Race and Reunion

According to Blight, postwar politics and reconciliationism derailed the process of Reconstruction, sidelining radical Republicans and allowing a white supremacist insurgency to flourish in the Southern states.

The elections of 1868 and 1872 were instrumental in reconciliationism’s ascendency, and the presidential campaigns in these years “served as a referendum on both the sectional and racial meanings of the war” (98). In 1868, the Republicans nominated former Union general Ulysses S. Grant for the Presidency. Grant was a moderate who loosely favored suffrage for Black American men. With Grant’s nomination, the party abandoned radical Republicanism and focused on maintaining order rather than any progressive agenda. Democrats nominated white supremacist candidates who launched a racist campaign painting Reconstruction as an effort to give free Black Americans, whom they accused of various unsavory acts, authority over whites. Democratic campaigners worked to “build a line of defense against radical Republicanism and turn the country away from Reconstruction” (103). Still others used the language of reconciliation to praise the generals who fought on both sides. Meanwhile, white-run Southern newspapers promoted the image of a broken South with which readers should empathize. Yet they also portrayed the former Confederacy as “unbowed” (102) while stoking fears about Black empowerment.