#radicalrepublicans

Black Codes: Slavery Under a New Name During Reconstruction

The Black Codes were a series of racist and discriminatory policies enacted by several former slave states in the United States during the early years of the Reconstruction Era (circa 1865-1877). Rooted in earlier vagrancy laws and slave codes, the Black Codes established a new form of quasi-slavery by restricting Black freedoms, denying Black people equal political rights, and resubjugating freed men and women to forced labor. Outrage over the Black Codes by Northerners and Radical Republicans helped trigger the 'Radical' phase of Reconstruction, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Reconstruction Acts. However, the Black Codes, part of a larger legacy of White supremacy, did not end with Reconstruction but morphed into the Jim Crow laws of the segregationist South.

Background: Vagrancy Laws & Slave Codes

The Black Codes were rooted in a long legacy of racism, classism, and White supremacy. They relied heavily on earlier vagrancy laws, which restricted the freedom of movement of those deemed to be 'vagrants.' Vagrants were usually classified as impoverished people who made their living by begging, scavenging, or thieving; ostensibly to minimize these activities, authorities were permitted to arrest anyone they deemed to be a 'vagrant' out in public places or on the streets. These laws, first implemented in late medieval England, discouraged poor peasants and serfs from traveling, effectively guaranteeing a pool of labor to manorial lords, who could now rest assured that their workers would be less likely to leave. Later, these laws were weaponized to clamp down on homelessness as well as on those deemed to come from 'undesirable' classes.

The slave codes of colonial and Antebellum America would also help inform the later Black Codes. These laws codified the racial hierarchy and White supremacy that were necessary for chattel slavery to exist. They defined enslaved people as the property of their masters, rather than as human beings, and proclaimed that a child born to an enslaved mother would also be enslaved. Although slave codes varied from state to state, many forbade enslaved people from being educated and denied them any legal or civil rights. The codes also allowed masters to whip, brand, or imprison their slaves as punishment. In the decades running up to the American Civil War, much of the American South relied on slave labor to uphold its agrarian, plantation-based economy. However, the loss of the war and the end of slavery deprived the South of much of its workforce. It was this labor shortage – combined, of course, with the legacy of slavery and White supremacy, as well as a desire to avenge the defeat of the Confederacy – that would lead to the slave codes and vagrancy laws being wound together to create the Black Codes.

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Fourteenth Amendment: Defining Birthright Citizenship

The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the most important and consequential additions to the United States Constitution. Ratified in 1868, it defines American citizenship as belonging to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" – i.e., 'birthright citizenship' – and guarantees "equal protection of the laws" and "due process" to all citizens. The amendment was drafted and implemented during the turbulent Reconstruction Era (circa 1863-1877) to protect the newly won liberties of the formerly enslaved. It remains highly relevant in US political discourse and is one of the most frequently litigated parts of the US Constitution.

Background: Reconstructing a Nation

With the end of the American Civil War came the abolition of slavery in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had already freed the slaves in the rebellious South, while the Thirteenth Amendment – ratified by the requisite number of states in December 1865 – freed them everywhere else (with the notable exception of forced labor being retained as punishment for criminals). Millions of formerly enslaved people were liberated from their shackles and were, at least on paper, finally able to take control of their own destinies. But although the issue of slavery itself had been decided in the smoke and fire of the American Civil War, there was not yet a consensus about the place that freedmen and women would have within American society. Would they be counted as full citizens? Would they be allowed to vote?

US President Abraham Lincoln knew that the country had to grapple with these questions before the scars of war and sectional division could ever truly be healed. To this end, he and the antislavery Republican Party established the Freedmen's Bureau in early 1865. The bureau was a federal agency responsible for helping formerly enslaved people make the transition to freedom; agents helped impoverished freedpeople secure supplies and access to education, and even made plans to provide them with farmlands that had been confiscated from ex-Confederates – this plan became the basis for the 'forty acres and a mule' slogan.

With the Freedmen's Bureau working to help freedpeople take advantage of their freedoms, Lincoln next turned to the question of their liberties, including suffrage. On 11 April 1865, shortly after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he gave a speech voicing his support for the enfranchisement of Black Americans, or at least those who had served in the Union Army during the war. But whether he would have followed through on this promise can never be known, as only a few days later, he was dead, felled by an assassin's bullet.

Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, was a less capable politician. A rough-spun Democrat from Tennessee, Johnson was less interested in securing the rights of Black Americans than he was in ending Reconstruction as quickly as possible. To this end, he granted amnesty to most ex-Confederates and gave them back much of their confiscated lands, thereby thwarting the Freedmen's Bureau's plans to give these lands to formerly enslaved people. Indeed, Johnson derailed many of the bureau's efforts and even vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bills, which would have done much to aid freedpeople throughout the South.

Johnson's policies – a phase known as 'Presidential Reconstruction' – emboldened the defeated South to reclaim much of the power it had lost. The former Confederate States returned many of their old leaders to office and implemented the 'Black Codes,' discriminatory legislative policies that restricted the freedoms and civil liberties of Black Americans. When Congress reconvened, the most fervent advocates for the Union and for Black liberties – known as Radical Republicans – were horrified that Johnson had endangered Reconstruction by allowing the old slave-holding aristocracy to reclaim some of its authority.

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