The following article is part two in a series on the effects of the Civil War in Alabama.

Less than nine months into the term of Alabama Governor Lewis Parsons, he was succeeded by Robert M. Patton who took office in December 1865 after a federally mandated election. With the turnover in the governor’s office, the next phase of reconstruction in Alabama was set to begin. In the time period between Patton’s election in 1865 and the initiation of the Congressional Military Reconstruction Act in 1867, the main thrust of state government was on reviving the lackluster economy. Union Gen. Wager Swayne remained involved heavily as the federal government’s representative in the state.

When Patton became Alabama’s 20th governor in 1865, he was no stranger to the state’s political system nor to its economic foundations. Even though he was born in Virginia, Patton grew up near Florence. At the age of 20 he moved to Florence where he began a career as a merchant and planter. And unlike former Governor Parsons, he did own slaves amassing as many as 300 before the practice was struck down. In 1832, Patton first won election to the Alabama State Legislature where he remained until the beginning of the Civil War.

Patton’s governorship remained focused on the state’s economy for the first two years of his term. In 1867, Congressional Reconstruction was inaugurated with the passage of the first of a series of Military Reconstruction Acts which gave Swayne control within the state of Alabama. After which, the black electorate in Alabama began to be more involved in the political process. Within a year, however, the political intrigue that pitted the president and congress against one another came to a head with Swayne being removed as the military commander in the state. He was replaced by Gen. Julius Hayden who reversed many of the more liberal actions undertaken by Swayne.

The seven years from 1867 to 1874 when reconstruction in Alabama came to a close, battles centered around the political and economic future of the state as perceived by republican and democrat political entities. Swayne had helped to create the Alabama Republican Party in the summer of 1867. At the same time, the democrat party rallied around former confederate leaders as both attempted to have the state restored to its place within the union.

In Alabama, as well as throughout the South, a series of Military Reconstruction Acts dictated the procedure by which the Southern states were allowed to re-enter the union. As a result of those acts, the South was divided into military districts with Gen. John Pope in charge of the overall operation. In Alabama, first Swayne and then Hayden came to control the political and economic engines within the state.

In addition to the reconstruction acts, three amendments to the Constitution provided rights to the freedmen and those amendments had to be ratified by the states as part of their quest to rejoin the union. The 13th amendment abolished slavery with its declaration that “Neither slave nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The 13th amendment was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. The 14th amendment, ratified in July 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” It also forbade states from denying any person “life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” or “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” And finally, the 15th amendment gave black men in the United States the right to vote. Ratified in February 1870, the amendment stated that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account or race, color or previous condition of servitude.”