Why was Reconstruction “Radical”?

• Revolutionary moment (Foner 1988)
• Increasing evidence of effects (Stewart and Kitchens 2021; Logan 2020; Chacon and Jensen 2020; Rogowski 2018)
• Not obvious that it would happen

• Understanding why legislation passed helps understand weakening
• Question: Why did Congress adopt these policies?

Why?: (i) Electoral Incentives

Vallely (2004) and others suggest:

• Republicans faced strategic dilemma with South rejoining the Union
• Democrats would gain seats; need for Republican voters in the South
• Enfranchisement of African Americans provided an answer
• Changing electoral incentives weakened Reconstruction

Why?: (ii) Factions and Public Opinion

• Republican party was new, composed of factions that disagreed on Slavery and Civil Rights
• Republican factions backed Black suffrage before the war (Bateman 2020)
• Factional politics determined trajectory of Civil Rights Legislation (Jenkins and Peck 2021)
• Party sensitive to public opinion, unfolding events (Wang 1997)

Three Major Questions

Truth to both (i) and (ii)…

1. Where did public support among Northern voters come from?

2. Why did state parties move faster than Congressional Republicans?

3. Were Republican factions persistent over time? (Abolitionists like Horace Greeley \(\to\) Liberal Republicans)

Argument: Union Veterans, Activism from Below

Union Veterans…

1. Formed a large vote bloc (~25% of eligible voters in the North)
2. Became Republican voters
3. Interpreted “Won Cause” as linked to ending slavery, gaining Civil Rights

\(\to\) Veterans provided public support and votes for Republicans during Reconstruction (Weaver 2022)

Argument: Union Veterans, Activism from Below

Union veterans formed organizations (like the Grand Army of the Republic) that

1. Mobilized votes during elections (1866, 1868)
2. Had strong connections to Radical Republicans
3. Took strong stances on Reconstruction politics

\(\to\) Veterans organizations could push Radical policies from the bottom up

Testing: Implications

1. Members of Congress with more veteran constituents should take more pro-Civil Rights positions, after the war (public support)
2. Republicans in Congress from districts with more veterans should take increasingly pro-Civil Rights positions, after the war (organizational pressure)

Testing: Data

1. Enlistment Rates: enlistment rate for military aged males in 1860 by Congressional District (Dippel and Heblich 2021)
2. Civil Rights Ideal Points:

• House Roll Calls from 35th (pre-war) to 44th (last “Reconstruction”) Congresses
• Identified civil rights related votes (Bateman and Lapinski 2016)
• Slavery, Prosecution of the War, Civil Rights, Civil Rights Enforcement, and Reconstruction (votes on Federal Powers over the South, etc.)

Testing: Ideal Points

Two problems:

1. Radicals voted against moderate proposals

   • normal scaling techniques mislabel Radical legislators (Thaddeus Stevens)
   • use “Ends against the Middle” estimator from (Duck-Mayr and Montgomery 2023)

2. Policy spaces in successive Congresses not comparable

   • Raw scores cannot be meaningfully compared
   • Rankings in policy space are meaningful

Testing: Design

A kind of continuous differences-in-differences:

• Did relationship between enlistment rates and civil rights voting change after veterans returned home?
• Did civil rights rankings within districts change more in places with more enlistment?

\[\text{Civil Rights Rank}_{dc} = \alpha_{d} + \alpha_{c} + \sum_{c = 39 \neq 38}^{42} \beta_c \text{Enlistment}_d * \mathrm{Congress}_c + \epsilon_d\]

Enlistment-Civil Rights Voting Correlation by Year

Change in Civil Rights Voting by Enlistment (Panel)

Interpretation

Districts with higher enlistment saw legislators increase their ranking in pro-Civil Rights voting after the Civil War

• these legislators moved more even as Congress as a whole adopted more Radical policies
• these changes are not ONLY due to Republican seat gains
• effects persist when looking at seats held by Republicans; same legislator over time

Next Steps

• Look at specific votes: which issue areas drive this change?
• A common policy space (?): ranking pairs of votes
• Tracing the mechanisms: GAR posts/activities, activism in state houses, data on veterans in state/county conventions(?)
• Durability of Reconstruction coalition: do these effects persist later? (Bateman 2023)