THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION -

ANDREW JACKSON -
To Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fell the task of overseeing the
restoration of the Union. Born in poverty in North Carolina, as a youth Johnson
worked as a tailor’s apprentice. After moving to Tennessee, he achieved
success through politics. Beginning as an alderman (a town official), he rose to
serve in the state legislature, the U.S. Congress, and for two terms as governor
of Tennessee.
A strong defender of the Union, he became the only senator from a seceding
state to remain at his post in Washington, D.C., when the Civil War began in
1861. When northern forces occupied Tennessee, Abraham Lincoln named him
military governor. In 1864, Republicans nominated him to run for vice president
as a symbol of the party’s hope of extending its organization into the south. A
lonely, stubborn man, he was intolerant of criticism and unable to compromise.
He lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion.

FAILURE OF PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION -

Johnson in May 1865 outlined his plan for reuniting the nation. He issued a
series of proclamations that began the period of Presidential Reconstruction
(1865–1867). Johnson offered a pardon (which restored political and property
rights, except for slaves) to nearly all white southerners,He excluded
Confederate leaders and wealthy planters whose prewar property had been
valued at more than $20,000.
Johnson also appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state
conventions, elected by whites alone, that would establish loyal governments in
the South. he granted the new governments a free hand in managing local
affairs.
At first, most northerners believed Johnson’s policy deserved a chance to
succeed. The conduct of the southern governments elected under his program,
however, turned most of the Republican North against the president. Reports of
violence directed against former slaves and northern visitors in the South
further alarmed Republicans.

THE BLACK CODES-

But what aroused the most opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy were
the Black Codes, laws passed by the new southern governments that
attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted blacks
certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited
access to thecourts. But they denied them the rights to testify against whites,
to serve on juries or in state militias, or to vote. And in response to planters’
demands that the freedpeople be required to work on the plantations, the Black
Codes declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be
arrested and hired out to white landowners.
the Black Codes so completely violated free labor principles that they called
forth a vigorous response from the Republican North. . A handful of southern
leaders were arrested but most were quickly released. Only one was executed
RADICAL. REPUBLICANS-
When Congress assembled in December 1865, Johnson announced that with
loyal governments functioning in all the southern states, the nation had been
reunited. In response, Radical Republicans, who had grown increasingly
disenchanted with Johnson during the summer and fall, called for the
dissolution of these governments and the establishment of new ones with
“rebels” excluded from power and black men guaranteed the right to vote. ,
Radicals shared the conviction that Union victory created a golden opportunity
to institutionalize the principle of equal rights for all, regardless of race.
The most prominent Radicals in Congress were Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus
Stevens, Before the Civil War, both had been outspoken foes of slavery and
defenders of black rights. Early in the Civil War, both had urged Lincoln to free
and arm the slaves, and both in 1865 favored black suffrage in the South.
Thaddeus Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of dis- loyal
planters and divide it among former slaves and northern migrants to the South.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVIL RIGHTS -

With the South unrepresented, Republicans enjoyed an overwhelming majority

in Congress. But the party was internally divided. Most Republicans were
moderates, not Radicals. Moderates believed that Johnson’s plan was flawed,
but they desired to work with the president to modify it. They feared that
neither northern nor southern whites would accept black suffrage.
Early in 1866, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois proposed two bills, reflecting
the moderates’ belief that Johnson’s policy required modification. The first
extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, The second, the Civil Rights Bill,
was described by one congressman as “one of the most important bills ever
presented to the House for its action.” It defined all persons born in the United
States as citizens and they were to enjoy without regard to race. Equality before
the law was central to the measure—no longer could states enact laws like the
Black Codes discriminating between white and black citizens. So were free
labor values. According to the law, no state could deprive any citizen of the
right to make contracts, bring lawsuits, or enjoy equal protection of one’s
person and property. These, said Trumbull, were the “fundamental rights
belonging to every man as a free man.” The bill made no mention of the right to
vote for blacks. In constitutional terms, the Civil Rights Bill represented the first
attempt to give concrete meaning to the Thirteenth Amendment, which had
abolished slavery, to define in law the essence of freedom.
To the surprise of Congress, Johnson vetoed both bills. Both, he said, would
centralize power in the national government and deprive the states of the
authority to regulate their own affairs. Moreover, he argued, blacks did not
deserve the rights of citizenship. But in April 1866, the Civil Rights Bill became
the first major law in American history to be passed over a presidential veto.

THE 14TH AMENDMNENT -

Congress now proceeded to adopt its own plan of Reconstruction. In June, it
approved and sent to the states for ratification the Fourteenth Amendment,
which placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born
in the United States, and which empowered the federal government to protect
the rights of all Americans. The amendment prohibited the states from
abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal
protection of the law.” In a compromise between the radical and moderate
positions on black suffrage, the amendment did not grant blacks the right to
vote. But it did provide that if a state denied the vote to any group of men, that
state’s representation in Congress would be reduced. The Fourteenth
Amendment offered the leaders of the white South a choice—allow black men
to vote and keep their state’s full representation in the House of
Representatives, or limit the vote to whites and sacrifice part of their political
power.
The Fourteenth Amendment produced an intense division between the parties.
Not a single Democrat in Congress voted in its favor, and only 4 of 175
Republicans were opposed. Radicals, to be sure, expressed their
disappointment that the amendment did not guarantee black suffrage.
Denouncing his critics, the president made wild accusations that the Radicals
were plotting to assassinate him. His behavior further undermined public
support for his policies, as did riots that broke out in Memphis and New
Orleans, in which white policemen and citizens killed dozens of blacks.
In March 1867, over Johnson’s veto, Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act,
which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and called for the
creation of new state governments, with black men given the right to vote. Thus
began the period of Radical Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.
A variety of motives combined to produce Radical Reconstruction— demands
by former slaves for the right to vote, the Radicals’ commitment to the idea of
equality, widespread disgust with Johnson’s policies, the desire to fortify the
Republican Party in the South, and the determination to keep ex-Confederates
from office. But the conflict between President Johnson and Congress did not
end with the passage of the Reconstruction Act.

IMPEACHMENT -
In March 1867, Congress adopted the Tenure of Office Act, barring the presi-
dent from removing certain officeholders, including cabinet members, with- out
the consent of the Senate. Johnson considered this an unconstitutional
restriction on his authority. In February 1868, he removed Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. The House of Representatives
responded by approving articles of impeachment—that is, it presented charges
against Johnson to the Senate, which had to decide whether to remove him
from office.
That spring, for the first time in American history, a president was placed on
trial before the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” By this point,
virtually all Republicans considered Johnson a failure as president
The final tally was 35-19 to convict Johnson, one vote short of the two-thirds
necessary to
remove him. Seven Republicans had joined the Democrats
in voting to acquit the president.
A few days after the vote, Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, the Union’s
most prominent military hero, as their candidate for president. Grant’s
Democratic oppo- nent was Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York.
Reconstruction became the central issue of the bit- terly fought 1868
campaign. Republicans identified their opponents with secession and treason, a
tactic known as “waving the bloody shirt.” Democrats denounced
Reconstruction as unconstitutional and condemned black suffrage as a
violation of America’s political traditions. They appealed openly to racism.

THE 15TH AMENDMENT -

Grant won the election of 1868, although by a margin
The result led Congress to adopt the era’s third and final amendment to the
Constitution. In February 1869, it approved the Fifteenth Amendment, which
prohibited the federal and state govern- ments from denying any citizen the
right to vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the Democratic Party, it was
ratified in 1870.
Although the Fifteenth Amendment opened the door to suffrage restric- tions
not explicitly based on race—literacy tests, property qualifications, and poll
taxes—and did not extend the right to vote to women.

BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM -
Reconstruction redrew the boundaries of American freedom. Reconstruction
Republicans’ belief in universal rights also had its limits. The racial boundaries
of nationality had been redrawn, but not eliminated.
RIGHTS OF WOMEN -
Women activists saw Reconstruction as the moment to claim their own
emancipation. No less than blacks, women had arrived at a “transition period,
from slavery to freedom.” The rewriting of the Constitution, offered the
opportunity to sever the blessings of freedom from sex as well as
race and to “bury the black man and the woman in the citizen.” The destruction
of slavery led feminists to search for ways to make the promise of free labor
real for women. Other feminists debated how to achieve “liberty for married
women.”
Demands for liberalizing divorce laws and for recognizing “woman’s control
over her own body” moved to the center of many feminists’ concerns.

FEMINISTS AND RADICALS -

The Fourteenth Amendment for the first time introduced the word “male” into
the Constitution, in its clause penalizing a state for denying any group of men
the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment outlawed discrimination in voting
based on race but not gender. These measures produced a bitter split both
between feminists and Radical Republicans, and within feminist circles.
Some leaders, like Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, opposed the Fifteenth
Amendment because it did nothing to enfranchise women. . On occasion, they
appealed to racial and ethnic prejudices, arguing that native- born white
women deserved the vote more than non-whites and immi- grants.
The result was a split in the movement and the creation in 1869 of two hostile
women’s rights organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association, led
by Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, with Lucy Stone as
president. They would not reunite until the 1890s.
Despite their limitations, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the
Reconstruction Act of 1867 marked a radical departure in American and world
history.