In March 1867, following the refusal of the Southern states organized by Johnson to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress passed the first of a series of four Reconstruction Acts. Historians consider these acts the cornerstone of Radical Reconstruction, ushering in the new, Radical phase of thoroughly reconstructing the defeated Confederate states. Not surprisingly, Johnson vetoed each in succession. The Reconstruction Acts reflected the Radicals’ determination to impose strict conditions on those states. White Southerners believed that the acts rendered their states conquered provinces.
The first act (March 2, 1867) divided the ten unreconstructed states (Tennessee, after ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, had been readmitted to the Union in 1866) into five military districts and called for elections under universal manhood suffrage for constitutional conventions to frame basic laws. Congress required each state to ratify new constitutions that included black suffrage and the Fourteenth Amendment as preconditions for readmission to the Union. The act disfranchised some persons, prohibiting from voting those who had violated pre–Civil War loyalty oaths, had committed crimes, or who were disqualified from office by the Fourteenth Amendment.33 Significantly, the act enfranchised African-American male voters in the former Rebel states, inaugurating their participation in politics. After the states had adopted these constitutions and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, they could apply for readmission to the Union.
On March 23, when Southern state legislators failed to implement this process, Congress passed a second (supplemental) Reconstruction Act, authorizing the commanding generals of the military districts to supervise the election process, spelling out the oaths to be administered to registrars and voters, and providing for the ratification of the state constitutions by a majority of the states’ registered voters. A third Reconstruction Act (July 19, 1867) subjected Johnson’s state provisional governments to the military commanders, arming them with broad powers to remove state officials and to assess voter eligibility. Finally, the fourth Reconstruction Act (March 11, 1868) mandated that the ratification of the new Southern state constitutions required a majority of the actual number of voters, not a majority of those persons registered to vote in the ratification process.
Historian Hugh Davis underscores the importance of the new Southern state constitutions mandated by the Reconstruction Acts. Under close federal government scrutiny, the legislators totally revamped and modernized their basic laws. “These constitutions were quite innovative,” Davis explains, “in that they laid the foundations of the Southern public school system, provided protection for all citizens’ civil rights, funded railroad construction, and established the basis for a new system of free labor.” Despite their best efforts, however, Republicans struggled to gain legitimacy for their party among white Southerners, “because it was imposed by a Northern Congress and relied largely on the support of the freedpeople.”34
Foner correctly interprets the Reconstruction Acts, especially the implementation of black suffrage, as Congress’ response to “the obstinacy of Johnson and the white South, and the determination of Radicals, blacks, and eventually Southern Unionists not to accept a Reconstruction program that stopped short of this demand.” That said, he characterizes the Radical project as a “somewhat incongruous mixture of idealism and political expediency.” At each step, moderate acts tempered radical elements. While the acts subjected the Southern states to temporary military rule to ensure order, they provided a means for them to gain readmission to the Union. The legislation “looked to a new political order for the South, but failed to place Southern Unionists in immediate control. It made no economic provisions for the freedmen. Even the commitment to black suffrage applied only to the defeated Confederacy, not the nation as a whole.”35
Two events, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in May 1868 and the election of Ulysses S. Grant in November of that year, signaled the end of Presidential Reconstruction. Johnson’s stormy relationship with Congress harkened back to December 1865, when Congress refused to seat members elected by the Southern state provisional governments, and then worsened over disagreements over the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. The president’s vocal opposition to the Reconstruction Acts set him on a collision course with Congress, a situation exacerbated by Johnson’s determination to reassign Radical-friendly commanding generals in the South and to remove Secretary of War Stanton from his cabinet, in direct violation of the Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act. As early as December 1867 some representatives sought to impeach Johnson, a move that finally came to pass on February 21, 1868, when the House of Representatives passed Pennsylvanian John Covode’s resolution to impeach him for eleven articles of high crimes and misdemeanors. Johnson’s trial lasted from March 29 until May 26, 1868, when the Senate acquitted him by one vote. Though he held office for the rest of his term, Johnson remained politically impotent.
During Presidential and Radical Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant, who became a hero as the commanding general of the Union armies, served as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army. Following his report on a Southern tour in December 1865, the general gradually came to support the Radical Republicans, though he served as Johnson’s interim secretary of war (August 12, 1867, to January 14, 1868) following the president’s ousting of Stanton from office.
The popular Grant captured the Republican presidential nomination in 1868, and defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour by 134 electoral votes. Despite scandals that marred his presidency, involving both members of his cabinet and close associates, Grant was reelected president in 1872, defeating Liberal Republican–Democratic candidate Horace Greeley by 220 electoral votes. As president, Grant witnessed ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment (adopted by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the states in 1870), guaranteeing that citizens’ right to vote “shall not be abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Under Grant the ten Southern states still under provisional governments regained their proper position in the Union. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina met Congress’ requirement in 1868. The remaining former Confederate states—Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia—rejoined the Union in 1870.
As president, Grant also took steps to protect the freedpeople and Unionists from white paramilitary or vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, established in May 1866 as a social club in Tennessee, marked an aggressive challenge to the newly empowered blacks and to the federal government’s Reconstruction efforts. The terrorist organization quickly spread across the South, attacking and terrorizing blacks and white Republicans. Using violence as a political tool, the Klan sought to undo Reconstruction by undermining the Republican Party, destabilizing the Reconstruction governments, and reestablishing white supremacy through the forced subordination of people of color and their Union supporters.
Three Enforcement Acts (May 31, 1870; February 28, 1871; and April 20, 1871) imposed federal protection and supervision of voting in the South, outlawed terrorist conspiracies, and authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in areas where lawlessness ruled. This legislation worked to some degree in preventing voter intimidation, fraud, and bribery, and in protecting the right under federal law of all citizens, black and white, to vote. Nonetheless, Klan violence became so severe that in 1871 Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in several South Carolina counties.
CHARLES SUMNER TO THE DUCHESS OF ARGYLL
(April 3, 1866)
Sumner’s remarkable letter to his longtime friend and correspondent, the British abolitionist Elizabeth, Georgiana Granville, Duchess of Argyll (1824–1878), provides vivid insights into his fears regarding the rights of the freedpeople, the state of the country, and President Johnson’s intransigence. Though Congress had passed the Civil Rights Bill in order to offer Southern blacks legal protection, the president quickly vetoed it. Only granting the freedmen the vote, Sumner
writes with a degree of anguish, will “counterbalance the rebels.”
My dear Duchess,
. . . These are trying days for us. I am more anxious now than during the war. The animal passions of the Nation aided the rally then. Now the appeal is to the intelligence, & to the moral & religious sentiments. How strangely we are misrepresented in the Times. I read it always, & find nothing true in its portraiture of our affairs.
Believe me, the people are with Congress. When it is considered, that the Presdt has such an amazing part, it is extraordinary to see how the conscience of the masses has stood firm. Congress is misrepresented in England. I speak of the Lower House now. In my opinion it is the best that has ever been since the beginning of our govt. It is full of talent & is governed by patriotic purpose. There is no personal or party ambition, which prompts its course. It is to save the country, that it takes its present responsibilities.
You say “Why not urge the Abolition of the Black Codes”? This I have done from the beginning. There are several speeches of mine, which you have never seen, three years ago, against any exclusion of witnesses on account of color; also an elaborate report. A partial measure I carried. Since the cessation of hostilities this subject has occupied me constantly. In my speech at Worcester I dwelt on the Black Codes; then again in a speech early this session. At last we passed a Bill known as the Civil Rights Bill. It went through both Houses by unprecedented majorities. The Presdt. refuses to sign it. By our Constitution it requires a vote of 2/3ds to pass it over his Veto. It is still uncertain, if we can command this large vote. The division will be very close. The loss of this Bill will be a terrible calamity. It leaves the new crop of Black Laws in full force & gives to the old masters a new letter of license to do any thing with the freedman short of making him a chattel. A new serfdom may be substituted, & this is their cruel purpose.
But after most careful consideration I see no substantial protection for the freedman except in the franchise. He must have this (1) for his own protection (2) for the protection of the white Unionist & (3) for the peace of the country. We put the musket in his hands, because it was necessary. For the same reason we must give him the franchise. Unionists from the South tell me that unless this is done they will be defenceless. And here is the necessity for the universality of the suffrage. Every vote is needed to counter-balance the rebels.
It is very sad that we should be tried in this way. For our country it is an incalculable calamity. Nobody can yet see the end. Congress will not yield. The Presdt. is angry & brutal. Seward is the Marplot. In the cabinet, on the question of the last Veto, there were 4 against it to 3 for it; so even there among his immediate advisers the Presdt. is left in a minority. Stanton reviewed at length the Bill, section by section, in the cabinet & pronounced it an excellent & safe bill every way from beginning to end. But the Veto Message was already prepared & an hour later was sent to Congress.
You hear that I do not bear contradiction. Perhaps not. I try to bear every thing. But my conscience & feelings are sometimes moved, so that I may show impatience. It is hard to meet all these exigencies with calmness. I hope not to fail.
I despair of the Presdt. He is no Moses, but a Pharoah to the colored race, & they now regard him so. He has all the narrowness & ignorance of a certain class of whites, who have always looked upon the colored race as out of the pale of Humanity.
Ever Sincerely Yours, Charles Sumner
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866
(April 9, 1866)
On this date, Congress overrode Johnson’s veto and the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1866 became law. The measure, the first move to enforce the equal rights of the freedpeople by federal legislation (and a forerunner of the Fourteenth Amendment), defined citizenship for all persons born in the U.S. (excepting Indians not taxed) and guaranteed citizens the protection of the federal courts if states or federal territories deprived them of their civil rights. Republicans framed the bill in response to the notorious Black Codes passed in the Southern states in late 1865 and 1866. Johnson objected to the bill, arguing that it violated states’ prerogatives and privileged people of color. The Congressional override was the first time the Legislative branch passed a major bill over an executive’s objections.
AN ACT TO PROTECT ALL PERSONS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS, AND FURNISH THE MEANS OF THEIR VINDICATION.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, 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 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.
Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by this act, or to different punishment, pains, or penalties on account of such person having at any time been held in a condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court.
Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That the district courts of the United States, within their respective districts, shall have, exclusively of the courts of the several States, cognizance of all crimes and offences committed against the provisions of this act, and also, concurrently with the circuit courts of the United States, of all causes, civil and criminal, affecting persons who are denied or cannot enforce in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State or locality where they may be any of the rights secured to them by the first section of this act; and if any suit or prosecution, civil or criminal, has been or shall be commenced in any State court, against any such person, for any cause whatsoever, or against any officer, civil or military, or other person, for any arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs done or committed by virtue or under color of authority derived from this act or the act establishing a Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees, and all acts amendatory thereof, or for refusing to do any act upon the ground that it would be inconsistent with this act, such defendant shall have the right to remove such cause for trial to the proper district or circuit court in the manner prescribed by the “Act relating to habeas corpus and regulating judicial proceedings in certain cases,” approved March three, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, and all acts amendatory thereof. The jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters hereby conferred on the district and circuit courts of the United States shall be exercised and enforced in conformity with the laws of the United States, so far as such laws are suitable to carry the same into effect; but in all cases where such laws are not adapted to the object, or are deficient in the provisions necessary to furnish suitable remedies and punish offences against law, the common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State wherein the court having jurisdiction of the cause, civil or criminal, is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States, shall be extended to and govern said courts in the trial an
d disposition of such cause, and, if of a criminal nature, in the infliction of punishment on the party found guilty.
Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That the district attorneys, marshals, and deputy marshals of the United States, the commissioners appointed by the circuit and territorial courts of the United States, with powers of arresting, imprisoning, or bailing offenders against the laws of the United States, the officers and agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and every other officer who may be specially empowered by the President of the United States, shall be, and they are hereby, specially authorized and required, at the expense of the United States, to institute proceedings against all and every person who shall violate the provisions of this act, and cause him or them to be arrested and imprisoned, or bailed, as the case may be, for trial before such court of the United States or territorial court as by this act has cognizance of the offence. And with a view to affording reasonable protection to all persons in their constitutional rights of equality before the law, without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, and to the prompt discharge of the duties of this act, it shall be the duty of the circuit courts of the United States and the superior courts of the Territories of the United States, from time to time, to increase the number of commissioners, so as to afford a speedy and convenient means for the arrest and examination of persons charged with a violation of this act; and such commissioners are hereby authorized and required to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred on them by this act, and the same duties with regard to offences created by this act, as they are authorized by law to exercise with regard to other offences against the laws of the United States.
A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction Page 21
