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chapter 9 Reconstruction: The Making and Unmaking of a Revolution
they practice-taught at the successor to the Butler School for Negro Children. The 1865–1877
Hampton model of vocational training was akin to that of training schools for poor
white children and immigrants at the time, but some black leaders feared that it would
perpetuate black subordination. The Louisianian, a black newspaper, complained
that Armstrong “seems to think that we should only know enough to make good ser-
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vants.” The debate over vocational training versus liberal arts intensified toward the
end of the century, and at its center was Washington, the preeminent black leader of
his day.

A Short-Lived Political Revolution

Even as black men and women built independent lives, they sought a place in American
public life, and for a short period known as Black Reconstruction, black men were able
to vote in the South and to participate in politics. Radical Republicans in Congress
had taken charge of Reconstruction and forced the former Confederate states to hold
democratically elected constitutional conventions, which wrote new state constitu-
tions that protected black suffrage. The consequences were revolutionary. Nowhere
else in the world had an emancipated people been integrated into the political sys-
tem so quickly. Black men elected or appointed to state and local offices proved able
and moderate and demonstrated their interest in compromise and progressive reforms
such as public schools. But Black Reconstruction was short-lived. Outraged southern
whites mobilized a violent and racist counterrevolution that restored white political
dominance by 1877. Congress and the Republican Party abandoned black interests,
and the U.S. Supreme Court reversed gains made by Reconstruction laws and amend-
ments. In its retreat from Black Reconstruction, the national government reflected the
expanding white opposition to the evolving black freedom struggle.

The Political Contest over Reconstruction
Andrew Johnson, who became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, con-
tinued Lincoln’s lenient policies toward former Confederates. Like Lincoln, Johnson
insisted that the war was an insurrection, that the southern states were never out of the
Union, and that the organization of a new civil authority in these states was an execu-
tive, not a legislative, function. His rapid restoration of civil government in the former
Confederate states, amnesty for former Confederates, and lack of interest in protect-
ing the civil rights of freedpeople angered the Radical Republicans in Congress. This
faction, led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner, had
pressed for more aggressive military campaigns during the war and a quicker end to
slavery. Challenging Lincoln, it had run John C. Frémont against him for the presi-
dency in 1864 and passed the Wade-Davis Bill aiming to reverse Lincoln’s proposed
leniency toward Confederates. In December 1865, when Johnson declared that the
Union had been restored and it looked as though representatives and senators from

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