Please respond to each student as if you are speaking to them, with at least 137 words per student. There are 2 students to respond to. When responding to the students please do not be judgmental and critical.
This is from classmate:
The Radical Republicans in Congress were initially happy with the idea that Andrew Johnson would be the one taking over after the death of President Lincoln. Johnson had championed himself as somewhat of a “Moses” type for the newly freed slaves, making statements like “treason must be made odious, and traitors must be punished and impoverished”.[1] This however, was far from the truth because although Johnson did make these statements, he actually was of the belief that neither he nor congress held the power that was needed to impose these kind of damaging punitive measures against the leaders of the southern rebellion. In reality, Johnson was not only uninterested in pressing the southern states for a more fully recognized citizenship of the newly freed blacks, he even held some deeply racist views that were well documented at the time. In an address to Congress in December of 1867, Johnson remarked that “negroes…..have less capacity for government that any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.”[2]
I believe that these types of racist sentiments are what doomed any type of unification of the Radical Republican congress at the time who had members that had been sorely committed to the idea of franchising blacks with equal rights. Notable members included notable members like Charles Sumner, Ben Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and Henry Wilson.[3] These men were to only deeply committed to the idea that the very notion of a republican form of government allowed all loyal citizens the right to vote, they argued that a government could not be truly republican if they prevented this from happening.[4] In the end however, Johnson’s approach of reconciliation and reunification instead of reconstruction won the battle for determining the future that the nation would face. Because Johnson believed that the federal government lacked the rights to impose the types of radical changes on states like suffrage rights for blacks, it was unlikely that the 14th and 15th amendments would actually be enforced upon the states. Without support from the president in this area, the radicals were stuck because the ideas of the moderates in the congress won out, and thus ended the hopes of enforced suffrage for the newly freed blacks. This failed for a few reasons, firstly, many people of that time still held deeply racist ideals when it came to African-Americans, this is most evident in the speeches and words that have been attributed to Johnson during his time as president. Another reason that it failed was that in the north, where thousands of black votes would mean constant republican control, whites were not willing to give up that kind of power because it was clear and obvious that the newly freed slaves would have all been voting for the party that gave them their freedom.[5]
The biggest ideological shifts at the time however, centered on the Radical Republicans belief that the individual rights of the seceding states had been destroyed.[6] This was something that the moderate republicans and democrats at the time were not willing to accept. Their refusal was not because they did not want the southern states to be fairer in their treatment of the newly freed states, they were just unwilling to give the federal government that kind of power. This type of argument over the power and role of the federal government in relation to the type of power it can wield over the states is one that we still face today and will most likely never be fully agreed upon.
[1] Eric Foner, Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2014), loc 3620 of 18052.
[2] Ibid, loc 3664 of 18052.
[3] Ibid. loc 4553 of 18052.
[4] Ibid. loc 4631 of 18052.
[5] Ibid. loc 4795 of 18052.
[6] Ibid. Loc 4812 of 18052
This is from classmate:
At the start of President Johnson’s term, it appeared that the political balance of Presidential Reconstruction would fall on the side of the Radical Republicans. Johnson espoused his intentions to punish the treasonous South and to install yeomen-lead governments in a Reconstructed South. However, Johnson did not share the Radicals’ concern for black suffrage or black equality. Johnson paid lip-service to the idea of changing the political and economic landscape of the south, all the while maintaining a firm belief in states’ rights and limited federal government.[1] His laissez-faire approach to southern government, along with his white supremacist views quickly revealed that he was no friend to the Radical Republican agenda. There was hope that he was still aligned with the moderates within his party, but even that allegiance would shift as the weaknesses of Presidential Reconstruction began to reach Washington D.C. and the North.
Beginning with his two proclamations in May, which would return confiscated land and property rights to Confederate whites, as well as voting rights to many Confederates, Johnson quickly deserted any effort to help the freedmen. He did attempt to exclude the plantation elite from these benefits, but even that would fade as he aligned himself with the southern elites that he once claimed to hate in an attempt to ensure his re-election.[2]
As Northerners discovered the abuses of the freedmen, as well as the intransigence of the South toward the North, Republicans began to realize that the President was no longer aligned with their party, whether they were Radical or moderate. No matter where Republicans stood on black suffrage or even black civil rights, admitting a south whose political and economic construction was the same as before the war was something the Republican party could not accept. Outside of the “Unionist mountains,” asserts Foner, “Johnson’s policies had failed to create a new political leadership to replace the prewar “slaveocracy…” Most of this was due to Johnson’s re-alignment with the southern elite (and thus the southern Democrats.)[3]
The South attempted to sustain the old order as closely as possible. Johnson allowed that to happen. Despite being split by their views on black suffrage, it became clear to the Republicans, who controlled Congress, that they would need to split with Johnson and create their own policies for Reconstruction. In time, even moderates viewed black suffrage as a way of creating both political and economic conditions in the south as they envisioned them. Republicans would not fully embrace black suffrage until the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. However, it became clear to them that black equality needed protection and that black suffrage would soon follow.[4]
Racial violence was commonplace in the South. Freedmen were unable to secure the most basic rights under the law and even states such as Louisiana, whose free government was set up by Lincoln, experienced massacres of blacks who attempted to participate in civil life. As Johnson vetoed a variety of statutes passed by Congress, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill, Republicans moved to amend the Constitution. No one wanted a long-standing military occupation or permanent federal bureaucracy. Thus, the focus changed not just from Presidential Reconstruction to Congressional Reconstruction, but to the unprecedented effort to define in the Constitution, civil rights for all natural-born or naturalized citizens and to define citizenship, thus overturning Dred Scott permanently. Federal oversight through the judicial branch would keep a check on how states treated their citizens. Accepting the Fourteenth Amendment was required for southern states to be re-admitted to the Union, along with black suffrage.
Between the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional force behind black suffrage in the South (along with a push for the disenfranchisement of former Confederates), these measures starkly demonstrated the impact of the political changes in America. Debates centered on the disenfranchisement of whites instead of black voting and civil rights.[5] This was a direct result of the failure of Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, which allowed the white South to simply return to its former political, economic, and social policies, along with his shift in political allegiance. Largely due to Johnson’s actions, slavery was abolished only in name and the planter class generally still held the power, which still ignored the yeoman and Unionist whites. Congress was forced to address black rights and southern intransigence to create a new South. In the end, black suffrage, which few but the Radical Republicans gave any consideration to in 1865, became the vehicle for southern Reconstruction. The black vote would be the “freedman’s Moses” and in time, they hoped, not the federal government through military or bureaucratic intervention. Despite these needed corrections, even the Fifteenth Amendment would not truly give blacks the vote until almost a century later.
[1] Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution: 1863-1877, updated ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 177-178.
[2] Foner, Reconstruction, 183, 190-191
[3] Ibid., 197.
[4] Ibid., 242, 261.
[5] Ibid., 274.
