Reconstructed Rebels: Ex-Confederates in the Republican Party

After Congress took control of Reconstruction in 1866, thousands of former Confederates migrated into the Republican Party. Though nowhere near a majority of former Confederates, these “reconstructed rebels” exerted an outsized influence on Congressional Reconstruction. Few have a place in popular memory other than James Longstreet, though scholars have written about a handful of others as forgotten heroes who represented a different path for the South. In contrast to that view, this dissertation argues that their impact was largely conservative and that they were complicit in the abandonment of Reconstruction. An analysis of the roughly 4,600 former Confederates who received amnesty from Congress—that is, relief from the Fourteenth Amendment’s officeholding ban—shows that reconstructed rebels had much in common with Reconstruction’s opponents. Unlike Democratic Redeemers, however, they made a tactical decision that by joining forces with the Republicans, they could regain political power and attract northern economic investment in their states. Moreover, drawing on a long history of patron-client relationships with yeoman whites, they saw Black political participation as fully compatible with white supremacy and elite power. By joining the Republican Party, reconstructed rebels believed they could make Reconstruction more conservative and restore traditional white elites to power. While a great many southern elites supported violence as a means to overthrow Reconstruction, others preferred political cooptation. By successfully convincing white northerners that they were “reconstructed,” ex-Confederates in the Republican Party re-legitimized the image of white southern elites. The Democratic Redeemers benefited from their actions and later followed in their footsteps by combining Black political participation and white supremacy in the decades leading up to Black disfranchisement at the end of the nineteenth century. This history should remind readers in the twenty-first century about the mutability of white supremacy and the vulnerability of institutions to capture by elites. An accurate understanding of reconstructed rebels is particularly important in the current context of racial injustice, political violence, and struggle to balance national unity with justice.Doctor of Philosoph