In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:
Men now seem eager to vest all powers in governments, i.e., in the apparatus of social compulsion and coercion. They aim at totalitarianism, that is, conditions in which all human affairs are managed by governments. They hail every step toward more government interference as progress toward a more perfect world; they are confident that the governments will transform the earth into a paradise.
That insight aptly encapsulates the centralization of government power during the Reconstruction Era of 1865 to 1877 in the American South. The Radical Republicans saw the federal government as essential to the daunting task of rebuilding the south. William Dunning describes the devastation caused by the war, “the ravaged territory of the Confederacy, [as] the ancient social structure lay in obvious and irremediable ruin.” Particularly in “the heart of the Confederacy, the cotton states proper…chaos was universal.” In addition to the casualties of war, much of the South had been burned to the ground by General Sherman’s armies. The organization of labor was in disarray. While some emancipated slaves stayed at their usual work, others “wandered aimless but happy through the country, [and] found endless delight in hanging about the towns and Union camps.” The challenge of social and economic reconstruction was not inconsiderable.
Under the guise of rebuilding the subjugated territory, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 decreed that “no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States,” and that it was therefore necessary for “loyal and republican State governments” to be “legally established.” To that end, the rebel states were divided into military districts to be “subject to the military authority of the United States.” To the Radical Republican, Southerners were neither loyal nor republican, as they were still devoted to their “lost cause.” Therefore, the Radicals reasoned, men loyal to the Union would have to be brought in to rebuild the South. Dunning observes that,
The [Radical Republican] party, then, which triumphed in the making of the [Southern] constitutions, and which looked forward to a further triumph in their ratification, consisted chiefly of freedmen, led by a small number of northern whites—the detested “carpet-baggers.” With these were united a body of [Southern] whites—the even more detested “scalawags”—who were either war-time Unionists animated by still undiminished hatred of the ex-Confederates, or “reconstructed” rebels who had given up the fight against the congressional policy…
The duty of the reconstruction government, as the Radicals saw it, was to force Southern “rebels” to uphold the ideals of racial equality and universal suffrage. To understand this vision in context, it must be remembered that there is a good reason why in 1865 these ideals were described as “radical.” Even within the Republican party, racial integration could not be described as an ideal held by most Republicans. The radical faction was hostile to the more measured approach of President Andrew Johnson, who insisted that the process of reconstruction must be constitutional. The problem, as the Radicals saw it, was that there was nothing in the Constitution to authorize their vision of enforcing social revolution at the point of the bayonet. They saw this as a question of enforcing the outcome of the war, rather than merely an exercise in upholding the Constitution. They were impatient with President Johnson’s view, as Dunning reports, that he lacked “constitutional warrant for a determination of suffrage qualifications by executive decree.” There was no political consensus on this point, and as time went by, support for the President’s view only dwindled. Dunning reports that, from the outset, “Radical senators and representatives insistently urged the importance of including the freedmen in the reorganizing electorates, and the cabinet was equally divided on this question.”
Although by this time black people were, in theory, not prohibited from voting in most Northern states, it was not regarded as customary for them to do so. For example, slavery was abolished in Ohio in 1802, but legal restrictions on black people continued for several more decades:
When Ohio’s prohibition against blacks testifying in legal cases involving white people was lifted in 1849, observers acknowledged that, at least in the southern part of the state, where most of the blacks lived, social prejudice would keep the ban in practical effect.
Racial segregation in Ohio schools and colleges continued into the 1860s despite legal challenges:
The Ohio courts upheld this segregation in 1850 and 1859, rejecting the idea of integration and declaring that, “whether consistent with true philanthropy or not…there…still is an almost invincible repugnance to such communion and fellowship.”
Nor was Ohio unusual in this regard:
Anti-immigration legislation passed in Illinois in 1819, 1829, and 1853. In Indiana, such laws were enacted in 1831 and 1852. Michigan Territory passed such a law in 1827; Iowa Territory passed one in 1839 and Iowa enacted another in 1851 after it became a state. Oregon Territory passed such a law in 1849.
Therefore, the idea that it was important to send in federal troops to crush white supremacy in the South by force was certainly not widespread anywhere in America, or indeed, anywhere in the world, in 1865. Yet, on the basis that governments elected by Southerners could not be trusted to implement Radical ideals, and only the federal government could transform the South into a nation befitting the Radical vision, the government embarked upon military occupation of the South.
Southerners took great exception to both the military occupation and the tearing up of the Constitution that was needed to justify it. As Dunning observes,
…the southerners felt that the policy of Congress had no real cause save the purpose of radical politicians to prolong and extend their party power by means of negro suffrage.… a craving for political power was assumed to be the only explanation of an otherwise unintelligible proceeding.
The “unintelligible proceeding” here denotes the propaganda promoted by the Radical Republicans, in which they alleged that the South had not “genuinely” accepted losing the war, that Southerners were trying to restore slavery by stealth, and that a desire to participate in rebuilding their own society and economy was simply cover for returning troublesome rebel politicians to power.
James and Walter Kennedy, in their book The South Was Right, observe that during Reconstruction the military authorities had “complete authority over the affairs of these states.” They highlight the threat posed by Reconstruction to peace between North and South, as the federal government set out “to humiliate and impoverish” the South and to “remake Southern society after its own image.” Their warning echoes that of Mises in Omnipotent Government, where he argues that the aftermath of war is instrumental in ensuring lasting peace.
Speaking of the rise of nationalism in Europe, Mises observes that the seeds of WWII were sown in the ashes of WWI: in between the two wars “every nation was eager to inflict as much harm on the other nations as possible.” Rather than reconciliation, vengeance was the prevailing sentiment. Describing the threat to peace posed by dictators and conquerors throughout history—from Genghis Khan to Napoleon to Hitler—Mises warns that,
History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.… A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets. A minority cannot rule if it is not supported by the consent of those ruled.
The Reconstruction era was precisely that—an attempt to enforce “cooperation by coercion” and to create “a lasting order” in the South “established by bayonets.”
