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The Republican party in Washington DC and white Southerners on the ground over the attempt to give shape to the reconstruction process

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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The Republican party in Washington DC and white Southerners on the ground over the attempt to give shape to the reconstruction process

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