Historians Howard Zinn and Irwin Unger amass powerful historical evidence to explain how Reconstruction failed to secure equal civil rights for blacks in the American South after the Civil War. Both historians agree that the North had the legislative and military power to create and enforce these rights in the South, and both contend that the North's actions, instead of securing black equality, produced a near-reversion to the racist Southern status quo: freedmen and freedwomen were not quite slaves but yet not quite free. Though factually consistent, the two accounts nonetheless differ concerning who was responsible for Reconstruction's failure and, by extension, whether the failure was inevitable. In A People's History of the United States, Zinn portrays the events of Reconstruction as the result of a top-down process. Controlled by white elites and designed to achieve only moderate post-bellum goals that benefited the rich classes, Reconstruction's outcome was pre-determined.
Blacks' rights were not on the agenda of the rich, and the rich held the power, so it was inevitable that these rights never received more than a trivial recognition on paper. Unger's These United States, by contrast, holds a much wider section of the American population responsible for Reconstruction's failure: Northerners and Southerners, businessmen and politicians, elites and average voters, scalawags and Klu Klux Klan members, conservatives and even radicals were all blameworthy to some degree for the fact that black independence never progressed significantly beyond the bare-bones legal enforcement of Emancipation. Unlike Zinn, Unger sees no master narrative by which one dominant group controlled the direction of Reconstruction and forced its inevitable outcome; each of these groups had power - albeit some more than others - and each may be held partially responsible for the failure of Reconstruction.
Though Zinn and Unger concur that Reconstruction was an overall failure, we must examine the criteria they use to make this judgement in order to understand in what respect it failed. Indeed, it appears that though the failure was significant, neither historian argues that it was complete. In areas not directly related to black independence and rights, both historians point to groups of Americans that benefited from Reconstruction. Unger refers to the reparation of physical devastation, Southern states' re-establishment in the Union, and even the doubling price of cotton as evidence of Reconstruction's success in some areas. Zinn, too, points out that Reconstruction was a “profitable” period for some whites. Even with respect to black rights, Zinn and Unger acknowledge that Reconstruction was not a complete failure.
Unger maintains that “considerable social and cultural gains” resulted from the North's post-bellum insistence on rigid enforcement of Emancipation legislation in the South. Educational opportunities, leadership opportunities, and freedom of religion for ex-slaves were direct and positive results of Reconstruction. Zinn, too, refers to the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution as well as numerous Southern laws from the late 1860s and early 1870s as evidence of some limited steps towards black rights during Reconstruction. Zinn and Unger consider Reconstruction to be a failure not because black rights were completely ignored, but because the gains made in this area were inadequate for any historian concerned with human rights to judge the era to be a success.
These achievements, both historians agree, were eclipsed by a massive failure to ensure the independence and equality of freed people throughout the South. Neither historian sees any reason to blame the recently freed slaves for their plight: Zinn argues that, despite their severely limited resources, “southern blacks were determined to make the most of their freedom,” and Unger is swift to dismiss arguments that black politicians were incompetent as mere “myths.” Zinn writes that blacks simply “did not have enough strength to make real the promise of equality in the Civil War,” but implies that with sincere help from the North - including a strong military presence - this would have been possible. Unger, too, deems genuine Northern assistance to be the key to real gains for blacks in the South. Using anti-black riots in Memphis to argue that Southerners “would never accept the consequences of defeat without northern coercion,” Unger is, like Zinn, adamant that the protection of federal troops was vital for true civil rights in the conquered South. The North's gradual withdrawal of troops from the South during Reconstruction, culminating in the Compromise of 1877 in which Republicans removed the last forces in exchange for Southern electoral votes, ensured that white supremacy, now unchecked by Federal power, would become the unchallenged status quo. Former slaves were left, in Unger's words, “on the bottom rung of society.”
While both Unger and Zinn are disappointed in the North's performance - or lack thereof - during Reconstruction, the two historians give different accounts to explain why Northern help was limited and ineffective. Zinn provides a class-oriented explanation. From Emancipation in 1863 to Reconstruction after the war, Zinn argues, the apparent “crusade” for black liberation was carefully “orchestrated [by] dominant groups” in America to ensure it never became too radical. To Zinn, just as the interests of the Northern “business elite” - not the morally-minded abolitionist minority - brought about the end of slavery, Northern business was the deciding factor in Reconstruction's pace after the war. Zinn argues that powerful businessmen in the North who believed that the Republican Party was the most profitable party for business allowed for a “brief period” in which blacks could vote and be elected to state legislatures and Congress.
