CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

 

 

“Pardon . . . Franchise.  Shall I Trust These Men and Not This Man?” in Harper’s Weekly, August 5, 1865.

           

 

The Man That Blocks Up The Highway.  Lithograph.  Philadelphia: J. L. Magee, 1866.

“Andy Johnson is Great, and the Veto is his Prophet,” declares Johnson as he welcomes southern rebels back into the Union while vetoing such Republican measures as the Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill.

 

 

Lyman Trumbull, Freedmen’s Bureau.  Speech . . . In the Senate of the United States, January 19, 1866 (Washington: H. Polkinghorn & Son, 1866).

Trumbull, a “moderate” Republican, in one of the first salvos on the duty of congressional Republicans in Reconstruction, insisted that constitutional authority and practical necessity dictated that Congress “legislate in the interest of freedom” to counter the “black codes” in the South, and urged the president to use the Freedmen’s Bureau “to protect the colored race in their rights” until lawful government could be established there. 

 

 

Richard Yates, The Only Salvation, Equality Of Rights.  Speech . . . In the Senate of the United States, February 19, 1866 (Washington: Congressional Globe Office, 1866).

Republican Representative Yates invoked the newly ratified 13^th Amendment to argue for a federal civil rights bill that would recognize the citizenship of the ex-slaves and protect all citizens “in the full and equal employment and exercise of all their civil and political rights, including suffrage.” The extent of authority granted to Congress by the  “freedom amendment” remained a contested issue inside and outside the Capitol.

 

 

Martin Russell Thayer, Speech . . . In the House of Representatives, March 2, 1866, On the bill to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights and to furnish the means for their vindication (Washington: Congressional Globe Office, 1866).

Following President Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill on the grounds that it favored one class of citizens over another, Republicans like Thayer insisted the 13^th Amendment gave Congress the power to define citizenship and protect citizens in their civil rights and warned that the southern rebellion would not be put down until black rights were lifted up.

 

 

Civil Rights.  Address of the Colored Citizens of Chicago to the Congress of the United States (Washington, 1866).

Blacks celebrated the passage of the Civil Rights Act over Johnson’s veto with mass demonstrations, such as the one reported from Chicago. Such displays of support attested not only to blacks’ close scrutiny of events in Washington but also their organized efforts to lobby for civil and political rights.

 

 

Is the South Ready for Restoration? (Philadelphia: Union League of Philadelphia, 1866).

The Union League kept up its advocacy of both the Union cause and the Republican Party after the war.  Angry at southern truculence under Johnson’s promise of easy “restoration” of former Confederate states to the Union, this Union League pamphlet catalogued acts of continued southern disloyalty: “Thus, like the Bourbons, the South has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  Unabashed, unhumiliated, unrepentant, it comes up to us with its old swagger, yielding nothing and demanding everything, listening to no reason and threatening revolution and confusion.”

 

 

Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Union Commission, Gentlemen of the Union League.  Printed letter, Philadelphia Nov. 27^th, 1866.

This appeal to the Union League to support freedmen’s education was central to Republican efforts to implant northern values and the party in the South lest the region revert to its old ways and Democratic control.

 

 

The Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 1, February, 1865.

Freedmen’s aid societies sent teachers, books, and supplies southward to remake the South and published regular reports on the progress of education and economic uplift among the freedpeople as a way to mobilize continued financial support for their schools and political support for Reconstruction.

 

 

Equal Suffrage.  Address From the Colored Citizens of Norfolk Va., to the People of the United States.  Also an Account of the Agitation among the Colored People of Virginia for Equal Rights.  With an Appendix Concerning the Rights of Colored Witnesses Before the State Courts (New Bedford: E. Anthony & Sons, 1865).

 

 

Liberty and Equality Before the Law.  Proceedings of the Convention of the Colored People of Va., Held in the City of Alexandria, Aug. 2, 3, 4, 5, 1865 (Alexandria: Cowing & Gillis, 1865).

Blacks across the South met in conventions in 1865 and 1866 to press for broad definitions of rights, which included the franchise and equal protection before the law as essential guarantees of liberty. Mustering mass support through conventions and publishing their proceedings were intended to show that blacks could not be ignored in the political process and gave the lie to the white southern argument that the freedpeople were incapable of self-government.

 

 

Michael Hahn, Manhood the Basis of Suffrage.  Speech . . . Delivered before the National Equal Suffrage Association of Washington, on Friday Evening, November 17, 1865 (Washington: Jos. L. Pearson, 1865).

Southern Unionists trying to form pro-Union governments in the immediate postwar South sought northern support for their efforts. In Louisiana, with a sizable propertied and educated “black elite,” prospects seemed good. Michael Hahn, a Johnson-appointed governor in 1865 who later became a Republican, understood that a pro-Union government could only succeed on a biracial basis and called for universal manhood suffrage.