Societal Consensus: Howard Zinn and Irwin Unger’s Accounts of the Failure of Reconstruction

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.