RECONSTRUCTION: THE FINAL PLAN
The Congress which met in December, 1866, was the same body as in the
previous winter; but the prolonged contest, the President's misbehavior,
the South's rejection of the offered terms, and the popular verdict at
the November election, had strengthened the hands of the Republicans and
intensified their temper. Thaddeus Stevens brought in, February 6, 1867,
a bill which was trenchant indeed. It superseded the governments of the
ten unreconstructed States, divided their territory into five military
districts, placed their commanders under the orders, not of the
President, but of the general of the army, and suspended the habeas
corpus. It was military rule in its barest form, and for an indefinite
period. Blaine moved an amendment, specifying the terms on which the
States might be released from this military control and restored to
their normal status. But Stevens's despotic sway shut out the amendment
and carried the bill through the House. In the Senate, Sherman
successfully carried a substitute, much the same as the Blaine
amendment. This went back to the House, where a majority of Republicans
favored the change, but Stevens still opposed it, and had enough
followers to make together with the Democrats a majority that threw out
the whole measure. But success by such allies was undesired by the
radicals and alarming to the moderate Republicans. There was
reconsideration, minor concessions to Stevens, and the bill finally
passed February 20, not at all as he had designed it, but in a form due
either to Blaine or Sherman. It is singular that so important a measure
should be of doubtful paternity. It seems more like a production of
Sherman, who in constructive ability was far ahead of Blaine and of most
of his congressional colleagues. In its substance it represents
apparently the judgment and purpose of the great majority of the
Republicans in Congress.
It is remarkable that so vital and momentous a law should have been
enacted with so little discussion. It was hurried through, in order that
its passage twelve days before the close of the session might prevent
the President from "pocketing" it--letting it fail for want of his
signature, without risking a veto. The debate, as Blaine reports it in
his _Twenty Years of Congress_, seems to have been mainly for the
scheme, and against the far more drastic proposal of Stevens and
Boutwell,--in opposing which Blaine himself seems to have done service
certainly as creditable as any in his checkered career. But the radical
character of the bill as passed, its great advance on all earlier
proposals, seems to have called forth hardly any challenge among the
Republicans.
In a word, the law put the whole unreconstructed South,--all of the old
Confederacy except Tennessee,--under temporary military government,
subject to the President; and the commanders were at once to initiate
measures for new State organizations. They were to enroll all adult
males, white and black, as voters, except only such as the Fourteenth
Amendment would shut out from office; these voters were then to elect
delegates in each State to a convention; this body was to frame a
constitution incorporating permanently the same conditions of suffrage;
this constitution was then to be submitted to popular vote; and if a
majority ratified it,--if Congress approved it,--if the Legislature
elected under it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment,--and if and when
that amendment received enough ratifications to enact it,--then, at
last, each State was to be fully restored to the Union.
On this plan the States were rapidly and finally reconstructed. Its
central feature was the enforcement of suffrage for the negroes
throughout the South. Of this tremendous measure, but small discussion
appears in the debate over the bill. But it seems to have had behind it
the prevailing sentiment of the North. A good witness on this point is
the Springfield _Republican_. That paper had strongly advocated the
adoption of the Massachusetts plan, a reading and writing qualification
for suffrage--the State's only good legacy from the Know-nothing period.
Of such a provision it said January 9: "It would be a most potent
stimulus to education, and once made the national rule there would be
such a studying of spelling books as never was seen before.... There can
be no sure reliance on the votes of blacks any more than of whites who
cannot read their ballots." But this plan found little popular favor.
The objection to it which we now recognize,--that the Southern States
might probably have forborne to educate the freedmen, and so left them
disfranchised,--was not then prominent. But there had not come to be a
general recognition at the North of the danger of ignorant suffrage. Of
the actual drift of opinion the _Republican_ said, March 3, that equal
suffrage is "the sole condition about which there is any approach to
unanimity among our people."
To understand this opinion we must look back a little. The belief in
universal male suffrage was part of the Democratic movement that swept
almost unchallenged from Jefferson's time till Lincoln's. The mass of
ignorant immigrants gave some alarm, but they seemed to be successfully
digested by the body politic. Beecher, we have seen, thought suffrage a
"natural right," and that was a common doctrine. Besides, it was assumed
at the North that the negroes were naturally the friends of the
national government and of the party that had given them freedom. There
were politicians in plenty who looked to the negro vote to keep the
Republicans in control of the national government. Many of these
doubtless valued the party organization mainly as a means of
self-advancement; while others like Sumner devoutly believed that in the
Republican party lay the sole hope of justice and freedom. To the North
generally, the convincing argument for negro suffrage was that the
ballot would give the black man the necessary weapon for
self-protection. On this ground Mr. Schurz favored it in his report of
1865, and in reviewing the situation in 1904 he holds the same opinion.
The assumption in this view was that the freedmen and the former master
class were, and were to remain, natural enemies. Looking back to
slavery, which really combined an element of oppression with an element
of protection, the North saw only the oppression. Viewing the present,
it was not merely the State laws, but the frequent personal abuse of the
negroes which confirmed the idea that they must have the ballot for
self-protection.
On broader grounds, the question was reasoned thus: "The logical, the
necessary ultimate step in the negro's elevation to full manhood is his
possession of the vote. By far the most desirable road to this
consummation would be a gradual and educational introduction of the body
of freedmen to the franchise. But toward such a course the South
shows no inclination. The alternative remains--in the brief period
during which the national authority can be applied to organic
reconstruction--of establishing universal manhood suffrage; with the
drawback of a present admixture of a large ignorant and unfit element;
with the great disadvantage, too, of further alienating the two races
for the present; but with the possibility and hope that the exercise of
the ballot will in itself prove educational, and that the Southern white
man and Southern negro will ultimately fare better than if the one is
allowed to permanently disfranchise the other." Something like this,
apparently, whether wise or unwise, was the predominant judgment of the
better class at the North.
With others the argument was simpler. Blaine in his _Twenty Years_ gives
a common sentiment, himself in 1884 still concurring in it: "The North
believed, and believed wisely, that a poor man, an ignorant man, and a
black man, who was thoroughly loyal, was a safer and better voter than a
rich man, an educated man, and a white man, who in his heart was
disloyal to the Union." The _Republican_, on the contrary, expressed the
opinion: "It is better to be governed by ex-rebels than by fools."
The Fourteenth Amendment had been put forward virtually as an
invitation. It was rejected by the South, and the new plan--military
government, to give place to new constitutions with universal
suffrage--was issued as a mandate. It was promptly carried out. In
little more than a twelvemonth, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas had been reconstructed; their State
organizations were provisionally accepted by Congress in June, 1868; and
as their Legislatures at once ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and
secured its adoption, they were fully restored and their senators and
representatives admitted in July. Virginia and Mississippi managed to
stave off final action, hoping to escape the excluding clauses, until
after Grant's election to the Presidency in 1868; and their hopes were
justified when Grant gave his influence successfully with Congress
against the excluding clauses; so that these two States, with belated
Texas, were reorganized in the following year and admitted early in
1870. Georgia had troubles of her own, and a suspension by Congress
from full statehood for half a year; and her final admission, on July
15, 1870, marked definitely the end of the reconstruction process. The
registration of voters in the ten States had shown that in Alabama,
Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the colored voters
were in a majority; in Georgia, the two races were about equal; and in
Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas, one-third or more were
colored. The preponderance of voting power had been given to a people
just out of slavery. The practical working of the plan, and the six
further years of Federal supervision over the South, belong to another
chapter.
An episode in this story, though an important feature in a general
history, must be the impeachment of President Johnson in the spring of
1868. Though the main questions at issue were definitely settled, the
bitterness between the President and Congress lasted and increased. At
the same time with the final reconstruction measure, there was passed
the "Tenure of Office bill," which took away from the President the
power of removing his subordinates which all his predecessors had
enjoyed, and required the Senate's concurrence in removals as in
appointments. Some exception was made as to Cabinet officers; and the
President, exasperated beyond endurance by Stanton, after vainly, though
reasonably, asking the Senate to relieve him of his hostile secretary,
assumed the right to remove him by his own authority, and appointed Gen.
Lorenzo Thomas in his place, February 21, 1868. The House, in which the
radical temper had grown stronger than ever, in a blaze of excitement
voted the President's impeachment. He was tried before the Senate, the
House prosecutors being led by Stevens, Boutwell, and Benjamin F.
Butler, whose vindictive and unscrupulous personality had come to the
front. The President was defended by a group of the foremost lawyers in
the country, including Benjamin R. Curtis, Jeremiah S. Black, and
William M. Evarts. The only weighty article in the charge was that
concerning Stanton's removal, and upon this a legal defense was made
which now seems conclusive. But it has been justly said that the
President was on trial nominally for one class of offenses, but
practically for another--namely, his persistent opposition to the policy
of Congress. Party loyalty was invoked for his condemnation; the general
temper of the North was hot against him; wrath and tribulation were
predicted for any Republican senator who should vote for his acquittal.
In face of the storm, there were a few who quietly let it be known or
surmised that they should vote in their capacity as judges sworn to
follow the law and the facts, whatever the political consequences. The
decisive hour came, May 16, and the result no one could predict; the
Democratic senators and the four administration Republicans all would
sustain the President; seven additional votes would prevent the decisive
two-thirds condemnation. Man after man, Fessenden, Fowler, Grimes,
Henderson, Ross, Van Winkle, and Trumbull--Republicans all--voted "Not
guilty"; and, by nineteen to thirty-five, President Johnson escaped
deposition--to get rid of Stanton finally, and finish his term; to
return to the Senate from Tennessee; to take his place in history as an
honest and patriotic man, beyond his proper sphere, whose limitations
worked a part in the partial failure of reconstruction. The country
escaped a dangerous dislocation of the relation of Congress and the
executive, and the triumph of an exaggerated radicalism. The seven
independent senators sacrificed their future careers, and deserve the
perpetual gratitude of their country.
And now it remained for the nation, through a Presidential election, to
pass upon the completed work. In the Democratic convention at New York,
in July, 1868, the reactionary and the progressive elements strove. A
new Democracy was growing, intent on administrative reform and moderate
Constitutionalism; Samuel J. Tilden of New York and his allies were
among the leaders; their candidate was Chief Justice Chase. Only the
incongruity with his judicial position marred the fitness of Chase's
candidacy. Lincoln, though he had his own troubles in dealing with him,
said, "Of all the great men I have known, Chase is equal to about one
and a half of the best of them." He had proved eminent on the bench as
in the Cabinet, and under his lead the Supreme Court gave a series of
conservative decisions on reconstruction questions which were a most
valuable contribution to the national stability and security--a vital,
though not to the popular eye a conspicuous service in the
reconstruction period. Against him, the candidacy of George H. Pendleton
of Ohio represented the element historically unfriendly to the war for
the Union, and intensely opposed to the reconstruction measures. He had
the support of the Southern delegates, present in full force, and
lending to the cheering the dominant note of the well-known "rebel
yell." The reactionists got their own way with the resolutions, which
declared the reconstruction acts to be "unconstitutional, revolutionary,
and void." On the new question which was looming up, of shirking the
national debt by payment in promises, the platform leaned strongly
toward repudiation. Pendleton's supporters, seeing their candidate could
not win, and determined that the other Ohio man, Chase, should not win,
thwarted their New York opponents by a clever trick, and successfully
rushed through the convention the nomination of its presiding officer,
Horatio Seymour of New York, against his protest and to the discomfiture
of his associates. An able, accomplished man, but reckoned half-hearted
in the war, and not rising to statesmanlike proportions, he could not
outweigh the mischievous platform and the Vice-Presidential candidate,
the hot-headed Gen. Francis P. Blair of Missouri, who had just proposed
measures nothing short of revolutionary to override Congress. Against
this combination the Republicans advanced securely to victory. Meeting
in Chicago in May, they showed a temper more moderate than that of
Congress; they of course condemned the President, but they refused to
censure the seven independent senators; and upon Carl Schurz's motion
passed a resolution welcoming back all former enemies now become loyal,
and favoring the early and rapid removal of disabilities. As to the
Presidential nomination, there was no division,--it was given
unhesitatingly, unanimously, heartily, to General Grant. His
steadfastness and success in war had been matched by his magnanimity in
victory and his prudence in the troubled times that followed. Of manly
simplicity and solid worth, sagacious and successful wherever he had
been tried, he seemed at once an embodiment of past victory and an
assurance of future safety. Of the thirty-four States that voted, all
but eight were for Grant and Colfax. Seymour had New York, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Oregon, Georgia, and Louisiana. The
popular vote was 3,012,000 for Grant and Colfax to 2,703,000 for Seymour
and Blair.
The Republican convention had shirked the question of negro suffrage at
the North by referring it to the individual States. Its refusal in many
of the Northern States was felt as a discredit after it had been
enforced throughout the South. The Republicans in Congress took courage
from the election. The Fifteenth Amendment, forbidding the States to
deny the right to vote "on account of race, color or previous condition
of servitude," was brought forward in Congress in December, and passed
February 28, 1869. It was ratified in rapid succession by thirty States
out of thirty-seven,--Tennessee not acting, and negative votes being
given by California, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, and
Oregon,--and proclaimed as adopted, March 30, 1870.
With Grant's election, and the last touches of reconstruction sure to
follow close, the North, as it were, drew a deep breath of relief. It
felt that the fundamental issues were settled. The war had preserved the
Union and destroyed slavery. The consummation had been fitly rounded out
by the changes in the Constitution. The Southern States were restored to
their places. Vast tides of material advance were setting in. New
questions were rising, new ideas were fermenting. Good-bye to the
past,--so felt the North,--to its injustice and its strife. As the
nation's chieftain had said, in accepting the call to the nation's
Presidency, "Let us have peace."