VIII. Transubstantion of a Poor White

How Andrew Johnson, unexpectedly raised to the Presidency, was suddenly set between a democracy which included poor whites and black men, and an autocracy that included Big Business and slave barons; and how torn between impossible allegiances, he ended in forcing a hesitant nation to choose between the increased political power of a restored Southern oligarchy and votes for Negroes

Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture. If Northern industry before the war had secured a monopoly of the raw material raised in the South for its new manufactures; and if Northern and Western labor could have maintained their wage scale against slave competition, the North would not have touched the slave system. But this the South had frustrated. It had threatened labor with nation-wide slave competition and had sent its cotton abroad to buy cheap manufactures, and had resisted the protective tariff demanded by the North.

It was this specific situation that had given the voice of freedom a chance to be heard: freedom for new-come peasants who feared the competition of slave labor; peasants from Europe, New England and the poor white South; freedom for all men black and white through that dream of democracy in which the best of the nation still believed.

The result was war because of the moral wrong, the economic disaster and the democratic contradiction of making human labor real estate; war, because the South was determined to make free white labor compete with black slaves, monopolize land and raw material in the hands of a political aristocracy, and extend the scope of that power; war, because the industrial North refused to surrender its raw material and one of its chief markets to Europe; war, because white American labor, while it refused to recognize black labor as equal and human, had to fight to maintain its own humanity and ideal of equality.

The result of the war left four million human beings just as valuable for the production of cotton and sugar as they had been before the war – but during the war, as laborers and soldiers, these Negroes had made it possible for the North to win, and without their actual and possible aid, the South would never have surrendered; and not least, these four million free men formed in the end the only possible moral justification for an otherwise sordid and selfish orgy of murder, arson and theft.

Now, early in 1865, the war is over. The North does not especially want free Negroes; it wants trade and wealth. The South does not want a particular interpretation of the Constitution. It wants cheap Negro labor and the political and social power based on it. Had there been no Negroes, there would have been no war. Had no Negroes survived the war, peace would have been difficult because of hatred, loss and bitter grief. But its logical path would have been straight.

The South would have returned to its place in Congress with less than its former representation because of the growing North and West. These areas of growing manufacture and agriculture, railroad building and corporations, would have held the political power over the South until the South united with the new insurgency of the West or the old Eastern democratic ideals. Industrialization might even have brought a third party representing labor and raised the proletariat to dominance.

Of this, in 1865 there were only vague signs, and in any case, the former Southern aristocracy would not easily have allied itself with immigrant labor, while the Southern poor whites would have needed long experience and teaching. Thus, the North in the absence of the Negro would have had a vast debt, a problem of charity, distress and relief, such reasonable amnesty as would prevent the old Southern leaders from returning immediately to power, the recognition of the reorganized states, and then work and forgetting.

"Let us have peace." But there was the black man looming like a dark ghost on the horizon. He was the child of force and greed, and the father of wealth and war. His labor was indispensable, and the loss of it would have cost many times the cost of the war. If the Negro had been silent, his very presence would have announced his plight. He was not silent. He was in unusual evidence. He was writing petitions, making speeches, parading with returned soldiers, reciting his adventures as slave and freeman. Even dumb and still, he must be noticed. His poverty had to be relieved, and emancipation in his case had to mean poverty. If he had to work, he had to have land and tools. If his labor was in reality to be free labor, he had to have legal freedom and civil rights. His ignorance could only be removed by that very education which the law of the South had long denied him [ 239 ] and the custom of the North had made exceedingly difficult. Thus civil status and legal freedom, food, clothes and tools, access to land and help to education, were the minimum demands of four million laborers, and these demands no man could ignore, Northerner or Southerner, Abolitionist or Copperhead (§), laborer or captain of industry. How did the nation face this paradox and dilemma?

Led by Abraham Lincoln, the nation had looked back to the status before the war in order to find a path to which the new nation and the new condition of the freedmen could be guided. Only one forward step President Lincoln insisted upon and that was the real continued freedom of the emancipated slave; but the abolition-democracy went beyond this because it was convinced that here was no logical stopping place; and it looked forward to civil and political rights, education and land, as the only complete guarantee of freedom, in the face of a dominant South which hoped from the first, to abolish slavery only in name.

In the North, a new and tremendous dictatorship of capital was arising. There was only one way to curb and direct what promised to become the greatest plutocratic government which the world had ever known. This way was first to implement public opinion by the weapon of universal suffrage - a weapon which the nation already had in part, but which had been virtually impotent in the South because of slavery, and which was at least weakened in the North by the disfranchisement of an unending mass of foreign-born laborers. Once universal suffrage was achieved, the next step was to use it with such intelligence and power that it would function in the interest of the mass of working men.

To accomplish this end there should have been in the country and represented in Congress a union between the champions of universal suffrage and the rights of the freedmen, together with the leaders of labor, the small landholders of the West, and logically, the poor whites of the South. Against these would have been arrayed the Northern industrial oligarchy, and eventually, when they were re-admitted to Congress, the representatives of the former Southern oligarchy.

This union of democratic forces never took place. On the contrary, they were torn apart by artificial lines of division. The old anti-Negro labor rivalry between white and black workers kept the labor elements after the war from ever really uniting in a demand to increase labor power by Negro suffrage and Negro economic stability. The West was seduced from a vision of peasant-proprietors, recruited from a laboring class, into a vision of labor-exploiting farmers and land speculation which tended to transform the Western farmers into a petty bourgeoisie fighting not to overcome but to share spoils with the large [ 240 ] land speculators, the monopolists of transportation, and the financiers. Wherever a liberal and democratic party started to differentiate itself from this group, the only alliance offered was the broken oligarchy of the South, with its determination to reenslave Negro labor.

The effective combination which ensued was both curious and contradictory. The masters of industry, the financiers and monopolists, had in self-defense to join with abolition-democracy in forcing universal suffrage on the South, or submit to the reassertion of the old land-slave feudalism with increased political power.

Such a situation demanded an economic guardianship of freedmen, and the first step to this meant at least the beginning of a dictatorship by labor. This, however, had to be but temporary union and was bound to break up before long. The break was begun by the extraordinary corruption, graft and theft that became more and more evident in the country from 1868 on, as a result of the wild idea that industry and progress for the people of the United States were compatible with the selfish sequestration of profit for private individuals and powerful corporations.

But those who revolted from the party of exploitation and high finance did not see allies in the dictatorship of labor in the South. Rather they were entirely misled by the complaint of property from the Southern oligarchy. They failed to become a real party of economic reform and became a reaction of small property-holders against corporations; of a petty bourgeoisie against a new economic monarchy. They immediately joined Big Business in coming to an understanding with the South in 1876, so that by force and fraud the South overthrew the dictatorship of the workers.

But this was only the immediate cause. If there had been no widespread political corruption, North and South, there would still have arisen an absolute difference between those who were trying to conduct the new Southern state governments in the interest of the mass of laborers, black and white, and those North and South who were determined to exploit labor, both in agriculture and industry, for the benefit of an oligarchy. Such an oligarchy was in effect back of the military dictatorship which supported these very Southern labor governments, and which had to support them either as laborers or by developing among them a capitalist class. But as soon as there was understanding between the Southern exploiter of labor and the Northern exploiter, this military support would be withdrawn; and the labor governments, in spite of what they had accomplished for the education of the masses, and in spite of the movements against waste and graft which they had inaugurated, would fail. Under such circumstances, [ 241 ] they had to fail, and in a large sense the immediate hope of American democracy failed with them.

Let us now follow this development more in detail. In 1863 and 1864, Abraham Lincoln had made his tentative proposals for reconstructing the South. He had left many things unsaid. The loyal-minded, consisting of as few as one-tenth of the voters whom Lincoln proposed to regard as a state, must naturally, to survive, be supported by the United States Army, until a majority of the inhabitants acquiesced in the new arrangements. It was Lincoln's fond hope that this acquiescence might be swift and clear, but no one knew better than he that it might not.

He was careful to say that Congress would certainly have voice as to the terms on which they would recognize the newly elected Senators and Representatives. This proposal met the general approval of the country, but Congress saw danger and enacted the Wade-Davis Bill (§). This did not recognize Negro suffrage, and was not radically different from the Lincoln plan (§), except that the final power and assent of Congress were more prominently set forth.

Lincoln did not oppose it. He simply did not want his hands permanently tied. The bill failed, leaving Lincoln making a careful study of the situation, and promising another statement. He was going forward carefully, hoping for some liberal movement to show itself in the South, and delicately urging it. In the election of 1864, the country stood squarely back of him. The Northern democracy carried only New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky. But he died, and Andrew Johnson took his place.

Thus, suddenly, April 15, 1865, Andrew Johnson found himself President of the United States, six days after Lee's surrender, and a month and a half after the 38th Congress had adjourned, March 3.

It was the drear destiny of the Poor White South that, deserting its economic class and itself, it became the instrument by which democracy in the nation was done to death, race provincialism deified, and the world delivered to plutocracy. The man who led the way with unconscious paradox and contradiction was Andrew Johnson.

Lately the early life and character of Andrew Johnson have been abundantly studied. He was a fanatical hater of aristocracy. "Through every public act of his runs one consistent, unifying thread of purpose – the advancement of the power, prosperity and liberty of the masses at the expense of intrenched privilege. The slaveholding aristocracy he hated with a bitter, enduring hatred born of envy and ambition. 'If Johnson were a snake,' said his rival, the well-born Isham G. Harris, 'he would lie in the grass to bite the heels of the rich men's [ 242 ] children.' The very thought of an aristocrat caused him to emit venom and lash about him in fury."¹

His political methods were those of the barn-storming demagogue.

Johnson's speeches were tissues of misstatement, misrepresentation, and insulting personalities, directed to the passions and unreasoning impulses of the ignorant voters; assaults upon aristocrats combined with vaunting of his own low origin and the dignity of manual labor."² Yet a biographer says that Johnson was "the only President who practiced what he preached, drawing no distinction between rich and poor, or high and low. …

Do not these facts furnish an explanation of Johnson's life? Do they not show why he had the courage to go up against caste and cheap aristocracy, why he dared to stand for the under-dog, whether Catholic, Hebrew, foreigner, mechanic, or child; and to cling like death to the old flag and the Union. …

'Gladly I would lay down my life,' he wrote, 'if I could so engraft democracy into our general government that it would be permanent.' …

To all this there is one great qualification. Andrew Johnson could not include Negroes in any conceivable democracy. He tried to, but as a poor white, steeped in the limitations, prejudices, and ambitions of his social class, he could not; and this is the key to his career.

Johnson sat in Congress from 1843 to 1853, and was Senator from 1857 to 1862. He favored the annexation of Texas as a gateway for Negro emigration. He was against a high tariff, championed free Western lands for white labor, and favored the annexation of Cuba for black slave labor.

McConnell introduced a homestead bill into Congress in January, 1846. Johnson's bill came in March. He returned to Tennessee as Governor, but induced the legislature to instruct members of Congress to vote for his bill. The bill finally passed the House but was defeated in the Senate, and this was repeated for several sessions. Meantime, Johnson found himself in curious company. He was linked on the one hand to the Free Soilers (§), and in 1851 went to New York to address a Land Reform Association. On the other hand, the South called him socialistic and Wigfall of Texas dubbed him: "The vilest of Republicans, the reddest of Reds, a sans-culotte, for four years past he has been trying to please the North with his Homestead and other bills."⁴ The Abolitionists meanwhile looked askance because Johnson favored the bill for annexing Cuba.

He voted against the Pacific railroad, owned eight slaves and said at one time: "You won't get rid of the Negro except by holding him in slavery."⁵ In the midst of such vacillation and contradiction, small [ 243 ] wonder that Lane referred to Johnson's "triumphant ignorance and exulting stupidity." Yet Johnson hewed doggedly to certain lines. In 1860, he was advocating his homestead bill again (§). It finally passed both House and Senate, but Buchanan vetoed it as unconstitutional. Johnson called the message "monstrous and absurd." At last, in June, 1862, after the South had withdrawn from Congress, Johnson's bill was passed and Lincoln signed it.

Yet it was this same Johnson who said in the 36th Congress that if the Abolitionists freed the slaves and let them loose on the South, "the non-slaveholder would join with the slave-owner and extirpate them," and "if one should be more ready to join than another it would be myself."

Johnson early became a follower of Hinton Helper and used his figures. The Impending Crisis was "Andrew Johnson's vade mecum - his arsenal of facts."⁶

Johnson made two violent speeches against secession in 1860-61, with bitter personalities against Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and their fellows. He called them rebels and traitors; the galleries yelled and the presiding officers threatened to clear them. Johnson shouted: "I would have them arrested, and if convicted, within the meaning and scope of the Constitution, by the Eternal God, I would execute them; Sir, treason must be punished; its enormity and the extent and depth of the offense must be made known!"

Clingman of North Carolina said that Johnson's speech brought on the Civil War. Alexander Stephens said that it solidified the North. Letters came in to congratulate and to encourage "the only Union Senator from the South." Labor rallied to him. A Baltimore laborer wrote that "the poor working man will no doubt be called on to fight the battles of the rich." From Memphis another wrote: "It was labor that achieved our independence and the laborers are ready to maintain it." The New York Working Man's Association passed a resolution of thanks.⁷

Lincoln set about winning Tennessee, and as a step toward it, asked Andrew Johnson to go and act as Military Governor, and restore the state. Johnson resigned from the Senate and went to Tennessee early in March, 1862. He arrived in Nashville March 12, and took possession of the State House. His courage and sacrifice eventually redeemed the state and restored it to the Union.

Several times Johnson spoke on slavery and the Negro. When he asked that plantations be divided in the South and lands opened in the West, he had in mind white men, who would thus become rich or at least richer. But for Negroes, he had nothing of the sort in mind, [ 244 ] except the bare possibility that, if given freedom, they might continue to exist and not die out.

Johnson said in January, 1864, at Nashville in reply to a question as to whether he was in favor of emancipation:

As for the Negro I am for setting him free but at the same time I assert that this is a white man's government. ... If whites and blacks can't get along together arrangements must be made to colonize the blacks. ... In 1843, when I was candidate for Governor, it was said, 'That fellow Johnson is a demagogue, is an Abolitionist.. … Because I advocated a white basis for representation – apportioning members of Congress according to the number of qualified voters, instead of embracing Negroes, they called me an Abolitionist. … What do we find today? Right goes forward; truth triumphs; justice is supreme; and slavery goes down.

In fact, the Negroes are emancipated in Tennessee today, and the only remaining question for us to settle, as prudent and wise men, is in assigning the Negro his new relation. Now, what will that be? The Negro will be thrown upon society, governed by the same laws that govern communities, and be compelled to fall back upon his own resources, as all other human beings are. … Political freedom means liberty to work, and at the same time enjoy the products of one's labor. ... If he can rise by his own energies, in the name of God, let him rise. In saying this, I do not argue that the Negro race is equal to the Anglo-Saxon. ... If the Negro is better fitted for the inferior condition of society, the laws of nature will assign him there!⁸

As a reward for Johnson's services and to unite the sections Lincoln chose Johnson as his running mate in 1864. Before the campaign June 10, from the St. Cloud Hotel, Johnson gave his philosophy of Reconstruction:

One of the chief elements of this rebellion is the opposition of the slave aristocracy to being ruled by men who have risen from the ranks of the people. This aristocracy hated Mr. Lincoln because he was of humble origin, a rail-splitter in early life. One of them, the private secretary of Howell Cobb, said to me one day, after a long conversation, 'We people of the South will not submit to be governed by a man who has come up from the ranks of the common people, as Abe Lincoln has.' He uttered the essential feeling and spirit of this Southern rebellion. Now it has just occurred to me, if this aristocracy is so violently opposed to being governed by Mr. Lincoln, what in the name of conscience will it do with Lincoln and Johnson. …

I am for emancipation for two reasons: First, because it is right in itself; and second, because in the emancipation of the slaves, we break [ 245 ] down an odious and dangerous aristocracy; I think that we are freeing more whites than blacks in Tennessee.

I want to see slavery broken up, and when its barriers are torn down, I want to see industrious, thrifty immigrants pouring in from all parts of the country. Come on! we need your labor, your skill, your capital. …

Ah, these Rebel leaders have a strong personal reason for holding out – to save their necks from the halter. And these leaders must feel the power of the government. Treason must be made odious, and the traitor must be punished and impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized and divided into small farms, and sold to honest, industrious men. The day for protecting the lands and Negroes of these authors of rebellion is past. It is high time it was.⁹

During the campaign he addressed a torchlight procession of thousands of Negroes and whites. He said, October, 1864:

Who has not heard of the great estates of Mack Cockrill, situated near this city, estates whose acres are numbered by the thousand, whose slaves were once counted by the score? And of Mack Cockrill, their possessor, the great slave-owner and, of course, the leading rebel, who lives in the very wantonness of wealth, wrung from the sweat and toil and stolen wages of others, and who gave fabulous sums to aid Jeff Davis in overturning this Government. …

Who has not heard of the princely estates of General W. D. Harding, who, by means of his property alone, outweighed in influence any other man in Tennessee, no matter what were that other's worth, or wisdom, or ability. Harding, too, early espoused the cause of treason and made it his boast that he had contributed, and directly induced others to contribute, millions of dollars in aid of that unholy cause. ... It is wrong that Mack Cockrill and W. D. Harding, by means of forced and unpaid labor, should have monopolized so large a share of the lands and wealth of Tennessee; and I say if their immense plantations were divided up and parceled out amongst a number of free, industrious, and honest farmers, it would give more good citizens to the Commonwealth, increase the wages of our mechanics, enrich the markets of our city, enliven all the arteries of trade, improve society, and conduce to the greatness and glory of the State.

The representatives of this corrupt, and if you will permit me almost to swear a little, this damnable aristocracy, taunt us with our desire to see justice done, and charge us with favoring Negro equality. Of all living men they should be the last to mouth that phrase; and, even when uttered in their hearing, it should cause their cheeks to tinge and burn with shame. Negro equality, indeed! Why, pass any day along the sidewalks of High Street where these aristocrats more [ 246 ] particularly dwell – these aristocrats, whose sons are now in the bands of guerillas and cut-throats who prowl and rob and murder around our city – pass by their dwellings, I say, and you will see as many mulatto as Negro children, the former bearing an unmistakable resemblance to their aristocratic owners. … Thank God, the war has ended all this ... a war that has freed more whites than blacks. … Suppose the Negro is set free and we have less cotton, we will raise more wool, hemp, flax and silk. ... It is all an idea that the world can't get along without cotton. And, as is suggested by my friend behind me, whether we attain perfection in the raising of cotton or not, I think we ought to stimulate the cultivation of hemp (great and renewed laughter); for we ought to have more of it and a far better material, a stronger fiber, with which to make a stronger rope. For, not to be malicious or malignant, I am free to say that I believe many who were driven into this Rebellion, are repentant; but I say of the leaders, the instigators, the conscious, intelligent traitors, they ought to be hung.¹⁰

'Looking at this vast crowd of colored people,' continued the Governor, 'and reflecting through what a storm of persecution and obloquy they are compelled to pass, I am almost induced to wish that, as in the days of old, a Moses might arise who should lead them safely to their promised land of freedom and happiness.'

'You are our Moses,' shouted several voices, and the exclamation was caught up and cheered until the Capitol rung again. …

'Well, then,' replied the speaker, 'humble and unworthy as I am, if no other better shall be found, I will indeed be your Moses, and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace. I speak now as one who feels the world his country, and all who love equal rights his friends. I speak, too, as a citizen of Tennessee. I am here on my own soil; and here I mean to stay and fight this great battle of truth and justice to a triumphant end. Rebellion and slavery shall, by God's good help, no longer pollute our State. Loyal men, whether white or black, shall alone control her destinies; and when this strife in which we are all engaged is past, I trust, I know, we shall have a better state of things, and shall all rejoice that honest labor reaps the fruit of its own industry, and that every man has a fair chance in the race of life. …

Winston interpreted the latter part of this speech as directed to the whites, when clearly he was speaking directly to the colored people; but he was afterward unwilling to live up to its promises. As a matter of fact, he favored emancipation "in order to save the Union and to free the white man and no further. 'Damn the Negroes,' he once said [ 247 ] when charged with race equality. 'I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats, their masters.'"¹²

Johnson appeared to take the oath of office as Vice-President so drunk he was taken into prolonged seclusion after a maudlin speech; his resignation was discussed. He was not a habitual drunkard, although he drank "three or four glasses of Robertson's Canada Whiskey" some days. In 1848 Johnson writes that he had been "on a kind of bust – not a big drunk."¹³ Both of Johnson's sons became drunkards and were cut off before they reached middle life. Yet Lincoln was right:

"Oh, well, don't you bother about Andy Johnson's drinking. He made a bad slip the other day, but I have known Andy a great many years, and he ain't no drunkard." Johnson was deeply humiliated by the inauguration episode and perhaps here began his alienation from those who might have influenced him best.

Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, says that he met Vice-President Johnson in Richmond. "He took me aside and spoke with great earnestness about the necessity of not taking the Confederates back without some conditions or without some punishment. He insisted that their sins had been enormous, and that if they were let back into the Union without any punishment the effect would be very bad. He said they might be very dangerous in the future. The Vice-President talked to me in this strain for fully twenty minutes, I should think – an impassioned, earnest speech on the subject of punishing rebels."¹⁴

His sudden induction as President was marked by modesty and genuine feeling. Carl Schurz says that the inaugural speech of Andrew Johnson, in 1865, was very pleasing to the liberals of the North, and made them believe that he was going to allow the Negro to have some part in the reconstruction of the states.

For a month after coming to the Presidency, Johnson indulged in speech-making, and his words were still so severe that the anti-slavery people became uneasy, feeling that Johnson would give his attention primarily to punishing the whites rather than protecting the Negroes. April 21, 1865, he said in an interview with some citizens of Indiana:

"They [the Rebel leaders] must not only be punished, but their social power must be destroyed. … And I say that, after making treason odious, every Union man and the government should be remunerated out of the pockets of those who have inflicted this great suffering upon the country." This was exactly the thesis of Thaddeus Stevens enunciated in September of the same year.

A number of Virginians visited Johnson in July and complained that they were seeking credits in the North and West, but could get [ 248 ] no consideration while they remained under the ban of the government. The President replied: "'It was the wealthy men who dragooned the people into secession; I know how this thing was done. You rich men used the press and bullied your little men to force the state into secession.' He spoke as a poor white for poor whites and the planters left in gloom."

He kept on insisting upon punishment for the South, and not only personal punishment but economic punishment, so that many conservatives were afraid that they had elected to the Presidency a radical who would seriously attack the South.

This would have been true but for one thing: the Southern poor white had his attitude toward property and income seriously modified by the presence of the Negro. Even Abraham Lincoln was unable for a long time to conceive of free, poor, black citizens as voters in the United States. The problem of the Negroes, as he faced it, worried him, and he made repeated efforts to see if in some way they could not be sent off to Africa or to foreign lands. Johnson had no such broad outlook. Negroes to him were just Negroes, and even as he expressed his radical ideas of helping the poor Southerners, he seldom envisaged Negroes as a part of the poor.

Lincoln came to know Negroes personally. He came to recognize their manhood. He praised them generously as soldiers, and suggested that they be admitted to the ballot. Johnson, on the contrary, could never regard Negroes as men. "He has all the narrowness and ignorance of a certain class of whites who have always looked upon the colored race as out of the pale of humanity."¹⁵

The Northern press had been quite satisfied with Lincoln's attitude. He had served liberty and America well. "Lincoln," said Senator Doolittle, representing industry in the West, "would have dealt with the Rebels as an indulgent father deals with his erring children. Johnson would deal with them more like a stern and incorruptible judge. Thus in a moment has the scepter of power passed from the hand of flesh to the hand of iron."

At a cabinet meeting with Mr. Lincoln on the last day of his life, Friday, April 14, Stanton submitted the draft of a plan for the restoration of governments in the South. The draft applied expressly to two states, but was intended as a model for others. The President suggested a revision, and the subject was postponed until Tuesday the 18th.

Andrew Johnson became President, and on Sunday, April 16, Stanton read his draft to Sumner and other gentlemen. Sumner interrupted the reading with the inquiry: "'Whether any provision was made for enfranchising the colored men,' saying, also, that 'unless the black man [ 249 ] is given the right to vote his freedom is a mockery.' Stanton deprecated the agitation of the subject … but Sumner insisted that the black man's right to vote was 'the essence – the great essential.' Stanton's draft, now confined to North Carolina, was considered in the Cabinet May 9, when it appeared with a provision for suffrage in the election of members of a constitutional convention for the State. It included 'the loyal citizens of the United States.' This paragraph, it appears, Stanton had accepted April 16, as an amendment from Sumner and Colfax. … He admitted that it was intended to include Negroes as well as white men."¹⁶

Stanton invited an expression of opinion; several members of the Cabinet were absent. Stanton, Dennison and Speed favored the inclusion; McCulloch, Welles and Usher were against it. The President expressed no opinion, but Sumner was certain of the President's decision in favor of Negro suffrage.

Sumner sought to keep close to Johnson. He and Chase had an interview with him a week after he had taken the oath of office. Johnson was reserved but sympathetic and they left light-hearted. A few days later, when the President and Senator Sumner were alone together, the President said: '"On this question [that of suffrage] there is no difference between us; you and I are alike.' Sumner expressed his joy and gratitude that the President had taken this position, and that as a consequence there would thus be no division in the Union party; and the President replied, 'I mean to keep you all together.' As he walked away that evening, Sumner felt that the battle of his own life was ended." ¹⁷

He wrote to Bright, May 1, 1865, encouragingly: "Last evening, I had a long conversation with him [Johnson], mainly on the rebel states and how they shall be tranquillized. Of course my theme is justice to the colored race. He accepted this idea completely, and indeed went so far as to say 'that there is no difference between us.' You understand that the question whether rebel states shall be treated as military provinces or territories is simply one of form, with a view to the great result. It is the result that I aim at! and I shall never stickle on any intermediate question if that is secured. He deprecates haste; is unwilling that states should be precipitated back; thinks there must be a period of probation, but that meanwhile all loyal people, without distinction of color, must be treated as citizens, and must take part in any proceedings for reorganization. He doubts at present the expediency of announcing this from Washington lest it should give a handle to party, but is willing it should be made known to the people in the rebel states. The Chief Justice started yesterday on a visit to North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and New Orleans, and will on his [ 250 ] way touch the necessary strings, so far as he can. I anticipate much from this journey. His opinions are fixed, and he is well informed with regard to those of the President. I would not be too sanguine, but I should not be surprised if we had this great question settled before the next meeting of Congres - I mean by this that we had such expression of opinion and acts as will forever conclude it. My confidence is founded in part upon the essential justice of our aims and the necessity of the case. With the President as well disposed as he shows himself, and the Chief Justice as positive, we must prevail. Will not all this sanctify our war beyond any in history?"

The next day writing to Lieber, Sumner quoted Johnson as saying that "colored persons are to have the right to suffrage; that no state can be precipitated into the Union; that rebel states must go through a term of probation. All this he had said to me before. Ten days ago, the Chief Justice and myself visited him in the evening to speak of these things. I was charmed by his sympathy, which was entirely different from his predecessor's. The Chief Justice is authorized to say wherever he is what the President desires, and to do everything he can to promote organization without distinction of color. The President desires that the movement should appear to proceed from the people. This is in conformity with his general ideas; but he thinks it will disarm the party at home. I told him that while I doubted if the work could be effectively done without federal authority, I regarded the modus operandi as an inferior question; and that I should be content, provided equality before the law was secured for all without distinction of color. I said during this winter that the rebel states could not come back, except on the footing of the Declaration of Independence, and the complete recognition of human rights. I feel more than ever confident that all this will be fulfilled. And then what a regenerated land! I had looked for a bitter contest on this question; but with the President on our side, it will be carried by simple avoirdupois."

Chase wrote Johnson from South Carolina the same month: "Suffrage to loyal blacks; I find that readiness and even desire for it is in proportion to the loyalty of those who express opinions. Nobody dissents, vehemently; while those who have suffered from rebellion and rejoice with their whole hearts in the restoration of the National Authority, are fast coming to the conclusion they will find their own surest safety in the proposed extension. …

All seem embarrassed about first steps. I do not entertain the slightest doubt that they would all welcome some simple recommendation from yourself, and would adopt readily any plan which you would suggest. …

I am anxious that you should have the lead in this work. It is my [ 251 ] deliberate judgment that nothing will so strengthen you with the people or bring so much honor to your name throughout the world as some such short address as I suggested before leaving Washington. Just say to the people: 'Reorganize your state governments. I will aid you in the enrollment of the loyal citizens; you will not expect me to discriminate among men equally loyal; once enrolled, vote for delegates to the Convention to reform your State Constitution. I will aid you in collecting and declaring their suffrages. Your convention and yourselves must do the rest; but you may count on the support of the National Government in all things constitutionally expedient.'¹⁸

In April and May of 1866, Tennessee had confined the right to vote to whites. The Tennessee Senate refused a suffrage bill which allowed all blacks and whites of legal age to vote, but excluded after 1875 all who could not read. Sumner wanted Johnson to insist on Negro suffrage in Tennessee, but Johnson explained that if he were in Tennessee he would take a stand, but that he could not in Washington.

Sumner remained in Washington half through May and saw the President almost daily, always seizing opportunity to present his views on Reconstruction, and insisting on suffrage for Negroes.

Just before leaving Washington, Sumner had a final interview with the President. He found him cordial and apparently unchanged. Sumner apologized for repeating his views expressed before. Johnson said, with a smile, "Have I not always listened to you?" Sumner, as he left, "assured his friends and correspondents that the cause he had at heart was safe" with Andrew Johnson.¹⁹

Disturbing signs, however, began to occur. Carl Schurz wrote in May concerning the plans of Southern leaders in Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina. Thaddeus Stevens was alarmed at the President's recognition of the Pierpont government of Virginia. A caucus was, therefore, called at the National Hotel at Washington, May 12, to prevent the administration from going completely astray. Wade and Sumner said the President was in no danger, and that he was in favor of Negro suffrage.

Sumner may have been over-sanguine and read into Johnson's words more than Johnson intended, but it is certain that Sumner received a definite understanding that President Johnson stood for real emancipation and Negro suffrage.

Here then was Andrew Johnson in 1865, born at the bottom of society, and during his early life a radical defender of the poor, the landless and the exploited. In the heyday of his early political career, he railed against land monopoly in the South, and after the Civil War, wanted the land of the monopolists divided among peasant proprietors.

Suddenly, by the weird magic of history, he becomes military dictator of a nation. He becomes the man by whom the greatest moral and economic revolution that ever took place in the United States, and perhaps in modern times, was to be put into effect. He becomes the real emancipator of four millions of black slaves, who have suffered more than anything that he had experienced in his earlier days. They not only have no lands; they have not owned even their bodies, nor their clothes, nor their tools. They have been exploited down to the ownership of their own families; they have been poor by law, and ignorant by force. What more splendid opportunity could the champion of labor and the exploited have had to start a nation towards freedom?

Johnson took over Lincoln's cabinet with an Anti-Abolitionist Whig, a Pro-Slavery Democrat, and a liberal student of industry, among others. This cabinet lasted a little over a year when early in July, 1866, three members, Dennison, Harlan and Speed, resigned, being unwilling to oppose Congress.

In all their logical sequence, the Reconstruction policies now associated with Johnson's name were laid down by Seward, and his logic overwhelmed Johnson. As Stevens explained: "Seward entered into him, and ever since they have been running down steep places into the sea."

The Cabinet met at Seward's house May 9, and on May 29, Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty which showed the Seward influence. Indeed, nothing was left, apparently, of Johnson's liberalism, except the exclusion from amnesty, not simply of the leaders of the Confederacy, but of the rich – those worth $20,000 or more. Seward opposed this, but it was the only thing that he yielded to Johnson's liberalism. He early convinced Johnson that Reconstruction was a matter for the President to settle and especially he opened the door to his thorough conversion when the power of further pardons was put into Johnson's hand.

Seward, who had remained secretary after Lincoln's death, had used all the powers of his persuasive eloquence to satisfy President Johnson that all now to be done was simply to restore the Union by at once readmitting the 'States lately in rebellion' to their full constitutional functions as regular States of the Union, and that then, being encouraged by this mark of confidence, the late master class in the South could be trusted with the recognition and protection of the emancipated slaves. That Mr. Seward urged such advice upon the President, there is good reason for believing. Not only was it common report, but it accorded also strikingly with Mr. Seward's singular turn of mind concerning the slavery question. As after the outbreak of the secession movement he peremptorily relegated the slavery question to [ 253 ] the background in spite of its evident importance in the Civil War and of the influence it would inevitably exercise upon the opinion and attitude of foreign nations, so he may have been forgetful of the national duty of honor to secure the rights of the freedmen and the safety of the Southern Union men in his impatient desire to 'restore the Union' in point of form.²⁰

Johnson was transformed. From the champion of peasant labor, he saw himself as the restorer of national unity, and the benefactor and almsgiver to those very elements in the South which had formerly despised him. Of his real role as emancipator, and the one who was to give effective freedom to Negroes, he still had not the slightest idea. He could not conceive of Negroes as men. And equally, he had no adequate idea of the industrial transformation that was going on in the North. There were, of course, the inevitable scars of the war: the loss of a million men and twelve billion dollars in property; eventual pensions and indirect losses; the revolution in Southern agriculture; the universal lowering of ethical standards which always follows war. The West was uneasy on account of taxes, debt and the money situation. In New York and Boston, men engaged in foreign commerce wanted speedy restoration of the South and a reduction in the tariff to increase their business. These complicated threads varied and changed as time went on. But when the 39th Congress met, the war business boom was still on; failures had disappeared; prices had increased. Wealth was being concentrated among the manufacturers, merchants, financiers and speculators. There were great amounts of waiting capital and all of these interests wanted the war stopped, and the South restored.

Sumner had not left Washington ten days before his hopes for a just reconstruction on the basis of Negro suffrage were killed by the President's proclamation.

Johnson's plan of reconstruction included the abolition of slavery, the repudiation of war debts, the nullification of secession ordinances, and the appointment of provisional governors to help in the reconstruction of civil government. Only those white folks who could take the loyal oath would take part in this reconstruction. In other words, this was practically Lincoln's plan and it was also the Wade-Davis plan, save that there was no open or expressed recognition of any power or function of Congress except as judging the legality of elections. Johnson did not eventually even admit, as Lincoln apparently had agreed, that Congress was final judge as to whether these states could hold legal elections.

Congress had adjourned before Lee's surrender, and it was widely believed that had Lincoln lived, a special session would have been [ 254 ] summoned. The Seward-Johnson compromise proposed not to call Congress. In one way, the decision was shrewd. It gave the administration nine months to carry out its policy, and if the policy was successful, Congress would, when it met, be faced by a fait accompli, a nation at peace, a South restored with slavery abolished. What more could the nation want?

On the other hand, the attempt was full of risk. Already the power of the Executive had gone far beyond the dreams of living men. It must be curbed sooner or later. The military dictatorship which had carried on the war must, as soon as possible after the war, be tempered by democracy. The attempt to do even what the nation wanted without this was foolish. An attempt to override the will of the nation was suicidal, and yet that was precisely what Seward and Johnson eventually attempted. May 29, the Declaration of Amnesty was issued; and that same month, Provisional Governors were appointed for North Carolina and Mississippi. In June, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and South Carolina were given Governors, and in July, Florida. Thus, three months after the assassination of Lincoln, Reconstruction was in operation; the Union party divided in opinion; the Northern Democrats encouraged, and the South particularly encouraged.

The South thereupon turned its attention on Johnson and brought to bear a second influence next in power to Seward's and in the end exceeding it. Southern leaders descended upon the President; not simply the former slave barons but new representatives of the poor whites. In less than nine months after the Proclamation of Amnesty, 14,000 prominent persons are said to have received pardons from the President.

No wonder the attitude of Johnson towards the South and the leaders of the rebellion was transformed. The very inferiority complex which made him hate the white planter concealed a secret admiration for his arrogance and address. Carl Schurz was coldly received when he returned from the Southern trip which Johnson had urged upon him.

Arrived at Washington, I reported myself at once at the White House. The President's private secretary, who seemed surprised to see me, announced me to the President, who sent out word that he was busy. When would it please the President to receive me? The private secretary could not tell, as the President's time was much occupied by urgent business. I left the ante-room, but called again the next morning. The President was still busy. I asked the private secretary to submit to the President that I had returned from a three months' journey made at the President's personal request, that I thought it my duty respectfully to report myself back, and that I should be obliged to the [ 255 ] President if he would let me know whether, and, if so, when, he would receive me to that end. The private secretary went in again and brought out the answer that the President would see me in an hour or so. At the appointed time, I was admitted.

The President received me without a smile of welcome. His mien was sullen. I said that I had returned from the journey which I had made in obedience to his demand and was ready to give him, in addition to the communications I had already sent him, such further information as was in my possession. A moment's silence followed. Then he inquired about my health. I thanked him for the inquiry and hoped the President's health was good. He said it was. Another pause, which I brought to an end by saying that I wished to supplement the letters I had written to him from the South with an elaborate report giving my experiences and conclusions in a connected shape. The President looked up and said that I need not go to the trouble of writing out such a general report on his account. I replied that it would be no trouble at all, but I considered it a duty. The President did not answer. The silence became awkward and I bowed myself out.

President Johnson evidently wished to suppress my testimony as to the condition of things in the South. I resolved not to let him do so. I had conscientiously endeavored to see Southern conditions as they were. I had not permitted any political considerations or any preconceived opinions on my part, to obscure my perception and discernment in the slightest degree. I had told the truth as I learned it and understood it, with the severest accuracy, and I thought it due to the country that the truth be known.

Among my friends in Washington there were different opinions as to how the striking change in President Johnson's attitude had been brought about. Some told me that during the summer the White House had been fairly besieged by Southern men and women of high social standing who had told the President that the only element of trouble in the South consisted in a lot of fanatical abolitionists who excited the Negroes with all sorts of dangerous notions, and that all would be well if he would only restore the Southern State governments as quickly as possible, according to his own plan as laid down in his North Carolina proclamation, and that he was a great man to whom they looked up as their savior. Now it was thought that Mr. Johnson, the plebeian who before the war had been treated with undisguised contempt by the slave-holding aristocracy, could not withstand the subde flattery of the same aristocracy when they flocked around him as humble suppliants cajoling his vanity.²¹

In fact, personally, Johnson liked the slave-holders. He admired their manners; he enjoyed their carriage and clothes. They were quite naturally [ 256 ] his ideal of what a gentleman should be. He could not help being tremendously flattered when they noticed him and actually sued for his favor. As compared with Northerners, he found them free, natural and expansive, rather than cold, formal and hypocritical.

Johnson's change of mind during the last ten days of May, 1865, was probably due to the flatteries of Southern leaders; to the notice taken of his intoxication in the Senate by Sumner and others; to the counsels of Preston King and the Blairs who sheltered him after that unfortunate exhibition; and above all to Seward. Johnson's program swung swiftly into its stride.

Already May 9, the laws of the United States had been put in operation in Virginia and the Alexandria government thus recognized. Johnson recognized the reconstruction already accomplished in Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. So that by mid-summer all the seceded states had been reconstructed under the Johnson plan except Texas. During the autumn, summer and winter of 1865, elections for delegates to constitutional conventions were ordered in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, on the basis of white suffrage. Before Congress met, these conventions had all passed ordinances repealing the secession ordinances, or pronouncing them null and void. All except Mississippi and South Carolina had repudiated the Confederate debt. All had amended their constitutions abolishing slavery or recognizing its disappearance. State officers and representatives in Congress had been elected. Senators had also been chosen, except in Florida. All the states had adopted the Thirteenth Amendment (§), except Florida and Mississippi; North Carolina had adopted the amendment with reservations; Florida adopted the amendment with reservations December 18, and elected Senators.

Against this suddenly marshaled and quickly executed plan of Johnson and his advisers, there was at the time no organized opposition. Congress was unquestionably determined to have the last word in the matter but not decided as to what the word would be. The Abolitionists wanted the freedom of the slaves guaranteed, and some of them saw Negro suffrage as the only method of accomplishing it, while still fewer recognized that a minimum of land and capital was absolutely necessary even to make the ballot effective. The majority of Northerners simply wanted to get rid of the question as quickly as possible. They were disposed to agree in the main with Johnson, but they were afraid that he was moving too fast, and that the South was returning to the Union without guarantees, either so far as the freedmen were concerned, or with regard to the problem of debt, the tariff, and national finance.

Charles Sumner, representing the abolition-democracy, agitated the [ 257 ] question all summer. He brought up the matter on the streets, at dinner, and in society. He wrote his views for the Atlantic Monthly and had it and his speeches distributed widely. On June 21, 1865, there was a public meeting in Philadelphia, on Negro suffrage, at which reports were read of reaction in the South. Sumner wrote to the members of Johnson's cabinet and urged them to change their course of action and not to follow the advice of Seward. But, although four members of the cabinet were sympathetic, they took no action, and Sumner wrote to Lieber on August 11: "They were all courtiers, as if they were councilors of the King."

Stevens, Davis and Wade were in despair against an executive who had both military power and the power of patronage and was as yet unmoved by any unity of opinion in the North. Moreover, it did not seem wise to make as yet a fight on the basis of Negro suffrage. Too few Northern people agreed with it. Most public men and journalists gave no support to Sumner's demand for Negro suffrage. The Governor of Indiana denounced it; the Governor of Massachusetts was sure of the President's honesty of purpose; the editor of the New York Evening Post advised against any coercive action by Congress in the matter of suffrage, and the New York Times stood absolutely against it.

"Is there no way to arrest the insane course of the President in reorganization?" asked Stevens, in the summer of 1865. "If something is not done," wrote Sumner, "the President will be crowned King before Congress meets."

The abolitionists opened a campaign to convert the North to Negro suffrage, carrying on a propaganda with the money of industry and the logic of abolition-democracy. The speeches of Sumner, Kelley, Phillips and Douglass on Negro suffrage were printed and sent broadcast. Stearns wrote: "I am distributing 10,000 copies to anti-slavery men in all the free states; but desiring to increase the number to 100,000 or more, invite you to aid in its circulation."²² He raised $50,000 in the fall of 1865 to send out 100,000 newspapers and 50,000 pamphlets a week, and himself printed between 20,000 and 40,000 copies of Sumner's Worcester speech, October 12, 1865. Later the Schurz report and his newspaper articles formed strong documents.

Yet the conversion of public opinion in the United States to Negro citizenship and suffrage was long and difficult. There were harassing questions that presented themselves to the majority of people in the North: Could a government, by united and determined effort, raise the Negroes to full American citizenship? Of course it could, if they were men; but were they men? Even if they were men, was it good policy thus to raise a great new working, voting class? On this point [ 258 ] there was less open argument; but it lay in the minds of business men, and influenced their outlook and action.

Johnson sensed the trend toward Negro suffrage and taking a leaf from Lincoln's book, sought to stem it. But Johnson's mind was not like Lincoln's. Lincoln moved forward to Negro suffrage; Johnson, alarmed, retreated to it. August 15, he had wired to his nominee, Sharkey, Provisional Governor of Mississippi:

If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free States. I hope and trust your convention will do this, and, as a consequence, the Radicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempt to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and representatives."²³

Blaine says that this advice was sent to other provisional governors, but nothing came of it, chiefly because Johnson did not insist and his heart was not in the suggestion.

Sumner's words showed that union between Northern industrialists and abolition-democracy had been growing during the summer. After the autumn elections, Sumner sent a long telegram to President Johnson. On the Saturday evening before Congress met, he was with him two hours. He found him "changed in temper and purpose ... no longer sympathetic, or even kindly," but "harsh, petulant and unreasonable." Near the end of the interview, there was a colloquy, in which the President reminded the Senator of murders in Massachusetts and assaults in Boston as an offset to outrages in the South visited on Negroes and white Union men, under the inspiration of political or race animosity. The two parted that evening not to meet again – the senator leaving "with the painful conviction that the President's whole soul was set as a flint against the good cause, and that by assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the rebellion had vaulted into the Presidential chair."²⁴

Meantime, the Massachusetts Republican convention approved Negro suffrage as a condition of Reconstruction, and they were followed by Vermont, Iowa, and Minnesota. The other Republican conventions were not explicit, but the conviction grew in the North that state governments in the South, which would curb the political [ 259 ] power of ex-Confederates and insure the freedom of Negroes, could not be established without Negro suffrage.

Sumner led in spreading this opinion, stressing naturally the rights of Negroes. He wrote to Mr. Bright, November 14:

The President's 'experiment' appears to be breaking down; but at what fearful cost! The Rebels have once more been put on their legs; the freedmen and the Unionists are down. This is very sad. I cannot be otherwise than unhappy as I think of it. Our session is uncertain. Nobody can tell certainly what pressure the President will bring to bear on Congress, and how Congress can stand it. I think that Congress will insist upon time – this will be our first demand, and then generally upon adequate guarantees. There are unpleasant stories from Washington; but we must persevere to the end."²⁵

In October, Johnson began openly to argue against Negro suffrage. In an interview with George L. Stearns of Massachusetts, he reminded him that Negro suffrage could not have been argued in the North seven years before and that the South must have time to understand its new position.

If I interfered with the vote in the rebel states, to dictate that no Negro shall vote, I might do the same for my own purpose in Pennsylvania. Our only safety lies in allowing each state to control the right of voting by its own laws, and we have the power to control the rebel states if they go wrong. …

My position here is different from what it would be if I were in Tennessee. There I should try to introduce Negro suffrage gradually; first, those who had served in the army; those who could read and write; and perhaps a property qualification for others, say $200 or $250. It would not do to let the Negro have universal suffrage now; it would breed a war of races.²⁶

He went on to develop this thesis which was a favorite one with him: that Negroes and poor whites naturally hated each other; and that the outrages in the South were chiefly of poor whites on Negroes, and Negroes on poor whites; and if suffrage was given the Negro, he would vote with the master and thus precipitate a race war in the South. That there was truth in this fear, the subsequent history of Reconstruction proved; but it did not turn out as Andrew Johnson anticipated.

Johnson had little knowledge of Negroes; although he had owned a few slaves, he accepted most of the current Southern patterns. He believed that the Negro was lazy and could not survive freedom. He was afraid he might be tempted to lawlessness and insurrection. He spoke to certain colored folk May 11, 1865, according to the Philadelphia Press of May 20, and stated that he had to "deplore the [ 260 ] existence of an idea among them that they have nothing to do but to fall back upon the government for support in order that they may be taken care of in idleness and debauchery." October 10, 1865, he talked to the First Colored Regiment of the District of Columbia troops who had recently returned from the South. He congratulated them on serving with patience and endurance and exhorted them to be tranquil and peaceful now that the war was ended:

Freedom is not a mere idea. … Freedom is not simply the principle to live in idleness. Liberty does not mean merely to resort to the low saloons and other places of disreputable character. Freedom and liberty does not mean that people ought to live in licentiousness; but liberty means simply to be industrious and to be virtuous, to be upright in all our deals and relations with men. … You must give evidence that you are competent for the rights that the government has guaranteed you. …

The institution of slavery is overthrown. But another part remains to be solved, and that is, can four millions of people, reared as they have been, with all the prejudices of the whites – can they take their places in the community, and be made to work harmoniously and congruously in our system? This is a problem to be considered. Are the digestive powers of the American government sufficient to receive this element in a new shape, and digest it and make it work healthfully upon the system that has incorporated it?

He then hinted at colonization of the Negro population:

If it should be so that the two races cannot agree and live in peace and prosperity, and the laws of Providence require that they should be separated – in that event, looking to the far distant future, and trusting in God that it may never come – if it should come, Providence, that works mysteriously, but unerringly and certainly, will point out the way, and the mode, and the manner by which these people are to be separated, and they are to be taken to their land of inheritance and promise, for such a one is before them. Hence we are making the experiment."²⁷

Congress met in December, 1865, with the determination to control the reconstruction of the Union. And in this there is no question but that Congress was right. If the nation was going backward to the same status in which it was before the war, it was conceivable that this might be done by executive action. But there were two tremendous changes that made this unthinkable: one was the abolition of slavery, and the other was the new political power which the emancipation of these slaves would confer upon the South. Moreover, there appeared from the South, demanding seats at the opening of Congress, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, four Confederate generals, five Confederate [ 261 ] colonels, six Confederate cabinet officers, and fifty-eight Confederate Congressmen, none of whom was able to take the oath of allegiance. "The case of Alex H. Stephens, late Vice-president of the Confederacy, was especially aggravating. Four months before he had been a prisoner at Fort Warren. Pardoned by the President, he waited not a moment to repent and returned to Georgia, was elected to the United States Senate, and was now asking admission – asking to govern the country he had been trying to destroy."²⁸ Moreover one of the worst of the new black codes was passed in Mississippi in November.

Thaddeus Stevens took immediate lead. He called in caucus twenty or thirty of his followers, December 1; on December 2, the Republican caucus met, and Stevens submitted his plan:

1. To claim the whole question of Reconstruction as the exclusive business of Congress.

2. To regard the steps taken by the President as only provisional.

3. Each House to postpone consideration of the admission of members from Southern states.

4. And that a Joint Committee of Fifteen be appointed to inquire into the condition of the former Confederate states.

Without waiting even for the reception of the President's message, Stevens proposed in the House a resolution for a Joint Committee of Fifteen members of the House and Senate to "inquire into the condition of the states which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether they or any of them are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress, with leave to report at any time by bill or otherwise; and until such report shall have been made and finally acted upon by Congress, no member shall be received into either House from any of the said so-called Confederate States; and all papers relating to the representation of the said states shall be referred to the said committee without debate."²⁹

By vote of 129-35 with 18 not voting, the rules were suspended and this resolution passed. This was the first test of political strength in the new Congress.

The Senate did not take up the matter until December 12. The joint resolution was changed to a concurrent resolution in order to make the approval of the President unnecessary. The section of the resolution concerning the reception of members and reference of all papers was objected to and the resolution was amended so as to direct the committee "to inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether they, or any of them, are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress, with leave to report at any time by bill or otherwise."³⁰

This amended form the House concurred in, but passed another [ 262 ] House resolution to admit no Southern members, and to refer all motions and papers. Eventually, Stevens had his way, and after Johnson's speech of February 22, the Senate assented to excluding representatives from the South until both Houses agreed.

Industry was uneasy at the Stevens plan. The New York Herald claimed it created lack of business confidence North and South. Such a lack of confidence, of course, would hinder economic development in the South, and to that extent limit New York's commercial prosperity. Commerce was especially alarmed lest Thaddeus Stevens should use his machine for carrying out his scheme of confiscation of Southern lands. Such wholesale confiscation, capital could not contemplate. Local harmony, law and order, the development of the vast industrial resources of the South, seemed wisest in New York.

Johnson, in his message of December 4, began an extraordinary series of state papers which he could never have written all by himself.

Johnson's state papers, including vetoes, were uniformly in good temper, conservative, historical and well considered. In the preparation of them he made use of every person on whom he could lay his hands. Bancroft wrote the first message to Congress; Jerre Black, the hero of Ex Parte Milligan (§), wrote the Reconstruction veto; Seward, the precise scholar, supervised much that the President wrote; Stanton, the practical lawyer, wrote the bill to admit North Carolina and other states into the Union in 1865; the Attorney-General, Welles, Secretary of the Navy, and other members of the cabinet he frequently used.³¹

In his first message, he forecast the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, which, in fact, occurred December 18th. He explained that because of this anticipated abolition of slavery, he had proceeded to begin reorganization of the states and admission to their full rights in the Union. He knew that this policy was attended with some risk but the risk must be taken:

The relations of the General Government towards the four millions of inhabitants whom the war has called into freedom has engaged my most serious consideration. On the propriety of attempting to make the freedmen electors by the proclamation of the Executive, I took for my counsel the Constitution itself, the interpretation of that instrument by its authors and their contemporaries, and recent legislation by Congress. When, at the first movement towards independence, the Congress of the United States instructed the several States to institute governments of their own, they left each State to decide for itself the conditions for the enjoyment of the elective franchise. … Moreover, a concession of the elective franchise to the freedmen, by act [ 263 ] of the President of the United States, must have been extended to all colored men, wherever found, and so must have established a change of suffrage in the Northern, Middle, and Western States, not less than in the Southern and Southwestern. Such an act would have created a new class of voters, and would have been an assumption of power by the President which nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States would have warranted.

On the other hand, every danger of conflict is avoided when the settlement of the question is referred to the several States. They can, each for itself, decide on the measure, and whether it is to be adopted at once and absolutely, or introduced gradually and with conditions. In my judgment, the freedmen, if they show patience and manly virtues, will sooner obtain a participation in the elective franchise through the States than through the General Government, even if it had power to intervene. When the tumult of emotions that have been raised by the suddenness of the social change shall have subsided, it may prove that they will receive the kindliest usage from some of those on whom they have heretofore most closely depended.

But while I have no doubt that now, after the close of the war, it is not competent for the General Government to extend the elective franchise in the several States, it is equally clear that good faith requires the security of the freedmen in their liberty and in their property, their right to labor, and their right to claim the just return of their labor. I cannot too strongly urge a dispassionate treatment of this subject, which should be carefully kept aloof from all party strife. We must equally avoid hasty assumptions of any natural impossibility for the two races to live side by side, in a state of mutual benefit and good will. The experiment involves us in no inconsistency; let us, then, go on and make that experiment in good faith, and not be too easily disheartened. The country is in need of labor, and the freedmen are in need of work, culture, and protection.

And then came a characteristic turn of thought: "While their right of voluntary migration and expatriation is not to be questioned, I would not advise their forced removal and colonization."

Here President Johnson was clearly envisaging the extinction or voluntary removal of four million laborers in the South, and the settlement of the problem of their presence in the United States by replacing them with white labor. On the other hand, he seemed anxious to have them protected in their present new status and it was understood, both from the message and from other sources, that the President was in favor of continuing the Freedmen's Bureau.

The temper of Congress was firm. What should be done in Reconstruction was a matter for deliberation, thought and care. It could [ 264 ] not be settled by the Southern leaders who brought on the crisis, working alone in conjunction with the President and his cabinet. On the other hand, what the nation wanted was by no means clear. There was among its millions no one mind. There was among its various groups no unanimity.

The mind of Thaddeus Stevens evolved a course of action. This plan was to set up at least temporarily a cabinet form of responsible government in the United States: to put in power a camarilla of representatives of the various sections, groups and parties, who, by deliberation and inquiry, would find out what action could command a majority in the House and in the Senate. This in itself was the beginning of a momentous change in our government, a change unfortunately, never carried completely through; and the failure to carry it through has hampered the United States government ever since.

The original idea of the Congress was a small, deliberative assembly in two Houses which should think and argue matters through, and then have their decisions enforced by the Executive, and coordinated and clarified by a Supreme Court. But Congress grew to unwieldy size; the Executive grew in prestige and power, until during the Civil War, he became a dictator, while the Supreme Court was destined to assume powers which would at times threaten to stop the progress of the nation, almost without appeal.

Moreover, the contingency of an Executive, who far from being the servant of a congressional majority was antagonistic and even a contradictory source of authority and action, never occurred to the fathers. They did not intend to have the President a mere mouthpiece of Congress, and, for this reason, they gave him the message and the veto; but on the other hand, they never conceived that he should be in himself both executive and lawgiver and yet this he practically was during and after the Civil War; he exemplified at the time of Andrew Johnson a new and extraordinary situation in which the President of the United States in vital particulars was opposed to the overwhelming majority of the party in Congress which had elected him, and refused in effect to do their will.

This had to be remedied, and for this, the Committee of Fifteen, on the motion of Thaddeus Stevens, came into being in the 39th Congress (§). It was government on the English parliamentary model with two modifications: it was responsible to two Houses instead of to one, which enormously delayed and complicated its functioning; and it contained representatives of the opposition party – although this representation was often nullified through caucuses and sub-committees.

It was the business of the Committee of Fifteen to see how the government of the United States was to be changed after the war, from its [ 265 ] form before the war; and this involved, first, some change in the basis of popular representation; secondly, a clarification of the status of the Negro; and finally it brought a modification of the relation of the national government to state government, not simply in civil rights but even more in industry and labor. It was through the first and second that the majority, which eventually dominated the 39th Congress, gained its moral power. It was through the third that the moral power was implemented.

Stevens was too astute a politician to stress first the moral foundation of his argument. In his first speech, as leader of the 39th Congress, he placed his main argument on representation, because he knew that that would appeal to the men sitting in front of him, and representing national wealth and industry.

In December, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, a curious result followed: twenty-nine Representatives were added to the South. Since the adoption of the Constitution, the basis of congressional representation had been the free population, including free Negroes and three-fifths of the slaves. Stevens said that with this basis of representation unchanged, "The eighty-three Southern members, with the Democrats, that will in the best times be elected from the North, will always give them a majority in Congress and in the Electoral College. They will at the very first election take possession of the White House and the halls of Congress. I need not depict the ruin that would follow. Assumption of the rebel debt or repudiation of the Federal debt would be sure to follow. The oppression of the freedmen; the reamendment of their State constitutions, and the reestablishment of slavery would be the inevitable result. That they would scorn and disregard their present constitutions, forced upon them in the midst of martial law, would be both natural and just. No one who has any regard for freedom of elections can look upon those governments, forced upon them in duress, with any favor."

This was the cogent, clear argument of Thaddeus Stevens, the politician. But Thaddeus Stevens was never a mere politician. He cared nothing for constitutional subtleties nor even for political power. He was a stern believer in democracy, both in politics and in industry, and he made his second argument turn on the economic freedom of the slave.

We have turned, or are about to turn, loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the commonest laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business life. This Congress is bound to provide for them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not furnish them with [ 266 ] homesteads, and hedge them around with protective laws; if we leave them to the legislation of their late masters, we had better have left them in bondage.

He then resolutely went further in a defense of pure democracy, although he knew that in this argument he was venturing far beyond the practical beliefs of his auditors:

Governor Perry of South Carolina and other provisional governors and orators proclaim that 'this is the white man's government. … Demagogues of all parties, even some high in authority, gravely shout, 'this is the white man's government.' What is implied by this? That one race of men are to have the exclusive rights forever to rule this nation, and to exercise all acts of sovereignty, while all other races and nations and colors are to be their subjects, and have no voice in making the laws and choosing the rulers by whom they are to be governed. …

Our fathers repudiated the whole doctrine of the legal superiority of families or races, and proclaimed the equality of men before the law. Upon that they created a revolution and built the Republic. They were prevented by slavery from perfecting the superstructure whose foundation they had thus broadly laid. For the sake of the Union they consented to wait, but never relinquished the idea of its final completion.

The time to which they looked forward with anxiety has come. It is our duty to complete their work. If this Republic is not now made to stand on their great principles, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to its center. If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God's creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father. …

This is not a white man's Government, in the exclusive sense in which it is used. To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates the fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is Man's Government, the Government of all men alike; not that all men will have equal power and sway within it. Accidental circumstances, natural and acquired endowment and ability, will vary their fortunes. But equal rights to all the privileges of the Government is innate in every immortal being, no matter what the shape or color of the tabernacle which it inhabits. …

Sir, this doctrine of a white man's Government is as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame; and, I fear, to everlasting fire.³²

The ensuing debate in the House and Senate flamed over all creation, [ 267 ] but it started with a note of moral triumph. The newly elected Speaker declared: "The fires of civil war have broken every fetter in the land and proved the funeral pyre of slavery." The chaplain of the Senate increased this moral afflatus with religious fervor, thankful that "the statue of Freedom now looks down from our capital upon an entire nation of free men, and that we are permitted by the dispensation of Thy Providence, and the way being prepared, to give liberty to the captive, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, and to proclaim the acceptable year of our God."

The chaplain of the House said: "O God, we stand today on the soil of a nation which is, not alone by inference or report, but by the solemn announcement of the constituted authorities, declared free in every part and parcel of its territory. Blessed be Thy name, O God, for Thy wonderful ending of this terrible conflict!"

Congressional amendments of every sort poured into Congress concerning the national and Confederate debt, the civil rights of freedmen, the establishment of republican government, the basis of representation, payment for slaves and the future powers of Federal government and the states. Argument swirled in a maelstrom of logic. No matter where it started, and how far afield in legal metaphysics it strayed, always it returned and had to return to two focal points: Shall the South be rewarded for unsuccessful secession by increased political power; and: Can the freed Negro be a part of American democracy?

Thither all argument again and again returned; but it tried desperately to crowd out these real points by appealing to higher constitutional metaphysics. This constitutional argument was astonishing. Around and around it went in dizzy, silly dialectics. Here were grown, sensible men arguing about a written form of government adopted ninety years before, when men did not believe that slavery could outlive their generation in this country, or that civil war could possibly be its result; when no man foresaw the Industrial Revolution or the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; and yet now, with incantation and abracadabra, the leaders of a nation tried to peer back into the magic crystal, and out of a bit of paper called the Constitution, find eternal and immutable law laid down for their guidance forever and ever, Amen!

They knew perfectly well that no such omniscient law existed or ever had existed. Yet, in order to conceal the fact, they twisted and distorted and argued: these states are dead; but states can never die. These states have gone out of the Union; but states can never go out of the Union, and to prevent this we fought and won a war; but while we were fighting, these states were certainly not in the Union, else why did we fight? And how now may they come back? They [ 268 ] are already back because they were never really out. Then what were we fighting for? For union. But we had union and we have got union, only these constituent states are dead and we must bring them to life. But states never die. Then they have forfeited statehood and become territories. But statehood cannot be forfeited; conspirators within the states interfered, and now the interference has stopped. But as long as the interference lasted, there was surely no union. Oh, yes, only it did not function; we need not now provide for its functioning again, for the Constitution already provides for that.

Where was the Constitution during the war? But the war is ended; and now the Constitution prevails; unless the Constitution prevails, this is no nation, there is no President; we have no real Congress, since it does not represent the nation. But who represented the nation during the war? And by that token, who saved the nation and killed slavery? Shall the nation that saved the nation now surrender its power to rebels who fought to preserve slavery? There are no rebels! The South is loyal and slavery is dead. How can the loyalty of the South be guaranteed, and has the black slave been made really free? Freedom is a matter of state right. So was secession. Must we fight that battle over again? Yes, if you try to make monkeys equal to men. What caused the war but your own insistence that men were at once monkeys and real estate? Gentlemen, gentlemen, and fellow Americans, let us have peace! But what is peace? Is it slavery of all poor men, and increased political power for the slaveholders? Do you want to wreak vengeance on the conquered and the unfortunate? Do you want to reward rebellion by increased power to rebels?

And so on, around and around, and up and down, day after day, week after week, with only here and there a keen, straight mind to cut the cobwebs and to say in effect with Seward through Johnson: Damn the Nigger; let us settle down to work and trade! Or to declare with Stevens and Sumner: Make the slaves free with land, education and the ballot, and then let the South return to its place. Or to say with Blaine and Conkling and Bingham, not in words but in action: Guard property and industry; when their position is impregnable, let the South return; we will then hold it with black votes, until we capture it with white capital.

After all this blather, the nation and its Congress found itself back to the two plain problems: The basis of representation in Congress and the status of the Negro. When it came to the Negro, the old dogmatism leaped to the fore and would not down. Chandler of New York regarded Farnsworth's demand for Negro equality as not only an attack on foreigners but "an insult to white citizens." When the Constitution said "people," it meant "white people." And he stood [ 269 ] for "the purity of the white race." Fink declared that Ohio would never let Negroes vote with his consent. This is "and of right ought to be a white man's government," said Boyer of Pennsylvania, and he declared that eighteen of the twenty-five states now represented in Congress would not let the Negro vote.

Yet the argument for freedom and democracy loomed high and clear. "Slavery, but a short time ago received as a God-given condition of men, has fallen under the banner of a purer morality, and come down with the curses of a Christian world. With the fall of slavery must also fall the things pertaining thereto. The master who yesterday had his heel upon the neck of his slave, today meets that slave upon the level of common equality. … The Negro should be carefully considered in this question of Reconstruction, for after all we are our brother's keeper and we must see that even-handed justice is meted out to the black man if possible."

Woodbridge of Vermont declared: "New social and political relations have been established. Four million people have been born in a day. The shackles have been stricken from four million chattels, and they have become in an hour living, thinking, moving, responsible beings, and citizens of these United States. And if Congress does not do something to provide for these people, if they do not prove equal to their duty, and come up to their work like men, the condition of the people will be worse than before."

The South represented by the Border States had to confine itself to constitutional metaphysics, or else blurt out, as some of its spokesmen did, a new defense of the old slavery. The West, on the other hand, had a real and disturbing argument and it was voiced by Voorhees in his dramatic attempt to drive a wedge between Johnson and the Republicans. He said, January 6, 1866:

How long can the inequalities of our present revenue system be borne? How long will the poor and laborious pay tribute to the rich and the idle? We have two great interests in this country, one of which has prostrated the other. The past four years of suffering and war has been the opportune harvest of the manufacturer. The looms and machine shops of New England and the iron furnaces of Pennsylvania have been more prolific of wealth to their owners than the most dazzling gold mines of the earth. …

They are the results of class legislation, of a monopoly of trade established by law. It may be said that they indicate prosperity. Most certainly they do; but it is the prosperity of one who obtains the property of his neighbor without any equivalent in return. The present law of tariff is being rapidly understood. It is no longer a deception, but rather a well-defined and clearly-recognized outrage. The agricultural [ 270 ] labor of the land is driven to the counters of the most gigantic monopoly ever before sanctioned by law. From its exorbitant demands there is no escape. The European manufacturer is forbidden our ports of trade for fear he might sell his goods at cheaper rates and thus relieve the burden of the consumer. We have declared by law that there is but one market in which our citizens shall go to make their purchases, and we have left it to the owners of the markets to fix their own prices.³³

This was another unanswerable argument. But, having made it, what was Voorhees' remedy? His logical remedy would have been to unite the industrial democracy of the West with the abolition-democracy of the East in order to fight oligarchy in Northern industry and the attempt to reestablish agricultural oligarchy in the South. Yet this was farthest from his intention. His immediate effort was to embarrass and split the Republicans by forcing them to endorse or repudiate their own President and leader; his ultimate program, if he had one, was to seek with Andrew Johnson to restore oligarchy in the South with a dominant planter class and serfdom for the emancipated Negroes. This was unthinkable, and it deprived the radical West of all moral sympathy and voting power which its economic revolt deserved.

What was it the nation wanted? Charles Sumner told the nation what it ought to want, but there was no doubt but that it did not yet want this. Thaddeus Stevens knew what the nation ought to want, but as a practical politician his business was to see how much of this he could get enacted into actual law.

There came before the 39th Congress some 140 different proposals to change the Constitution of the United States, including 45 on apportionment, 31 on civil and political rights, and 13 forbidding payment for slaves. Over half of these affected the status of the freedmen. Before the Committee of Fifteen could sift these and settle to its larger task of fixing the future basis of representation and the degree of national guardianship which Negro freedmen called for, there seemed to be two measures upon which public opinion in the North was so far crystallized that legislation might safely be attempted. These were: a permanent Freedmen's Bureau, and a bill to protect the civil rights of Negroes. On the first day of business of the 39th Congress, there were introduced into the Senate two bills on these subjects.

The Civil Rights Bill was taken up December 13, but Sherman of Ohio reminded the Senate that there was scarcely a state in the Union that did not make distinctions on account of color, and wished, therefore, to postpone action until the Thirteenth Amendment had been adopted. Saulsbury of Maryland called it "an insane effort to elevate [ 271 ] the African race to the dignity of the white race," and claimed that the Thirteenth Amendment would carry no such power as Sherman assumed.

Trumbull of Illinois, on the contrary, declared that the second section of the Thirteenth Amendment as reported by his committee was drawn "for the very purpose of conferring upon Congress authority to see that the first section was carried out in good faith, and for none other; and I hold that under that second section Congress will have the authority, when the constitutional amendment is adopted, not only to pass the bill of the Senator from Massachusetts, but a bill that will be much more efficient to protect the freedman in his rights. We may, if deemed advisable, continue the Freedmen's Bureau, clothe it with additional powers, and if necessary back it up with a military force, to see that the rights of the men made free by the first clause of the constitutional amendment are protected. And, sir, when the constitutional amendment shall have been adopted, if the information from the South be that the men whose liberties are secured by it are deprived of the privilege to go and come when they please, to buy and sell when they please, to make contracts and enforce contracts, I give notice that, if no one else does, I shall introduce a bill and urge its passage through Congress that will secure to those men every one of these rights : they would not be freemen without them."³⁴

Congress asked the President for the specific facts concerning the situation in the South. The President replied with the report of General Grant, containing the superficial results of a hasty, five-day trip, and disingenuously tried to suppress the report of Carl Schurz, undoubtedly the most thorough-going and careful inquiry into the situation just after the war that had been made. Sumner expressed his indignation and the evident need of a civil rights bill.

When I think of what occurred yesterday in this Chamber; when I call to mind the attempt to whitewash the unhappy condition of the rebel States, and to throw the mantle of official oblivion over sickening and heart-rending outrages, where Human Rights are sacrificed and rebel Barbarism receives a new letter of license, I feel that I ought to speak of nothing else. I stood here years ago, in the days of Kansas, when a small community was surrendered to the machinations of slave-masters. I now stand here again, when, alas! an immense region, with millions of people, has been surrendered to the machinations of slave-masters. Sir, it is the duty of Congress to stress this fatal fury. Congress must dare to be brave; it must dare to be just.³⁵

He claimed that the Civil Rights Bill aimed "simply to carry out and maintain the Proclamation of Emancipation, by which this republic is solemnly pledged to maintain the emancipated slave in his freedom. [ 272 ] Such is our pledge : 'and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.' This pledge is without any limitation in space or time. It is as extended and as immortal as the Republic itself. Does anybody call it vain words? I trust not. To that pledge we are solemnly bound. Wherever our flag floats as long as time endures we must see that it is sacredly observed.

But the performance of that pledge cannot be entrusted to another; least of all, can it be entrusted to the old slave-masters, embittered against their slaves. It must be performed by the National Government. The power that gave freedom must see that this freedom is maintained. This is according to reason. It is also according to the examples of history. In the British West Indies we find this teaching. Three of England's greatest orators and statesmen, Burke, Canning, and Brougham, at successive periods, united in declaring, from the experience in the British West Indies, that whatever the slave-masters undertook to do for their slaves was always 'arrant trifling,' and that, whatever might be its plausible form, it always wanted 'the executive principle.' More recently the Emperor of Russia, when ordering Emancipation, declared that all efforts of his predecessors in this direction had failed because they had been left to 'the spontaneous initiative of the proprietors.' I might say much more on this head but this is enough. I assume that no such blunder will be made on our part; that we shall not leave to the old proprietors the maintenance of that freedom to which we are pledged, and thus break our own promises and sacrifice a race.

But Congress was not yet ready for this high ground and Sumner's scheme was widely criticized. Whitelaw Reid, in a letter to the Cincinnati Gazette, March 3, 1868, recalled the profound surprise and bitterness of feeling with which Sumner's remarks were received by Senators. Republican journals and leaders within the inner circles of the party were hostile.³⁶

The Republicans were, especially, afraid of any split with the President lest this bring the Democrats into power; Forney of the Philadelphia Press begged Sumner to yield for the sake of harmony within the great political army in which he had been "a conscientious and courageous leader."

Protests against President Johnson's policy were therefore slow in expression. The nation was weary of war and objected to military administration in the South. Capitalists wanted pacification of the Southern territory to open a market closed for four years. They wanted any method which would bring the quickest results. Moreover, Republicans held some of the largest states of the North by narrow majorities. [ 273 ] Any unpopular step might put the Democrats in power. Office-holders did not want to break with Johnson and candidates for office were timid.

Congress made in effect the first overture to the South and instead of forcing civil and possibly political rights, turned to take up the bill which proposed government guardianship and tutelage for the blacks. The Civil Rights Bill was postponed and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which Johnson's message seemed to accept, was substituted. This was introduced as an amendment to the act of March 3, 1865, and contained the following propositions: (1) That the bureau should continue in force until abolished by law; (2) That it should embrace the whole country wherever there were freedmen and refugees; (3) That bureau officials should have annual salaries of $500 to $1,200; (4) That the President should set apart for the use of freedmen and loyal refugees unoccupied lands in the South, to be allotted in parcels not exceeding forty acres each; (5) That the titles granted in pursuance of General Sherman's orders of January 16, 1865, be made valid; (6) That the commissioner procure land and erect suitable buildings as asylums and schools for dependent freedmen and refugees; (7) That it be the duty of the President to extend military protection and jurisdiction over all cases where any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, including the rights to make and enforce contracts, to give evidence, to inherit, buy, sell and hold property, etc., are refused or denied by local law, prejudice on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude; or where different punishments or penalties are inflicted than are prescribed for white persons committing like offenses; (8) That it be made a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $1,000 or imprisonment for one year or both, for anyone depriving another of the above rights on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. These last sections were to apply to those states or districts where ordinary judicial proceedings had been interfered with by war.³⁷

The bill was opposed as establishing a permanent bureau instead of a war-time emergency institution. Its great power was criticized and it was declared that its expense would be enormous. There were special objections to the validation of land titles under Sherman's orders and to the section on civil rights. It was defended as being not necessarily permanent; as in accordance with our Indian policy; and as not being expensive, since it was manned by army officers. It passed the Senate in January, 1866, by a vote of 37-10.

In the House, Thaddeus Stevens tried to strengthen the bill by the most thorough-going provisions for government guardianship yet proposed. These provisions directed that food, clothes, medical attention [ 274 ] and transportation be furnished white refugees and black freedmen and their families; that public land be set aside in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas, and also from forfeited estates, to the extent of three million acres of good land; and that this should be parceled out to loyal white refugees and black freedmen at a rental not to exceed ten cents an acre; and that at the end of a certain period this land be sold to the applicants at a price not to exceed two dollars an acre. The occupants of land, under Sherman's order, were confirmed in their possession, unless the former owner proved his title, and in that case, other land at the rate of forty acres a farm should be given to the applicant. The bureau was to erect buildings for asylums and schools, and provide a common school education for all white refugees and freedmen who applied. This thorough-going substitute unhappily was lost.

The bill which finally passed the House, February 6, extended the power of the Freedmen's Bureau to freedmen throughout the whole United States and provided for food and clothing for the destitute, a distribution of public lands among freedmen and white refugees in parcels not exceeding forty acres each at a nominal rent and with an eventual chance of purchasing. The land assigned by Sherman was to be held for three years and then, if restored, other lands secured by rent or purchase. School buildings and asylums were to be erected when Congress appropriated the money. Full civil rights were to be enforced, and punishment was provided for those thwarting the civil rights of Negroes.

This bill encountered strong opposition, especially from the Border States. Saulsbury of Delaware deliberately reiterated his contention that Congress had no right to abolish slavery, even if three-fourths of the states assented! With minor changes the bill was accepted by the Senate, February 9, and thus the first great measure of Reconstruction went to the President. Southern slavery had now been definitely abolished by constitutional amendment, and government guardianship of the Negro with land and court protection was assured by a permanent Freedmen's Bureau.

What was the answer of the South to this? Where were Southern brains and leadership? Why did so many hide, like Toombs? Why did the South have to trust its guidance to a half-educated, poor white President and a New York corporation lawyer? Suppose a Southern leader had appeared at that time and had said frankly: "We propose to make the Negro actually free in his right to work, his legal status, and his personal safety. We are going to allow him to get, on easy terms, homesteads, so as gradually to replace the plantation system with peasant proprietors; and we are going to provide him and our [ 275 ] poor whites with elementary schools. And when in time, he is able to read and write and accumulate a minimum of property, then, and not until then, he can cast a vote and be represented in Congress."

What was there so wild and revolutionary, so unthinkable, about a manly declaration of this sort? But a native of Alabama knew that this attitude was entirely lacking: "I do not think that Congress should wait for the people of the South to make regulations by which, at some future time, the Negroes will be provided with homes, have their rights as freemen acknowledged, be given a participation in civil rights, and be made a part of the framework of the country. They will not do that; you need not wait for it. If Congress can constitutionally commence a system of educating and elevating the Negroes, let them do it, and not wait for the people of the South to do it."³⁸

It is nonsense to say that the South knew nothing about the capabilities of the Negro race. Southerners knew Negroes far better than Northerners. There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually in the course of the history of slavery recognized such men. Here and there teachers and preachers to white folks as well as colored folks had arisen. Artisans and even artists had been recognized. Some of these colored folks were blood relatives of the white slaveholders: brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. They had sometimes been given land, transported to the North or to Europe, freed and encouraged.

Of course, the Southerners believed such persons to be exceptional, but all that was asked of them at this time was to recognize the possibility of exceptions. To such a reasonable offer the nation could and would have responded. It could have paid for the Negro's land and education. It could have contributed to relief and restoration of the South. Instead of that came a determination to reestablish slavery, murder, arson and flogging; a dogmatic opposition to Negro education and decent legal status; determination to have political power based on voteless Negroes, and no vote to any Negro under any circumstances.

This showed the utter absence of common sense in the leadership of the South. Their attitude was expressed best, however, not by a Southerner but by William H. Seward, and it came in the shape of a veto to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. Johnson vetoes Freedmen's Bureau Bill (§) If this veto had applied to a civil rights bill or to a bill providing for Negro suffrage, it would have been much more logical; but to veto a bill for the guardianship of Negroes, even though that bill carried and had to carry a defense of civil rights, was reactionary to the last degree. The veto was a [ 276 ] shrewd document, as was every argument written by that master of subtle logic. The President was made to say:

"I share with Congress the strongest desire to secure to the freedmen the full enjoyment of their freedom and property and their entire independence and equality in making contracts for their labor." But he objected to the bill because it was "unconstitutional"; because the bureau was permanent; because it did for the colored people what had never been done for white people; because it confiscated land, and because its cost would be prodigious. It was unconstitutional, because it extended jurisdiction all over the United States, and gave the Bureau judicial power in that jurisdiction. It was made permanent in spite of the fact that slavery had been abolished. Conceive a President, born a poor white laborer, saying:

Congress has never felt itself authorized to spend public money for renting homes for white people honestly toiling day and night, and it was never intended that freedmen should be fed, clothed, educated and sheltered by the United States. The idea upon which slaves were assisted to freedom was that they become a self-sustaining population.

The bureau, he said, would be costly. During war times, we had already spent $5,876,272 for the relief of Negroes, and $2,047,297 for the relief of whites. For 1866, the present bureau needed $11,745,000. Now we are planning to spend money for land and education which will double this sum. The bill proposes to take away land from former owners without due process of law. Finally, comes this extraordinary economic philosophy for serfs:

Undoubtedly, the freedman should be protected, but he should be protected by the civil authorities, especially by the exercise of all constitutional powers of the courts of the United States and of the states.

His condition is not so bad. His labor is in demand, and he can change his dwelling place if one community or state does not please him. The laws that regulate supply and demand will regulate his wages. The freedmen can protect themselves, and being free, they could be self-sustaining, capable of selecting their own employment, insisting on proper wages, and establishing and maintaining their own asylums and schools.

It is earnestly hoped that, instead of wasting away, they will, by their own efforts, establish for themselves a condition of responsibility and prosperity. It is certain that they can attain that condition only through their own merits and exertions.

This was the answer of Andrew Johnson and William H. Seward to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. Practically, it said that the Negroes do not need protection. They are free. Let them go to work, earn wages, and support their own schools. Their civil rights and political rights [ 277 ] must depend entirely upon their former masters, and the United States has no constitutional authority to interfere to help them. As Stevens said later, the President himself favored confiscation of Southern land for the poor when he was "clothed and in his right mind."³⁹

It was an astonishing pronouncement. It was the American Assumption, of the possibility of labor's achieving wealth, applied with a vengeance to landless slaves under caste conditions. The very strength of its logic was the weakness of its common sense.

Yet, Andrew Johnson was the President of the United States. He was the leader of the Republican party which had just won the war. He declared in the face of an astounding array of testimony to the contrary, that the South was peaceful and loyal, and the slaves really free. Congress did not believe the President or agree with him, but some were not yet prepared to break with him. Six Republicans deserted their party and voted to uphold the veto. The result was that by a vote of 30-18, the attempt to override the President's veto failed. veto stands, Republicans divided The rift made in the Republican party was wide. On the one side stood abolition-democracy in curious alliance with triumphant Northern industry, both united in self-defense against Johnson and the South. This Northern unity, Johnson and Seward intended to disrupt, and did so in part when the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was sustained. Seward followed this by an appeal for the quick resumption of peace and industry, and Johnson made an appeal to labor unrest and Western radicals. But here again, there was no natural union and this Seward knew. His defense, therefore, of Johnson's plan was intended to soothe both industry and abolition without stressing radicalism.

Washington's Birthday had been fixed upon by the President's friends for a grand demonstration. The New York Aldermen endorsed the President's "conservative, liberal, enlightened, and Christian policy," with "one hundred guns salute on February 21 and one hundred on February 22." Johnson was declared "greater than 'Old Hickory.'" "He was on the highest pinnacle of the mount of fame"; "his feet were planted on the Constitution of his country"; "he was a modern edition of Andrew Jackson bound in calf." "Indeed, it was said by the Radicals in reply to the Democratic fireworks that 'more powder was burned in honor of the veto by the Copperheads than they consumed during the four years of war.'"⁴⁰

Seward said at Cooper Union:

This, I think, is the difference between the President, who is a man of nerve, in the Executive chair at Washington, and the nervous men who are in the House of Representatives. Both have got the Union restored not with slavery, but without it; not with secession, flagrant [ 278 ] or latent, but without it; not with compromise, but without it; not with disloyal states, or representatives, but with loyal states and representatives; not with Rebel debts, but without them; not with exemption from our own debts for suppressing the rebellion, but with equal liabilities upon the Rebels and the loyal men; not with freedmen and refugees abandoned to suffering and persecution, but with freedmen employed in productive, self-sustaining industry, with refugees under the protection of law and order. The man of nerve sees that it has come out right at last, and he accepts the situation.

He does not forget that in this troublesome world of ours, the most to be secured by anybody is to have things come out right. Nobody can ever expect to have them brought out altogether in his own way. The nervous men, on the other hand, hesitate, delay, debate and agonize – not because it has not come out right, but because they have not individually had their own way in bringing it to a happy termination.

As to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, he said:

I have not given prominence in these remarks to the conflict of opinion between the President and Congress in reference to the bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees. That conflict is, in its consequences, comparatively unimportant; it would excite little interest and produce little division if it stood alone. It is because it has become the occasion for revealing the difference that I have already described that it has attained the importance which seems to surround it.

He proceeded to point out that the present Freedmen's Bureau Bill had not expired and might not expire for another year and that, therefore, during the next year Congress might still prolong its existence.

Ought the President of the United States to be denounced in the house of his friends, for refusing in the absence of any necessity, to occupy or retain, and to exercise power greater than those which are exercised by any imperial magistrate in the world? Judge ye! I trust that this fault of declining imperial powers, too hastily tendered by a too confiding Congress, may be forgiven by a generous people."⁴¹

This was an adroit defense, but Johnson could not let well enough alone. He was deprived of his mentor and assuming his vivid role of stump speaker, possibly with a few stimulants, he felt called upon this same Washington's Birthday to reply to a committee which had waited upon him with resolutions. He was speaking after the Fourteenth Amendment (§) in its first form had been reported to the House of Representatives and sent back to the Committee of Fifteen. With that as well as the vetoed Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the pending Civil Rights Bill (§|§) in mind, he recited again his services to the Union during the war; he reminded his auditors that when rebellion manifested [ 279 ] itself in the South, he stood by the government. He was for the Union with slavery; he was for the Union without slavery. In either alternative, he was for the government and the Constitution. Then he went on with the classic argument:

You have been struggling for four years to put down a rebellion. You contended at the beginning of that struggle that a state had not a right to go out. … And when you determine by the executive, by the military and by the public judgment, that these States cannot have any right to go out, this committee turns around and assumes that they are out, and that they shall not come in. ... I say that when the states that attempted to secede comply with the Constitution, and give sufficient evidence of loyalty, I shall extend to them the right hand of fellowship, and let peace and union be restored. I am opposed to the Davises, and Toombses, the Slidells, and the long list of such. But when I perceive, on the other hand, men … still opposed to the Union, I am free to say to you that I am still with the people. … Suppose I should name to you those whom I look upon as being opposed to the fundamental principles of this Government, and now laboring to destroy them. I say Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania; I say Charles Sumner of Massachusetts; I say Wendell Phillips of Massachusetts.

Finally, Johnson became melodramatic: Johnson's drunken(?) speech "Are they not satisfied with one martyr? Does not the blood of Lincoln appease the vengeance and wrath of the opponents of this Government? Is their thirst still unslaked? Do they want more blood? Have they not honor and courage enough to effect the removal of the Presidential obstacle otherwise than through the hands of the assassin? I am not afraid of assassins," etc., etc.⁴²

Small wonder that the New York Tribune and the Philadelphia Press reported that Johnson was drunk when he made his speech; but the main cause of his drunkenness was not necessarily whiskey, it was constitutional inability to understand men and movements. This was not time to straddle on the slavery question; that question has been settled. The crucial question now was, what will the South do when it comes back to Congress; what will it do to Negroes, and even more important in the minds of many, what will it do to the new industry? The latter question struck deepest, but the former voiced itself loudest.

"The masses of the loyal people must be as agreed to arise against this veto of a measure, intended as a bulwark against slavery and treason, as they were on the night when the flag of the Union was first hauled down from Fort Sumter," said the Chicago Tribune⁴³

Congress immediately hit back with a concurrent resolution not [ 280 ] to admit Southern Congressmen to either House until the status of the Southern states was settled. This had passed the House of Representatives after dilatory tactics February 20, but was not considered in the Senate until February 23, after Johnson's speech. It was passed after debate March 2, and thus Stevens' original resolution of December 4 was finally confirmed.

Here evidently there was small ground for compromise. Either Johnson must bow to the will of the majority of his party in Congress, or, led by him, the South would be in the saddle in 1866. Many who had criticized Sumner in December, now were on his side.

The President and the South, on the other hand, were greatly encouraged: despite the majority which the Republicans had in Congress, they could not override a Presidential veto; with the reaction that Johnson and the South expected at the next election, the Republicans would lose power and the South, united with Northern and Western Democracy, would rule. The Southerners resumed their drive to complete their black codes and their program of reducing the Negro to a servile caste.

The President, drunk with his new feeling of power, showed his entire misapprehension of the nature of the forces working against him. Congress girded itself for battle, not mainly because the virtual reenslavement of the Negro aroused them, but because this was the symptom of a reassertion of power on the part of the South which might affect the debt, the tariff and the national banking system.

The President and his supporters were going to insist upon the full political power of the South, unhampered by a Freedmen's Bureau or by Negro civil rights. Had it not been for the presence of the Negro, this attitude of the South could not have arisen. Never before in modern history has a conquered people treated their conqueror with such consummate arrogance. The South hid behind the darkness of the colored men and thumbed their noses at the nation.

For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing, when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote. He even went so far as to change plans which he had thought out and announced before he faced the Negro problem. He once said that representation ought to be based on voters; but no sooner did he learn that Thaddeus Stevens advocated the same thing, than he became dumb on the subject, and had no advice to offer. He had advocated the confiscation of the land of the rich Southerners and penalties on wealth gained through slavery. When he realized that Negroes would [ 281 ] be beneficiaries of any such action, he said not another word. He was a thick-and-thin advocate of universal suffrage in the hands of the laborer and common man, until he realized that some people actually thought that Negroes were men. He opposed monopoly on the New Jersey railroads, until Charles Sumner joined him.

The Civil Rights Bill Civil Rights Bill which was taken up next made Negroes citizens of the United States and punished any person who deprived them of civil rights under any state law:

They shall have the same right in every State and Territory in the United States to make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties and give evidence; to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property; and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by the white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.

It gave to the District Courts of the United States jurisdiction in crimes and offenses against the act, gave the power of arrest to United States marshals and District Attorneys, and provided fines and penalties.

David Bingham, of Ohio, brought up a difficulty. He reminded Congress that the first eight amendments to the Constitution could not be enforced by the Federal Government since they were held to be limitations upon the Federal power, and that, therefore, the power to punish offenses against life, liberty and property was one of the reserved powers of the state. He, therefore, suggested a constitutional amendment which would punish all violations of the bill of rights by state officers. He reminded the House that even when property had been taken by the states without due process of the law, there was no remedy in the Federal Courts, and that this had been affirmed in a recent case in Maryland. His proposal went to the Committee of Fifteen.

The Civil Rights Bill passed the Senate, was amended in the House, and was agreed to by both Houses, March 14, 1866. The debate on the Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill made it clear that the emancipation of the slaves meant increased representation in Congress and in the Electoral College, whenever the Southern states were readmitted, and that this increase in power would take place whether the Negroes were enfranchised or not.

Moreover, the Civil Rights Act might be repealed; the United States might be made to pay all or a part of the Confederate debt, and Congress might repudiate the debt. The debate, therefore, on the Civil Rights Bill made the necessity of a constitutional amendment clear.

On March 27, President Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill with curious logic. Johnson vetoes Civil Rights Bill He feared that under this bill Chinese, Indians and Gypsies, as well as Negroes, might be made citizens. He declared that a citizen of the United States would not necessarily be a citizen of a state. He again questioned whether it was good policy to act on citizenship of Negroes, since eleven of the thirty-six states were unrepresented.

Four million of them have just emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably supposed that they possess the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all the privileges and equalities of citizens of the United States?

One wonders what Andrew Johnson expected the Negroes to be. They were not to be citizens; they were not to be voters; and yet he repeatedly assured them that they were free. He went on with another strange argument, declaring that the bill discriminated "against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the Negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues of freedom and opportunity have just now been suddenly opened." Thus, he thought Negroes less familiar with the character of American institutions than foreigners. And yet foreigners must wait "five years" for naturalization and be "of good moral character."

He said that if Congress could give the equal civil rights enumerated to Negroes, it could also give them the right to vote and the right to hold office. He objected to state officers being liable to arrest for discriminating against Negroes. He objected to the interference of Congress with the judiciary, and assuming jurisdiction of subjects which had always been treated by state courts.

Again, he returned to his astonishing economics:

The white race and the black race of the South have hitherto lived together under the relation of master and slave – capital owning labor. Now, suddenly, that relation is changed, and, as to ownership, capital and labor are divorced. They stand now each master of itself. In this new relation, one being necessary to the other, there will be a new adjustment, which both are deeply interested in making harmonious. Each has equal power in settling the terms, and, if left to the laws that regulate capital and labor, it is confidently believed that they will satisfactorily work out the problem. Capital, it is true, has more intelligence, but labor is never so ignorant as not to understand its own interests, not to know its own value, and not to see that capital must pay that value.

This bill frustrates this adjustment. It intervenes between capital and labor, and attempts to settle questions of political economy through the agency of numerous officials, whose interest it will be to foment discord between the two races; for as the breach widens their employment [ 283 ] will continue, and when it is closed their occupation will terminate.

He declared that this law establishes "for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government have ever provided for the white race," and, therefore, discriminates against the white race.

He declared the bill a step toward concentrating all legislative power in the national government. "A perfect equality of the white and colored races is attempted to be fixed by Federal law in every State of the Union, over the vast field of state jurisdiction covered by the enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any power of discrimination between the different races."

He then fetched up his heavy artillery of "Social Equality" to stampede the prejudiced.

"In the exercise of State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State, it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate between the two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that white persons shall not intermarry with a Negro or a mulatto." While he did not believe that this particular bill would annul state laws in regard to marriage, nevertheless, if Congress had the power to provide that there should be no discrimination in the matters enumerated in the bill, then it could pass a law repealing the laws of the states in regard to marriage!

He continued: "Hitherto, every subject embraced in the enumeration of rights contained in this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging to the States. They all relate to the internal police and economy of the respective States. ... If it be granted that Congress can repeal all State laws discriminating between whites and blacks in the subjects covered by this bill, why, it may be asked, may not Congress repeal, in the same way, all state laws discriminating between the two races, on the subject of suffrage and office?"

Speaking of the general effect of the bill, he declared it interfered "with the municipal legislation of the states, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State – an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers, and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. It is another step, or rather stride, toward centralization, and the concentration of all legislative powers in the national government."

The President's veto of the Civil Rights Bill offended the nation. Senator Stewart declared that the President had promised not to veto [ 284 ] this bill and for that reason the Senator had voted to sustain the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. Senator Trumbull had publicly announced that the President would not veto the Civil Rights Bill. Henry Ward Beecher (§) had urged him to sign it.

Even in the President's cabinet, none of the members, except Seward and Wells, agreed with Johnson. Sumner wrote: "Nobody can yet see the end. Congress will not yield. The President is angry and brutal. Seward is the marplot. In the cabinet, on the question of the last veto, there were four against it to three for it; so even there, among his immediate advisers, the President is left in a minority. Stanton reviewed at length the bill, section by section, in the Cabinet, and pronounced it an excellent and safe bill every way from beginning to end. But the veto message was already prepared, and an hour later was sent to Congress."⁴⁴

The time for the final test between Johnson and Congress had come. There ensued some sharp political maneuvering. Morgan, Wiley and Stewart were won over to the majority and Stockton, a Johnson man from New Jersey, was unseated on a technicality. Thus on April 6 and 9 Congress overrode the veto. veto overridden The Civil Rights Bill became law, and Johnson faced a Congress able to work its will.

There was one other matter, besides amending the Constitution, on which Congress might take significant action. According to the current American creed, full protection of a citizen could only be accomplished by possession of the right to vote. This was not wholly true, even in the North, and with the ballot in the hands of white men. Nevertheless, it still retained a great element of truth, for only with universal suffrage could the mass of workers begin that economic revolution which would eventually emancipate them. They would have to use their ballot at first in conjunction with the petty bourgeois; that is, in conjunction with the small property holder, who was being hard-pressed by the new concentrated capital of industry; in conjunction with the small Western farmer, who was pushed to the wall by the railway and land monopoly. But armed with the ballot, this preliminary fight against the power of capital would clear the way for the final fight which would make democracy real among the workers.

While the Committee of Fifteen was groping its way to action, there was a chance for Congress to express its real feeling on the ballot. There might be a question in the minds of constitutional hair-splitters as to how far Congress could coerce states in defining the right of suffrage. But Congress ruled directly the District of Columbia. Black suffrage in Washington, D.C. Congress had the right to decide as to the political franchise in territories. Would it not be the first step toward a logical and consistent end for Congress to establish Negro suffrage in the District, and in all territories [ 285 ] which were set up? Thus, among the first bills introduced in the 39th Congress were bills to give the Negro the right to vote in the District of Columbia, and this demand was supported by petitions and speeches, and especially well-written petitions from the educated Negroes of the District.

In January, 1866, there came a notable petition from the colored people signed by John F. Cook, a wealthy octoroon of a free Negro family, and twenty-five other citizens. It did not come from freedmen or laborers, but from property holders of Negro descent, many of whom had been born free. Kelley of Pennsylvania read it in part to the House:

We are intelligent enough to be industrious, to have accumulated property, to build and sustain churches and institutions of learning. We are and have been educating our children without the aid of any school fund, and until recently had for many years been furnishing, unjustly as we deem, a portion of the means for the education of the white children of the District.

We are intelligent enough to be amenable to the same laws and punishable alike with others for the infraction of said laws. We sustain as fair a character on the records of crime and statistics of pauperism as any other class in the community, while unequal laws are continually barring our way in the effort to reach and possess ourselves of the blessings attendant upon a life of industry and self-denial and of virtuous citizenship.

Experience likewise teaches that that debasement is most humane which is most complete. The possession of only a partial liberty makes us more keenly sensible of the injustice of withholding those other rights which belong to a perfect manhood. Without the right of suffrage, we are without protection, and liable to combinations of outrage. Petty officers of the law, respecting the source of power, will naturally defer to the one having a vote, and the partiality thus shown will work much to the disadvantage of the colored citizens.⁴⁵

However, there were some special reasons for avoiding this ticklish subject. After all, Washington was the capital of the nation. It had long been a center of Southern society. To give the Negroes political freedom and partial control there, was a long step and a decisive one.

The people of the District hastily organized a counter-stroke, and presented to the Senate a communication from the Mayor in which he asserted that a special vote had been taken December 21, "to ascertain the opinion of the people of Washington on the question of Negro suffrage." He meant, of course, the white people, and the vote was overwhelming: 6,591 against Negro suffrage and 35 for it. Whites vote against Black suffrage in D.C.The communication proceeded, in a fine climax of Southern rhetoric, [ 286 ] to say that "This unparalleled unanimity of sentiment which pervades all classes of this community in opposition to the extension of the right of suffrage to that class, engenders an earnest hope that Congress, in according to this expression of their wishes the respect and consideration they would as individual members yield to those whom they immediately represent, would abstain from the exercise of its absolute power, and so avert an impending future apparently so objectionable to those over whom, by the fundamental law of the land, they have exclusive jurisdiction."

A long argument ensued, which showed that Congress was not ready to declare itself on Negro suffrage; further action was postponed for another year, and a bill for Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia did not pass Congress until December, 1866; it became a law in January, 1867.

Meantime, the Committee of Fifteen had met first December 26, 1865. Charles Sumner was considered too radical on the Negro question to be a member of it, and so the committee was headed by a Conservative, Fessenden of Maine, who wished to stand by President Johnson, and was strongly, sometimes even bitterly, opposed to the radicalism of Sumner. Stevens, the great protagonist of curbing the political power of the South and completely emancipating the Negro, was the prime figure in the committee. Then, there were Bingham of Ohio, the more or less conscious defender of property; Conkling of New York, the sophisticated, exquisite corporation lawyer; and Boutwell of Massachusetts. There were three Democrats, of whom the most distinguished was Johnson of Maryland, the strongest Border State representative in Congress, handicapped by a legal mind; and the narrow-minded Rogers of New Jersey.

A sub-committee of the Committee of Fifteen courteously waited on President Johnson, and he consented to do nothing more toward Reconstruction for the present, in order to secure harmony of action. On December 26, at the first meeting of the Committee, Stevens brought forward his proposal to base representation on voters. And singularly enough, later in this same month, Johnson in an interview with Senator Dixon of Connecticut said that if, however, amendments are to be made to the Constitution, changing the basis of representation and taxation (and he did not deem them at all necessary to the present time), he knew of none better than a simple proposition, embraced in a few lines, making in each state the number of qualified voters the basis of representation, and the value of property the basis of direct taxation. Such a proposition could be embraced in the following terms:

'Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states [ 287 ] which may be included within this Union according to the number of qualified voters in each state.. …

Such amendment, the President also suggested, would remove from Congress all issues in reference to the political equality of the races. It would leave the States to determine absolutely the qualifications of their own voters with regard to color; and thus the number of Representatives to which they would be entitled in Congress would depend upon the number upon whom they conferred the right of suffrage.

The President, in this connection, expressed the opinion that the agitation of the Negro franchise question in the District of Columbia at this time was a mere entering-wedge to the agitation of the question throughout the States, and was ill-timed, uncalled-for, and calculated to do great harm. He believed that it would engender enmity, contention and strife between the two races, and lead to a war between them, which would result in great injury to both, and the certain extermination of the Negro population. Precedence, he thought, should be given to more important and urgent matters, legislation upon which was essential to the restoration of the Union, the peace of the country, and the prosperity of the people.⁴⁶

Here, surely, was logic and understanding in plain sight. But not only did the President eventually drop this proposal, but even in committee, opposition appeared. Boutwell suggested at the third meeting of the Committee, January 9, that he preferred to retain population as the basis of apportionment, with the provision that no state should make "any distinctions in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race or color." Boutwell was from Massachusetts, and New England, through Blaine, had protested vigorously against the Stevens proposition in the House the day before, January 8. It was a curious situation, which Blaine explained in part; and in part, he did not.

New England had lost a good proportion of its male population by migration to the West, and it did not allow women to vote. New England, moreover, had a large immigrant population which she was using in her mills, and on which a part of her representation in Congress was based. She proposed to make this population still larger. She proposed, also, to reduce the voting power of this laboring population, not only by confining the vote to the native-born and naturalized, but also by a literacy qualification. Through Blaine, therefore, spoke the exploiting manufacturer, and voiced an idea as different from Sumner's as one could well imagine. To base population on voters was, in the eyes of industry, to keep down the representation of the South, to be sure; but also to transfer the balance of political power from the East to the West, and in the West industry was not [ 288 ] so sure of its dictatorship. Consequently, the Committee of Fifteen was compelled to take steps in another direction.

On January 12, Bingham introduced a proposal to the committee for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing civil rights. It said : "The Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all persons in every state within this Union, equal protection in their rights of life, liberty and property."⁴⁷ This proposition, destined to become part of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, had been introduced early in December in the House of Representatives.

The Committee of Fifteen referred the Bingham proposal to a sub-committee, consisting wholly of Republicans. At the same time, the committee insisted that the basis of representation provided for in the Constitution should be changed. Johnson of Maryland adhered to the Stevens proposal of making voters the basis. New England and New York objected, and this matter was left to the consideration of the same sub-committee. Meantime, three other propositions were submitted :

1. Representation should be based on population, but if colored people were disfranchised, they should not be counted in the apportionment. (Morill.)

2. Representatives should be apportioned according to population, except that Negroes, Indians, Chinese and other colored persons, if they were not allowed to vote, should not be counted in the apportionment. (Williams.)

3. Representatives were to be apportioned among the states according to the whole number of citizens of the United States; provided that whenever in any State, civil or political rights or privileges should be denied or abridged, on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color should be excluded from the basis of representation or taxation. (Conkling.)

On January 16, a proposed Fourteenth Amendment was considered in two parts; the first part had alternative propositions:

A. Apportioning representation according to the number of citizens and making "inoperative and void" any laws "whereby any distinction is made in political or civil rights or privileges on account of race, creed or color."

B. The alternative proposition was the Conkling proposal.

The second part of the amendment was Bingham's proposal that: "Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all citizens of the United States the same equal protection in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property." These propositions went to sub-committees and were reported back [ 289 ] January 20. The Civil Rights section of Bingham appeared in the strongest and most specific form which it ever took: "Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to secure to all citizens of the United States, in every State, the same political rights and privileges; and to all persons in every State equal protection in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property."

It was voted 10-4 to consider this proposition of Bingham's separately; and by a vote of 11-3, the second resolution on apportionment was chosen as a proposed Fourteenth Amendment. This excluded from representation Negroes who were denied the right to vote. Stevens wished to amend this by declaring who were citizens. Conkling, however, moved to strike out the phrase "citizens of the United States," and insert "persons in every state, excluding Indians not taxed." This was a move to insure the counting of the foreign-born as a part of the basis of apportionment, and was in accordance with the New England idea. Stevens, Fessenden and Bingham were against it, but it passed 11-3.

On January 22, this section on apportionment was reported to Congress as a Fourteenth Amendment, and was the first effort of the Committee of Fifteen to prepare for Reconstruction by constitutional amendment. 14th amendment This was before the Freedmen's Bureau Bill or the Civil Rights Bill had passed Congress, and the bill for suffrage in the District of Columbia, while it had passed the House, had not been considered in the Senate, and was not destined to be for several months. This fact is a sufficient answer to the accusation that the Committee of Fifteen purposely delayed action on the problems of Reconstruction. Within less than a month after it began work, it laid its first proposition before Congress.

Stevens reported this first form of the Fourteenth Amendment to the House and asked rather peremptorily that it pass before sundown. His reason was that there were numbers of state legislatures in session and that they could consider it immediately. But he was disappointed. There was too much opposition in his own group. Conkling elaborated and made specific the argument which Stevens had first brought forward :

The four million people who had suddenly been released from slavery, while falling within the category of "free persons," were not yet political persons. "This emancipated multitude has no political status. Emancipation vitalizes only natural rights, not political rights. Enfranchisement alone carries with it political rights, and these emancipated millions are no more enfranchised now than when they were slaves. They never had political power. Their masters had a fraction of power as masters." But since the relationship of master and slave [ 290 ] was destroyed, this fraction of power could no longer survive in the masters. There was only one place where it could logically go, and that was to the Negroes; but since it was said that "they are unfit to have it ... it is a power astray, without a rightful owner. It should be resumed by the whole nation at once. ... If a black man counts at all now, he counts as five-fifths of a man, not as three-fifths. … Four millions, therefore, and not three-fifths of four millions, are to be reckoned in here now," and in eleven states most of these four millions were presumed to be "unfit for political existence." Since the framers of the Constitution did not foresee such contingency, and expected that emancipation would come gradually and be accompanied by education and enfranchisement, they provided for no situation whereby eleven states might claim twenty-eight (or twenty-nine) representatives besides their just proportion.

Twenty-eight votes to be cast here and in the Electoral College for those held not fit to sit as jurors, not fit to testify in the court, not fit to be plaintiff in a suit, not fit to approach the ballot box. Twenty-eight votes, to be more or less controlled by those who once betrayed the Government, and for those so destitute, we are assured, of intelligent instinct as not to be fit for free agency.

Shall this be? Shall four million beings count four million, in managing the affairs of the nation, who are pronounced by their fellow beings unfit to participate in administering government in the states where they live … who are pronounced unworthy of the least and most paltry part in the political affairs? Shall one hundred and twenty-seven thousand white people in New York cast but one vote in this House and have but one voice here, while the same number of white people in Mississippi have three votes and three voices? Shall the death of slavery add two fifths to the entire power which slavery had when slavery was living? Shall one white man have as much share in the Government as three other white men merely because he lives where blacks out-number whites two to one? Shall this inequality exist, and exist only in favor of those … who did the foulest and guiltiest act which crimsons the annals of recorded time? No, sir; not if I can help it.

"This proposition," he continued, "rests upon a principle already imbedded in the Constitution, and as old as free government itself," a principle "that representation does not belong to those who have no political existence, but to those who have. The object of the amendment is to enforce this truth. … Every State will be left free to extend or withhold the elective franchise on such terms as it pleases, and this without losing anything in representation if the terms are impartial as to all. …" If, however, there is found "a race so vile or worthless [ 291 ] that to belong to it is alone cause of exclusion from political action, the race is not to be counted here in the Congress."⁴⁸

Thus spoke New York in cold contrast to Thaddeus Stevens but with quite as merciless logic. This argument made it clear that the basis of representation must be changed in some way, unless the South was coming back with increased political power. What change should be made? The West wanted Stevens' original proposition which had early been introduced in Congress by Stevens himself and also separately by two Ohio representatives, and which based representation on voters; but this proposition would have increased the power of the Middle and Western states at the expense of New England, and New England had had her warning from Voorhees. While, then, a majority of Republicans undoubtedly favored this, the proposition could not pass Congress without the support of New England, and the West yielded.

Eliot of Massachusetts submitted an amendment, which was practically the Fifteenth Amendment (§), but it was agreed that this could not pass Congress. And so, finally, the report was sent back to the Committee of Fifteen.

Meantime, on January 22, the Bingham Amendment on Civil Rights was considered in the Committee of Fifteen and referred to a sub-committee, after Boutwell had tried to make its wording milder, by saying that "Congress shall have power to abolish any distinction in the exercise of the elective franchise."

On January 27, this section was reported from the sub-committee with modifications, and appeared now in the following words: "Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to all persons in every state full protection in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and to all citizens of the United States the same immunities and also equal political rights and privileges."

It was postponed; Bingham explained in 1871 that, after postponement, he had introduced this section of the amendment in the Committee of Fifteen in the words in which it now stands in the Constitution. He had changed the form in the hope that the amendment might be so framed that "in all the hereafter it might be accepted by the historian of the American Constitution like Magna Charta as the keystone of American legislation." The decision of Marshall vs. the City Council of Baltimore (§), a celebrated case, had induced him to take counsel with Marshall. Thus, curiously enough, constitutional restraints designated to protect persons were changed into a form which eventually made the Federal Government the protector of property against state enactments: [ 292 ]

The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of every state all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.⁴⁹

This substitute, which Bingham reported to the committee February 3, was adopted in the Committee of Fifteen and on February 10, by a vote of 9-5, it was referred to Congress. It came up before the House of Representatives, February 13, as a proposed constitutional amendment and was debated at length February 27-28, when the House refused to table it, but postponed it until April.

When the Committee of Fifteen received the amendment on apportionment back from the House, it made the minor change of taking out the reference to direct taxes, which was irrelevant and of little importance. So that, again, January 31, the proposition came back to the House of Representatives.

Stevens was unequivocal:

"I do not want them [the Southern states] to have representation – I say it plainly – I do not want them to have the right of suffrage before this Congress has done the great work of regenerating the Constitution and laws of this country according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence."⁵⁰ Again, Schenck of Ohio tried to base representation on voters, but this was defeated. Stevens said that he favored it, but that it could not pass Congress. The House passed this form of the Fourteenth Amendment, January 3, 1866, and sent it to the Senate.

In the meantime, the whole aspect of the political situation changed. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill had passed Congress, and, to the astonishment of the country, had been vetoed. The Civil Rights Bill had passed the Senate, and Johnson had made his speech of February 22, definitely aligning himself now with the South and their Northern Democratic allies, and against his own party. Black Codes had been passed in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Louisiana.

On the other hand, Northern business was afraid.

"Viewed as a practical matter," asked the Nation, "what would be the effect upon Government securities of the immediate admission to Congress of 58 Southern Representatives and 22 Senators, nearly all of whom could be counted on as determined repudiationists? ... It would hardly be a safe thing for the national credit to have such a body of men in Congress, reenforced as they would probably be, by a considerable number of Northern men ready to go for at least qualified repudiation."⁵¹

Seward, himself, it is said, was greatly disappointed and embarrassed by the Black Codes of the South. He found that the South was getting [ 293 ] stronger in Johnson's confidence. Nemesis again dogged Seward's steps, as when before he was defeated for the Presidential nomination by the anti-slavery men to whom he had given a slogan. It was then that Toombs had sneered: "Actaeon had been devoured by his dogs." The dogs were at it again. Blaine says that, "When Congress reassembled after the holidays, there was a great change in its attitude. Many feared that the President and the Democrats together would win.

The leading commercial men, who had become weary of war, contemplated with positive dread the reopening of a controversy which might prove as disturbing to the business of the country as the struggle of arms had been, and without the quickening impulses to trade which active war always imparts. The bankers of the great cities, whose capital and whose deposits all rested upon the credit of the country and were invested in its paper, believed that the speedy settlement of all dissension, and the harmonious cooperation of all departments of the government, were needed to maintain the financial honor of the nation and to reinstate confidence among the people. Against obstacles so menacing, against resistance so ominous, against an array of power so imposing, it seemed to be an act of boundless temerity to challenge the President to a contest, to array public opinion against him, to denounce him, to deride him, to defy him.⁵²

The Committee of Fifteen paused to get its bearings. In the first place, what was the attitude of the country toward Negro suffrage? In 1865, Wisconsin had rejected a proposal to let Negroes vote. Minnesota, the same year, had defeated a constitutional amendment giving Negroes the suffrage. Connecticut, also, in 1865 gave a majority of 6,272 against Negro suffrage. Later, in 1867, Ohio defeated Negro suffrage by 50,629. In Michigan, 1868, a new Constitution, omitting the word "white," was defeated by a majority of 38,849. In the Nebraska Constitution of 1866, only whites were allowed the suffrage. In New York and some other states, there was special legislation on the voting of Negroes, which was not changed. Evidently, the country was not ready for Negro suffrage.

Moreover, the pinch of economic difficulties following the war, was beginning to be felt. The price of gold which was at 170 in 1864, rose to 284 in 1865. The income tax had been increased in 1865. The United States was paying out vast sums of interest on its annual debt. Cotton was high, selling at forty-three cents a pound in 1865; it dropped to thirty cents only in 1866, with a crop of 1,900,000 bales, as compared with that marvelous crop that precipitated the Civil War, 5,740,000 bales in 1861. The price of agricultural products had increased, but not nearly as much as the prices of manufactured goods, and the farmers were feeling the difference. Gambling and speculation were wide-spread.

The United States Treasury was trying to reduce the circulation of the depreciated greenbacks, and under the Act of 1866, retired some $75,000,000; but early in 1868, the contraction of the currency was prohibited and the West began to cry for inflation. A Western editor wrote Senator Trumbull of Illinois: "You all in Washington must remember that the excitement of the great contest is dying out, and that commercial and industrial enterprises and pursuits are engaging a large part of public attention. The times are hard; money is close; taxes are heavy; all forms of industry here in the West are heavily burdened; and in the struggle to pay debts and live, people are more mindful of themselves than of any of the fine philanthropic schemes that look to making Sambo a voter, juror and office holder."⁵³

Johnson knew nothing of finance, and left the Treasury entirely to McCulloch, who was struggling, October 31, 1865, with a national debt that stood at $2,800,000,000. There was still doubt of the legal tender constitutionality of the greenbacks. Taxation was enormous and applied to almost every available subject. There faced the country a tremendous problem of reorganizing the debt, reestablishing the currency and reducing the revenue.

Stevens had rushed the Committee of Fifteen as fast as or faster than his majority wished. The first draft of the Fourteenth Amendment reached the Senate and was attacked by Charles Sumner. There was no greater proof of his courage, and his learning and keenness of mind were unquestioned. From the day of his great speech on Kansas to his unswerving advocacy of civil rights for Negroes and their political enfranchisement, he towered above his contemporaries. He was unwilling to compromise like Stevens, and for that reason was not made head of the great Committee of Fifteen. But there was no question about his integrity and his idealism.

Sumner had no sympathy with an amendment which made the disfranchisement of Negroes possible and regarded it as "another compromise with human rights" and a discrimination on account of race and color which hitherto had been kept out of the Constitution. Thus the first proposition which Northern industry made, met the direct opposition of abolition-democracy. Charles Sumner, in a tremendous speech February 6, 1865, laid down the thesis that under no circumstances should it be possible to disfranchise a man simply on account of race or color; that here for the first time we had a chance to realize the democracy which the fathers of the Republic foresaw, and he spoke prophetic words on future disfranchisement.

I am not insensible to the responsibility which I assume in setting myself against a proposition already adopted in the other House, and having the recommendation of a committee to which the country [ 295 ] looks with such just expectations, and to which, let me say, I look with so much trust. But after careful reflection, I do not feel that I can do otherwise. …

There are among us, four millions of citizens now robbed of all share in the government of their country, while at the same time they are taxed according to their means, directly and indirectly, for the support of the Government. Nobody can question this statement. And this bare-faced tyranny of taxation without representation it is now proposed to recognize as not inconsistent with fundamental right and the guarantee of a republican government. Instead of blasting it you go forward to embrace it as an element of political power.

If, by this, you expect to induce the recent slave-master to confer the right of suffrage without distinction of color, you will find the proposition a delusion and a snare. He will do no such thing. Even the bribe you offer will not tempt him. If, on the other hand, you expect to accomplish a reduction of his political power, it is more than doubtful if you will succeed, while the means you employ are unworthy of our country.

There are tricks and evasions possible, and the cunning slave-master will drive his coach and six through your amendment stuffed with all his representatives. Should he cheat you in this matter, it will only be a proper return for the endeavor on your part to circumvent him at the expense of fellow-citizens to whom you are bound by every obligation of public faith.⁵⁴

Seldom has a great political prophecy been so strikingly fulfilled!

Stevens in the House had, by his diplomacy, ranged back of his policy the industrial leaders of the North who feared that a return of the South would mean attack upon the tariff, the national banks, the debt, and the whole new post-war economic structure. Sumner in the Senate, on the other hand, took little account of the political game. He set his strategy on the high ground of democracy, and democracy for all men, and it was his opposition that killed the first draft of the Fourteenth Amendment which permitted the disfranchisement of Negroes on penalty of reduced representation. Stevens with infinite pains had gotten this much through the Committee of Fifteen and the House of Representatives. Sumner spoke his convictions despite the desertion of friends and party. Senator Williams of Oregon expressed admiration, but could not follow him. "The echoes of his lofty and majestic periods will linger and repeat themselves among the corridors of history."

There was wide discussion throughout the country. Garrison was converted, and to him Sumner's speech seemed unanswerable. To Whittier, it was irresistible; Phillips' voice was filled with enthusiasm, [ 296 ] while Henry Ward Beecher said that the speech rose far above the occasion, "covering a ground which will abide after all contemporary questions of special legislation have passed away."

The proposed amendment went down to defeat on March 9, receiving only 25 votes against 22, instead of the necessary two-thirds majority. Sumner's wide influence, while it did not command the full sympathy of Republicans or Democrats, nevertheless, was enough to block compromise between Northern industry and the abolition-democracy. Fessenden was bitter and Stevens furious. No man demanded more for Negroes than Stevens, or was more thoroughly an advocate of complete democracy. But, as he said, "The control of republics depends on the number, not the quality, of the voters. This is not a government of saints. It has a large sprinkling of sinners."

As the head of the Committee of Fifteen, he was trying to get a proposition for which a two-thirds majority of Congress would vote, and start the country as far on the road towards democracy and abolition of caste as was possible under the circumstances. He complained that his proposition had "been slaughtered by a puerile and pedantic criticism."

Andrew Johnson was deeply incensed by Sumner's speech and sneered at it next day. "I am free to say to you that I do not like to be arraigned by someone who can get up handsomely-rounded periods and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, who never periled life, liberty, or property. This kind of theoretical, hollow, unpractical friendship amounts to but very little."

He was receiving a group of Negroes who were trying by direct appeal either to get his sympathy or to probe his animus against the race. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill had passed, but Johnson had not yet indicated what action he would take. The Civil Rights Bill and the first draft of the Fourteenth Amendment were before the Senate. Perhaps the delegation hoped to influence him.

Douglass had seen Johnson on inauguration day in 1865 when President Lincoln had pointed Douglass out to him. "The first expression which came to his face, and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance, but it was too late."⁵⁵

In the interview with President Johnson, February 7, 1866, there were present George T. Downing of Rhode Island, William E. Mathews of New York, John Jones of Philadelphia, John F. Cook of Washington, Joseph E. Otis, A. W. Ross, William Whipper, John M. Brown, Alexander Dunlap, Frederick Douglass and his son Lewis.

What was said on the occasion brought the whole question virtually [ 297 ] before the American people. Until that interview the country was not fully aware of the intentions and policy of President Johnson on the subject of reconstruction, especially in respect to the newly emancipated class of the South. After having heard the brief addresses made by him to Mr. Downing and myself, he occupied at least three quarters of an hour in what seemed a set speech, and refused to listen to any reply on our part, although solicited to grant a few moments for that purpose.⁵⁶

The President shook hands with the colored men and then George T. Downing, a leading Negro from Newport, Rhode Island, opened the discussion. He said to the President: "We desire for you to know that we come feeling that we are friends meeting a friend." He said that they represented colored people from the "States of Illinois, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the New England states, and the District of Columbia." They were not satisfied with an amendment prohibiting slavery but wanted it enforced by appropriate legislation.

We are Americans, native-born Americans; we are citizens. … We see no recognition of color or race in the organic law of the land. ... It has been shown in the present war that the government may justly reach its strong arm into the States and demand from those who owe it allegiance, their assistance and support. May it not reach out a like arm to secure and protect its subjects upon whom it has a claim?

Then Frederick Douglass came forward and said: "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands, the ballot with which to save ourselves."

The President was evidently embarrassed and floundered. He was not going to make a speech; he had jeopardized life, liberty and property, not only for the colored people, but for the great mass of people. He was a friend of the colored man, but "I do not want to adopt a policy that I believe will end in a contest between races, which if persisted in will result in the extermination of one or the other."

He remembered his speech to Nashville Negroes before the election and repeated his willingness to be a "Moses to lead him from bondage to freedom," but not into a war of races. He said that one can talk about the ballot-box and justice and Declaration of Independence, but "suppose by some magic touch you can say to everyone, 'You shall vote tomorrow.' How much would that ameliorate their condition at this time?"

Then the President approached Douglass and said, "Now let us get [ 298 ] closer up to this subject." He said he opposed slavery because it was a monopoly and gave profit and power to an aristocracy. By getting clear of the monopoly, they had abolished slavery.

Douglass started to interrupt, but the President was not through. He went on to show the position of the poor white in relation to the slave owners, and how the slaves despised the poor whites. Douglass denied this personally, but the President insisted that anyway, most colored people did, and this made the poor white man opposed both to the slave and his master; and that, therefore, there was enmity between the colored man and the poor white. Already the colored man had gained his freedom during the war, and if he and the poor white came into competition at the ballot-box, a "war of races" would result.

Moreover, was it proper to put on a people, without their consent, Negro suffrage? "Do you deny that first great principle of the right of the people to govern themselves?" Here Downing interrupted. "Apply what you have said, Mr. President, to South Carolina, for instance, where a majority of the inhabitants are colored." The President twisted uncomfortably and said that the matter to which he referred "comes up when a government is undergoing a fundamental change" and he preferred to instance Ohio rather than South Carolina. Was it right to force Ohio to make a change in the elective franchise against its will?

He could not touch the question as to whether it was right to prevent a majority in South Carolina from ruling because, to his mind, no number of Negroes could outweigh the will of whites. He stumbled on without mentioning this suppressed minor premise and said, "It is a fundamental tenet of my creed that the will of the people must be obeyed. Is there anything wrong or unfair in that?"

Douglass smiled, still thinking of South Carolina : "A great deal that is wrong, Mr. President, with all respect." But the President insisted: "It is the people of the states that must for themselves determine this thing. I do not want to be engaged in a work that will commence a war of races." Then he indicated that the interview was at an end; he was glad to have met them, and thanked them for the compliment paid him.

Douglass returned the thanks, and said that they had not come to argue but if the President would grant permission, "We would endeavor to controvert some of the positions you have assumed." Mr. Downing, too, suggested persuasively that the President, by his kind explanation, "must have contemplated some reply to the views which he has advanced."

Douglass continued, "I would like to say one or two words in reply: You enfranchise your enemies and disfranchise your friends. … My own impression is that the very thing that your Excellency would [ 299 ] avoid in the Southern states can only be avoided by the very measure that we proposed. ... I would like to say a word or so in regard to that matter of the enfranchisement of the blacks as a means of preventing the very thing which your Excellency seems to apprehend – that is a conflict of races."

The President naturally did not want to give publicity to views of Negroes antagonistic to his own, and said shortly that there were other places besides the South for the Negro to live. "But," said Douglass, "the masters have the making of the laws and we cannot get away from the plantation." "What prevents you?" asked Johnson. Douglass replied that, "His master then decides for him where he shall go, where he shall work, how much he shall work. … He is absolutely in the hands of those men."

The President replied, "If the master now controls him or his actions, would he not control him in his vote?" Douglass answered: "Let the Negro once understand that he has an organic right to vote, and he will raise up a party in the Southern states among the poor, who will rally with him. There is this conflict that you speak of between the wealthy slave owner and the poor man." The President replied eagerly: "You touch right upon the point there. There is this conflict, and hence, I suggest emigration."

The President then bowed his dark visitors out, saying they were all desirous of accomplishing the same ends but proposed to do so by following different roads. Douglass, turning to leave, said:

"The President sends us to the people and we go to the people." "Yes, sir," answered the President, "I have great faith in the people. I believe they will do what is right."⁵⁷

Afterwards the colored delegation published a reply to various points brought up by the President, and especially stressed the matter of enmity between the Negroes and the poor whites:

The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility on the part of the former slaves towards the poor white people of the South. We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it is entirely reciprocal; but you obviously commit an error by drawing an argument from an incident of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility between the white and blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendency over both the poor whites and blacks by putting enmity between them.

They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason [ 300 ] why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received their slave catchers, slave-drivers and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters whenever any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. Now, sir, you cannot but perceive, that the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of this antagonism is removed, and you must see that it is altogether illogical (and putting 'new wine into old bottles') to legislate from slaveholding premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared it your purpose to maintain in freedom.

Besides, even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks towards the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of heaven, we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defense and clothe him whom you regard as his enemy in the panoply of political power? Can it be that you recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast down the defenseless? Can you, by any possibility of reasoning, regard this as just, fair, or wise? Experience proves that those are most abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. …

On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach, very much could be said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness of the black man in times of peace as a laborer in the South, and in time of war as a soldier in the North, and the growing respect for his rights among the people and his increasing adaptation to a high state of civilization in his native land, that there can ever come a time when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace.⁵⁸

The Committee of Fifteen began its work again. The indomitable Stevens never gave up, never despaired; if he could not get all he wanted, he stood fast and took what he could. He said sadly June 13, 1866, in the House of Representatives, referring to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment with its permission to disfranchise the Negro:

In my youth, in my manhood, in my old age, I had fondly dreamed that when any fortunate chance should have broken up for a while the foundation of our institutions, and released us from obligations the most tyranical that ever man imposed in the name of freedom, that the intelligent, pure and just men of this Republic, true to their professions and their consciences, would have so remodeled all our institutions as to have freed them from every vestige of human oppression, [ 301 ] of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich. In short, that no distinction would be tolerated in this purified Republic but what arose from merit and conduct. This bright dream has vanished 'like the baseless fabric of a vision.' I find that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it, in many of its parts, to be swept through by the tempests, frosts and the storms of despotism.

Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels; among men as intelligent, as determined and as independent as myself, who, not agreeing with me, do not choose to yield up their opinions to mine. Mutual concessions is our only resort, or mutual hostilities.⁵⁹

The Committee of Fifteen now tried to find out by actual inquiry just what the situation in the South was with regard to the Negro. It did this, not so much because anyone was in doubt, as because the situation of the Negro was the most appealing thing that could be used to bring a majority to vote for the industrial North. It would increase the tremendous moral afflatus which made the war more and more symbolic in the minds of the people of the United States of a great triumph of human freedom. Sub-committees of the main committee took testimony for months all over the South and eventually issued an unanswerable array of evidence.

April 20, Robert Dale Owen brought a proposal for a Fourteenth Amendment to Stevens in the Committee of Fifteen. "Stevens picked up my manuscript, looked it carefully over, and then, in his impulsive way, said: 'I'll be plain with you, Owen. We've had nothing before us that comes anywhere near being as good as this, or as complete. It would be likely to pass, too; that's the best of it. We haven't a majority, either in our committee or in Congress, for immediate suffrage; and I don't believe the states have yet advanced so far that they would be willing to ratify it. I'll lay that amendment of yours before our committee tomorrow, if you say so; and I'll do my best to put it through.' "⁶⁰

Previous to this time, the thought was to bring in several separate amendments, but now the attitude was to unite the whole matter in one comprehensive amendment, so that the proposition of April 21 was presented as follows:

Section 1. No discrimination shall be made by any state, nor by the United States, as to the civil rights of persons because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. From and after the fourth day of July, in the year one [ 302 ] thousand eight hundred and seventy-six, no discrimination shall be made by any state, nor by the United States, as to the enjoyment of classes of persons of the right of suffrage, because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 3. Until the fourth day of July, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six, no class of persons, as to the right of any of whom to suffrage discrimination shall be made by any state, because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, shall be included in the basis of representation.

Section 4. Debts incurred in aid of insurrection or of war against the Union, and claims of compensation for loss of involuntary service or labor, shall not be paid by any state nor by the United States.

Bingham moved a fifth section to the amendment, along the lines of his previous efforts:

Section 5. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Bingham proposal was first adopted and then struck out by the committee. It was voted 7 to 6 to report the first three sections to Congress. Bingham tried in vain to bring in his proposal as a separate amendment.

Thus Owen's proposition was ordered sent to Congress and had a good chance of being adopted; but Fessenden, the chairman, was sick with varioloid and it was decided to delay final report until he was better. Stevens told Owens the sequel:

Our action on your amendment [said Stevens] had, it seems, gotten noised abroad. In the course of last week the members from New York, from Illinois, and from your state too, Owen – from Indiana – held, each separately, a caucus to consider whether equality of suffrage, present or prospective, ought to form a part of the Republican program for the coming canvass.

They were afraid, so some of them told us, that if there was a 'nigger in the wood-pile' at all (that was the phrase), it would be used against them as an electioneering handle; and some of them – hang their cowardice! – might lose their elections. By inconsiderable majorities each of these caucuses decided that Negro suffrage in any shape, ought to be excluded from the platform; and they communicated these decisions to us.

Our committee hadn't backbone enough to maintain its ground. Yesterday, the vote on your plan was reconsidered, your amendment was laid on the table, and in the course of the next three hours we [ 303 ] contrived to patch together – well, what you've read this morning.⁶¹

The sections were changed so as simply to exclude disfranchised Negroes from being made the basis of apportionment. Williams then presented a new section which allowed the Negroes gradually to be enfranchised, and thus gradually to become a basis of representation.

Representatives shall be apportioned among several states which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State excluding Indians not taxed. But whenever in any State the elective franchise shall be denied to any portion of its male citizens, not less than twenty-one years of age, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall i be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age.

This was adopted as Section II of the final amendment.

Finally, on this same date, the Committee reinserted, by a vote of 10-3, Bingham's proposition on civil rights as Section I. Afterward, Conkling, before the Supreme Court, explained this action.

At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, individuals and joint stock companies were appealing for congressional and administrative protection against the invidious and discriminating state and local taxes. One instance was that of an express company, whose stock was owned largely by citizens of the State of New York, who came with petitions and bills seeking acts of Congress to aid them in resisting what they deemed oppressive taxation in two states, and oppressive and ruinous rules of damages applied under state laws. That complaints of oppression in respect of property and other rights, made by citizens of Northern states who took up residence in the South, were rife, in and out of Congress.

The Committee then considered Section III. Mr. Harris moved to insert the following:

Until the 4th day of July, in the year 1870, all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for Representatives in Congress and for electors for President and Vice President of the United States.⁶²

This was finally adopted by a vote of 8-7. The Committee then discussed the readmission of the Southern states with the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition. Finally, the Joint Resolution and the bill concerning the readmission of the Southern states were adopted by a vote of 12-3. This proposed amendment and bill were reported to the House April 30, debated May 8, 9, and 10, and passed May 10. Stevens defended it May 8 and May 10. [ 304 ]

Our fathers had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration, and wait for their full establishment until a more propitious time. That time ought to be present now. But the public mind has been educated in error for a century. How difficult in a day to unlearn it. In rebuilding, it is necessary to clear away the rotten and defective portions of the old foundations, and to sink deep and found the unrepaired edifice upon the firm foundation of eternal justice. If, perchance, the accumulated quick-sands render it impossible to reach in every part so firm a basis, then it becomes our duty to drive deep and solid the substituted piles on which to build. It would not be wise to prevent the raising of the structure because some corner of it might be founded upon materials subject to the inevitable laws of mortal decay. It were better to shelter the household and trust to the advancing progress of a higher morality and a purer and more intelligent principle to underpin the defective corner. …

This proposition is not all that the committee desired. It falls far short of my wishes, but it fulfills my hopes. I believe it is all that can be obtained in the present state of public opinion. Not only Congress but several States are to be consulted. Upon a careful survey of the whole ground, we did not believe that nineteen of the loyal States could be induced to ratify any proposition more stringent than this. I say nineteen, for I utterly repudiate and scorn the idea that any State not acting in the Union is to be counted on the question of ratification. It is absurd to suppose that any more than three-fourths of the States that propose the Amendment are required to make it valid; that States not here are to be counted as present. Believing then that this is the best proposition that can be made effectual, I accept it. I shall not be driven by clamor or denunciation to throw away a great cause because it is not perfect. I will take all I can get in the cause of humanity and leave it to be perfected by better men in better times. It may be that that time will not come while I am here to enjoy the glorious triumph; but that it will come is as certain as that there is a just God. …

Stevens then referred to the previous draft of the amendment.

After having received the careful examination and approbation of the committee, and having received the united Republican vote of one hundred and twenty Representatives of the people, it was denounced as 'utterly reprehensible,' and 'unpardonable'; 'to be encountered as a public enemy'; 'positively endangering the peace of the country, and covering its name with dishonor.' 'A wickedness on a larger scale than the crime against Kansas or the fugitive slave law; gross, foul, outrageous; an incredible injustice against the whole African race'; with every other vulgar epithet which polished cultivation could command. ... I confess my mortification at its defeat. I grieved especially because [ 305 ] it almost closed the door of hope for the amelioration of the condition of the freedmen. But men in pursuit of justice must never despair. Let us again try and see whether we cannot devise some way to overcome the united forces of self-righteous Republicans and unrighteous copperheads. It will not do for those who for thirty years have fought the beasts at Ephesus to be frightened by the fangs of modern catamounts.⁶³

Thaddeus Stevens continued his speech, May 10:

Let not these friends of secession sing to me their siren song of peace and good will until they can stop my ears to the screams and groans of the dying victims at Memphis. I hold in my hand an elaborate account from a man whom I know to be of the highest respectability in the country, every word of which I believe. This account of that foul transaction only reached me last night. It is more horrible in its atrocity, although not to the same extent, than the massacre at Jamaica. Tell me Tennessee or any other State is loyal of whom such things are proved. …

Ah, sir, it was but six years ago when they were here, just before they went out to join the armies of Cataline, just before they left this Hall. Those of you who were here then will remember the scene in which every Southern member, encouraged by their allies, came forth in one yelling body, because a speech for freedom was being made here; when weapons were drawn, and Barksdale's bowie-knife gleamed before our eyes. Would you have these men back again so soon to reenact those scenes? Wait until I am gone, I pray you. I want not to go through it again. It will be but a short time for my colleagues to wait. …

Now, sir, if the gentlemen had remembered the scenes twenty years ago, when no man dared to speak without risking his life, when but a few men did do it – for there were cowards in those days, as there are in these – you would not have found them asking to bring these men in, and I only wonder that my friend from Ohio [Mr. Bingham] should intimate a desire to bring them here.

The announcement of the vote, May 10, was 128 to 37, 19 not voting. It was received with applause on the floor and in the galleries. Mr. Elridge of Wisconsin rose angrily to a question of order. "I want to know if it is understood that the proceedings of this House are to be interrupted by those who come here and occupy the galleries."

"The gentleman from Wisconsin," replied the speaker, "makes the point of order that expressions of approbation or disapprobation from persons occupying the galleries are not in order. The chair sustains the point of order." But Mr. Elridge was still angry.

"I do not want our proceedings to be interrupted by the 'niggerheads' in the galleries."

The galleries hissed and Stevens asked, "Is it in order for members on the floor to disturb those in the galleries?"

"Members upon the floor should not insult the spectators in the galleries," said the speaker.⁶⁴

The Fourteenth Amendment came up in the Senate April 30, but Fessenden was still ill and no action was taken for two weeks. Finally, May 23, Howard of Michigan began the debate. He declared that the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was primarily to give Congress the power to enforce the guarantees of freedom in the first eight amendments to the Constitution. The West, led by Sherman, Doolittle and others, tried to reintroduce voters as the basis of representation. New England, through Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, was opposed to striking from the basis of representation 2,100,000 unnaturalized foreigners who gave the North 17 representatives. Sherman did not agree. "If it is right to exclude four millions of blacks in the Southern states who are denied representation, is it not also right to exclude all other classes in every other state who are denied political power?"

The question of Negro citizenship was discussed, and Julian of Indiana opposed the conservative stand; to follow conservatism we would recognize the revolting states as still in the Union; it opposes the protection of the millions of loyal colored people of the South through the agency of the Freedmen's Bureau; it opposes the Civil Rights Bill; it opposes, with all bitterness, the policy of giving the freedmen the ballot. On the other hand, radicalism would hold treason a crime; it would base representation on the actual voters; it favors the protection of the colored people of the South through the Freedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights Bill; it demands the ballot as the right of every colored citizen.

Evidently the breach between the East and West was growing, and coupled with Sumner's attitude, it looked as though the Fourteenth Amendment was again doomed. The Republican party fell back upon the caucus. From May 24 to May 28, the Senate was in session but a few hours, which gave the Republicans time to discuss the whole matter in party caucus. The party at that time showed clear division into conservative, industrial elements, like Fessenden, Trumbull and Morgan; and the abolition-democracy, led by Sumner, Wade and Yates. The opposition of Sumner and the abolition-democracy was finally overcome by the plain facts of the case: this was the utmost that could be got from Congress in defense of democracy. Was it not worth taking? What could be hoped for in further delay?

As a result of the caucuses, certain amendments were made. The second section was amended to strike out the word "citizen" and insert "inhabitants being citizens of the United States." A new first section [ 307 ] was inserted: "That all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of states wherein they reside."

The Senate's changes thus consisted in defining who were citizens, and in substituting for disfranchisement of all participants in secession until 1870, the ineligibility of certain high officials; it opened the elective franchise to such persons as the states may choose to admit, and adopted the third section in its present form.

We have thus followed, as well as records let us, the inner history of the Reconstruction measures of Congress in the Committee of Fifteen and other sources. Now let us look at the proceedings of Congress, as negotiations on these matters rose among the leaders, here and there and now and then, in a sea of struggling unorganized action.

In the matter of civil rights, the final draft of the Fourteenth Amendment said:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The first proposition on civil rights was introduced into the House by Mr. Stevens, December 5, 1865. On December 6, Bingham of Ohio offered an amendment. Both these resolutions went to the Committee on the Judiciary. Two other propositions were introduced December 11. February 1, 1866, a motion was passed directing the Committee of Fifteen to inquire into this matter. Williams suggested an amendment, February 5, empowering Congress to enforce "all obligations, prohibitions or disabilities imposed by the Constitution on the several states."⁶⁶ February 13, 1866, the Committee of Fifteen, as we have noted, reported to both Houses a proposed amendment by Mr. Bingham in the House and by Mr. Fessenden in the Senate. Both motions were indefinitely postponed, and there was a strong desire to get the whole final report of the Committee of Fifteen.

On March 9, 1866, while the Senate was discussing the apportionment of representatives, Senator Yates of Illinois moved an amendment for civil and political rights, but it secured only seven votes. Two other and similar propositions were made in the Senate but received small support. The first section of the resolution reported to the House April 30, 1866, became eventually the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment passed by the House, but the Senate, as we have seen, did not adopt it. Several attempts were made to amend it in the [ 308 ] Senate: Mr. Wade offered a substitute for the entire resolution, but the whole proposition failed. When the second proposition came before the Senate, May 30, Howard of Michigan, in behalf of Senate members of the Joint Committee, presented a series of resolutions which had been adopted by the Republican caucus as a substitute for the House Amendment. The substitute was accepted. The first change was to prefix these words to the first clause of the amendment: "All persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

Later, Fessenden of Maine secured the inclusion of "naturalized persons." Senator Johnson of Maryland tried unsuccessfully to strike out the guarantee that states should not make or enforce any law to abridge the privileges of immunity of citizens.

Disability for participation in secession was covered by Section III:

No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.

Four amendments on disabilities for participation in the rebellion were introduced in 1866. In the report of the Committee of Fifteen April 30, 1866, there was included a third section by which all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection were excluded from the right to vote until July 4, 1870. Attempts were made to amend this in the House. When the resolution reached the Senate there were 15 attempts to alter this section. On May 30, Senator Howard of Michigan in behalf of the Senate members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction presented a new draft in which he proposed in place of the third section, the provision which now appears in the Fourteenth Amendment. Many efforts were made to amend it. The Democratic Senators seemed to prefer the Howard substitute to the House amendment. This section passed.

The question of suffrage for Negroes was covered by Section II:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive [ 309 ] or judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

This question of Negro suffrage gave rise to five proposed amendments just before the Civil War. All these excluded persons of Negro descent from the right to vote, and most of them excluded from them the right to hold office.

In the opening days of the 39th Congress, there were six propositions to guarantee the right to vote to Negroes. Two proposed an educational standard in voting for Federal officials. Boutwell proposed an amendment making unlawful any distinction in the elective franchise on account of race or color. Another amendment proposed to give Congress power to define the qualifications of voters, and members of Congress, and of Presidential electors. Henderson, January 23, 1866, proposed an amendment denying the state the right to discriminate against voters on account of race or color. January 22, 1866, the proposal on the apportionment of Representatives and abridgment of Representatives was presented by the Committee of Fifteen to the House. It was recommitted January 29, and reported again January 31. It passed January 31.

In the Senate, there were five attempts to amend this resolution. Sumner presented a resolution making color discrimination impossible in the courtroom or ballot-box. This was rejected, 39 to 8. Howard proposed to admit to the franchise Negroes in the army and navy, or those able to read and write, or those who had property to the value of $250. This was not acted on. Sumner again attempted to amend the resolution by making illegal discrimination on account of race and color. It was lost, 39-8. A similar proposal by Yates of Illinois was rejected.

Three other propositions to amend the Constitution, relative to the suffrage, were introduced before the close of this Congress. One was a proposition by Stewart of Nevada on March 16; this foreshadowed the subsequent "Grandfather Clause." It admitted the Southern states on several conditions, one of which was:

The extension of the elective franchise to all persons upon the same terms and conditions, making no discrimination on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude; provided that those who were qualified to vote in the year ; 1860 by the laws of their respective states shall not be disfranchised by 310 reason of any new tests or conditions which have been or may be prescribed since that year.

That when the aforementioned condition shall have been complied with and ratified by a majority of the present voting population, a general amnesty shall be proclaimed.

That all the loyal states be respectfully requested to incorporate in their constitutions an amendment corresponding to the one above described.

That it is not intended to assert a coercive power on the part of Congress, in regard to the regulation of the suffrage in the different states, but only to make an appeal to their own good sense and love of country, with a view to the prevention of serious evils now threatened.

Seward said in 1870, "When the Reconstruction question arose about the Fourteenth Amendment, I proposed that all persons born in the United States after the date of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery should be entitled to vote on arriving at the age of twenty-one years, and this should enter into Reconstruction."⁶⁷

The resolution for the new Fourteenth Amendment passed the Senate June 8, 1866, by a vote of 33-11; five members not voting. The amended resolution was brought before the House and was called up June 13. After a limited debate, the amendments made by the Senate were concurred in by a vote of 120-32, thirty-two not voting. Thus the Fourteenth Amendment was sent to the states for approval.

After the President's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, many members wanted the question immediately reconsidered, and the day after the President's speech of February 22, Senator Wilson introduced a bill which was not reported. The legislatures of several states approved of a bill, by petitions which urged maintaining the Bureau. The President tried to counteract this by sending two agents, Generals Steedman and Fullerton, to investigate the Bureau. They were both in sympathy with his policy and made a tour of four months. They commended Howard and believed that the Bureau had done much to preserve order and organize free labor, but that it had sometimes been dishonestly and injudiciously administered, and that it was time for it to come to an end.

This report was widely circulated and discussed. The charges were investigated and public confidence in the Bureau was shaken. Nevertheless, May 22, a bill to continue the Bureau was introduced. It differed from the bill of February 9, in limiting the Bureau to two years. Land held under Sherman's orders was to be restored to former owners and other land furnished the dispossessed freedmen. Army officers were retained in the service of the Bureau, and commissioners were authorized to cooperate with agents of benevolent associations; property [ 311 ] was to be appropriated for the education of the freedmen, and military protection of their civil rights guaranteed.

After discussion, the bill passed the House May 29, by vote of 96-32. In the Senate, the bill was amended and a conference was held. The conference agreed that the questions arising out of Sherman's orders should be left entirely with the President for settlement. On June 16, the President vetoed the bill and called the Freedmen's Bureau a proposition to transfer four million slaves from their original owners to a new set of taskmasters. By a severe exercise of party discipline, according to Blaine, the necessary two-thirds vote was procured in each House, and the bill passed over the President's veto on the same day that it was received. Thus government guardianship of freedmen was given a temporary extension under a grudging and partly inimical administration. The disposition of Congress to yield in part to the President was manifest.

On June 6, the Committee of Fifteen was reappointed. Sub-committees had been taking testimony all over the South.

The final report of the Committee of Fifteen was made June 18. It made an eight hundred page book and 100,000 copies were distributed. Its majority and minority sections summed up the strongest arguments available for and against the proposed methods of Reconstruction. The part of the majority report that touched the Negro said:

Slavery had been abolished by constitutional amendment. A large proportion of the population had become, instead of mere chattels, free men and citizens. Through all the past struggle these had remained true and loyal, and had, in large numbers, fought on the side of the Union. It was impossible to abandon them without securing them their rights as free men and citizens. The whole civilized world would have cried out against such base ingratitude, and the bare idea is offensive to all right-thinking men. Hence, it became important to inquire what could be done to secure their rights, civil and political. It was evident to your committee that adequate security could only be found in appropriate constitutional provisions. … The increase of representation necessarily resulting from the abolition of slavery was considered the most important element in the questions arising out of the changed condition of affairs, and the necessity for some fundamental action in this regard seemed imperative.

It appeared to your committee that the rights of these persons by whom the basis of representation had been thus increased should be recognized by the General Government. While slaves, they were not considered as having any rights, civil or political. It did not seem just or proper that all the political advantages derived from their becoming free should be confined to their former masters, who had fought [ 312 ] against the Union, and withheld from themselves, who had always been loyal. …

Doubts were entertained whether Congress had power, even under the amended Constitution, to prescribe the qualifications of voters in a state, or could act directly on the subject. It was doubtful, in the opinion of your committee, whether the states would consent to surrender a power they had always exercised, and to which they were attached. As the best, if not the only, method of surmounting the difficulty, and as eminently just and proper in itself, your committee came to the conclusion that political power should be possessed in all the states exactly in proportion as the right of suffrage should be granted, without distinction of color or race. …

It appears quite clear that the anti-slavery amendments, both to the state and Federal Constitutions, were adopted in the South with reluctancy by the bodies which did adopt them, while in some states they have been either passed by in silence or rejected. The language of all the provisions and ordinances of these states on the subject amounts to nothing more than an unwilling admission of an unwelcome truth. …

Looking still further at the evidence taken by your committee, it is found to be clearly shown, by witnesses of the highest character, and having the best means of observation, that the Freedmen's Bureau, instituted for the relief and protection of freedmen and refugees, is almost universally opposed by the mass of the population, and exists in an efficient condition only under military protection, while the Union men of the South are earnest in its defense, declaring with one voice that without its protection the colored people would not be permitted to labor at fair prices, and could hardly live in safety. They also testify that without the protection of United States troops Union men, whether of Northern or Southern origin, would be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling in many portions of the country towards the emancipated slaves, especially among the uneducated and ignorant, is one of vindictive and malicious hatred. This deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals, and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish. There is no general disposition to place the colored race, constituting at least two-fifths of the population, upon terms even of civil equality. While many instances may be found where large planters and men of the better class accept the situation, and honestly strive to bring about a better order of things by employing the freedmen at fair wages and treating them kindly, the general feeling and disposition among all classes are yet totally averse to the toleration of any class of people friendly to the Union, be they white [ 313 ] or black; and this aversion is not infrequently manifested in an insulting and offensive manner. …⁶⁸

This part of the report was signed by twelve members of the Committee. The other three members submitted a Minority Report. It was in the main, the old metaphysical argument, signed by Johnson, the constitutional lawyer from Maryland, Rogers, the extreme advocate of Southern rights from New Jersey, and Grider.

They are asked to disfranchise a numerous class of their citizens, and also to agree to diminish their representation in Congress, and of course in the electoral college, or to admit to the right of suffrage their colored males of twenty-one years of age and upwards (a class now in a condition of almost utter ignorance), thus placing them on the same political footing with white citizens of that age. For reasons so obvious that the dullest may discover them, the right is not directly asserted of granting suffrage to the Negro. That would be obnoxious to most of the Northern and Western states, so much so that their consent was not to be anticipated; but as the plan adopted, because of the limited number of Negroes in such States, will have no effect on their representation, it is thought it may be adopted, while in the Southern States it will materially lessen their number.

That these latter States will assent to the measure can hardly be expected. The effect, then, if not the purpose, of the measure is forever to deny representatives to such States, or, if they consent to the condition, to weaken their representative power, and thus, probably, secure a continuance of such a party in power as now controls the legislation of the government. The measure, in its terms and its effect, whether designed or not, is to degrade the Southern States. To consent to it will be to consent to their own dishonor.

Neither Sumner nor Stevens was satisfied with the Fourteenth Amendment. On the last day of the session, July 28, 1866, Thaddeus Stevens made his last defense of Negro suffrage. He was at the time worn out; his health was precarious; he was seventy-three years of age, and he hardly expected to return to his seat in the House. With deep solemnity, he sought:

'to make one more – perhaps an expiring – effort to do something which shall be useful to my fellow men; something to elevate and enlighten the poor, the oppressed, and the ignorant in this great crisis of human affairs.' The black man, he declared, must have the ballot or he would continue to be a slave. There was some alleviation to the lot of a bondman, but 'a freeman deprived of every human right, is the most degraded of human beings.' Without the protection of the ballot-box the freedmen were 'the mere serfs,' and would become 'the victims of their former masters.' He declared that what he had done he had done for humanity. 'I know it is easy,' [ 314 ] he said, 'to protect the interests of the rich and powerful; but it is a great labor to guard the rights of the poor and downtrodden – it is the eternal labor of Sisyphus, forever to be renewed. In this, perhaps my final action on this great question, I can see nothing in my political course, especially in regard to human freedom, which I could wish to have expunged or changed. I believe that we must all account hereafter for deeds done in the body, and that political deeds will be among those accounts. I desire to take to the bar of that final settlement the record which I shall this day make on the great question of human rights. While I am sure it will not make atonement for half my errors, I hope it will be some palliation. Are there any who will venture to take the list with their negative seal upon it, and who will dare to unroll it before that stern judge who is the Father of the immortal beings whom they have been trampling under foot, and whose souls they have been crushing out?⁶⁹

This was not, in fact, his last speech, but it had the tone of a final message. Congress adjourned before a congressional plan of reconstruction reached its final form, but its general outline was clear, and no further compromise between the congressional majority and Johnson was possible.

Already, the President's attitude on the Fourteenth Amendment and Reconstruction had led to two suicides, the resignation of three members of the Cabinet; and although Stanton remained, his retention caused the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Sumner, much against his will, had remained silent when the Senate, by party caucus, had decided upon the Fourteenth Amendment. On the last day of Congress, he wrote the Duchess of Argyll:

The suffering at the South is great, through the misconduct of the President. His course has kept the rebel spirit alive, and depressed the loyal, white and black. It makes me very sad to see this. Considering the difficulties of their position, the blacks have done wonderfully well. They should have had a Moses as a President; but they had found a Pharaoh.⁷⁰

Particularly had the situation in Louisiana become tense. The New Orleans riot of July 30, 1866, confirmed the Abolitionists in their opinion that the reconstructed states were in the power of the rebels, and that they were using their power to put the Negro back into slavery; and that no man, white or black, who was friendly to the Union, was safe in the South. There were reported a thousand murders in the South, with few of the criminals brought to justice. And the country was convinced that the President had disrupted the Union party, and was conspiring with Democrats, North and South, to drive out the Republicans.

In the election of 1866, there was on the side of Congress, a Union party with a center bloc of Republicans; a left wing of radical Abolitionists, and a right wing of reactionary War Democrats. Andrew Johnson tried to unite the Western Radicals and the War Democrats into a new third party, to be reenforced eventually by the returned Secessionists. But between extreme democracy and reaction there was no common ground. He only succeeded in getting the support of a few of the War Democrats, and the copperheads, who were either Southerners living North, or Northern men with Southern principles.

State and national conventions met. Johnson and his friends started out August 14 to form a Johnson Party. The National Union Convention met in Philadelphia with states North and South represented. A special wigwam, two stories high, was erected on Girard Avenue, seating ten thousand people. The interior was decorated with flags. Horace Greeley called it a bread and butter convention, composed of 99% of rebels and copperheads. Thomas Nast ridiculed the convention in his cartoons in Harper's Weekly.

Their declaration of principles, accepted unanimously, declared the war had maintained the Constitution and the Union unaltered, and that neither Congress nor the general Government had any authority to deny the constitutional right of congressional representation to any state. They urged the election of Congressmen who would admit all "loyal" representatives from the South. They affirmed the inability of a state either to secede or exclude any other state from the Union, and the constitutional right of each state to decide for itself the qualifications for voting, within its borders. They insisted that the Constitution could not be legally amended, except with all the states voting in Congress, and action by all the legislatures. They denied any desire in the Southern states to restore slavery. They proclaimed the invalidity of the rebel debts, the inviolability of the Federal debt, and the right of freedmen to the same protection of persons and property as afforded to whites. They urged government aid for Federal soldiers and their families. Finally, they expressed whole-hearted endorsement of Andrew Johnson.

The weakness of this meeting was that, first, it contained in fact few Republicans, most of the delegates being well-known Democrats who had opposed Lincoln. It was dubbed the conference of "copperheads," and among the delegates were Vallandigham and Fernando Wood. Secondly, the meeting was not followed up with careful organization.

No sooner had this convention adjourned than Southern Loyalists met in Philadelphia on September 3, to confer with Northern Republicans, including Horace Greeley, John Jacob Astor, Carl Schurz, [ 316 ] Frederick Douglass, Brownlow, Thomas E. Benton, Morton, Cameron, and Gerry. This conference met in two parts, one Northern and one Southern.

Frederick Douglass was elected delegate from Rochester to attend the convention. It was a great honor for a black man in a white city. On the train, he met Southern and Western delegates, including Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana. After consultation, a committee waited on him, and through a Louisiana spokesman, insisted on their high respect for him, but also on their fear that it was inexpedient for him to attend the convention, on account of the cry of social and political equality which would be raised against the Republican party. Douglass replied: "Gentlemen, with all respect, you might as well ask me to put a loaded pistol to my head and blow my brains out, as to ask me to keep out of this convention, to which I have been duly elected."⁷¹

He pointed out that the fact of his election was widely known, and his failure to attend would be inexplicable. Later, he was warned against walking in the procession, and for a while it looked as if he would have to walk alone, until Theodore Tilton of New York offered to walk with him. In that parade, he met a daughter of his former owner!

During the convention, Speed, who had just resigned from the Cabinet, called the President a tyrant, and the Southern Loyalists attacked Johnson, but split on Negro suffrage. A part of the convention finally adopted this declaration:

…The Government by national and appropriate legislation, enforced by national authority, shall confer on every citizen in the States we represent, the American birthright of impartial suffrage and equality before the law. This is the one all-sufficient remedy. This is our great and pressing necessity.⁷²

Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, in discussing Negro suffrage at this same convention on September 3, 1866, said:

Some gentlemen, from a mistaken view of my character, said they were afraid of Negro Suffrage, and wanted to dodge it. I have never dodged any subject, nor have I ever been found on both sides of any subject. While I am satisfied with everything done here, I would go further. I am an advocate of Negro suffrage, and impartial suffrage. I would rather associate with loyal Negroes than with disloyal white men. I would rather be buried in a Negro graveyard than in a rebel graveyard; and after death I would sooner go to a Negro heaven than a white rebel's hell.⁷³

There followed in September two military conventions, one in Cleveland, September 18, by friends of Johnson, which did not mention Negro suffrage. It denounced the Abolitionists and said that they [ 317 ] were trying to force another war. It contained many Democrats and a few conservative Republicans. Confederate officers at Memphis, including General Forrest of Fort Pillow fame, sent sympathy by telegram, which was unfortunate publicity. In answer to this a National Convention of "Citizens, Soldiers and Sailors" was held at Pittsburgh, September 25 and 26. There were many volunteer officers of high rank and Johnson was denounced and the Fourteenth Amendment advocated. This convention had great influence on public opinion and popularized the Fourteenth Amendment.

The issue in the election of the fall of 1866, turned on whether Congress should recognize Southern states as reconstructed by Johnson. It was not a presidential year, but congressmen and state legislatures were to be elected.

The real campaign began in August, with the fourteenth of August convention in Philadelphia. This convention greatly encouraged Johnson, and he wrote it, attacking Congress for preventing the restoration of peace and union, and denying that it was really a legal Congress. "If I had wanted authority, or if I had wished to perpetuate my own power, how easily could I have held and wielded that which was placed in my hands by the measure called Freedmen's Bureau Bill."⁷⁴

On July 4, he had issued another proclamation of general amnesty, and on August 20, he declared the Civil War at an end. Already, in the spring, he had promised to lay the cornerstone of a monument to Stephen A. Douglas in Chicago, and he left Washington, August 28, on a great campaign tour, which was to sweep the country. He took General Grant with him and members of his Cabinet, and Seward joined him in New York. Johnson stopped at Philadelphia, New York, Albany, and then went West by way of Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis.

It was an extraordinary and increasingly painful effort, by which Johnson definitely defeated himself and his own political policies. He showed genius for saying the wrong thing. In New York, for instance, he asked, "Are we prepared, after the cost of war, to continue the disrupted condition of the country? Why are we afraid of the representatives of the South? Some have grown fat, some have grown rich by the aggression and destruction of others."

In Philadelphia, he declared that God was a tailor, like himself. At Cleveland his audience became a mob while the President himself increased the hubbub. The city authorities had made preparations for a polite reception, but as he proceeded with his harangue, the mob took complete possession of the crowd. Someone cried, "Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?" "Yes," yelled Johnson, "why not hang them?"⁷⁵

Some towns hung out blacks flags and banners, "No welcome to traitors." Bands played the death march; Johnson shouted in defiance. His egotism was ridiculed. He was charged with being drunk, a traitor and a demagogue. On he reeled. As Burgess said, "The trip degraded the presidential office." The New York Tribune watched it with a "feeling of national shame," and called it "the stumbling tour of an inebriated demagogue." The New York World excused him by asking: "Who of all presidents had been lower than Lincoln in personal bearing?" The Herald put the blame on Seward's shoulders, "the Mephistopheles of the administration." Lowell called the journey "an indecent orgy"; Rhodes says he was "intoxicated" at Cleveland, while Schouler declares he was sober. The culmination came in St. Louis, where Johnson declared that the blood of the New Orleans riot was on Congress, and decried the "diabolical and nefarious policies of Stevens, Phillips and Sumner."

The most charitable thing that the defenders of Andrew Johnson can say of him is that occasionally he got drunk; for too much liquor alone would excuse such extraordinary conduct and performances as his Vice-Presidential inauguration, his speech of February 22, 1866, his exhibition at Cleveland, and his St. Louis debauch. If he was not an occasional drunkard, he was God's own fool.

"He returned to Washington," as Schurz says, "an utterly discomfited and disgraced man, having gone out to win popular support, and having earned only public disgust."

The role of Seward during this episode was pathetic. One of the wits of the time spoke of Seward's new office of bear-leader.

Unfortunately he was very unsuccessful even in this task, for he could do little more than apologize for Johnson, and in a few commonplace sentences call upon the audience to support the President in opposition to Congress. At Niagara, he told the crowd that Lincoln had been traduced when alive, but after his assassination all hearts inclined to the deepest sorrow; and it would be the same if Johnson should be taken off. To the citizens of Buffalo he stated the issue as follows: 'The question is between the President and the Congress. Of all that has been done to bring us so near the consummation [of Reconstruction] you see that nothing has been done that was not done through the direction, agency, activity, perseverance and patriotism of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. Will you stand by Congress? Or will you stand by the President?'

The Republicans took every advantage of the situation. They saw in Johnson the instinct of the poor white cropping out. "He cannot shake off the boot-licking proclivity, born and bred in him, towards the aristocracy of the South. Miserable fool!"

Stevens made but one speech in the campaign of 1866. He said that he had been directed by his physician neither to think, speak nor read until the next session of Congress; that he had followed the orders not to read almost literally.

It is true, I have amused myself with a little light, frivolous reading. For instance, there was a serial account from day to day of a very remarkable circus that traveled through the country, from Washington to Chicago and St. Louis, and from Louisville back to Washington. I read that with some interest, expecting to see in so celebrated an establishment, – one which from its heralding was to beat Dan Rice and all the old circuses that ever went forth, – expected great wit from the celebrated character of its clowns.⁷⁶

As the campaign of 1866 progressed, the agitation in favor of granting suffrage to the Negro as a necessary protection of his freedom became marked. First of all, Industry and Trade were convinced that they could not trust the white South. Therefore, the more extreme ideas which Stevens had advocated, were allowed to be broadcast. Their logic was strong and their methods popular. People had faith in laws and wanted some great enactment in keeping with the greatness of the war. It was a ripe time for amending the Constitution and inaugurating final reforms. These reforms might be in advance at the time, but they were worth trying, and there appeared to be no middle path.

Thus, as the campaign went on, Negro suffrage occupied a more and more important position. Stevens, Wade, Sumner, Chase, Schurz and Chandler were in favor of it. To many Northerners it had been at first unthinkable, but more and more they became convinced. The Nation urged full Negro suffrage and Negro civil rights, but opposed the exclusion of white leaders from office.

The doctrine that 'this is a white man's government and intended for white men only,' is, as the Perrys profess it, as monstrous a doctrine as was ever concocted.

To allow the states to reorganize on this basis, the Nation added,

will make the very name of American democracy a hissing and a byword among the nations of the earth. … To have this theory of the nature of our government boldly thrust in our faces now, after the events of the last four years, by men who have come red-handed from the battlefield, and to whose garments the blood of our brothers and sons still clings; and to know that the President, who owes in part at least his ability to be President to the valor and blood of colored troops, concurs with them in this scandalous repudiation of democratic principles, are things which the country, we trust, will find it hard to bear.⁷⁷

For a brief period – for the seven mystic years that stretched between Johnson's "Swing round the Circle" to the Panic of 1873, the [ 320 ] majority of thinking Americans of the North believed in the equal manhood of Negroes. They acted accordingly with a thoroughness and clean-cut decision that no age which does not share that faith can in the slightest comprehend. They did not free draft animals, nor enfranchise gorillas, nor welcome morons to Congress. They simply recognized black folk as men. "The South called for war," said James Russell Lowell, "and we have given it to her. We will fix the terms of peace ourselves and we will teach the South that Christ is disguised in a dusky race."⁷⁸

Then came in 1873-76 sudden and complete disillusion not at Negroes but at the world – at business, at work, at religion, at art. A bitter protest of Southern property reenforced Northern reaction; and while after long years the American world recovered in most matters, it has never yet quite understood why it could ever have thought that black men were altogether human.

There were men in the South and former slaveholders who knew the truth and spoke it. They knew that there could be no salvation for the South in time or eternity, until the former slave went forth as a man. But the intrenched intolerance of the South, coupled with the awful grief at the death of the flower of Southern manhood, let such prophets speak but few words. They spoke here and there in nearly every Southern state, but they were soon threatened into silence; and there prevailed a bitter hatred and cry for vengeance from people who could not brook defeat because they had been used to victory, and had the slave-born habit of arrogance. For their grief, none had greater sympathy than the bulk of their former slaves. They served and even succored their former masters; and yet, upon these and their fellows, was eventually placed the whole wrath of the South which it could not turn toward the North. And especially it fell upon those freedmen who felt their freedom; who were uplifted by new ambition; who showed the gathered resentment of two hundred years of whipping, kicks and cuffs; in fine, on them who had rolling in their ears God's great: "Deposuit potente.–"

He hath put down the Mighty
From their seats
And hath exalted them
Of low degree!

After the final elections of 1866, the Republicans had 143 members in the House, and the Democrats 49. All states gave strong majorities to the Republican party, except the Border States of Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky. In the South, Democratic candidates were universally [ 321 ] successful. Not counting the South, the Republicans in the Senate had a two-thirds majority, and nearly a three-fourths majority in the House.

Through the winter of 1866-1867, notwithstanding the results of the elections of 1866, the South rejected the Fourteenth Amendment. Virginia gave one vote in favor; North Carolina, 11 out of 148; South Carolina, 1 vote; Georgia, 2 out of 169; Alabama, 10 out of 106; Texas, 5, and Arkansas, 3; Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana were unanimously against it.

Thus the South defied Congress, and demanded that the disfranchised Negro should be counted as basis of representation. The South was encouraged in this stand by the President. The Governor of Alabama telegraphed him that the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment could be reconsidered by his state, but Johnson discouraged him. This increased the strength of the Republicans in the North.

The President's message of December 4, 1866, with all the earmarks of Seward, was calm and skillful. He said that the war was ended, and that the nation should now proceed as a free, prosperous and united nation. He had already informed Congress of his efforts for the gradual restoration of the States. All that remained now was the admission to Congress of loyal Senators and Representatives. While Congress had been considering this, the President had appointed various public officials, and the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed. Yet Congress hesitated to admit the Southern states to representation, and after eight months, only Tennessee had been admitted. He wished to leave the whole matter of suffrage to the States and he was significantly silent on the Black Codes.

The second session of the 39th Congress began December 3. The Senate asked for a report on the condition of the Southern states, since the President had said practically nothing about it. The President replied, December 19, 1866:

As a result of the measures instituted by the Executive, with the view of inducing a resumption of the functions of the States comprehended in the inquiry of the Senate, the people of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, have reorganized their respective State governments, and are yielding obedience to the laws and government of the United States with more willingness and greater promptitude than under the circumstances could reasonably have been anticipated. The proposed amendment to the Constitution, providing for the abolition of slavery forever within the limits of the country, has been ratified by each one of those states, with the exception of Mississippi, from which no [ 322 ] official information has yet been received; and in nearly all of them measures have been adopted or are now pending, to confer upon freedmen rights and privileges which are essential to their comfort, protection, and security. In Florida and Texas, the people are making commendable progress in restoring their State governments, and no doubt it is entertained that they will, at an early period be in a condition to resume all of their practical relations to the Federal Government.

It is true that in some of the States the demoralizing effects of the war are to be seen in occasional disorders; but these are local in character, not frequent in occurrence, and are rapidly disappearing as the authority of civil law is extended and sustained. Perplexing questions were naturally to be expected from the great and sudden change in the relations between the two races; but systems are gradually developing themselves under which the freedman will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled, and by means of his labor make himself a useful and independent member of the community in which he has his home.

The transubstantiation of Andrew Johnson was complete. He had begun as the champion of the poor laborer, demanding that the land monoply of the Southern oligarchy be broken up, so as to give access to the soil, South and West, to the free laborer. He had demanded the punishment of those Southerners who by slavery and war had made such an economic program impossible. Suddenly thrust into the Presidency, he had retreated from this attitude. He had not only given up extravagant ideas of punishment, but he dropped his demand for dividing up plantations when he realized that Negroes would largely be beneficiaries. Because he could not conceive of Negroes as men, he refused to advocate universal democracy, of which, in his young manhood, he had been the fiercest advocate, and made strong alliance with those who would restore slavery under another name.

This change did not come by deliberate thought or conscious desire to hurt – it was rather the tragedy of American prejudice made flesh; so that the man born to narrow circumstances, a rebel against economic privilege, died with the conventional ambition of a poor white to be the associate and benefactor of monopolists, planters and slave drivers. In some respects, Andrew Johnson is the most pitiful figure of American history. A man who, despite great power and great ideas, became a puppet, played upon by mighty fingers and selfish, subtle minds; groping, self-made, unlettered and alone; drunk, not so much with liquor, as with the heady wine of sudden and accidental success.

My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.
  I heard the mournful loon
  In the marsh beneath the moon
And then, with feathery thunder, the bird of my desire
     Broke from the cover
     Flashing silver fire.
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.
  The pale clouds gazed aghast
As my falcon dropped upon him, and gript and held him fast.