The Man Who Saved the Union (61 page)

Congress, moreover, should finish the egalitarian task the war had begun. The American republic, Stevens said, had been built on the principle of equality. The founders had intended for all men to exercise equal rights but were stymied by the representatives of the slave power. “For the sake of the Union they consented to wait, but never relinquished the
idea of its final completion,” Stevens declared. “The time to which they looked forward with anxiety has come. It is our duty to complete their work. If this Republic is not now made to stand on their great principles, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to its center.”

Stevens’s insistence on black equality, shared by other Radical Republicans, inspired Congress in March 1866 to pass a
civil rights bill nullifying the Southern
black codes, guaranteeing
citizenship to the freedmen and promising equality before the law. Johnson vetoed the bill. “
In all our history, in all our experience as a people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted,” the president declared. “They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” But moderate Republicans joined the Radicals to override the veto, and the civil rights bill became law.

Yet the Radicals weren’t satisfied. Stevens, Sumner and the others understood that what Congress establishes by statute the Supreme Court can disestablish by decision. The Taney court had ruled in the
Dred Scott case that blacks could not be citizens, and though Taney was dead his successors on the court might follow his lead and find or conjure cause for disallowing the new civil rights act. To forestall such an outcome the Republicans proposed to write the essence of the civil rights act, the guarantee of citizenship, into the Constitution. They had revised the Constitution once already; the
Thirteenth Amendment, disallowing slavery, had passed Congress in January 1865, been ratified by most of the Northern states in short order and won the approval of the Southern states as a de facto condition of their readmission under the Johnson reconstruction plan.

The
Fourteenth Amendment was trickier. Johnson had endorsed the end of slavery—not that he had had much choice—but he remained stubbornly opposed to the idea of black citizenship. “
This is a country for white men,” he declared, “and, by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.” Nor was he alone in questioning a civil rights amendment. Several Northern states barred blacks from political participation and had no desire for a civil rights amendment to apply to
them
. Yet the status quo appeared intolerable to most Northerners.
Justice to African Americans apart, the end of slavery was about to produce a side effect not many Northerners—or Southerners—had previously thought through.
Abolition rendered inoperative the clause of the Constitution counting but
three-fifths of slaves toward Southern representation in Congress; the black populations of the South would now be counted in full. In other words, the South, far from being punished for its crimes against the Union, would be rewarded with extra seats in the House and with the extra electoral votes for president those seats would convey. It wasn’t beyond imagination that a Southerner would become president at the next election.

What to do? The Republicans couldn’t fiddle the numbers back down without denying their commitment to equality and the fundamental principles of democracy. Yet they
could
insist that Southern blacks be given full rights of citizenship, including the vote, so that they might have a voice in filling those extra Southern seats. But a direct guarantee of black suffrage wouldn’t sit well with the Northern states that still wanted to discriminate at the polls. The simplest solution was to count qualified voters rather than mere inhabitants in determining representation. If Southern states didn’t let blacks vote, those states would gain no congressional seats. Northern states that disallowed black voting would theoretically suffer, too, but because the numbers of Northern blacks were small, in practice no Northern state was likely to lose a seat in Congress.

The Republican drafters of the civil rights amendment began by declaring that “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.” This sentence would guarantee citizenship to African Americans (while bypassing
Indians, who were not subject to federal jurisdiction). The proposed amendment went on to require that all persons in every state be accorded “the equal protection of the laws.” It forbade the states to “abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” And it guaranteed “due process of law” to all.

The “equal protection” and “due process” clauses would keep constitutional lawyers busy for the next century and a half, but the true art began in the second section of the amendment. It confirmed the end of the three-fifths rule but went on to say that when a state denied the vote to any group of adult males (excluding those barred from voting by crime or participation in the late rebellion), that state’s representation in Congress would be trimmed by a proportional amount. Put otherwise, if Southern states denied the vote to blacks, they would be
worse
off than
before (by roughly the three-fifths the slaves had counted). Of course, the same rule applied to Northern states that didn’t allow blacks to vote, but it would have much less effect there.

As with most important works of art, what became the Fourteenth Amendment evoked strong emotions, often negative. Hardcore egalitarians complained that suffrage should have been addressed directly and that the proposed amendment left too much to chance and to the evil genius of Southern whites. Erstwhile abolitionist
Wendell Phillips, still president of the
Anti-Slavery Society, condemned it as a “
fatal and total surrender” to the South.
George W. Julian, a Radical congressman from Indiana, called it a “
wanton betrayal of justice and humanity.” But Thaddeus Stevens, though privately declaring the amendment a “
shilly-shally bungling thing,” publicly explained that nothing better could be accomplished under present circumstances. “
In my youth, in my manhood, in my old age,” he told the House, “I had fondly dreamed that when any fortunate chance should have broken up for a while the foundation of our institutions, and released us from obligations the most tyrannical that ever man imposed in the name of freedom, that the intelligent, pure and just men of this Republic, true to their professions and their consciences, would have so remodeled all our institutions as to have freed them from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich. In short, that no distinction would be tolerated in this purified Republic but what arose from merit and conduct.” This dream, however, had vanished in the crucible of the war and its turbulent aftermath. “I find that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it, in many of its parts, to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the storms of despotism.” Stevens had reconciled himself to what was possible. “Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels.”

53

T
HE
R
EPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP DROVE THE AMENDMENT THROUGH
Congress and prepared to fight the elections
of 1866 under its banner. Johnson prepared to fight back, and he enlisted Grant into service with him. Even Johnson’s enemies acknowledged the president’s skills as a stump speaker, and he intended to put his rhetorical talents to use on a several-state “swing around the circle.” He talked Grant into going by explaining that they would dedicate a memorial to Stephen Douglas in Chicago; the country would benefit from this display of bipartisan solidarity.

The crowds were tepid in the North but grew warmer as the president’s group reached the border states. The turnout in St. Louis was large and enthusiastic. Johnson interpreted the positive reception as an endorsement of his reconstruction policies. “
I look upon it as an indication of the popular heart moved with reference to questions now agitating the public mind,” he told an afternoon rally. The audience applauded more loudly. “Believing this, I come before you with the country’s flag bearing thirty-six stars, with the Constitution in one hand and the Union in the other.” Johnson’s reference was to his belief that all thirty-six states, North and South, were fully part of the Union, against the
Radical Republican view that the eleven rebel states remained outside. “The time has come when the great masses of the people of the United States should look to a constitutional government, and an emerging from the chaotic conditions in which they were plunged, and resuming our former relations. It behooves every man who loves the law and the Constitution to see that the questions involved are properly adjusted. In leaving the stand I leave with you the Constitution your fathers purchased with their
blood.” More applause and rousing cheers. “I turn over to you the flag of the country, not with twenty-five but with thirty-six stars. I turn over to you the Union. It will be protected and cherished in your hands, and, so far as I am concerned, being the humble medium in the Executive Department—God being willing—they shall be protected and defended at all hazards.” Louder cheers than ever.

The applause moved Johnson to greater flights that evening. He blamed violence in the South on the Radicals, who encouraged agitation against the existing Southern governments, he said. “Every drop of blood that was shed rests upon their shirts.” He lampooned the Radicals who called him a Judas for betraying what they asserted was the cause of the Union. “If I have played the Judas, who has been my Christ that I have played the Judas with? Was it Thad Stevens? Was it
Wendell Phillips? Was it
Charles Sumner?” At each name the audience hissed and shouted. “Are these the men that set themselves up and compare themselves with the Savior of man, and everybody that differs with them in opinion, and that try to stay and arrest their diabolical and nefarious policy, to be denounced as a Judas?” Cheers and a loud “Hurrah for Andy!” from the audience. Johnson derided the motives of his opponents in Congress and their allies in the executive branch, whom he was trying to remove from office. “Don’t you see, my countrymen, it is a question of power, and being in power.… Their object is to perpetuate themselves in power.… When you make an effort or struggle to take the nipple out of their mouths, how they clamor! They have stayed at home here five or six years, held the offices, grown fat, and enjoyed all the emoluments of position.” He called on his listeners to rally to his side. “If you will stand by me in trying to give the people a fair chance, to have soldiers and citizens to participate in these offices, God being willing I will kick them out. I will kick them out just as fast as I can.” More cheers, and shouts of “Kick ’em out!”

G
rant listened and groaned. “
I am getting very tired of this expedition and of hearing political speeches,” he wrote Julia from Auburn, New York, when the tour had hardly begun. “I must go through, however.” As Johnson’s attacks on the Radicals grew more heated, Grant’s tolerance diminished further. “
I never have been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political stump speeches of Mr. Johnson from Washington to this place,” he told Julia from St. Louis. “I look upon them as a
national disgrace.” He quickly added: “Of course you will not show this letter to anyone, for so long as Mr. Johnson is President I must respect him as such, and it is the country’s interest that I should also have his confidence.”

It complicated Grant’s position that many Republicans made no secret of their preference for him. He arrived at Cincinnati ahead of Johnson and sought refuge from politics by attending the theater. But a boisterous group of Union veterans cornered him there, shouting for him to come out and address them. Grant told them to send in their commander. When the officer arrived, Grant lectured sternly: “
I am no politician. The president of the United States is my commander-in-chief. I consider this demonstration in opposition to the president of the United States, Andrew Johnson. If you have any regard for me you will take your men away.” A local newspaper chuckled at the denouement: “A large crowd, bent upon seeing the Union hero, joined in the clamor, but neither the seductive strains of the band nor the enthusiastic calls of the people would induce the shy little man to appear. He had in fact smelt a rat, and doubtless in consideration of the fact that the Presidential party will be here tomorrow, of which he is at this time one, he vamoosed.” The crowd eventually realized that Grant had given them the slip, but they refused to be disheartened. “The boys abandoned the field with three mighty cheers for ‘General Grant, the next President of the United States!’ ” the paper related.

Grant’s unease grew into alarm as he considered the effects of Johnson’s campaign upon Southerners. “
I regret to say that since the unfortunate differences between the President and Congress, the former becomes more violent with the opposition he meets with until now but few people who were loyal to the Government during the rebellion seem to have any influence with him,” he wrote Phil Sheridan in Texas. “None have unless they join in a crusade against Congress and declare their acts, the principal ones, illegal, and indeed I much fear that we are fast approaching the point where he will want to declare the body itself illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.” Grant was writing Sheridan to say that the army must be on the alert. “Commanders in Southern states will have to take great care to see, if a crisis does come, that no armed headway can be made against the
Union
.” Grant ordered that army weapons stored in Southern states be removed to the North, lest local militias try to seize them, and he directed Sheridan to tell the Texas governor to leave the Texas militia in their homes. The governor was citing Indian
troubles as reason for summoning the citizen soldiers; Grant told Sheridan to inform the governor that the army would handle the
Indians. “Texas should have no reasonable excuse for calling out the militia.”