These notes are part of the Black Reconstruction Reading Group‘s study material.
Chapter 7 Looking Forward
How two theories of the future of America clashed and blended just after the civil War: abolition – democracy and industry.
Puritan idealism, after being transformed by the West, became abolition – democracy. Abolitionists include Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, some leaders of the new labor movement.
“The new industry had a vision not of work but of wealth; not of planned accomplishment, but of power. It became the most conscious, unmoral system of industry which the world has experienced.”
“The American assumption was that wealth is mainly the result of its owners effort and that any average worker can be thrift become a capitalist.” Still powerful idea today, I think, but less so, and dubois said that it “ceased with the civil War” and “it died with a great wail of despair” in the Great depression.
Allies of capital: “the most intelligent and best paid of workers” because they have money to buy things. The US is a dictatorship of capital.
Page 185: “abolition democracy was pushed towards the conception of a dictatorship of Labor.”
Industry looked upon the freed Negro labor as a source of profit.
The South opposed any education, land, capital, voting, political power for freed Negroes.
“Votes for Negroes were in truth a final compromise between business and abolition and were forced on abolition by businesses as the only method of realizing the basic principles of abolition – democracy.” This point I did not understand reading this chapter.
Black men wanted freedom, education, protection, land.
Dubois misuses the term “anarchy” again on page 189 saying that “the war ended in anarchy as War always ends”.
Talking about who should become a part of American democracy and who not in terms of having the right to vote, it said in the case of women voting interfered with “sex ownership.” And nothing is mentioned about Native Americans.
Dubois goes into Sumner and Stevens and their speeches. Sumner writes “strike at the black code as you have already struck at the slave code.” Stevens writes that “their votes are as necessary as their muskets” and that they should be given 40 acres. I think the mules came later.
It goes into debates about what reconstruction should be and look like.
The 13th amendment is on page 208 but it does not mention the fine print about slavery being abolished “except for punishment of a crime.”
“The freeing of the nation from the strangling hands of oligarchy in the South freed not only black men but white men, not only human spirit, but business Enterprise all over the land.”
To put the context of industry after the war, there were two things that industry was focused on: natural resources and transportation.
The homestead law was passed and “threw open the Western lands to settlers on easy terms.”
Page 214, another piece of the puzzle I have for this chapter is this great quote: “thus a movement which began primarily and sincerely to abolish slavery and ensure the Negroes rights [abolition – democracy], became coupled with a struggle of capitalism to retain control of the government as against Northern labor and southern and western agriculture.” ???
The proletariat was represented by four sets of people: the freed negro, the southern poor White, the northern skilled laborer and common laborer. ” These groups never came to see their common interests, and the financiers and capitalists easily kept the upper hand.”
Dubois notes that “strikes took place, soldiers were used to put them down, and laws were introduced to prevent strikes.”
The labor movement was mostly Northern skilled laborers and their organization was growing, “but almost none of these unions mentioned the Negro, or considered him or welcomed him.”
In the south a new dictatorship was designed for the protection of emancipated Negro labor. This was the Freedmen’s bureau, which is noted to be “the first fruit of the growing understanding between industrial expansion and abolition – democracy.” Like a government guardianship. The next several pages goes into the development of the legislation that created the bureau and the bureaus implementation by its head, Oliver Howard.
Three things the South fought bitterly (and still do!): any federal interference with labor, arms in the hands of Negroes, votes for Negroes.
The Freedmen’s bureau focus mainly on schools, hospitals, courts and it was under the war department and so had a limited time span to get everything done. In addition, its appropriations were problematic in less than optimal.
It’s described as a dictatorship of the army.
On page 230, Robert Smalls of Facebook Fame is noted to be an elected delegate to the national convention but was denied a seat.
Black people petitioned the government, and the next few pages go into what those protests and petitions were about, basically human rights and going against the Black codes.
Dubois states “there can be no doubt that Abraham Lincoln never would have accepted the black codes. He began by Looking backward and then turned with the forward-looking word.”
However, Andrew Johnson who took over from Lincoln “started looking forward towards free land, and the interest of the suppressed laborers in the south…he accepted the Black codes.”
Supplemental References:
https://isreview.org/issue/80/karl-marx-and-american-civil-war/index.html
https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/marx-and-the-american-civil-war
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-White-Race-Two-Anglo-America/dp/1859840760
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea
These notes are part of the Black Reconstruction Reading Group‘s study material.
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