In general, the southern state governments formed during this period of Reconstruction represented a coalition of African Americans, recently arrived northern whites (“carpetbaggers”) and southern white Republicans (“scalawags”). The new state legislatures formed in 1867-69 reflected the revolutionary changes brought about by the Civil War and emancipation: For the first time, Blacks and whites stood together in political life. That legislation divided the South into five military districts and outlined how new state governments based on universal (male) suffrage-for both whites and Blacks-were to be organized. Beginning in 1867, they formed a coalition with carpetbaggers (one-sixth of the electorate) and scalawags (one-fifth) to gain control of southern state legislatures for the Republican Party.Ĭongress’ passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 marked the beginning of the Radical Reconstruction period, which would last for the next decade. In the congressional elections of 1866, northern voters rejected Johnson’s view of Reconstruction and handed a major victory to the so-called Radical Republicans, who now took control of Reconstruction.ĭid you know? African Americans made up the overwhelming majority of southern Republican voters during Reconstruction. Freed African Americans had no role in politics, and the new southern legislatures even passed “black codes” restricting their freedom and forcing them into repressive labor situations, a development they strongly resisted. In the two years following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the end of the Civil War in April 1865, Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson angered many northerners and Republican members of Congress with his conciliatory policies towards the defeated South.
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