The Man Who Saved the Union (60 page)

J
ohnson’s reluctance to pick a fight with France reflected his preoccupation with the Republicans in Congress. Johnson’s first steps toward
reconstruction gave the Radical Republicans—the members of the party most devoted to equal rights for the former slaves—some of what they wanted but by no means all. On paper the exclusion from amnesty of the wealthy, defined as those with taxable property worth more than $20,000, portended the destruction of the planter class; the Radicals deemed this a good thing. But the restriction of suffrage to those who had voted in
1860 transparently barred blacks from politics. Congressional Republicans were deeply divided over the question of black suffrage, but to the Radicals this exclusion was disturbing and unacceptable.

The split among the Republicans allowed Johnson’s plan to proceed. Lukewarm rebels, closet Unionists and upcountry farmers dominated the constitutional conventions in the Southern states, raising the prospect that the postwar governments would be more democratic than the antebellum versions. But the constitutions the conventions wrote made no provisions for African American political participation, demonstrating that Southern democracy would stop short of the color line.

Early laws enacted by the governments elected under the new constitutions demonstrated still more: that on the race question, white resistance and reaction were rapidly setting in. In one Southern state after another the all-white legislatures approved general policies regarding the conduct of African Americans. These “black codes” addressed numerous of the issues attending the transition of blacks from slavery to freedom. They defined legal rights for the freedmen, allowing them to bring cases to court, to testify at trial, to marry, to have custody of their children. In this respect they marked an advance over slavery. But the codes also outlawed vagrancy and required blacks to find and keep employment, typically on terms dictated by white planters. Unemployed blacks could be imprisoned and hired out by the state to those same planters. As the codes took effect they revealed their central purpose: to re-create the caste system of slavery without the formal props of the peculiar institution.

The black codes convinced the Radical Republicans that Johnson couldn’t be trusted with reconstruction. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania led the Radicals in the House of Representatives. Lame from birth, Stevens had long identified with the disadvantaged. He was elected to
the House as a Whig but abandoned that party in frustration at its waffling on slavery. He became a founder of the Pennsylvania branch of the Republican party and was returned to Congress in time to support Lincoln against secession. He was chosen chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee shortly after the war commenced and in that post helped Lincoln raise the money to fight the rebels. But as the end of the war approached, he increasingly differed with Lincoln over reconstruction and demanded that the South be treated not as a lapsed partner but as a conquered province, that the planter class be broken forever, and that African Americans be accorded their democratic rights, including full citizenship and the vote.

Charles Sumner had an even more personal stake in reconstruction, having given his blood, under the beating by
Preston Brooks, on behalf of African Americans. The assault crippled the Massachusetts senator, but it silenced him only temporarily—until he regained consciousness—and it reinforced his belief that the slave system was rooted in sin and nurtured on violence. At the end of the war he advocated the fullest punishment of the rebels and the fullest equality for the former slaves.

Stevens and Sumner were revolutionary idealists; their critics called them raving zealots. But they were also practical politicians, as to an even greater degree were their moderate Republican colleagues. The secession of the South had been the best thing to happen to the Republican party in its short life, giving it control of Congress and the presidency. The return of the South, the stronghold of the Democrats, would threaten the Republican primacy unless measures were taken to bolster the Republicans there. When the Republicans advocated giving the vote to Southern blacks, they reasonably assumed that the freedmen would vote Republican out of gratitude toward their emancipators, hostility toward their oppressors or simple self-defense. The last thing either the Radicals or the moderates wanted was to let the Southern states back into the Union without some guarantee that blacks would exercise real political power. Because this was the result that Johnson’s reconstruction plan was producing, they turned against it with a will.

Johnson provoked them further by retreating from parts of his own initial policy. “
Treason is a crime and must be made odious,” he had declared upon assuming the presidency, and his exclusion of wealthy planters and influential Confederates from political participation had made him look as though he meant it. But events soon proved that though he despised the master class as a class, he couldn’t resist its members
as individuals. Prominent Southerners who entreated the president for pardon discovered that he was happy to assent; the exercise apparently stroked his ego. Psychology apart, Johnson guessed that though the Republicans of the North would never embrace him, the Democrats of the South just might.

Whether or not the Southern
Democrats thought they were embracing Johnson, they eagerly grasped what he offered, and when the Southern states elected federal representatives and senators, the new delegations to Congress looked suspiciously like the old, prewar delegations. Georgia’s
Alexander Stephens, formerly vice president of the Confederacy, was simply the most senior rebel among the many who received pardon or amnesty from Johnson in order to serve.

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T
HE STRUGGLE BETWEEN
J
OHNSON AND THE
R
EPUBLICANS REMINDED
Grant why he disliked politics so. His hope for honor in politics had died with Lincoln; he distrusted Johnson and the Radicals about equally. He appreciated the praise he received wherever he went, and he understood that it rested on the perception that he was a hero who stood apart from the grubby world of politics.

But standing apart grew harder. Grant agreed with Johnson in hoping for a swift transition to peace, but he sided with the Radicals in deeming protection for the freedmen essential to ensuring the permanence of the Union victory. As general-in-chief he commanded the troops that occupied the South, and though the return of civilian government under Johnson’s reconstruction program diminished the day-to-day responsibilities of the occupation force, the army might still wield considerable power across the South should Grant choose to exercise it. Yet he couldn’t exercise it independently of Johnson, at least not for long.

Johnson’s jealousy and ambition complicated matters further. Johnson knew that Grant was far more popular than he was, making the president reluctant to push Grant in directions Grant didn’t want to go. For the same reason Johnson tried, whenever possible, to entice Grant into supporting his policies—and, Johnson hoped, improving his chances for another term as president.

At times his efforts succeeded. In the autumn of 1865, Johnson asked Grant to take a tour of the South. Grant’s formal charge was to inspect federal troops and installations; the broader purpose was to assess the mind and mood of the former rebels. Grant crossed the Potomac into Virginia, then continued south through the Carolinas to Georgia before
returning to Washington via Tennessee. He got back to the capital in December. “
General Grant was in the council-room at the Executive Mansion today, and stated the result of his observations and conclusions during his journey south,”
Gideon Welles observed in his diary for December 15. “He says the people are more loyal and better disposed than he expected to find them, and that every consideration calls for the early reestablishment of the Union. His views are sensible, patriotic, and wise.” Johnson agreed, and he directed Grant to summarize his assessment in writing.

“
I saw much and conversed freely with the citizens of these States, as well as with officers of the army who have been stationed among them,” Grant recorded. “I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections—slavery and states’ rights, or the right of a state to secede from the Union—they regard as having been settled forever, by the highest tribunal, arms, that man can resort to.” Nor was this mere acquiescence. “I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision arrived at as final but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them on the field and in council.”

Yet the South wasn’t ready for self-rule, Grant said. Four years of war had disrupted habits of yielding to civil authority. The army still had a role to play. “I did not meet anyone, either those holding place under the government or citizens of the Southern states, who think it practicable to withdraw the military force from the South at present. The white and the black mutually require the protection of the general government.” Grant did not expect the troops to fight or even look particularly fearsome. “The mere presence of a military force, without regard to numbers, is sufficient to maintain order.” The makeup of garrisons, however, was a matter of some delicacy. In places where there were many freedmen, the troops should be white. “The presence of black troops, lately slaves, demoralizes labor both by their advice and by furnishing in their camps a resort for the freedmen for long distances around.” Moreover, black troops commanded less respect than white, most conspicuously, if somewhat surprisingly, among black civilians. “The late slave seems to be imbued with the idea that the property of his late master should by right
belong to him, or at least should have no protection from the colored soldier. There is danger of collisions being brought on by such causes.”

Grant elaborated on this point. Since emancipation blacks had dreamed—and been encouraged by
Radical Republicans and others to dream—of being awarded the lands of their former masters. The dream hadn’t been realized and by the end of 1865 looked as though it never would be. Yet it persisted among the freedmen and hindered the economic recovery of the South. “This belief is seriously interfering with the willingness of the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year,” Grant wrote. Potential employers and officials of the
Freedmen’s Bureau tried with only mixed success to convince the former slaves that they still had to work, even if for pay. “In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman’s mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman has the right to live without care or provision for the future. The effect of the belief in division of lands is idleness and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities.” This road would lead to disaster for the freedmen, Grant predicted. “In such cases I think it will be found that vice and disease will tend to the extermination or great reduction of the colored race.” The federal government and especially the Freedmen’s Bureau had the responsibility to prevent this outcome. “It cannot be expected that the opinions held by men at the South for years can be changed in a day, and therefore the freedmen require for a few years not only laws to protect them but the fostering care of those who will give them good counsel and in whom they rely.”

G
rant’s report was as apolitically objective as he could phrase it, but it was immediately turned to politically subjective use. Johnson appended the report to a self-congratulatory message he sent to Congress formally declaring that the rebellion had been suppressed, that the United States had reclaimed control of all the insurrectionary states, that federal courts and post offices had been reopened and that federal revenues were being collected. “
The aspect of affairs is more promising than, in view of all the circumstances, could well have been expected,” Johnson asserted. “The people throughout the entire South evince a laudable desire to renew their allegiance to the Government and to repair the devastations of war by a prompt and cheerful return to peaceful pursuits.” He acknowledged sporadic outbreaks of violence but said they weren’t worrisome. “These are local in character, not frequent in occurrence, and are rapidly disappearing
as the authority of civil law is extended and sustained.” Race relations posed continuing challenges; this could not be otherwise given the momentous changes in Southern affairs. “But systems are gradually developing themselves under which the freedman will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled, and, by means of his labor, make himself a useful and independent member in the community in which he has a home.” Johnson anticipated further rapid progress. “From all the information in my possession and from that which I have recently derived from the most reliable authority”—he cited Grant’s report specifically—“I am induced to cherish the belief that sectional animosity is surely and rapidly merging itself into a spirit of nationality, and that representation, connected with a properly adjusted system of taxation, will result in a harmonious restoration of the relation of the States to the National Union.”

Thaddeus Stevens didn’t let Johnson’s message land on his House desk before he rose to defy the president. To claim that the Southern states were full members of the Union was ludicrous, Stevens said. “
They have torn their constitutional states into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different character.” They couldn’t simply resume where they had left off in 1861. “Dead men cannot raise themselves. Dead states cannot restore their own existence.” Neither could the president restore them. Stevens asked his fellow legislators to consider where the Constitution reposed such restorative power. “Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the executive, for he only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the commander-in-chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law.” The legislature, alone, could restore the states, Stevens said. Two provisions of the Constitution controlled the issue: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union,” and “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” Who was the United States, in this context? “Not the judiciary, not the President, but the sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives in Congress.”