Prior to Civil War, the southern slave power fundamentally directed the destiny of the American Republic, facilitated at least in part by an unfair advantage in representation baked into the Constitution with the “three-
In The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 [2024], an ambitious, encyclopedic, groundbreaking work of scholarship, noted historian Manisha Sinha takes a fresh look at sixty years of American history and erases the boundaries attached to dates and events enforced in traditional textbooks, while sketching in her own markers. Civil War studies are typically bookended by the Mexican Cession that accelerated the crises of the antebellum, and the “Compromise of 1877” that officially ended Reconstruction—an artificial construct that ignores the fact that significant elements of Reconstruction endured at least until Plessy, with a last gasp when North Carolina Rep. George Henry White’s term expired in 1901, the sole remaining black from the south elected to Congress in the nineteenth century. Sinha, who previously distinguished herself with her widely acclaimed history of abolition, The Slave’s Cause, goes much, much further. In her striking reinterpretation that challenges the conventional historiography, the election of 1860 marked the dawn of the “Second American Republic,” a new era that extended far further than the timeline usually given to Civil War and Reconstruction, and expands the theme of Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” from emancipation to a whole host of unfulfilled rights those then marginalized would claim for themselves. As such, wide arms are wrapped around such seemingly disparate topics as women’s suffrage, the fate of Native Americans, Gilded Age plutocracy, the suppression of labor, and even overseas imperialism.
It remains astonishing that, until relatively recently, that is how most Americans understood the war and its aftermath. All too many still do. But the scholarly consensus has established that the central cause of the Civil War was human chattel slavery, that African Americans played a pivotal role in the Confederacy’s defeat, and that the postwar years in the south had far less to do with depredations by greedy northern plunderers than with the prevalence of violent bands of white supremacists who terrorized and murdered blacks attempting to claim civil rights newly won and enshrined in amendments to the Constitution.
The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic opens at the dawn of Reconstruction. Lincoln left no definitive blueprint for how he would frame the postwar period, but broad hints seemed to point towards generous terms for the defeated, rapid reunification, and at least some guarantees for the welfare of the newly emancipated. What was clear was his conviction that the process was to be directed by the executive branch. Congress—then controlled by the “Radical Republicans”—disagreed. They advocated for some sort of punishment for the south after all the bloodshed, demanded stiff conditions for states that had seceded to rejoin the Union, and imagined vastly expanded civil rights for African Americans—all under the purview of the legislative branch.
Clashes between these competing visions were made moot by Lincoln’s murder, just five days after Appomattox. At first glance, his successor, wartime governor Andrew Johnson—a Jacksonian Democrat known to despise the plantation elite, who had preemptively freed the enslaved in occupied Tennessee—had seemed a likely ally for Congressional aims. But such hopes were dashed early on as it became clear that the insecure and deeply racist Johnson gloried at the prospect of earning the esteem of his old foes by offering blanket pardons, while blocking all efforts to wield federal authority to protect freedmen under threat by their erstwhile masters. Leading Confederates, who once feared retribution, were delighted by the unexpected turn of events.
But Congress fought back. Significant legislation was passed, Johnson’s many vetoes overridden, and the landmark 14th Amendment mandating equal rights for African Americans was enacted in 1866. Johnson barely survived impeachment, but his tenure had wrought much havoc. Legal statutes proved tenuous against militant leagues of white supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan that would routinely intimidate and frequently murder blacks unwilling to be bullied into submission, as well as the whites who stood by them, particularly as the ranks of federal troops thinned with demobilization.
Next in the White House was the politically moderate Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln’s rightful heir, who both sought unity and sympathized with beleaguered blacks. But for all his good intentions, Grant turned out to be less adept and less effective as president than as general. And in many ways, it was already too late. There was no way to turn back the clock on the Johnson years. One by one, states formerly in rebellion that had rejoined the Union effectively overturned Reconstruction governments and claimed “Redemption” as ex-Confederate elites took power, and African Americans were even more heinously brutalized. Those who had once led the rebellion even took seats in Congress. Reconstruction formally sunsetted as occupying armies were withdrawn in a deal that settled the disputed election of 1876, but that was more ornamental than consequential. Reconstruction had been defeated; that was just a matter of pulling up stakes.
Efforts to realize the goals associated with Reconstruction persisted for the rest of the century, but these were generally marked by some small victories and many larger defeats. A number of blacks were elected to the House and Senate, even as equal protections guaranteed in the 14th Amendment faded away in practice. Although the 15th Amendment that extended the franchise to African American males became law in 1870, it could not be enforced across the bulk of the old Confederacy. And thus, the old three-fifths clause, officially extinct, had come full circle. Blacks were no longer counted as fractions for the purpose of representation, but as whole numbers. Yet, just as before, they were effectively denied the right to vote. The old slave power, sans the enslaved, had taken back much of what had been lost by secession and war—and somehow gained even more political clout.
For those who have read Eric Foner or Douglas Egerton, there is not much new here, but Sinha succeeds brilliantly in adding much-needed nuance while contextualizing Reconstruction beyond the political to a complex, interrelated movement of social, economic, and cultural forces that coexisted with often competing dynamics of a postwar United States driven by a thirst for wealth and territorial domination, while desperate to bury the past and move forward. As in her previous work on abolition, the author rightly refocuses the history on the ground to highlight African Americans who did the heavy lifting to advance Reconstruction, rather than their white allies who habitually receive credit in other accounts. And here again she excels, reminding us just how common it was for blacks to be arbitrarily targeted for violence and how many were left for dead. By citing numerous incidents, and attaching names (when possible) to the victims, she restores their humanity from the statistical anonymity of most studies.
But Sinha may be less successful when she leaves the struggle for African American civil rights behind to attach a Reconstruction zeitgeist to much wider arenas that encompass women’s suffrage, the Indian Wars, unbridled capitalism, strike-breaking, and imperialism. To be sure, Reconstruction was a truly radical attempt to remake society that carved deep grooves elsewhere, but there are limits. Certain ostensible correlations might be overstated. There is no doubt that the outcome of the Civil War resulted in a federal government capable of serving as a powerful agent for change, which warrants underscore. But even absent the conflict, it seems that given historical forces already present in the antebellum, such as the explosive growth of manufacturing in the north, an expanded labor pool fueled by immigration, innovations in communication and transportation, and westward expansion, subsequent developments such as the Second Industrial Revolution, an overheated economy, increasing inequality, and clashes between capital and labor were likely to occur regardless. As to overseas adventurism, so-called “filibusters” hankered for Cuba many decades before Theodore Roosevelt helped facilitate that “splendid little war.”
Sinha’s thesis finds its firmest ground in her treatment of the suffrage movement, as the long fight for women’s voting rights was first manifested in a series of alliances—of whites and blacks—that overlapped with causes favoring abolition and equal rights for African Americans. Many white women who had expended so much effort in this behalf were deeply embittered when black men seemed to leapfrog over them to earn the franchise. Some cloaked their disappointment, steadfast in the belief that their time would come. Others turned hostile. Sinha reveals the uncomfortable story of how, for a time, suffrage icons Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton betrayed black women by making common cause with Democrats openly inimical to civil rights in order to advance attempts to obtain the ballot. Other suffragists, loath to view expanding rights as a zero sum game, took a more honorable path. Sinha concludes The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which finally granted the right to vote to all adults, regardless of gender or color. Of course, for black women across the south, like their male counterparts, this was to be an empty promise until the late 1960s.
It is more difficult to connect the dots from Reconstruction to the displacement and near extermination Native Americans: brutally forced off their lands, driven to starvation, herded into reservations, hunted and killed by the cavalry, faced with extinction. Sinha emphasizes that many advocates for black equality witnessed these events unfold with horror and went on record in protest. But these figures represented the tiniest of minorities. The rest of America, north and south, was just as united after the war as in the antebellum in the pursuit of manifest destiny, and either wholly antagonistic or merely agnostic to the plight of the indigenous. Stephen Douglas’s cry for “popular sovereignty” that ended up fanning the flames of secession was deeply entangled with lobbying for a transcontinental railroad that would ride roughshod through domains Indians claimed as their own. Few whites objected then or later. In 1860, southern elites lusted for the western territories to recreate enslaved societies on the plains, while northern free-soilers yearned just as fervently for wide open spaces reserved for yeoman farmers. Neither vision included free blacks, and each excluded Native Americans. The end of the war simply translated into more resources that could be brought to bear upon Indian relocation or annihilation, accelerating a process long underway.
Like many historians, Sinha bemoans the fact that Lincoln’s party, which once cheered abolition and equality, mutated into a coldhearted pro-corporate entity indifferent to rights denied to large segments of its citizenry, and unfriendly to a labor force comprised principally of foreign nationals. Tragic indeed, but how surprising was that? The origin of the Republican Party, after all, was a coalition of former pro-business Whigs, disaffected Democrats, nativist “Know Nothings,” and racist, antislavery free-soilers—most whom despised the tiny minority of abolitionists who clung to the fringes. Antislavery and abolition rarely overlapped in those days. And in 1860, abolitionists were split over whether to endorse Lincoln. Even later, emancipation and civil rights were ideologically dominant in the party for only a very brief period. With the Union restored and slavery outlawed, Republicans cynically returned to their roots.
While impeccably researched and extremely well-written, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic is also a long, dense read, which some readers may find intimidating. Scores upon scores of individuals populate the narrative, further complicated by references to numerous organizations thereafter rendered in acronym. It is, at times, hard to keep track, something that might have been mitigated in appendices by a “cast of characters” and a table or two. Still, I suppose this is a quibble, and should by no means overshadow Sinha’s achievement in turning out this outstanding work of history that is original, illuminating, and thought-provoking. If you have a Civil War era bookshelf, this volume belongs on it.
Note: I reviewed Egerton’s Reconstruction work here: Review of: The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era, by Douglas R. Egerton
