Reconstruction: A Constitution Amended and a President Impeached

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Introduction

During the Congressional election in the fall of 1866, Republicans gained even greater victories. This was due in large measure to Northern voters’ opposition to President Johnson. He lost favor because of his inflexible and overbearing attitude, as well as his missteps during his 1866 speaking tour. Leading Radical Republicans in Congress included Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner (the same senator whom pro-slavery South Carolina representative Preston Brooks had thrashed with his cane in 1856 during the Bleeding Kansas crisis) and Pennsylvania representative Thaddeus Stevens. These men and their supporters envisioned much more expansive change in the South. Sumner advocated for integrating schools and giving black men the right to vote. He also argued for disenfranchising many Southern voters. Stevens believed that the Southern states had forfeited their rights as states when they seceded and were no more than conquered territories that the federal government could organize as it wished. He envisioned the redistribution of plantation lands and U.S. military control over the former Confederacy.

Their goals included the transformation of the South from an area built on slave labor to a free-labor society. They also wanted to ensure that the freed people were protected and given the opportunity for a better life. Violent race riots in Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana in 1866 gave greater urgency to the second phase of Reconstruction, beginning in 1867.

The Reconstruction Acts

The 1867 Military Reconstruction Act, which encompassed the vision of Radical Republicans, set a new direction for Reconstruction. Republicans passed this law and three supplementary laws, called the Reconstruction Acts, to deal with disorder in the South. The 1867 Act divided the ten Southern states that had yet to ratify the 14th Amendment into five military districts (Tennessee had already been readmitted to the Union by this time and was excluded from these acts). Martial law was imposed, and a Union general commanded each district. These generals and 20,000 federal troops stationed in the districts were charged with protecting freed people. When a supplementary act extended the right to vote to all freedmen of voting age (21 years old), the military in each district oversaw the elections and the registration of voters. Only after new state constitutions had been written and states had ratified the 14th Amendment could these states rejoin the Union. Predictably, President Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Acts, viewing them as both unnecessary and unconstitutional. However, by this time Johnson had lost relevance and power, due to his impeachment and his senatorial acquittal by only one vote. When it came to the Reconstruction Acts, once again, Congress simply overrode Johnson’s vetoes. By the end of 1870, all the Southern states under military rule had ratified the 14th Amendment and been restored to the Union.

The 15th Amendment

In November of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, the Union’s war hero, won the presidency in a landslide victory against Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour. The Republicans blamed the devastating Civil War and the violence of its aftermath on the rival party during their campaign, a strategy that Southerners called “waving the bloody shirt.”

Though Grant did not side with the Radical Republicans, his victory allowed the Radical Reconstruction program to continue. In the winter of 1869, Republicans introduced another constitutional amendment, the third of the Reconstruction era. When Republicans had passed the 14th Amendment, which addressed citizenship rights and equal protections, they were unable to explicitly ban states from withholding the franchise based on race. With the 15th Amendment, they sought to correct this major weakness by finally extending to black men the right to vote. The amendment directed:

“[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Unfortunately, the new amendment had weaknesses of its own. As part of a compromise to ensure the amendment passed with the broadest possible support, its drafters specifically excluded language that addressed literacy tests and poll taxes, the most common ways blacks were traditionally disenfranchised in both the North and the South. Indeed, Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner, himself an ardent supporter of legal equality without exception to race, refused to vote for the amendment precisely because it did not address these obvious loopholes.

Despite these weaknesses, the amendment’s language did provide for universal male suffrage — the right of all men to vote —and crucially identified black men, including those who had been slaves. The final Reconstruction amendment was ratified in 1870, and with its ratification, many believed that the process of restoring the Union was safely coming to a close and that the rights of freed slaves were finally secure. African American communities expressed great hope as they celebrated what they understood to be a national confirmation of their unqualified citizenship.

Poll

The Civil War Amendments — or, as we labeled them in the Overview above, the ABC Amendments — were fundamental in transforming the political, societal, and historical landscape of America.

Discover

The 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision denied African Americans citizenship. Could the Civil Rights Act of 1866 reverse the terrible precedent?

Seeking to overcome all legal questions, in July of 1866, the Radical Republicans sent the 14th Amendment — with provisions that followed those of the 1866 Civil Rights — to state legislatures for ratification.

The 14th Amendment stated,

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

The amendment granted citizenship to every person born or naturalized in the U.S. regardless of race or color and including former slaves. It eliminated the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution; promised punishment for states that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitant, black or white; and barred Confederates from holding political or military office unless pardoned and approved by two thirds of Congress.

The amendment also settled the question of Civil War debts, specifying that all debts incurred by fighting to defeat the Confederacy would be honored. Confederate debts, however, would not be honored (including remuneration claims by former slaveholders for the loss of their slaves). Any state that ratified the 14th Amendment would automatically be readmitted to the Union — though no former Confederate states ratified the amendment in 1866.

Most importantly, perhaps, were the unintended consequences of the language in the 14th Amendment which stated:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Using this language, the Supreme Court incorporated the protection of the civil liberties expressed in the Bill of Rights to mean protection against state governments, and not just the federal government. The rights of people of every race, creed, color, ethnicity, and nationality had therefore been protected from arbitrary discrimination. Without the 14th Amendment, there would be no Brown v. Board of Education; no Gideon v. Wainwright; no Miranda v. Arizona; and no Roe v. Wade. This is perhaps the most important language of any amendment in the Constitution because it has had such a vast impact on a variety of issues in contemporary America.

President Johnson called for the rejection of the 14th Amendment, believing that black men and women were inferior to whites. The president’s speeches against ratification proved to be a disaster. Hecklers provoked Johnson into make damaging statements, and Republicans charged that Johnson was drunk when making his speeches. As a result, Johnson’s reputation plummeted and the 14th Amendment was ratified.