1877 — When America Lost its First War Against Terror
Would our Nation look different Today?
When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 at the behest of newly elected President Joe Biden, many considered it a humiliating defeat in the war against terror.
Nearly 150 years ago, the United States lost another, far more destructive, war against terror that completely changed the country’s racial landscape. The defeat caused a sonic boom-like impact that still echoes today.
When the 1876 Presidential Election appeared deadlocked, Republicans made a “deal with the devil” to get their man, Rutherford B. Hayes (R-Ohio), elected to the Nation’s highest office. This deal effectively ended any federal enforcement of the recently-passed Reconstruction Acts.
Whatever chance formerly enslaved people in the South had of achieving equality and taking their place as full American citizens as affirmed by the 14th Amendment, or enjoying the full privileges of enfranchisement, codified by the 15th Amendment, ended then.
Capitulation by the Republican Party, previously the Party of Freedmen and de facto protectors of the freedom won by the Civil War, assured that Southern hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, would have free reign to terrorize southern blacks and southern white Republicans, thus preventing them from voting, and exercising any real legislative power.
Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War until approximately 1890, is woefully ignored in America’s schools. It is a seminal chapter of the American story. It reveals how close we came to achieving our ideals only to have them slip through our fingers.
Studying the Reconstruction era invokes a mountain of hope that soon gets buried in an avalanche of reality. Reconstruction is the story of Sisyphus, and the story of Tantalus, all rolled into one. So close, and yet so elusive.
But were we genuinely close to racial harmony or equality? Or would the hatred, white supremacy, and Lost Cause ignorance of Southern Democrats have never allowed full implementation of the 14th and 15th Amendments? Let’s look at some facts about the Reconstruction era to determine the direction the Nation was heading:
· Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866 to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed slaves.
· The South Carolina State Legislature was majority Black after the 1868 election and began enacting legislation to establish public schools to educate former slaves.
· The US Congress passed THREE Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871 to provide Federal resources to defeat the terrorists trying to deny Blacks their Constitutional Rights. The third, the Enforcement Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act), gave President Ulysses S. Grant (R-Ohio) broad powers to arrest and imprison those terrorizing blacks without having to abide by habeas corpus. It also authorized the use of Federal Troops to prevent the Klan and other gangs of Southern Democrats from terrorizing blacks.
· Between 1871 and 1877, Alabama elected African-Americans to the US House of Representatives. They would not elect another until 1993.
· In 1871, Georgia elected Blacks to the US House of Representatives. They would not elect another until 1971.
· South Carolina elected Blacks to the US House from 1870 until 1897, but not again until 1993.
The Civil Rights Act passed on March 1, 1875, required, “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”
The second section provided that any person denied access to these facilities on account of race would be entitled to monetary restitution under a federal court of law.”1
The US Supreme Court overturned the law in 1883, arguing it gave too much power to the Federal Government rather than the States. If the early mood of Reconstruction had continued, would there have been a different outcome? Would Congress have outlawed Jim Crow before the turn of the 20th Century?
But was this a War on Terror? Can the Klan and other Southern Democrat groups be considered terrorists? Here are some numbers2:
· White mobs killed 138 Blacks in Mobile, Alabama, in 1865
· White gangs killed 48 Blacks and burned to the ground numerous Black churches, schools, businesses, and homes in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1866
· White mobs killed 200 Blacks in Opelousas, Louisiana, in September 1868
· White mobs killed 150 Blacks in Millican, Texas, in 1868
Andrew Johnson mostly ignored these atrocities when he became President after the assassination of Lincoln.
However, when President Ulysses S. Grant (R-Ohio) entered office in 1869, he consistently signed Reconstruction enforcement legislation. He sent Federal Troops to the South to quell terrorism and assist the Freedmen and Women in pursuing the American Dream as complete, equal American Citizens.
So what happened?
The Election of 1876 happened.
In early 1877 when the election between Democrat Samuel Tilden(D-New York) and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was still too close to call and shrouded in controversy, Congress established a bi-partisan Committee to determine the winner of 20 disputed electoral votes. The eight craven Republicans on the Committee compromised with the seven Democrats, giving the Republican candidate (Hayes) all 20 votes and electing him President.
In return, Hayes promised Southern Democrats he would remove Federal Troops from Southern states. Hayes also agreed to a laissez-faire approach to the South, giving them the ability to deal with Black people as they saw fit, without Northern interference.
This home-rule provision ended any chance for Blacks to thrive, rendered moot any Reconstruction-enforcing legislation, and ushered in the era of Jim Crow, which lasted for nearly 100 years.
Poll Taxes, literacy tests, the threat of violence, and outright violence prevented freed slaves from voting, reducing Black representation in State and National Legislatures. Lynching became a tactic for intimidating Blacks and their supporters discouraging them from participating in the political process.
In the South, local law enforcement was primarily Democrats, so mobs terrorized Blacks with impunity, with no Federal Troops mobilized to stop them. These intimidation tactics resulted in majority Democrat representation in southern State Houses.
In the 1870s, the US lost a War on Terror to the Ku Klux Klan and Southern Democrats, and America, as a nation, has never fully recovered.
Is it assured that if the Compromise of 1877 did not occur, peace and acquiescence would have swept through the South? Certainly not. But if enforcement of the provisions of Reconstruction Era legislation had been allowed to proceed, we may be in a much better place than we are today.
Would legitimate enfranchisement of former slaves and federal enforcement of enacted Reconstruction legislation mean that in the 1890s, we would’ve skipped over Plessy v. Ferguson and gone straight to Brown v. Board of Education?
Would the slow progress in racial healing we have experienced have proceeded much quicker? Would Jim Crow laws have been rendered unenforceable? Would Homer Plessy have made Rosa Parks unnecessary?
We will never know, but the Compromise of 1877 halted the momentum of racial equality that began during Reconstruction, dooming the United States to decades more of racial strife and conflict.
