Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) 📕

had no right to fasten federal oversight agencies on states it was determined to bar from their due representation in Washington—and he let people draw their own conclusions from his contention that the Southern states were still states. Three days later, in a Washington’s Birthday speech at the White House, Johnson linked himself to Andrew Jackson, fighting off a new set of enemies of the Union. “Who has suffered more than I have?” Johnson whined. When a voice in the crowd asked him to name names, Johnson singled out Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips, as though they were public enemies. And then, as if to crown these gaffes, Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill on March 27, effectively burning whatever bridges he still had to the Republican Party that had nominated him only a year and a half before. Even moderate Republicans were aghast at Johnson’s recklessness, especially since the civil rights bill had been written and rewritten by Lyman Trumbull of Illinois specifically to appease Johnson.65

Rather than managing Congress in Lincoln’s style, Johnson had only succeeded in colliding with it and making himself look the worse for the wear. On April 9, Congress successfully overrode Johnson’s veto of the civil rights bill (although the Senate managed the override only by a single vote); a second version of the Freed-men’s Bureau bill was passed, and when Johnson vetoed it again, Congress overrode that veto as well. Finally, on April 30, determined to put black civil rights beyond the reach of Johnson’s interference and Johnson’s vetoes, William Pitt Fessenden in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House introduced a proposal for a new constitutional amendment, bluntly establishing a jus soli baseline for defining United States citizenship, and subordinating state citizenship to it.

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. 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.

This effectively removed the definition of both citizenship and voter eligibility from state jurisdiction and handed it to the federal government. But this was not all: the amendment went on to expel from Congress any member of the House or Senate, or any civil or military officer of the United States, who had been “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” and imposed repudiation of the Confederate debt on the former Confederate states, so that anyone still holding Confederate securities and expecting to get them redeemed was left to use them as wallpaper. Predictably, Johnson gagged on the amendment. But since amendments to the Constitution do not require a presidential signature, both houses of Congress passed this Fourteenth Amendment by the required two-thirds majority in June 13, 1866, and forwarded it to the state legislatures for ratification without even bothering to send Johnson the customary notification resolution.66

Johnson attempted to fight back with what powers he still had in hand, but by the summer of 1866 even the small standing he had as president was dwindling. The popular songwriter Henry Clay Work set his contempt for Johnson to music:

Who shall rule this American nation? Say, boys, say!

Who shall sit in the loftiest station? Say, boys, say!

Shall the men who trampled on the banner?

They who now their country would betray?

They who murder the innocent freed men? Say, boys, say!

chorus: No never! no, never! The loyal millions say;

And ‘tis they who rule this American nation, They, boys, they!

Who shall rank as the family royal? Say, boys, say!

If not those who are honest and loyal? Say, boys, say!

Then shall one elected as our servant

In his pride, assume a regal way?

Must we bend to the human dictator? Say, boys, say!

Shall we tarnish our national glory? Say, boys, say!

Blot one line from the wonderful story? Say, boys, say!

Did we vainly shed our blood in battle?

Did our troops resultless win the day?

Was our time and our treasure all squander’d? Say, boys, say!67

With congressional elections looming in the fall of 1866, Johnson embarked on a desperate bid to rally popular support for his collapsing Reconstruction plan, making a whirlwind speaking tour of the North, a “swing round the circle,” and dragging a reluctant General Grant with him to provide moral support. A National Union Convention, designed to unite moderate Republicans and Northern Democrats behind Johnson, met in Philadelphia in August, but it was upstaged by a Radical-sponsored Southern Loyalists’ Convention, which paraded through the streets of Philadelphia in September to hear Frederick Douglass and Quaker activist Anna Dickinson offer impassioned appeals for black equality. Johnson, for his part, could not seem to open his mouth without offending people, and his rough country mannerisms (in contrast to Lincoln’s, which had been smoothed by a lifetime of trying to elude his backwoods origins) dampened support across the North rather than rousing it. “I care not for dignity,” Johnson boasted, and promptly provided all the proof necessary. When a heckler in Cleveland on September 3 shouted that Johnson couldn’t look a man in the face, Johnson lost all self-control and began shouting,

I wish I could see you; I will bet now, if there could be a light reflected on your face, that cowardice and treachery could be seen in it. Show yourself. Come out here where we can see you. If ever you shoot a man, you will stand in the dark and pull your trigger … Those men—such a one as insulted me here tonight—you may say, has ceased to be a man, and in ceasing to be a man shrunk into the denomination of a reptile, and having so shrunken, as an honest man, I tread on him.68

In the November elections, the Republicans crushed Johnson’s moderate and Democratic friends,