XIV ANDREW JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION: 1865

THE problem of reconstruction occupied the mind of every politician and reformer in the winter of 1864-1865. Abolitionists applauded an intimation by Lincoln in his annual message of a willingness to compromise with congressional radicals on the issue.1 The thorny problem of the readmission of Louisiana under the Banks-Hahn Constitution of 1864 was dumped into the House Committee on Rebellious States in December. The chairman of this committee was James Ashley of Ohio, a radical antislavery man and a friend of several leading abolitionists. Ashley and Thomas Eliot, a radical Republican from Massachusetts, evidently negotiated a compromise with Lincoln whereby Ashley promised to accept the admission of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas under Lincoln’s 10 per cent plan in return for the administration’s acceptance of the right of Congress to prescribe the terms of reconstruction in the other Confederate states. Charles Sumner participated in the negotiation of this compromise and reluctantly approved its terms.²

Phillips and most other abolitionists denounced the compromise. Phillips argued that no matter what conditions Congress laid down for other states, the readmission of Louisiana would create a dangerous precedent for presidential reconstruction of the rest of rebeldom.³ “If Congress allows the President to determine the conditions on which Louisiana shall return to the Union,” asked the Commonwealth, “what resistance can it make when he brings Florida and Alabama along?”⁴ Phillips and George Stearns hurried to Washington for consultation with radical leaders. Henry Winter Davis and William D. Kelley told Phillips that most radicals favored Negro suffrage but that they were powerless in the face of Lincoln’s control of a majority of the party. The only hope was in an aroused public opinion that would convince the president that the North wanted equal suffrage as a condition of reconstruction. They urged Phillips and the abolitionists to keep up the demand for Negro suffrage. Meanwhile the radical leaders promised to do all they could to defeat the admission of Louisiana.5

Ashley drafted a proposal for equal suffrage in the eight nonreconstructed Confederate states, but a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans voted down his plan in committee. Instead, Ashley was forced to report to the House a bill to admit Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee under Lincoln’s reconstruction plan and to admit the rest under conditions similar to those of the Wade-Davis bill vetoed by Lincoln the previous summer. By prior arrangement with Ashley, Congressman William D. Kelley introduced an amendment on the House floor enacting impartial suffrage. Kelley was a prominent radical from Pennsylvania, allied to Philadelphia’s abolitionist circles by friendship and marriage. He pleaded for his amendment in a speech that became a classic in the struggle for equal suffrage. The House was impervious to his eloquence, however, and refused to pass the amendment.⁶

Ashley was criticized by abolitionists who were not aware of his backstage maneuvers in the House and thus did not understand why he had reported out his reconstruction bill without Negro suffrage. He explained in a House speech of February 22 that he had no choice; an adverse committee majority had compelled him to report the emasculated bill. He frankly expressed the hope that the House would pass no reconstruction measure at all this session. He wanted the question to go over to the next Congress in which the radicals would be stronger. Ashley also sent a private note to Tilton and to Charles Slack, editor of the Commonwealth, explaining the complex maneuvers in Congress. The Independent and Commonwealth published these letters in order to vindicate Ashley’s fidelity to the cause.7

As Ashley had hoped, the House laid all reconstruction proposals on the table. The real battle, however, was shaping up in the Senate where moderate Republicans were trying to force passage of a resolution recognizing Louisiana as a legitimate state “entitled to the guaranties and all other rights of a State government.” Abolitionists feared that adoption of this resolution would establish a precedent against the requirement of equal suffrage as a condition of reconstruction. Garrison was silent on the issue, but Phillips and the Commonwealth frantically urged antislavery Republicans to defeat “this suicidal act.”⁸ Sumner and a small band of radical associates were equal to the occasion. They introduced dilatory motions and filibustered against the resolution, preventing it from coming to a vote before Congress adjourned on March 4.⁹ Sumner received the fervent thanks of abolitionists for his decisive role in defeating the admission of “the sham state of Louisiana.” The Bird Club in Boston unanimously approved Sumner’s course and praised him as the savior of Negro suffrage.¹⁰

The defeat of Louisiana’s bid for readmission buoyed up the spirits of abolitionists. During the winter they professed to discern a favorable movement of northern public opinion toward Negro suffrage. Phillips reported that his audiences cheered his most radical utterances. Henry Ward Beecher came out strongly for Negro suffrage, and several northern Protestant denominations followed suit. Prominent public figures such as Salmon P. Chase and important Republican newspapers such as the New York Tribune and the Boston Journal endorsed the principle of equal suffrage.¹¹ Charles Slack informed Sumner at the end of February that “the idea of negro suffrage in the disloyal states grows daily in favor and advocacy among [Boston] business men.” Lydia Maria Child believed that many northerners had been converted to equal suffrage by the performance of Negro troops in the war. In early April Frank Sanborn observed that “the question of Reconstruction on the basis of negro suffrage is coming up for discussion everywhere, and the converts to Phillips’ view are increasing fast.”12

But a new danger to abolitionist hopes appeared as the war drew to a close. With victory assured there was a noticeable softening of the northern attitude toward rebels. Lincoln’s inaugural plea for malice toward none and charity for all appealed to a growing number of Yankees. The fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender sent the North into paroxysms of joy. The war was virtually over, and many Americans stood ready to forgive their enemies. Abolitionists feared that this mood boded ill for the freedmen. A soft attitude toward southern whites might be translated into a reconstruction policy that failed to secure the rights of Negroes. Abolitionists warned against sentimentality in dealing with the South. “I am astonished at the gammon still prevailing at the North about our Southern brethren, and their softened feelings and longings to come back, etc., etc.,” wrote Laura Towne from the South Carolina sea islands. “They are hungry, and long for loaves and fishes, but … they are bitter and spiteful and ‘cantankerous’ as ever, and show extreme contempt for Northerners while they are accepting their benefactions.” Sanborn rejoiced in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox but lamented that “the danger of neglecting the colored men in our plans of Reconstruction is still great.”¹³

“PARDON. Columbia—‘Shall I Trust These Men’?” Nast in Harper’s Weekly

“FRANCHISE. ‘And Not This Man’?” Nast in Harper’s Weekly

In a speech to a group of happy White House serenaders on the evening of April 11, Lincoln appealed for public acceptance of the reconstructed government of Louisiana. He wished that suffrage could have been extended to black soldiers and literate Negroes, but he felt that colored men would get the ballot sooner by working through the established Louisiana government than by tearing it down and starting anew. Lincoln regarded his reconstruction policy as a promise to Louisiana to be broken only if it proved a bad promise.14

Some abolitionists were discouraged by the president’s renewed commitment to the Louisiana policy, but others found grounds for hope in Lincoln’s willingness to break a “bad promise.” It would be the task of radicals to convince the president that reconstruction, Louisiana-style, was a “bad promise.” Many abolitionists, remembering Lincoln’s step-by-step progress from a war policy of noninterference with slavery to one of universal emancipation looked forward hopefully to his conversion to Negro suffrage.

Less than four days after his speech of April 11, the president was dead. Abolitionist reaction to his assassination was mixed. All, of course, were shocked and appalled by the enormity of the crime. Nonetheless some abolitionists interpreted Lincoln’s murder as a warning against leniency in the reconstruction of the South. It was widely believed that Andrew Johnson held more radical ideas on reconstruction than Lincoln. Johnson seemingly confirmed this belief by his thundering denunciations of traitors during the week after the assassination. “Mr. Lincoln’s too great kindness of heart led him to a mistaken leniency,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., “but Andy Johnson has fought the beasts of Ephesus on their own soil and has learned by bitter experience their implacable nature. ‘Thorough’ will be the word now…. The nation sails into new waters now and it may be providential that a new hand grasps the rudder.” But here and there arose a dissent. William Robinson recorded in his diary that the Bird Club had great confidence in Johnson, but that he personally thought Lincoln’s death “an unmixed evil.” Lincoln had possessed the confidence of the country as had no other man since Washington, but Johnson was a relatively unknown quantity. “Lincoln had no adequate idea of what ought to be done,” wrote Robinson, “but I fear Johnson has still less. Lincoln was, at least, master of himself, and master of the situation: Johnson may be the tool of anybody and everybody. Lincoln we have summered and wintered for four years, and knew exactly what he was: Johnson is wholly untried.”15

Abolitionists welcomed the hardening of northern opinion toward the South produced by Lincoln’s assassination. In the weeks before that tragic event, wrote Higginson, the North seemed to be “swiftly sliding back” into “a mush of concession.” But Booth’s bullet “restored us to our senses” and united the North as it had not been united since the firing on Fort Sumter. The chances for a reconstruction based on justice, he thought, were far better now than before the assassination.¹⁶

One manifestation of the post-assassination reaction of the North, however, was unwelcome to abolitionists. A cry for bloody vengeance against traitors rent the air. A few abolitionists echoed this demand for blood, but most of them were opposed to execution as a punishment for rebellion. They feared that the cries for vengeance would distract attention from the real issues of reconstruction. “We [don’t] want a reign of blood and terror,” wrote William Robinson; “we should have, instead, a settled and firm policy of reconstruction on the basis of justice to the negro.” Tilton argued that slavery, not individual rebels, was the real criminal. The rebellion should be punished not by hanging traitors but by exterminating slavery and by putting the Negro’s freedom on an indestructible foundation. Phillips declared that executions would only create martyrs. Confiscation of rebel lands and the grant of suffrage to freedmen, not mass hangings, were the proper punishments for rebellion. “What, cover the continent with gibbets!” exclaimed Phillips. “We cannot sicken the nineteenth century with such a sight…. [This country] needs for its safety no such policy of vengeance; its serene strength needs to use only so much severity as will fully guarantee security for the future.”17

Abolitionists had another reason for opposing the popular clamor for bloody revenge. Many of them were opposed to capital punishment and were active in the movement to outlaw it. Gerrit Smith, John G. Whittier, and the New York Tribune took the lead in calling for clemency to traitors. Smith sent personal letters to President Johnson pleading for leniency, and published two broadsides, a speech, and a sermon urging clemency. Whittier publicly deplored the cries for vengeance. Almost alone among leading Republican newspapers, the New York Tribune pleaded for sanity and mercy toward rebel leaders. In a pointed editorial the Tribune noted that more than any other single group in the North the abolitionists desired clemency for rebels. They had the good sense, said the Tribune, to see that the real enemy was not Jefferson Davis but the spirit of slavery and aristocracy which had spawned the rebellion.¹⁸

The desire for wholesale executions soon passed away, but the problem of reconstruction remained. Despite William Robinson’s prescient fears, most abolitionists had great confidence in Andrew Johnson in April 1865. This confidence was based partly on Johnson’s stern denunciations of rebels and partly on his record as wartime military governor of Tennessee. Abolitionists had been impressed by Johnson’s vigorous efforts to make Tennessee a free state in 1864-1865 and especially by his famous “Moses” speech to the Negroes of Nashville in October 1864, in which he promised to be their Moses and lead them out of bondage. George L. Stearns had known Johnson during his tenure as recruiting agent of Negro troops in Tennessee. Stearns had been sufficiently convinced of Johnson’s radicalism to invite him to join a Negro suffrage association that Stearns was organizing in the fall of 1864.¹⁹

Abolitionists did not realize that Johnson’s opposition to slavery, like that of Hinton Rowan Helper, sprang not from sympathy for the Negro but from the yeoman farmer’s traditional hatred of large slaveowners. Johnson had despised abolitionists before the war. He identified himself with the white yeoman class which disliked both the Negroes and the large planters. His private secretary once wrote in his diary that Johnson “exhibited a morbid distress and feeling against the negroes.” During the war a friend in Tennessee reminded Johnson that the abolitionists hoped to make free citizens out of the slaves. “Damn the negroes,” replied Johnson. “I am fighting these traitorous aristocrats, their masters.”20

In the weeks after Lincoln’s assassination abolitionists were unaware of the new president’s feelings toward Negroes. Stearns assured friends that Johnson would do the right things in reconstructing the South. John M. Langston led a delegation of Negroes to see the president, who told them that he was a firm friend of their race. Wendell Phillips declared that Johnson’s whole life was pledged to the extirpation of caste and aristocracy in the South. “I believe in him,” said Phillips, “I believe he means suffrage.” Abolitionists applauded every reference to Johnson at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society on May 9-10.²¹

There was one report from Washington, however, that disturbed some radicals. Johnson told a visiting Indiana delegation that he agreed with Lincoln’s theory of the legal indestructibility of the states. Radicals were startled, for logically pursued this theory denied the right of Congress to establish suffrage requirements as a condition of readmission because the states were already in the Union and hence possessed the right to regulate their own suffrage qualifications. There were also rumors from Washington that Montgomery Blair was cultivating a close relationship with the new president. Worried Boston abolitionists urged Sumner to establish contact with Johnson and make sure that he was influenced in the right direction. “Save him from the Blairs,” Frank Bird told Sumner.22 The Massachusetts senator needed little urging. Along with Senators Wade and Chandler and Chief Justice Chase, Sumner paid several visits to the White House in the last two weeks of April “with the view of conversing on negro suffrage.” The senators seemed to be satisfied with Johnson’s views on this question. “He is as radical as I am and as fully up to the work,” Chandler wrote to his wife. Sumner informed friends that Johnson was “well-disposed, & sees the right and necessities of the case…. Our new President accepts the principle and application” of Negro suffrage. Phillips thanked Sumner for his assurances of Johnson’s fidelity to equal rights. “I am glad & strengthened by the knowledge,” said Phillips.²³

In letters to George Stearns, however, Sumner expressed less confidence. The president had declared himself in favor of a broadened franchise, said Sumner, but Johnson thought that Negro suffrage should be granted by the states after reconstruction rather than imposed by Congress on the states as a condition of restoration. Sumner was worried, because he believed that once readmitted to the Union, southern states would never voluntarily adopt Negro suffrage. He therefore hoped that a decision on reconstruction could be postponed until the next session of Congress. Meanwhile radicals should try to educate public opinion up to the level of demanding Negro suffrage as a condition of readmission. If public opinion supported such a policy, Sumner was sure that Johnson, like Lincoln, would acquiesce in the will of the majority. Stearns agreed, and promised to do everything possible to help mature a correct public opinion.²⁴

Radicals began their intensified campaign for equal suffrage in May 1865. The Commonwealth published trumpet blasts warning the nation of the injustice and danger of reconstruction without Negro suffrage. “Refuse this, and the Southern States will make such laws as will allow the freedmen only to be ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water,’ and, uniting with Northern copperheads, will control the legislation of the country.” Phillips promised that the slogan of the American Anti-Slavery Society under his leadership would be “No Reconstruction without Negro Suffrage.” “No matter what else we yield, here our demand is to be inexorable,” said Phillips. “Abolitionists are to be educated to see that, without this, freedom, so called, is a sham.”25 George L. Stearns published at his own expense in April 1865, a pamphlet entitled The Equality of All Men before the Law, containing speeches in behalf of Negro suffrage by Phillips, Douglass, and William D. Kelley. Stearns printed 50,000 copies for distribution throughout the North in April; he prepared another edition of 40,000 in May, and told Sumner that he had enough money on hand or pledged by interested parties to finance the eventual printing of 500,000 copies.²⁶

During his trip to South Carolina for the flag-raising ceremonies at Fort Sumter, Theodore Tilton had come to the conclusion that “if the whip-using gentry who formerly held sway in those regions are to return to their former crown and kingdom, the North will have won only half a victory over the rebellion.” In a series of militant editorials Tilton argued that the Negro must be granted land and the ballot as inexorable conditions of reconstruction. He admitted that many well-intentioned men had doubts about the constitutional right of the federal government to impose such conditions. But “he is the statesman of a great occasion who is not hampered by mere usage, bigotry, or narrow technicality. It is criminal to let a nation die while hunting after a precedent by which to save it.” Whether the rebel states were theoretically in or out of the Union was a moot question, said Tilton, but no one could deny that legitimate governments did not exist in those states. There was no prescription in the Constitution for the problem of reconstruction. Whatever action was taken by the federal government on this question would be extraconstitutional, not unconstitutional. “The people of the rebel states, having been conquered in war, are at the mercy of the conqueror, and have no other recourse but in his clemency,” declared Tilton. “The restoration of the states to their rank in the Union, is an act of pure clemency; of course the entire details as to the manner and form rest in the discretion and judgment of the conquering power.”27

The radicals were alarmed by continuing rumors that Johnson would soon announce a reconstruction policy without Negro suffrage. On May 17 Stearns sent a personal entreaty to the president recalling their friendship in wartime Nashville and appealing to Johnson’s well-known hatred of aristocracy. The rebellion was more than a slaveholder’s war against Union and liberty, said Stearns. “It was the deadly strife of the Aristocratic Principle against the Democratic, of the Capital of the country against its Labor.” Negroes constituted a majority of the southern laboring class, and without guaranties for their future security and equal rights, aristocracy would continue to rule the South. Would Andrew Johnson “be true to the Democratic principle of Government,” asked Stearns, “or will he like all his predecessors ally himself with Capital and continue the war against labor?” Frank Sanborn reported on May 26 that Phillips and Stearns were afraid Johnson would go wrong on the suffrage question unless pressure was brought to bear upon him. An imposing array of radicals gathered in Boston on May 29 for the annual meeting of the Emancipation League. Hoping to impress Johnson with the strength of radicalism in New England, several abolitionists and Republican speakers made eloquent appeals for Negro suffrage.²⁸

But it was too late. On that very day the president issued an amnesty proclamation and a reconstruction proclamation for North Carolina. The latter named William Holden as provisional governor and stipulated that when a majority of the state’s qualified white voters had taken an oath of future loyalty they could form a new constitution and bring the state back into the Union.29 The reaction of abolitionists was swift and angry. Meeting in Boston on May 31, the New England Anti-Slavery Society unanimously passed a resolution condemning the North Carolina proclamation. “The reconstruction of rebel states without Negro suffrage is a practical surrender to the Confederacy,” said Phillips. “Better, far better, would it have been for Grant to have surrendered to Lee than for Johnson to have surrendered to North Carolina.” Phillips feared that reconstruction on the basis of white suffrage would doom the freedmen to “a century of serfdom.” He pointed to the black code already passed by one house of the Tennessee legislature and predicted that all the reconstructed states would enact such codes unless the black man was enfranchised. Charles C. Burleigh charged Johnson with inconsistency in his reconstruction theory. If the rebel states were actually in the Union, as Johnson claimed, the president had no right to create the extraconstitutional office of provisional governor. But if he did have the right to create such an office, he had the same right to require Negro suffrage.³⁰

On June 13 the president issued a reconstruction proclamation for Mississippi identical to the North Carolina edict. Even moderate abolitionists who wanted to believe in Johnson’s good intentions were depressed by this sign that the president had drawn up the North Carolina proclamation as a pattern for the rest of the South. “If reconstruction is to go on as in North Carolina and Mississippi the slave is not yet free nor is the Union secure,” wrote Edgar Ketchum. “People inquire with amazement, believing fully in the patriotism and integrity of President Johnson, whether he can persevere in the exclusion of the freedmen from the suffrage in view of what is now going on in the South. It is a great mystery.” Just one small glimmer of light penetrated Phillips’ gloomy appraisal of Johnson’s actions. “We can only hope the North Carolina policy is adopted as an experiment, not as a finality,” said Phillips. “The government, let us trust, is only feeling its way, and has no purpose to plunge headlong into such a vortex as reconstruction on the present theory would set whirling.”31

Only an experiment! This was the straw of hope grasped by many abolitionists and Republicans in the summer of 1865. Alarmed by the efforts of Democrats and conservative Republicans to drive a wedge between the president and radicals, the Commonwealth hastily reaffirmed its support of Johnson as head of the Republican party. “We expect him to see, before long if he does not now see, that the spirit of the Rebellion, and the spirit which denies the loyal black man the suffrage, are one and the same,” declared the Commonwealth. Despite the unfortunate North Carolina reconstruction proclamation, “it is not yet too late to modify or wholly change that plan of reorganization.” Samuel May, Jr., expressed willingness to accept Johnson’s policy as an experiment. If the southern states demonstrated their good faith by granting equal rights to the freedmen, abolitionists would applaud Johnson’s policy as a success. But if the new constitutions of former rebel states showed a continuing devotion to the spirit of slavery and oppression, “let such States remain under Provisional or Military Governorship, until the true light dawns upon them.” “I cannot doubt,” concluded May, “that such essentially will be the reply of Congress to any State presenting a Constitution excluding the freed people from citizenship and suffrage.”³²

In the summer of 1865 George L. Stearns, chief executive of the abolitionist campaign for Negro suffrage, had three separate but interrelated projects on hand. The first of these was an organization to distribute throughout the nation pamphlets, speeches, and newspapers favoring Negro suffrage. In the fall of 1864 Stearns had decided to organize a league of antislavery men to finance the dissemination of radical material. He collected a list of 2,000 sympathizers who could be called upon for contributions and for service as local agents to distribute pamphlets. Using mainly his own money, Stearns had printed nearly 90,000 pamphlets by June 1, 1865. The initiation of Johnson’s reconstruction policy and the consequent need for stepped-up radical activity brought the Emancipation League and interested Massachusetts Republicans into Stearns’ network. In June he sent out a circular proposing the formation of a “Universal and Equal Suffrage Association.” The response was favorable, and within three months Stearns had compiled a list of 20,000 “members” of this association. By July 1 he was employing between six and ten clerks to send out 10,000 newspapers and 3,000 pamphlets per week. The pamphlets contained speeches by Phillips, Douglass, William D. Kelley, Sumner, Henry Ward Beecher, Benjamin Butler, Richard Henry Dana, and other prominent figures. At the end of July Stearns began mailing 12,000 copies of the Commonwealth each week to selected subscribers, trebling the circulation of that radical journal. By September he was sending out 20,000 newspapers and 5,000 pamphlets per week, and looking forward to a weekly total of 100,000 newspapers and 50,000 pamphlets if he could raise enough money. He had already distributed a total of 230,000 newspapers and 3 million pages of pamphlets.33

Stearns’ second project was the founding of a weekly newspaper to represent the interests of the freedmen. J. Miller McKim and the freedmen’s aid societies were also laying plans for a weekly. Each group had raised several thousand dollars by the spring of 1865, when they decided to pool their resources and put the proposed paper on a sound financial basis. Wendell P. Garrison, soon to marry McKim’s daughter, was appointed associate editor of the new paper. Stearns and McKim cast about for an experienced journalist to serve as editor-in-chief. After George William Curtis and Whitelaw Reid had turned them down, they approached Edwin L. Godkin, a young British-born journalist who had been recommended to Stearns by friends in Boston. Stearns and Wendell Phillips interviewed Godkin for four hours, discussing the questions of reconstruction, Negro suffrage, the freedmen, and so on. Godkin gave them the impression that he agreed with their views on all important aspects of reconstruction. They approved of him as editor with the understanding that he was to have complete independence in editorial matters but that the paper was to represent primarily the interests of the freedmen.34 The stockholders sent out circulars to announce the publication of the first issue of the Nation in July 1865. All abolitionist papers gave generous publicity to the new enterprise, and Garrison gave his blessing to the Nation as the logical successor of the Liberator. Several abolitionists were listed among the contributors to the Nation.³⁵

With a capitalization of $100,000 and the backing of prominent abolitionists and Republicans, the Nation appeared headed for top rank among radical journals. But difficulties plagued the undertaking from the outset. In the first place the Nation was caught in the middle of the schism in the American Anti-Slavery Society. McKim had supported Garrison’s effort to dissolve the Society and was bitter toward the Phillips faction that now controlled the organization. Stearns, on the other hand, had sustained Phillips in his successful effort to preserve the Society. Godkin disliked the radical crusading fervor of the Phillips wing, and sided with McKim. The early issues of the Nation contained oblique disparagements of Phillips and Stearns. Godkin also made a derisive remark about Stearns in a private letter, a report of which came to Stearns’ ears. Stearns and Phillips were outraged by these insults. Stearns had contributed and raised more money for the Nation than any other person, and he felt that at the very least he deserved respect from its editor. Secondly, Godkin hoped to make the Nation into an outstanding political and literary review, modeled on English weekly reviews. Its abolitionist backers bad conceived of it primarily as a radical freedmen’s paper. Thirdly, Phillips and Stearns desired a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred radical journal that would sound the trumpet call of equality in stentorian tones. Instead the Nation offered long and scholarly editorials designed to appeal to the intellectual elite rather than to the masses. The editorials of the early months of the Nation favored Negro suffrage and equal justice to the freedmen, but they were characterized by a conservative restraint and impartial flavor which rendered them totally inadequate in the eyes of many radicals.36

Even Garrison and McKim were slightly unhappy with the first issues of the Nation, and Godkin adopted some of their friendly suggestions for improvement. But Phillips, Stearns, and other Boston radicals were entirely dissatisfied. They tried to force Godkin to change the style and spirit of the paper, and failing that, to force him out of the editor’s chair. Charging bad faith on the part of Godkin, Stearns and most of the Boston stockholders withdrew their capital from the Nation in May 1866. Godkin reorganized the paper and became its proprietor as well as editor. Thenceforth the Nation turned gradually more conservative on the reconstruction question. What Stearns had originally conceived of as a large-circulation radical journal crusading for social reform and racial equality became under Godkin a genteel political-literary review of limited circulation but of considerable influence among the patrician class of intellectuals and businessmen in America.³⁷

Made wiser by his experience with the Nation, Stearns kept control in his own hands of the next newspaper he founded (see discussion near the end of this chapter). Before the collapse of his hopes for the Nation, however, he set on foot his third major project to win public support for Negro suffrage: a mass meeting of the leading men of New England in Boston’s Faneuil Hall on June 21, 1865. In an effort to portray this convention as an assemblage of moderates, Stearns engineered the selection of his friend Theophilus Parsons, Harvard law professor and nationally known jurist, as chairman and keynote speaker of the occasion. Richard Henry Dana, a respected lawyer and conservative antislavery veteran gave the main address. Although Stearns organized the convention and several abolitionists served as vice presidents and secretaries, radicals generally remained in the background and allowed the solid, substantial men of New England to take the lead. Parsons and Dana both emphasized the need of Negro suffrage to insure the success of reconstruction. Dana frankly admitted that “to introduce to the voting franchise four millions of slaves is a revolution. If we do not secure that now in the time of revolution, it can never be secured except by a new revolution. (Loud applause)”38

Stearns considered the Faneuil Hall meeting a great success. It attracted nationwide attention and inspired similar meetings in other cities. All over the North the subject of reconstruction and Negro suffrage was a vital topic of political discussion in the summer of 1865. Abolitionists held several meetings to promote the cause of equal suffrage. Northern Negroes organized rallies and demanded the franchise for themselves and their southern brethren. Radical Republican leaders spoke out for Negro suffrage. Southern freedmen held meetings and asked for the ballot to guarantee their freedom and security. Abolitionists spared no effort to bear witness for equal rights. “I have again and again, in sermon, speech and conversation urged the necessity of universal suffrage and emphatically of black suffrage—on grounds of humanity, justice, equity, reason and safety,” reported O. B. Frothingham in August 1865. “And I shall continue to do so as long as I have breath.”39

The Democratic and conservative Republican press was annoyed by the outburst of Negro suffrage propaganda in the summer of 1865. The Chicago Times lamented: “This is an afflicted nation. To-day the negro is the one thing in every man’s mouth from the Gulf to the St. Lawrence. The entire press of the country is wrangling over the negro; Boston philanthropists are holding secret meetings and arranging plans with reference to the negro…. Orators are shouting about the negro; preachers are advocating higher law for the benefit of the negro; and, in short, the whole country is … ‘going it’ exclusively on account of the negro.” The New York Times was tired of the Negro question but was resigned to a continuation of the agitation. “It is evident,” said the Times, “that this whole negro question can only be got rid of by getting rid of the negroes; and as this is impossible, we must rest content with our lot.”⁴⁰

In the discussion of Negro suffrage several phrases were bandied about, often indiscriminately. The four phrases most frequently used were “Negro suffrage,” “impartial suffrage,” “equal suffrage,” and “universal suffrage.” There were real differences in the meanings of these phrases, but as time went on the differences tended to disappear. “Impartial suffrage” and “equal suffrage” meant that whether the franchise was unrestricted or qualified it would be open equally to both races. Any qualifications, such as a literacy test or property ownership, must be applied impartially to both races. “Universal suffrage” meant universal manhood suffrage for both races, unrestricted except for age and residence requirements. “Negro suffrage,” the phrase most often used, could mean either universal or impartial suffrage. Sometimes it was also used (but seldom by abolitionists) to mean a limited grant of suffrage to Negroes who met special requirements not applicable to whites.

At first several abolitionists, including Theodore Tilton, Gerrit Smith, and Lydia Maria Child, were willing to accept impartial suffrage. Conceding the argument that the freedmen were ignorant and lacked political experience, they endorsed a literacy qualification applied equally to both races. They hoped that the rapid spread of education in the South would soon enable most of the freedmen to qualify for the franchise.41

Most abolitionists, however, called for universal rather than impartial suffrage. It was unfair, they argued, to impose a literacy qualification on the franchise when the southern Negro for generations had been denied educational opportunities.⁴² As time passed the distinction between impartial and universal suffrage became less important. By the end of 1865 nearly all those who advocated Negro suffrage meant, in effect, universal suffrage. There were two reasons for this. In the first place the creation of impartial literacy and/or property qualifications would have disfranchised many white men who already enjoyed suffrage. The principle of universal (white) manhood suffrage was deeply rooted in America, and it was a rare politician who would vote to disfranchise any man except for treason. Secondly, abolitionists and Republicans soon realized that impartial suffrage would give the freedmen negligible political power at first. There would not be a literate colored electorate large enough to counterbalance the white voters or to build the foundations of a strong Republican party in the South. “All my first impressions were for the writing and reading qualification; but on reflection it seemed to me impracticable,” wrote Charles Sumner in August 1865. “You cannot get votes of Congress to disfranchise, which you must do in imposing this qualification…. Besides, there are very intelligent persons, especially among the freedmen, who cannot read or write. But we need the votes of all, and cannot afford to wait.”⁴³

Despite the criticisms of radical abolitionists, most Republican leaders reserved judgment on President Johnson’s reconstruction policy in 1865. The desire to regard that policy as an “experiment” which Johnson would abandon if it proved a failure was all-powerful. Moderate Republicans were unwilling to risk a party split over Negro suffrage.44 Disgusted with the pusillanimity of politicians, Wendell Phillips decided to launch a full-scale attack on Johnson in a deliberate attempt to alienate him from the Republican party and to force the party to repudiate his policy. Phillips was the first prominent figure to come out squarely against the president, blazing a trail followed by thousands of abolitionists and Republicans in the next twelve months.

In powerful editorials in the Anti-Slavery Standard of June 24 and July 1, Phillips declared that Johnson’s reconstruction program could no longer be considered an experiment. His extension of it to all Confederate states indicated a settled purpose. “We must make up our minds that we have to deal henceforth with a President implacably hostile to the only method of reorganization which is safe, peaceful, and permanent,” wrote Phillips. Johnson had surrounded himself with conservative advisers and had rejected the counsels of true Republicans. Like President Tyler before him, he was in the process of abandoning the party that had elected him. Phillips was not deaf to the pleas of Republicans to avoid splitting the party. But Johnson had already gone over to the enemy, and “in these circumstances, he is manifestly a force to be resisted, not one to be counted on our side; a power to be subdued, not one to be waited on and conciliated.” Most of the speakers at the abolitionist Fourth of July picnic in Framingham, Massachusetts, echoed Phillips’ sentiments. The picnickers resolved unanimously that any reconstruction policy that failed to recognize “the absolute equality of every man before the Law” would be “a practical surrender of the North to the South” and “the essential triumph of the Slave Power.”⁴⁵

Theodore Tilton was also apprehensive about Johnson’s course, but in midsummer of 1865 he was not yet prepared to declare a total break with the president. Instead he implored Johnson to reject the counsels of Democrats and remember that he had been elected by a party that meant to safeguard the Negro’s freedom won at so dear a cost in war. Charles Slack, editor of the Commonwealth and spokesman for the old John Brown wing of Massachusetts abolitionists, expressed confidence that Johnson would soon recognize the failure of his “experiment” and move closer to the radical idea of reconstruction. “Andrew Johnson still stands before the tribunal,” wrote Slack on July 22. “Press and people as yet only cry, ‘He is going wrong, but he is honest and will come right.’ So be it then. We will wait. But … if he wants the outspoken, unflinching support … of just men everywhere, he must bid for it soon.”46

“I feel anxious at Pres. Johnson’s course & think he mistakes it lamentably by his method of reconstruction, but am not ready to join in the hasty impeachment of him which is getting so popular,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., on July 9. “I prefer to believe in his good intentions & integrity till otherwise convinced.” His father shared these sentiments. The elder Garrison censured Phillips and other abolitionists who had openly declared war on the president. There was “no ground for discouragement or alarm,” said Garrison. “There is positive growth and constant progress.” Garrison’s continued faith in Johnson was echoed by many abolitionists in the summer of 1865. William H. Channing asserted that the president had not “a shade of a purpose to betray the cause of freedom. Let us stand by him and uphold his hand & so at once impel & guide him onward.” An abolitionist friend of Frederick Douglass urged the Negro leader to be more charitable in his judgment of the president. “Did you not once have as little faith in Pres. Lincoln when you said he was ‘wrong from choice, & right from necessity,’ as you have now in Johnson?” she asked. “Does the past justify the present?”⁴⁷

Wendell Phillips did more than denounce Johnson in the summer of 1865. In a July 4th speech he made a positive suggestion that became the keystone of Republican strategy at the next session of Congress. If Clerk of the House Edward McPherson called the names of southern congressmen elected under Johnson’s plan when Congress convened in December, warned Phillips, the game would be up, for the southerners would vote with the Democrats, organize Congress, and enact a reconstruction policy of their own. In a letter to the Anti-Slavery Standard of July 8 Phillips amplified his discussion of this question. Under House rules the clerk called the role before organization of the House or choice of a speaker. If the clerk called the names of southern representatives these former rebels would be in a position to control legislation. Phillips urged Clerk McPherson and the Republicans to make sure that this did not happen.48 Phillips’ speech and letter were the first public references to this problem, and they were widely reprinted and discussed in both the northern and southern press. Democrats denounced Phillips’ proposal for the omission of southern names from the clerk’s roll as “revolutionary” and “fanatical.” But many Republicans were jarred into an awareness of the danger by Phillips’ warning. McPherson privately assured Phillips in September that he would not call the names of southerners, and a month later the clerk publicly announced his position. When Congress met in December the members from former rebel states were automatically excluded by McPherson’s omission of them from the roll, allowing the Republicans to proceed freely with their discussion of the proper method of reconstruction.⁴⁹

In an effort to gather information on southern conditions for use as a weapon against Johnson’s policy, Boston abolitionists and radicals helped finance Carl Schurz’s southern tour in the summer of 1865 and arranged for publication of Schurz’s letters in the Boston Advertiser. J. M. W. Yerrington, the abolitionist stenographer, accompanied Schurz and took down the testimony of all classes of southerners.50 But radicals did not have to await Schurz’s report for evidence of southern oppression of the freedmen. The lower house of the Tennessee legislature had already passed a black code barring Negroes from juries, inflicting more severe punishments on Negroes than whites for the same crime, subjecting Negroes to sale into temporary bondage for vagrancy, and giving the courts power to bind out colored children to white men as apprentices. Reports by military personnel, newspaper correspondents, and teachers in the South of whippings, shootings, and lynchings began to make their way into the northern press. Antislavery and Republican papers ran daily and weekly columns filled with stories of southern outrages against Negroes. The chaotic condition of affairs in the South had its bright side for abolitionists, because it convinced many northerners of the dangers of Johnson’s program. Tilton recalled that Lincoln had advanced from a proslavery to an antislavery policy under the pressure of events and of public opinion, “So we believe will President Johnson yet [advance] if the press and the people persist in their just demands.”⁵¹

In Mississippi, Provisional Governor William Sharkey began reorganizing the state militia in August 1865, using Confederate veterans as a nucleus. Union General Henry W. Slocum issued an order prohibiting the formation of militia units, but upon appeal from Sharkey the president overruled his general and allowed the organization of state troops to proceed. More than almost anything Johnson had done thus far, this action aroused the suspicion and distrust of the North.⁵² Abolitionists who had not already done so began to turn against the president. “What can be hatched from such an egg but another rebellion?” asked the Commonwealth. “If rebels in Mississippi are to be thus armed, then also will they be in every rebel State. Can there be but one end to such a beginning?” Still protesting that he was not a member of the Phillips-Pillsbury party of “doubt, distrust, and denunciation,” Samuel May, Jr., nevertheless feared that “if the coming Congress does not present itself, like an immovable wall of adamant, to the encroachments of the Southern managers & their friends, … we shall be left in a most singular position, and the culmination of our terrible struggle … will be a most absurd, a most lamentable, & at the same time a most farcical one.” Even Garrison, who had managed to preserve his jaunty optimism all through the summer, confessed at the beginning of October that “the aspect of things at the South is somewhat portentous. I begin to feel more uneasy about the President.”53

Radicals realized that to impose Negro suffrage on the South while ignoring the same issue at home would leave them open to charges of hypocrisy. Only five northern states allowed Negroes to vote on equal terms with whites in 1865. Since “we of the North have a great battle to fight in order to secure suffrage to the negro at the South,” wrote Sydney Gay in May 1865, “it behooves us to clear our own skirts from stain as rapidly as possible.”⁵⁴ Republican legislatures in Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota put Negro suffrage constitutional amendments on their ballots for the fall elections. As the elections approached, however, abolitionists detected a tendency among Republican politicians to hedge on the question of Negro suffrage in their own states. The Minnesota Republican convention endorsed equal suffrage, but the conventions of Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey evaded the issue. Connecticut Republicans issued a broadside urging voters to approve the amendment, but the state committee showed a notable lack of enthusiasm for the measure. In truth, Negro suffrage in the North was by no means popular among northern voters, and Republican politicians knew it.⁵⁵

A great deal was at stake in the Connecticut election early in October. A victory for Negro suffrage in the pivotal Nutmeg State would imply a repudiation of Johnson’s reconstruction policy and an endorsement of the radicals. A defeat, on the other hand, would be interpreted as a victory for Johnson. The administration and the Democrats did their best to defeat the amendment, using appeals to race prejudice as their main weapon. Republicans failed to make similar efforts on the other side, and the amendment lost by 6,000 votes. A month later Minnesota and Wisconsin voters also turned down Negro suffrage. Abolitionists and radicals were inconsolable. The Connecticut vote was “the most disastrous event since the death of Mr. Lincoln and the inauguration of the present policy of his successor,” wrote Wendell P. Garrison in the Liberator. “We feel humiliated and ashamed of this ingratitude and shortsightedness,” declared the Boston Commonwealth a few days after the Connecticut vote. “It was an unworthy, unmanly and discreditable act, and will cover the New England name with shame the world over.” The Commonwealth frankly conceded that the defeat of Negro suffrage in Connecticut “jeopardizes—at least, delays—the permanent settlement of the questions in dispute in the rebellious States.” Tilton was disenchanted with moderate Republican leadership after the Connecticut election, and abandoned all efforts to promote reconciliation between moderates and radicals. “The Republican party must stand either for or against Equal Suffrage,” announced Tilton. “If this party refuses to fulfill its moral mission, it will go to pieces…. We shall be glad to stand with the great body of the Republican party in so far as that body shall stand inflexibly for Freedom and Justice; but we have no intention of abandoning moral principles for the sake of keeping company with political friends.”56

Abolitionists were discouraged by the entire course of events in the autumn of 1865. A reaction in favor of Johnson and of reconstruction without Negro suffrage seemed to have set in. Southern constitutional conventions were refusing to grant even equal civil rights to the freedmen. Unless something intervened it appeared that these states would be readmitted to the Union with constitutions and “Black Codes” relegating the Negroes to a permanent subordinate status. Hoping against hope, abolitionists looked forward to the meeting of Congress to remedy the situation. Meanwhile they did not sit back and wring their hands in despair. Anna Dickinson, Tilton, Phillips, Douglass, and several lesser abolitionists embarked on lecture tours that would take them before hundreds of audiences during the winter. Reconstruction was virtually the sole topic of their lectures. Nearly every abolitionist speaker kept up a relentless fire against President Johnson’s policy throughout the winter.57

The title of Phillips’ most oft-repeated lecture was “The South Victorious.” This jarring title brought thousands who had thought the North victorious to hear Phillips in Boston and New York in October. Judging by the present hour, Phillips told skeptical listeners, the South was indeed victorious. Beaten on the field of battle, she had a good prospect of winning the political game of reconstruction. Phillips reminded his audiences of the revolution of 1848 in France, when the people deposed a king only to install an emperor in his place. “Now, we stand exactly as France stood,” said Phillips. The North had overthrown slavery but was in danger of installing a new version of the aristocratic slave power in its place. Under Johnson’s plan, said Phillips, the South would return to the Union “with the same theories, with the same men to work them, and the same element to work them with…. It must be evident to any reasoning man that the single advantage the North has gained in changing the political and social condition of the Southern States was the elimination, possibly, of this single element of chattelhood.” Phillips denounced the Republican party for its timid failure to take a stand against Johnson’s policy. “There is really no political force in existence worthy the name of the Republican party,” he declared. “We can trust neither Congress, nor Andrew Johnson, nor the Republican party. The only hope remaining is in the People.”58

Charles Sumner had remained in Washington during the summer of 1865 in a futile effort to hold Johnson to the radical line. He returned to Boston at the end of August and confessed his failure to Phillips, Howe, and Stearns. Sumner was prepared to follow Phillips into open opposition to the president. Stearns, however, was not yet ready to give up. He had known Johnson well in Tennessee, and he believed that he could accomplish more in a single conversation with the plebeian president than the scholarly, polished Sumner had achieved all summer. Stearns journeyed to Washington early in October and spent a pleasant hour chatting with Johnson. The president denied that he was going over to the Democrats. On the burning question of Negro suffrage Johnson restated his belief that the federal government had no more right to prescribe suffrage conditions for Alabama than for Pennsylvania. If he were back in Tennessee, said Johnson, he would favor a gradual extension of suffrage to Negroes who had served in the army or could meet a property or literacy qualification. He was opposed to an immediate grant of universal suffrage, fearing that it would cause a war of races in the South.⁵⁹

Stearns returned to his hotel and immediately wrote down the substance of the president’s remarks. He requested Johnson’s permission to publish the interview, believing that “it will go far to promote a good understanding between you and our leading men.”⁶⁰ Johnson acquiesced, and Stearns returned to Boston for consultation with his colleagues before publishing the interview. Sumner and Boston’s leading abolitionists attended a meeting to discuss the question. Stearns argued that publication would cut the ground from under Democrats who were claiming Johnson as one of themselves, repair the widening breach in the Republican party, and insert an opening wedge for Negro suffrage. The interview put Johnson on record as favoring qualified suffrage, said Stearns, and after six months an improved public opinion would make it possible to get a stronger presidential endorsement of Negro suffrage. Johnson would move, like Lincoln, with the advancing tide of public opinion. “All my former intercourse with the President taught me to respect his honesty, sincerity and ability,” said Stearns, “and I shall trust him until he for the first time deceives me.” Sumner, Phillips, and others were opposed to publication of the interview. They believed Johnson to be an implacable foe of radical reconstruction, and did not favor anything that would increase the president’s stature in the eyes of the Republican party. They considered Johnson less dangerous as an avowed enemy than as a false friend. Stearns nevertheless published the interview in the Boston and New York papers on October 23, and it was reprinted or summarized by nearly every newspaper in the North.61

Most of the Republican press reacted precisely as Stearns desired, hailing the interview as evidence that Johnson was still a loyal Republican and a friend of the Negro.⁶² But most abolitionists failed to find any reason for encouragement in the interview. Johnson’s assertion that universal suffrage would breed a war of races reminded Tilton of the old conservative argument that emancipation would spark a race war. The Anti-Slavery Standard ridiculed Johnson’s statement that he could no more interfere with suffrage requirements in Alabama than in Pennsylvania. Had he appointed a provisional governor for Pennsylvania? Had he ordered Pennsylvania to repudiate her state debt? He had taken such steps in the former rebel states, proving by his own actions that the government possessed the power of a conqueror over the southern states and could mold their institutions into any shape it desired. The Standard was opposed to any efforts to reconcile Johnson and the radicals, for it believed Johnson irrevocably hostile to nearly everything the radicals stood for. “We assure Mr. Stearns that the Radicals mean to smash the reconstruction policy of the President,” declared the Standard, “and believe they can do it if their friends and the true friends of the Negro will stand by them.”⁶³

By the end of October 1865, many abolitionists had come to agree with Higginson that “what most men mean to-day by the ‘President’s plan of reconstruction’ is the pardon of every rebel for the crime of rebellion, and the utter refusal to pardon a single black loyalist for the crime of being black…. The truth is that we are causing quite as much suffering as a conqueror usually does. It is simply that we are forgiving our enemies and torturing only our friends.” The Garrison family was finally becoming convinced of Johnson’s bad faith. “Notwithstanding Stearns’ interview which amounts to nothing,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., “it will take a different course of action on the President’s part to inspire much trust in his administration.”64

But there were some abolitionists not yet ready to give up on Johnson. J. Miller McKim told a fellow abolitionist that “I share your fears in regard to President Johnson, and yet my hopes exceed my fears.”⁶⁵ George Stearns still had faith in the president. In November 1865, Stearns began publishing a weekly radical newspaper called the Right Way. The purpose of this journal was to win public support for Negro suffrage as the right way to accomplish a successful reconstruction. Stearns employed Alpheus Crosby, an abolitionist and the leading American authority on ancient Greece, as editor of the Right Way. William W. Thayer, a John Brown abolitionist, served as business manager of the paper and wrote many of its shorter editorials. The Right Way was published in the Liberator office, and every week 60,000 copies were sent to members of Stearns’ Universal and Equal Suffrage Association. Negroes in the South formed clubs to distribute the Right Way among the freedmen. In its early issues the paper advocated Stearns’ policy of reconciliation between the radicals and President Johnson. It praised Johnson as a “patriotic President” who needed the support of all “faithful men” in the difficult task of reconstruction. The Right Way was convinced that Negro suffrage was necessary for reconstruction and equally convinced that Johnson would soon realize this fact.⁶⁶

As the important 1865-66 session of Congress approached, abolitionists’ spirits revived somewhat from the doldrums of October. Leading Republicans were giving signs of opposition to Johnson’s policy. Phillips and some of the other ultraradical abolitionists believed congressional Republicans to be almost as culpable as Johnson because of their indecisive stand on Negro suffrage. But most abolitionists expressed confidence in Congress. In November Garrison embarked on a lecture tour that took him as far west as Springfield, Illinois. The veteran abolitionist was heartily welcomed and loudly cheered wherever he appeared. His lectures urged the exclusion of southern representatives from Congress until the freedmen were granted equal rights.67 Garrison returned to the East on the same train with several Republican congressmen on their way to Washington. Most of them agreed, reported Garrison, that the South should not be readmitted without further examination of the problem and greater safeguards for the freedmen.⁶⁸ As the senators and representatives gathered in Washington, John G. Whittier published an Ode to the Thirty-Ninth Congress:

Make all men peers before the law,

Take hands from off the negro’s throat,

Give black and white an equal vote.⁶⁹

At the end of 1865, abolitionists were divided roughly into four groups in their opinion of President Johnson. Some abolitionists, including Stearns and McKim, still believed that Johnson would prove faithful to his trust. Others such as Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, and Samuel May, Jr., were disappointed with the president but still possessed a glimmer of hope that he would change his policy under the pressure of congressional action and public opinion. A third group of abolitionists, including Tilton, Higginson, and Charles Slack, had preserved a precarious trust in the president until October, when it became obvious to them that Johnson considered his policy a finality rather than an experiment. They had turned against him and now reposed their confidence solely in Congress, still hoping against hope, however, that the president could somehow be persuaded to abandon his disastrous policy. Finally, the abolitionists led by Phillips had long since relegated Johnson to the status of an enemy who must be overcome before the Negro could obtain equal justice. As the representatives of the people gathered in Washington for their weighty deliberations, Phillips and his followers openly challenged President Johnson and dared him to do his worst.

1 Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (9 vols., New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), VIII, 152; Independent, Dec. 8, 1864; Liberator, Dec. 9, 1864; Commonwealth, Dec. 10, 1864.

2 Charles H. McCarthy, Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction (New York, 1901), 286-91; N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 24, 31, 1864; Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (4 vols., Boston, 1877-94), IV, 221.

3 Phillips to Moncure Conway, Jan. 8, 1865, McKim-Maloney-Garrison Papers, NYPL.

4 Commonwealth, Dec. 24, 1864.

5 Phillips to Moncure Conway, n.d., but sometime in January or February, 1865, Conway Papers, CU.

6 McCarthy, Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction, 291-313; Ira V. Brown, “William D. Kelley and Radical Reconstruction,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXV (July 1961), 317, 321; Commonwealth, Jan. 28, 1865; Independent, Mar. 16, 1865.

7 Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., 968-69, 1,002; Ashley to editor of the Commonwealth, Feb. 27, 1865, published in Commonwealth, Mar. 4; Ashley to Tilton, Feb. 27, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL; Independent, Mar. 2, 1865.

8 Commonwealth, Feb. 25, Mar. 4, 1865.

9 Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., 903, 1,011-12, 1,091-99, 1,101-11; Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America during the Great Rebellion (Washington, 1865), 579-81.

10 Sumner received nearly a dozen letters from abolitionists thanking him for his stand against the admission of Louisiana. The quotation is from Elizur Wright to Sumner, Mar. 6, 1865; the information on the action of the Bird Club is from E. L. Pierce to Sumner, Mar. 4, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

11 O. B. Frothingham to Moncure Conway, Jan. 2, 1865, Conway Papers, CU; M. W. Chapman to Mary Estlin, Feb. 5, 1865, Estlin Papers, BPL; Phillips to E. C. Stanton, Feb. 8, 1865, Stanton Papers, LC; Liberator, Feb. 10, Mar. 3, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 4, 18, 1865; New York Tribune, Feb. 22, 1865; Commonwealth, Mar. 4, 11, 18, 1865.

12 Slack to Sumner, Feb. 28, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; L. M. Child to George W. Julian, Apr. 1, 1865, Giddings-Julian Correspondence, LC; Frank Sanborn to Moncure Conway, Apr. 6, 1865, Conway Papers, CU.

13 Rupert S. Holland, ed., Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862-84 (Cambridge, Mass., 1912), 155-56; Sanborn to Gerrit Smith, Apr. 10, 1865, Smith Papers, SU. See also Sumner to Garrison, Mar. 29, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL; Amasa Walker to Sumner, Apr. 5, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

14 Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, VIII, 399-405.

15 W. L. Garrison, Jr., to Martha Wright, Apr. 16, 1865, Garrison Papers, SC; Wm. S. Robinson, Diary, entry of Apr. 16, 1865, in Mrs. Wm. S. Robinson, ed., “Warrington” Pen-Portraits: A Collection of Personal and Political Reminiscences from 1848 to 1876, from the Writings of William S. Robinson (Boston, 1877), 304-05. See also S. B. Anthony to E. C. Stanton, Apr. 19, 1865, Stanton Papers, LC; Liberator, Apr. 21, 1865; and N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 22, 1865.

16 Commonwealth, Apr. 29, 1865. See also Caroline Weston to Mary Estlin, Apr. 18, 1865, Estlin Papers, BPL; Independent, Apr. 20, 27, 1865; and Vincent Y. Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (2 vols., Boston, 1902), II, 48-52.

17 Robinson, “Warrington” Pen-Portraits, 305; Independent, Apr. 20, 27, 1865; Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures and Letters, 2nd Series (Boston, 1900), 449-50.

18 Gerrit Smith to Andrew Johnson, Apr. 19, 24, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Gerrit Smith to President Johnson, April 24, 1865, published letter (Peterboro, 1865); Gerrit Smith, No Treason in Civil War (New York, 1865); O. B. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith (New York, 1879), 294-95; Whittier to the editor of the Amesbury (Mass.) Villager, reprinted in Liberator, May 26, 1865; New York Tribune, Apr. 20, May 5, 8, 1865.

19 Stearns to Johnson, Sept. 26, 1864, Johnson Papers, LC. See also L. M. Child to Whittier, Nov. 8, 1864, Child-Whittier Correspondence, LC; W. L. Garrison, Jr., to Martha Wright, Nov. 13, 1864, Garrison Papers, SC; John Pierpont to L. M. Child, Nov. 20, 1864, Pierpont Papers, PML; and N.A.S. Standard, May 6, 1865.

20 Benjamin Thomas and Harold Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York, 1962), 440; Clifton Hall, Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee (Princeton, 1916), 221.

21 George Stearns to Gerrit Smith, Apr. 21, 1865, Smith Papers, SU; Stearns to Sumner, Apr. 30, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Commonwealth, Apr. 22, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 29, May 6, 13, 1865; Liberator, Apr. 28, May 12, June 2, 1865. Phillips’ statement quoted from ibid., June 2, 1865. Lewis Tappan wrote in his journal on April 23, 1865, “we have the encouragement to believe that [Johnson] will prove an able & faithful magistrate.” A year later, however, Tappan made a note in the margin next to this entry: “This prophecy falsified by his treachery!” Tappan Papers, LC.

22 Commonwealth, Apr. 29, 1865; Frank Bird to Sumner, Apr. 15, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

23 Sumner to Bird, Apr. 25, 1865, Bird Papers, HU; Chandler quoted in Joseph B. James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana, 111., 1956), 5-6; Sumner to R. Schleiden, May 1, 1865, in Pierce, Sumner, IV, 242; Wendell Phillips to Sumner, May 5, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

24 Sumner to Stearns, May 4, 11, and May ?, 1865, quoted in Frank P. Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns (Phila., 1907), 343-44; Stearns to Sumner, May 8, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

25 Commonwealth, May 6, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, May 27, June 3, 1865.

26 Stearns to William Still, Apr. 29, 30, 1865, quoted in Alberta S. Norwood, “Negro Welfare Work in Philadelphia, Especially as Illustrated by the Career of William Still,” M.A. thesis, U. of Pennsylvania, 1931, 136-37; Stearns to Sumner, Apr. 30, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

27 Independent, May 4, 11, 25, 1865.

28 Stearns to Johnson, May 17, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Sanborn to Moncure Conway, May 26, 1865, Conway Papers, CU; Commonwealth, June 3, 1865.

29 James D. Richardson, ed., The Messages and Papers of the Presidents (20 vols., Washington, 1897-1913), VIII, 3508-12.

30 N.A.S. Standard, June 3, 10, 1865. See also Independent, June 8, 1865; Commonwealth, June 3, 1865; and New York Tribune, May 31, June 1, 1865.

31 Ketchum to Sumner, June 17, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; N.A.S. Standard, June 3, 1865. See also Liberator, June 9, 1865; Principia, June 29, July 6, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, June 24, July 1, 1865; and George Cheever to Elizabeth Washburn, June 14, 1865, Cheever Papers, AAS.

32 Commonwealth, June 10, 17, 1865; May’s statement published in Liberator, June 23, 1865.

33 Stearns, Stearns, 351-52; Stearns to Gerrit Smith, Sept. 20, 1864, Smith Papers, SU; Stearns to Benjamin Butler, June 10, Sept. 16, 1865, enclosing circulars of the “Universal and Equal Suffrage Association,” Butler Papers, LC; Stearns to Sumner, Apr. 30, Oct. 4, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; N.A.S. Standard, June 10, Aug. 19, 1865; Commonwealth, June 10, July 29, Aug. 5, Sept. 30, 1865.

34 Stearns, Stearns, 332-35; Rollo Ogden, ed., Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin (2 vols., New York, 1907), I, 223-41; W. P. Garrison to W. L. Garrison, Dec. 11, 1864, Apr. 3, May 5, 1865, W. P. Garrison Papers, HU; Lucretia Mott to Martha Wright, Apr. 17, 1865, Mott Papers, SC; Stearns to Sumner, Apr. 30, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; McKim to Gerrit Smith, May 18, 1865, Smith Papers, SU; Frank Sanborn to Moncure Conway, May 26, 1865, Conway Papers, CU; McKim to M. W. Chapman, June 6, 1865, Weston Papers, BPL.

35 N.A.S. Standard, May 6, 1865; Commonwealth, May 13, June 17, 1865; Liberator, June 30, 1865.

36 Stearns, Stearns, 336-37, 351n.; Ogden, Godkin, I, 241-48; Nation, I (July 6, 1865), 1, 4-5 (July 13, 1865), 40 (July 20, 1865), 69, 73-74 (Sept. 21, 1865), 357, 359; Liberator, July 7, 1865; Commonwealth, July 15, 1865; Independent, July 13, 1865; McKim to E. L. Pierce, July 10, 1865, Godkin to McKim, July 10, 1865, Pierce to Benjamin Butler, July 11, 1865, in Jesse Marshall, ed., Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War (5 vols., Norwood, Mass., 1917), V, 491; Mary Stearns to A. Bronson Alcott, July 25, 1865, Alcott Papers, Concord Public Library.

37 Stearns, Stearns, 337-38, 366; Ogden, Godkin, I, 242, 246-48; Alan P. Grimes, The Political Liberalism of the New York Nation, 1865-1932 (Chapel Hill, 1953), 5-12; McKim to Samuel May, Jr., July 19, 1865, Quincy to May, Aug. 16, 1865, McKim to Richard Webb, Aug. 31, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL; McKim to M. W. Chapman, Aug. 26, 1865, Weston Papers, BPL; Quincy to Webb, Oct. 21, 1865, Quincy-Webb Correspondence, BPL; Samuel May, Jr., to Webb, Sept. 19, 1865, Samuel May, Jr., Papers, BPL; Nation, I (Oct. 26, 1865), 520-21; Liberator, Sept. 22, Dec. 8, 1865; Commonwealth, Feb. 17, 1866, May 30, Nov. 14, 1868; McKim to William Still, May 26, 1866, quoted in Norwood, “Negro Welfare Work in Philadelphia,” 145; Sarah Pugh to McKim, Dec. 20, 1866, McKim Papers, NYPL. Garrison later became critical of the Nation’s conservative course.

38 Stearns, Stearns, 346-50; Commonwealth, June 24, 1865.

39 O. B. Frothingham to Charles Sumner, Aug. 3, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU. Antislavery newspapers were filled with details of speeches, meetings, etc. on behalf of Negro suffrage in the summer of 1865.

40 Chicago Times, July 7, 1865; New York Times, quoted by N.A.S. Standard, July 1, 1865.

41 Tilton to Garrison, Jan. 11, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL; Lydia M. Child to Tilton, Mar. 7, 1865, in Independent, Mar. 16; Independent, July 20, Nov. 9, 1865; Liberator, Apr. 21, June 16, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 8, 1865; Gerrit Smith, Thoughts for the People, broadside published April 14, 1865 (Peterboro, 1865).

42 See, for example, Commonwealth, Mar. 11, June 3, 17, 24, Oct. 14, 1865; Wendell Phillips, Lectures, Speeches, and Letters (2nd Series; Boston, 1900), 451-52; Liberator, May 19, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 30, 1865, Feb. 17, 1866; Parker Pillsbury to Charles Sumner, Sept. 16, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU.

43 Sumner to Francis Lieber, Aug. 14, 1865, in Pierce, Sumner, IV, 256.

44 Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 42-84.

45 Liberator, July 14, 1865. See also Parker Pillsbury to Samuel Johnson, Aug. 3, 1865, Johnson Papers, Essex Institute.

46 Independent, July 6, 13, 1865; Commonwealth, July 8, 22, 1865.

47 W. L. Garrison, Jr., to Martha Wright, July 9, 1865, Garrison Papers, SC; Liberator, July 14, 1865; Wm. H. Channing to R. H. Dana, July 13, 1865, quoted by McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 63n.; Martha Greene to Douglass, Aug. 2, 1865, Douglass Papers, Anacostia. Charles Sumner was disturbed by Garrison’s endorsement of Johnson. “Has not the time come for your voice?” Sumner asked the veteran abolitionist on July 22. “This unwise and evil experiment of the Prest must be exposed. I would not break with him, but let him know frankly the opportunity he has lost, & the mischief he has caused.” Sumner to Garrison, July 22, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL.

48 Liberator, July 14, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, July 8, 1865.

49 N.A.S. Standard, July 15, Aug. 26, Sept. 2, 1865; New York Times, July 9, 1865; New York Herald, July 15, 1865; Richmond Commercial Bulletin, July 19, 1865; LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866 (New York, 1963), 140-41.

50 F. W. Bird to Garrison, July 5, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL; Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (2nd ed., New York, 1958), 70-71.

51 Independent, Aug. 10, 1865.

52 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 163-64, 193-94.

53 Commonwealth, Sept. 30, 1865; Samuel May, Jr., to S. J. May, Sept. 17, 1865, S. J. May Papers, BPL; Garrison to Henry Wright, Oct. 2, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL. Lydia Maria Child commented in October that “I feel more uneasy about public affairs than I care to say…. I have called to mind my impatience with Lincoln, and I have tried to think the best of Andy Johnson, and to hope for the best; but I confess faith and hope are dying out.” L. M. Child to Elisa Scudder, Oct. 22, 1865, Child Papers, Cornell.

54 New York Tribune, May 27, 1865.

55 ibid., Sept. 12, 26, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Aug. 19, Sept. 30, 1865; Independent, Aug. 24, Sept. 28, 1865; G. W. Curtis to S. H. Gay, Aug. 23, 1865, Gay Papers, CU; Henry Stanton to Gerrit Smith, Sept. 22, 1865, Smith Papers, SU; Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., “Northern Prejudice and Negro Suffrage, 1865-1870,” Journal of Negro History, XXXIX (Jan. 1954), 12-15.

56 Liberator, Oct. 13, 1865; Commonwealth, Oct. 7, 1865; Independent, Oct. 12, 1865. See also George Cheever to Elizabeth C. Washburn, Oct. 3, 1865, Cheever Papers, AAS; New York Tribune, Oct. 3, 7, 1865; and N.A.S. Standard, Oct. 14, 1865.

57 For examples of abolitionist discouragement, see Commonwealth, Oct. 14, 21, 1865; Wendell Phillips to Benjamin Butler, Oct. 24, 1865, Butler Papers, LC; Tilton to Sumner, Nov. 11, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 16, 23, Oct. 21, 1865. Phillips wrote privately in October 1865, that “we have no hope but in such utterly abominable conduct on the part of [Johnson’s] proteges at the South as will cause the North & Congress to checkmate his plan.” Phillips to Moncure Conway, Oct. ?, 1865, Conway Papers, CU.

58 N.A.S. Standard, Oct. 21, Nov. 4, 1865.

59 Stearns, Stearns, 358-60; New York Tribune, Oct. 23, 1865.

60 Stearns to Johnson, Oct. 8, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC.

61 Stearns, Stearns, 360-61; quotation from Stearns to Moncure Conway, Oct. 23, 1865, Conway Papers, CU.

62 New York Tribune, Oct. 23, 1865; Right Way, Nov. 18, 1865; Stearns to Andrew Johnson, Nov. 13, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Stearns, Stearns, 361-62.

63 Independent, Oct. 26, Nov. 9, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Oct. 28, 1865.

64 Higginson’s statement published in Independent, Oct. 26, 1865; W. L. Garrison, Jr., to Martha Wright, Nov. 5, 1865, Garrison Papers, SC.

65 McKim to S. J. May, Nov. 7, 1865, McKim letterbook, I, 55, McKim Papers, Cornell.

66 Stearns, Stearns, 357; W. W. Thayer, ms. autobiography, fragment in the MS Division, LC; Right Way, Nov. 18, 25, Dec. 9, 23, 1865.

67 Liberator, Nov. 10, Dec. 8, 15, 1865; Cleveland Leader, Nov. 9, 1865; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 17, 1865.

68 Garrison to Helen Garrison, Nov. 27, 29, 1865, Garrison Papers, BPL.

69 The Nation, I (Dec. 7, 1865), 714.