NARRATOR: In December of 1864, thousands of freed blacks marched into Savannah in the wake of the Union Army.
The "contrabands," as they were called, had fled the plantations following the outbreak of the war -- and forced the Union to confront race and slavery as issues central to the war.
Their presence was a powerful symbol of the ties that now bound the North to Southern blacks.
DAVID BLIGHT, HISTORIAN: Northerners had sacrificed tremendously to do two things: to save the Union, to save the government, to save the nation, but also to destroy slavery. There wasn't necessarily a clear consensus about the extent of liberty and civil rights for the freedmen. But there was a fierce need or desire among white Northerners at the end of the Civil War to preserve what they had suffered and died for.
NARRATOR: The end of slavery was celebrated by a majority of Northerners, eager to be rid of what they saw as a shameful burden on the country.
In New York, Thomas Nast, the young star cartoonist for the most popular magazine of the time, Harper's Weekly, captured the optimism of many about the future.
The German-born Nast had made a name for himself by vehemently championing the Union's cause -- and the dignity of Southern black people.
But Nast's racial attitudes -- like those of most whites in the country -- were not without contradictions.
TED TUNNELL, HISTORIAN: It's important to remember how different 19th century America was. The notion of a multi-ethnic America is something that has only come into being in my lifetime. Nineteenth century America was profoundly white supremist. That meant more than simply that black people and non-whites were discriminated against. It meant that 19th century Americans' whole notion of what it meant to be an American was all wrapped up in whiteness. An American was a person with white skin.
ERIC FONER, HISTORIAN: We certainly should not view the Civil War as a debate between Northerners, all of whom held very egalitarian views, and Southerners who were racist. There was plenty of racism in the North. The North had discriminated very severely before the war against free blacks who lived there. At this time only five Northern states -- all of them in New England, with very small black populations -- give African Americans the right to vote. Ohio doesn't. New York only gives a tiny number the right to vote. Pennsylvania doesn't. Illinois doesn't.
NARRATOR: But as white Southern defiance grew after the war's end, Northern public opinion began to shift -- influenced by Nast's powerful visual commentaries on the troubles in the South.
CLARENCE WALKER: The South's intransigence, its refusal to move beyond the status quo antebellum (that is to say, to change its mind about black people) and the violence visited upon black people, convinces many people in the North that something has to be done to give blacks more constitutional protection.
NARRATOR: Nast's hopes came to fruition when Congress passed the Reconstruction Act and the 14th and 15th amendments, that established equal protection of the law and guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race.
But by the early 1870s, Northerners felt they had done enough.
FONER: People don't want any more. They're not really interested in further federal intervention. They want to turn their attention to other issues. The general sentiment seems to be growing that "Okay, blacks have been given their chance. They've been given their rights. Now it's sink or swim."
NARRATOR: Northern newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, voiced the opinion of many.
READING, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: "Is it not time for the colored race to stop playing baby? The whites of America have done nobly in outgrowing the old prejudices against them. They cannot hurry this process by law. Let them obtain social equality as every other man, woman, and child in this world obtain it -- by showing themselves in their lives the social equals of those with whom they wish to consort. If they do this, year-by-year the prejudices will die away."
NARRATOR: The conservative New York World was even more blunt, arguing that only states should decide "whether negroes, or Chinamen, or Indians shall be allowed to buy and occupy boxes at the opera, or to dine at hotels, or to send their children to the public schools, or to get themselves buried or cremated, as the case may be, in common with their white fellow citizens."
WALKER: In the minds of many people in the North, by the 1870s they were tired of the "Negro question." The Negro question had haunted them since the 1860s, and it was a subject which they were extremely ambivalent about.
NARRATOR: Adding to the North's uneasiness were the increasing rumors of incompetence and corruption among Southern black legislators.
Even Thomas Nast, who had been one of the staunchest supporters of biracial democracy in the South, believed the situation was out of control.
In a scathing cartoon published on the front page of Harper's in March of 1874, he focused on South Carolina, a black-majority legislature that, to many critics of Reconstruction, epitomized the evils of "negro government."
Nast depicted black legislators as ape-like men fighting over spoils under the disapproving eyes of Lady Columbia, symbol of Liberty and Republicanism.
FONER: By this time, enlightened opinion in the North is increasingly arguing that Reconstruction was a mistake. You know, in the 1870s you have the rise very prominently of social Darwinism of the North, of the ideology that there's a sort of, you know, there's a survival of the fittest, and that [trying] to put the lower group (like blacks) into a position of power is unnatural, undesirable, and it would be better if the -- what are called the "natural rulers" (the old prominent whites of southern society) -- come back into power. It's inevitable, and so there's not much can be done about it.
WALKER: The whole Civil War and Reconstruction process has been characterized by a deep ambivalence on the part of the North. And that ambivalence, by 1870s -- by the late 1870s -- has crystallized into "Let's cut our losses and get out." And the best thing is to leave this to the people who know best how to handle it.
NARRATOR: In 1877, a compromise between Republicans and Democrats following a disputed presidential election would result in the North's final retreat from the South.
In Washington, the magazine The Nation prophesied the end of an era: "The negro will disappear from the field of national politics. Henceforth, the nation will have nothing more to do with him."
Thomas Nast had not been immune to the racism of the times. But in the North's abandonment of Southern blacks he saw the betrayal of the ideals he and others had supported right after the war. Nast mourned the death of Reconstruction. But by then, his had become a lone voice.
