The Republican party in Washington DC and white Southerners on the ground over the attempt to give shape to the reconstruction process
We’re going to cover a lot of ground in this lecture. And rather than stressing the particulars here I want you to keep an eye on on the sort of bigger picture and this is going to be the back and forth between the Republican party in Washington DC and white Southerners on the ground over the attempt to give shape to the reconstruction process and to shape the meaning of freedom in the post-Civil War era. So when we left off last time the former Confederate states had just passed the black codes. These were laws that
attempted to limit the civil rights of the formerly enslaved
African-Americans of the South. And it\’s in this
context in late 1865 that Congress comes
back into session. Now the first thing
that Republicans in Congress do is they simply refuse to seat the
claimants who had been elected to Congress under Andrew Johnson\’s policies. So Johnson has declared effectively that
Reconstruction is over that the South
is ready to return to Washington DC to take
it seats in Congress. Congress says not so fast. The US Constitution
gives Congress the right to judge the qualifications
of its own members. And the Republicans
in Congress in late 1865 say well we\’re not sure that Reconstruction is
over just yet. We\’re not quite ready to let former
Confederate generals back into Congress. So again the
Republican Party dominated Congress in
the early years of reconstruction that
the Republicans were the Party of Abraham
Lincoln the Union war effort and
of emancipation. The southern
states had not yet reclaimed their
seats in Congress. So it\’s no surprise that northern
Republicans constitute a large majority in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate. The two most important Radical Republican
leaders in Congress were Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania Representative
Thaddeus Stevens. We talked a
little bit about the radical republican
worldview in our last lecture. But
I want to point out at this point that not all Republicans
in Congress were radical there were
moderates and conservative
Republicans as well. So while Sumner and Stevens and their radical
allies supported for instance granting
the right to vote to Southern African Americans immediately other more conservative
Republicans weren\’t. So sure and preferred to proceed a little
bit more slowly. So at least initially congressional
Republicans focused on protecting the civil rights of African Americans
in the South. First of all this
means overturning those black codes that had made a mockery of black
freedom in the South. In early 1866
Congress passed a civil rights bill that
declared all people born in the United States with the exception of Native Americans citizens of the United States and established a set of basic civil rights that the federal government
would protect for its citizens significantly
African-Americans were included in the bounds of
American citizenship as established in 1866
Civil Rights Bill. Andrew Johnson who for his part felt that
Reconstruction was effectively over and that such attempts to protect black civil rights or unnecessary and dangerous. Andrew Johnson vetoed
the bill but Congress was able to pass
it over his veto Now in the meantime the situation on the ground in the South was
starting to deteriorate. And what we\’re
going to see here is this back
and forth where Congress take steps to protect black civil rights. And then Southern whites responds with an
attempt to control black freedom and to limit African-American
civil rights on the ground in the South so it goes back and forth. Congress acts
the white South reacts Congress act. Again the white South
reacts yet again. So in the summer
of 1866 violence across the South reaches epidemic proportions
white mobs in New Orleans and Memphis massacre dozens of
African-Americans representatives of
the Freedmen\’s Bureau in the South reported there was a widespread reported
widespread violence and in near universal unwillingness
on the part of white Southerners
to respect the civil rights of black men and black women. In spite of the passage of the Civil Rights Bill
earlier that year. In this context Congress
is kinda response. They seek to make
those guarantees of civil rights
more permanent. So they pass a
14th Amendment to the United States
Constitution. The 14th Amendment
defines the boundaries of American citizenship
and the rights guaranteed to citizens. This is really a
landmark piece of legislation a
landmark Amendment to the United States
Constitution. It lays out really for
the first time that the federal government
is duty-bound to protect certain
fundamental rights of its citizens. Now in order to be added to the Constitution it
constitutional amendment proposed amendment must be ratified by three-quarters
of the states. When this new Fourteenth
Amendment proposed Fourteenth Amendment
is sent to the states. The former
Confederate states refused to ratify
it in several of the Southern states to vote against ratification
was unanimous. So clear refusal
on the part of the former
Confederate states to accept this amendment which seeks to protect
the civil rights and the freedoms of formerly enslaved
African-Americans. So by early 1867
the idea of extending the right to vote African-American men. This is something
that had been too extreme for many members of the Republican Party only a year earlier but by early 1867 this idea
has an obvious appeal. White Southerners
intransigence The Black Codes the violence of the
summer of 1866 the refusal to ratify the proposed
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It is clear that the former
Confederate states are doing everything in their power to deny African American freedom
and civil rights. So it\’s in this context
that Republicans in Congress will turn
to the black votes. The logic here is that armed with the
right to vote Southern African
Americans would be able to protect themselves. They could elect
politicians who would represent
their interests on the local level and they
will help to create a more wholesome political atmosphere in the South. So in the
Reconstruction Act of 1867 Congress took an unprecedented step
extending the right to vote to Southern
African Americans. In addition that they
took power away from the white supremacist state governments that had been running the states since Andrew Johnson\’s may
proclamations of 1865. And finally the
Reconstruction Act charged that US military
with keeping order until new state governments which this time
would be elected by black as well as white voters could
take their place Sort of more than two years a population that had been enslaved had
become citizens and had earned the
right to vote. Former slaves were
now eligible to vote to hold public office. For the first time the South\’s
political regime was truly biracial and represented all of the region\’s
population rather than just the
white population. In addition the federal
government had taken a firm position
had established a baseline of civil rights for all of its citizens has shown a
willingness to stand up and protect those rights to make the promises of African American
freedom real in the early
reconstruction period. This is why this
period comes to be known as radical
reconstruction. So to close out
this lecture I want to talk it out one more new
development in US history that we see in the early reconstruction
period namely the impeachment of a
sitting president. In 1867 the US House
of Representatives brought charges against President Andrew
Johnson stemming from his improper removal of
the Secretary of War. In fact Congress is
real problem with Andrew Johnson went
much deeper than this. Since 1865 Johnson
had done everything in his power to subvert the reconstruction process. Believing that
reconstruction or restoration as he
preferred to call it was effectively
complete in mid to late 1865 Johnson
had since vetoed every piece of
Reconstruction legislation that Congress
had sent him and he had worked actively with the enemies of
reconstruction across the south to foil republican plans to pacify and bring order two. The former
Confederate states from the perspective of congressional Republicans. Therefore Andrew Johnson
simply had to go the future of the post-Civil War
South was at stake. So as outlined in
the US Constitution the House of
Representatives voted on the impeachment charges and then presented
its case to the Senate which would act as the jury in the
impeachment trial. If found guilty Johnson
would be removed from office 36 guilty votes would have been required to remove Johnson
from office but only 35 senators
voted against him. The impeachment attempt to therefore fails and Andrew Johnson
remains in office. So after the middle
of 1867 the center of political action would
shift to the south. But Republicans
in Congress had presided over an
extraordinary set of developments
between 18651867. They had created a
biracial democracy in a region barely
removed from slavery. They made real the promises of African-American
Freedom and establish the federal government
as a protector of the civil and
political rights of all of its citizens. And next time we will pick up the story at this point
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