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.

However, Zinn points to the actions of the “Southern white oligarchy” – including Klu Klux Klan murders, rapes, and burnings – to demonstrate that unchallenged white supremacy was simply a “more stable” situation. Zinn contends that as soon as it became clear that the costs of supporting black rights outweighed the benefits, businessmen promptly switched sides. A “new coalition of northern industrialists and southern businessmen-planters” thus emerged in opposition to black independence, powerful enough to later influence crucial Supreme Court decisions such as that in Plessy versus Ferguson of 1896. With no immediate economic benefits to securing black equality, all hope of Northern help evaporated. Congress ordered the removal of the Union army – whose presence in the South, to Zinn, merely “delayed” the onset of hardened inequality – because there had never been a moral cause in the North for its presence in the first place, and because the influential Northern elite’s economic interest in equality was regrettably short-lived. 

Unger recognizes the key aspects of Zinn’s argument. He writes that “stability in the South would be better for business,” and recognizes that the white supremacy necessary for this stability would be disastrous for black independence. He also recognizes that businessmen, both Northern and Southern, “were attracted to the Republican party because of its pro-business, pro-growth policies” and not because of any moral desire for black equality. Businessmen across the country and planters in the South are important actors in Unger’s explanation for the course of Reconstruction, but he does not go so far as to declare them to be the members of a “new coalition,” as Zinn maintains. With this interpretational discrepancy in mind, we must ask if there is any good reason to posit such an alliance; indeed, neither Zinn’s nor Unger’s account provides any explicit evidence for its existence. In defence of Zinn’s argument, perhaps some charity is in order: of course there may not have been an actual coalition in the strictest sense, but powerful Southern businessman-planters and influential northern elites were nonetheless inseparably linked due to their common interests, interests which clashed with black rights. As such, we may reasonably conceive of them as a single dominant and oppressive bloc.

However, Zinn’s implicit division of Americans into two more-or-less distinct groups, a rich minority of oppressors and a poorer oppressed majority, ignores any impact that poor white Americans may have had on the issue of black rights. Unger’s account, in contrast, calls attention to the negative influence of American society’s masses. He refers to an almost unanimously held belief in the North that blacks “were ill-equipped to exercise the rights of citizens.” In Unger’s judgment, the North was “full of “doughfaces” [Northern men with Southern principles].” Accordingly, “the majority of all northern white voters” were wholly opposed to black suffrage. The Northern majority’s disregard for black equality was magnified by its strong desire for post-bellum reconciliation with the South and the accompanying view that former Confederates should be allowed to determine their own course without federal imposition. Reconstruction’s failure to secure black independence in the South was thus met with profound and widespread indifference in the North. Radicals in Congress, always a minority, received fewer and fewer votes until these politicians disappeared altogether. For this reason, Unger holds white Americans as a whole – not just the rich elite – responsible for the failure of Reconstruction; he writes, simply, that “Americans of this era failed to meet the great challenges that faced them.”

Though Unger and Zinn agree on the factual details surrounding the failure of Reconstruction to secure independence and equality for black Americans in the South, their viewpoints clash over the issue of blame. Zinn presents a class-based analysis, concluding that a coalition of elites across the country should be held responsible for the North’s eventual military and political withdrawal from Southern states, leading to an inevitable reversion to white supremacy. Unger ascribes blame to a much wider section of the population, arguing that virtually all white Americans should be held accountable due to their racist attitudes. With every citizen answerable, Unger’s account does not portray Reconstruction’s failure as an inevitable outcome forced upon an oppressed majority. Rather, it hinged upon a racist societal consensus; as the more hopeful among us would hold, societal consensus can change.