XV THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AND THE ELECTION OF 1866

IN his first annual message to Congress on December 2, 1865, President Johnson restated his belief that he had no right to prescribe suffrage qualifications in the southern states and declared that the reconstructed state governments provided ample protection and security for all citizens. Radical abolitionists derided the message. They noted again the president’s inconsistency in appointing provisional governors and prescribing certain conditions for reconstruction but denying the right to fix suffrage requirements. As for the protection and security of citizens, one needed only to read the black codes or scan the daily reports of atrocities against freedmen to perceive the falsity of Johnson’s assertion.1 A good example of the southern attitude, said abolitionists, was a box received by Charles Sumner in the mail containing the severed finger of a Negro and a note: “You old son of a bitch, I send you a piece of one of your friends, and if that bill of yours passes I will have a piece of you.”²

Abolitionists were gratified when Congress, in effect, repudiated Johnson’s annual message by refusing to admit southern congressmen and by creating the Joint Committee of Fifteen to formulate a reconstruction policy.³ A few days later the American Freedmen’s Aid Commission, a union of the secular freedmen’s aid societies, memorialized Congress for a continuation and enlargement of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In an address written by McKim, the societies noted that freedmen could not get justice in the civil courts of the South, where they were excluded as jurors and sometimes as witnesses. McKim urged Congress to create military courts for the Negroes under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau.⁴ Soon after this Senator Lyman Trumbull introduced two bills intended to clarify and protect the status of southern freedmen. One bill enlarged the scope of the Freedmen’s Bureau; the second defined the civil rights of freedmen and empowered federal district courts to enforce these rights.5

While Congress debated these measures, abolitionists continued to urge Negro suffrage as a minimum condition of restoration. The first test of the suffrage question came on a bill to grant the ballot to colored men in the District of Columbia. Petitions for enactment of this bill poured in from abolitionists and Negroes all over the North. The House passed the bill on January 18, 1866, to the thundering applause of 300 Negroes in the galleries. Abolitionists hailed the event as the greatest victory for the Negro since the Thirteenth Amendment.⁶

While the District of Columbia suffrage bill rested in Senate committee, the full Senate took up an enabling act to admit Colorado as the newest state of the Union. Republicans backed the Colorado bill in order to gain two additional Republican senators to help override Johnson’s vetoes. But Sumner and the abolitionists opposed admission because Colorado’s constitution limited the franchise to white men. They appreciated the partisan advantages of two more Republican senators, but they were trying to make Negro suffrage the main issue of reconstruction, and admission of a new northern state without equal suffrage would stultify their efforts and create a disastrous precedent. Senator Henry Wilson took the lead in urging Colorado’s admission, and abolitionists denounced him unmercifully for his action. Despite the efforts of Sumner and the abolitionists, Congress passed the enabling act. But Johnson vetoed it on the ground that Colorado’s population was insufficient for statehood, and Congress could not muster enough votes to override the veto. It was the only Johnson veto of which abolitionists ever approved.⁷

Meanwhile the tension between President Johnson and the Republican congressional majority was mounting. At the beginning of the session Horace Greeley, George Stearns, and John Andrew made several attempts to preserve harmony between the president and Congress. Greeley journeyed to Washington in an effort to prevent a breach between Johnson and Republican leaders. Stearns made a personal appeal to his old friend Johnson for reconstruction on the basis of equal rights. In his valedictory address to the Massachusetts legislature on January 5, 1866, Andrew pleaded for the good will and cooperation of all classes, North and South, in solving the complex problem of reconstruction.8

Many abolitionists disapproved of these efforts to reconcile President Johnson and the Congress. Phillips thought that Republicans had carried conciliation far enough and that it was time for them to strike boldly against Johnson’s policy. In reply to the moderate Republican argument that precipitate action would drive the president into the Democratic party, Phillips said: “If he is capable of being there, he ought to be. If he means to betray his party, the sooner the better.” In January Senator Fessenden, chairman of the Joint Committee of Fifteen, publicly stated that there was no breach between the president and the Republican congressional majority. A special meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston on January 24, denounced Fessenden’s attempt to harmonize Johnson and Congress. “Those who bestow general approval of the President take off the edge of public vigilance,” said Phillips. If Fessenden and his associates really thought there was no major difference of opinion between themselves and Johnson, “the leaders of the Republican party are to be watched, not trusted…. We need outside pressure and remorseless criticism upon Congress and the President.”⁹

During the congressional session a delegation of Negro abolitionists, headed by George Downing, came to Washington to lobby for Negro suffrage. On February 7 Downing, Frederick Douglass, and three other Negroes held an important interview with President Johnson. In short introductory speeches Downing and Douglass assured the president that they came in a spirit of respect and friendship. They urged Johnson to enfranchise the Negro as a measure of justice and necessity. In his reply the president declared that he had always been a friend of the colored race. “If I know myself, and the feelings of my own heart, they have been for the colored man. I have owned slaves and bought slaves, but I never sold one.” Warming to his subject, Johnson declared that Negro suffrage in the South would cause a war of races. If enfranchised the freedmen would become mere political pawns of the planter class, who would use them to grind down further the small white farmers. The president could see no solution of the race problem except emigration of the Negroes from the South. Stunned by Johnson’s remarks, Douglass tried to reply, but was cut off by the president before he could utter more than a few sentences. The delegation was ushered out of Johnson’s office.10

“Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction and How It Works.” Nast in Harper’s Weekly

After consultation with radical congressional leaders, Douglass penned a reply to the president’s statement and published it in the Washington Chronicle. Douglass denied that Negro suffrage would create a race war or that the Negro voter would become the pawn of the planter class. Enmity between Negro and poor white grew out of slavery. In freedom the Negroes and the small white farmers would have similar interests and would vote accordingly. Even if hostility between poor white and Negro did continue in freedom, said Douglass, how was the freedman to protect himself without equal rights? Experience proved that “Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.” To keep the Negro politically powerless would only invite abuse and oppression of the defenseless freedmen. “Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another,” concluded Douglass, “but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes.”11

The interview and Douglass’ reply attracted widespread attention. The Republican press was almost unanimously critical of Johnson’s behavior toward the Negroes. Abolitionists exploded in anger at this new evidence of Johnson’s race prejudice. In an editorial entitled “Our Poor White President” the Anti-Slavery Standard assailed Johnson’s address to the colored delegation as “one of the most brutal and insolent speeches anywhere on record.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton commented that the interview showed “how much better Douglass understands the philosophy of social life and republican institutions than the President.” The Worcester Freedom Club resolved that the interview had revealed the real attitude of the president toward the Negro: there was no longer any doubt that Johnson’s policy was based on the belief that the country belonged to white men alone.12

Most abolitionists had given up hope of securing Johnson’s cooperation for a just reconstruction program, but there were still many Republicans seeking a basis of accommodation with the president. In mid-February their hopes centered on Trumbull’s Freedmen’s Bureau bill, recently passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress. Senators Trumbull and Fessenden fully expected Johnson to approve the act. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax wagered a box of Havana cigars that the president would sign. J. Miller McKim scouted Democratic rumors that the president would veto the bill. “I can hardly think he will be so unwise as to do so,” wrote McKim. “That bill… is a growth of the loyal and virtuous public sentiment of the land. To veto it … would be to fly in the face of the whole people.”¹³

But on February 19 Johnson shocked Republicans by vetoing the act. The Anti-Slavery Standard was not surprised. Phillips tossed an “I told you so” editorial at Republicans who had labored to reconcile President Johnson and the Congress. Two days after the veto Theodore Tilton told his friend Greeley that “it is a crime henceforth to deceive the Nation by the pretence that Andrew Johnson is the head of the Republican Party…. All disguise is now taken off. The way to victory is no longer by going with him but against him.” Greeley was stunned by the veto and expressed his grief in a series of Tribune editorials. He did not yet take Tilton’s advice to break completely with the president, but his editorials were henceforth much more critical of the administration.14

Among abolitionists there was hardly one who ever again said a good word for Johnson. Stearns, Oliver Johnson, McKim, Garrison, and others who had been hoping against hope that the president could be dissuaded from his wrongheaded course were completely disillusioned by the veto. “What is to be done with Andrew Johnson?” asked Samuel May, Jr., dejectedly. “It looks to me now that he has betrayed his friends, when he might have easily prevented any rupture if he chose.” General Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, told McKim that the veto had emboldened white southerners to increase their attacks on the Bureau and had made freedmen’s aid efforts in the South more difficult. “I have talked hopefully of the President,” reported McKim from Washington. “We have kept our fears to ourselves. But it is no use. Loyal and virtuous men here, who are well informed, as a general thing have no confidence in & no sanguine hope of much good from President Johnson.”¹⁵

Johnson followed his veto with one of the most remarkable public speeches ever uttered by an American president. On February 22 a group of Democrats held a Washington’s birthday celebration at Grover’s Theatre in the capital. They adopted resolutions endorsing Johnson’s reconstruction policy and affirming that “the grand old declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ was never intended by its authors … [to place] the African race in this country on a civil, social, or political level with the Caucasian.”¹⁶ In a festive mood the revelers trooped to the White House to serenade President Johnson, who responded with a long speech full of diatribes against radical leaders. Johnson compared himself to Christ; he denounced the radicals as traitors and disunionists, and when asked to name his tormentors, he called out the names of Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips. These plotters were planning to assassinate him, charged Johnson. “If my blood is to be shed because I vindicate the Union and the preservation of this government in its original purity and character,” he proclaimed, “let it be shed; let an altar to the Union be erected, and then, if it is necessary, take me and lay me upon it, and the blood that now warms and animates my existence shall be poured out as a fit libation to the Union of these States.”17

The nation was mortified by the president’s speech. Some of his best friends were appalled. Even abolitionists who believed Johnson capable of any villainy were taken aback. “Has the [presidential] office ever been so degraded before?” asked Samuel May, Jr. J. Miller McKim, usually restrained of speech, was moved by Johnson’s behavior to call the president “an obstinate, pigheaded, ill-conditioned, border-state, ‘poor white,’ and locofoco Democrat.” Garrison delivered a few well-publicized speeches and wrote several articles for the Independent denouncing Johnson and calling for his impeachment.¹⁸

Radical abolitionists who had long urged an unremitting war against the president were delighted by the public reaction to his Freedmen’s Bureau veto and his February 22 speech. Many moderate Republicans turned against the president. Eight state legislatures passed resolutions rebuking Johnson.¹⁹ The disillusionment with the president raised the stock of abolitionists who had been declaiming against him for months. Republican newspapers that had previously criticized the abolitionists for inciting ill will between President Johnson and the Congress now printed their speeches with editorial endorsement. Abolitionists spoke to cheering crowds on the lecture circuit. Radical congressional leaders encouraged their work of agitation. “Every school district in the country should be canvassed in the cause of justice and equality,” Congressman William D. Kelley told Phillips. In March 1866, Sumner urged Phillips to hold the antislavery societies together. “You and they are doing indispensable work; in this I express the conviction of every Senator and every Representative on our side of the pending questions.”20

One of the pending questions was Trumbull’s Civil Rights bill. This measure was passed by Congress in March. Again there was much speculation about whether Johnson would veto or sign it. Recovered somewhat from the debacle of February, moderate Republicans were negotiating for a reconciliation with Johnson on the basis of the Civil Rights bill. But again the president spurned their overtures and vetoed the bill. For most Republicans this was the last straw. From that time forward there was a virtually irreparable breach between the president and the party that had elected him. On April 9 Congress passed the Civil Rights bill over Johnson’s veto. Abolitionists were overjoyed. At last the Republicans had shown a bold and united front against the perfidious president. “Things begin to look a little brighter,” commented young Frank Garrison, “and if we can only keep the two-thirds majority obtained for the bill, we can snap our fingers at the wretched occupant of the White House.” Abolitionist David Plumb praised Congress for its defiance of the executive. “Now for the ‘Main Question’—the Suffrage of the Negro,” wrote Plumb. “I do not expect great things from the ‘Civil Rights Bill,’ unless backed by Negro Suffrage…. Since half-measures cannot win the President, now, why not go for a whole one?”²¹

Plumb expressed the sentiments of many abolitionists. Despite their happiness with the passage of the Civil Rights bill, they were far from satisfied. The Civil Rights bill, said Tilton, was all right as far as it went, but “the negro will never be thoroughly protected, even in person and property, until he has the ballot.” Gerrit Smith wrote an open letter to Senator Henry Wilson declaring that “the Civil Rights Bill cannot serve the black man in place of the ballot.” “What is suffrage, if it be not a civil right?” asked the Anti-Slavery Standard. “What are civil rights worth that do not include suffrage?” The Standard welcomed Congress’s display of backbone in passing the bill over Johnson’s veto, but nevertheless considered the measure only “half the loaf. And if this be, as many fear, the substitute for suffrage, it may prove far worse than no bread.”22

Abolitionists looked hopefully but not confidently to the Joint Committee of Fifteen for favorable action on the suffrage question. Since the beginning of January the Committee had been deliberating the problem of reconstruction. One of the first questions to come before it was the increase in southern representation occasioned by the abolition of slavery. Before emancipation the slave had counted as three-fifths of a man in determining congressional representation; the freed Negro now counted as a whole man. Without a constitutional amendment the South could return to the Union stronger than ever in Congress, her Negro population disfranchised but counted for representation purposes. In January the Joint Committee sent to Congress a constitutional amendment which would reduce the size of a state’s congressional delegation if that state denied or abridged the franchise on account of race or color. Believing that northern public opinion would not sanction a direct grant of Negro suffrage, moderate Republicans rallied behind the apportionment amendment as the best attainable substitute.²³

Abolitionists denounced the amendment. In a public letter Gerrit Smith asserted that if the South were readmitted under such a plan she would gladly accept reduced representation in order to keep her Negro population disfranchised. Tilton assailed the proposed amendment because it “puts the Negro into the hands of the Rebel…. It proves that a Republic is ungrateful.” The American Anti-Slavery Society resolved that the amendment was “only fitted to protect the North and the white race, while it leaves the Negro to his fate…. In times of revolution the decisions, the mistakes, of a single hour may settle the opinions of a nation and its forms of civil life for centuries.” Therefore it would be better to defeat this half measure than to accept it and run the risk of it becoming the final basis of settlement.24

Sumner was in complete accord with abolitionists on this question. The amendment was passed by the House at the end of January, but in the Senate it ran into the opposition of the powerful senator from Massachusetts. In a marathon Senate speech occupying two days (February 5 and 6), Sumner uttered an exhaustive excoriation of the Amendment and pleaded for congressional enactment of Negro suffrage. Abolitionists and northern Negroes praised Sumner’s speech as the greatest effort of his life. They moved quickly to back up his efforts with petitions and memorials against the proposed Amendment.²⁵ Democrats as well as radical Republicans opposed the Amendment, and by the middle of February Sumner claimed to have enough Senate votes to defeat it. When the vote was taken on March 9 it fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary for passage. Abolitionists rejoiced in its failure and heaped renewed praise on Sumner.²⁶

Victory in the battle of the ballot, however, still seemed remote. Convinced that northern public opinion opposed Negro suffrage, moderate Republican leaders continued to seek a less radical solution to the reconstruction puzzle. Abolitionists denounced these Republicans for their willingness to sacrifice the Negro on the altar of political expediency. “They have sought only to tinker, not to change ‘the President’s plans’; to merely prune, not to uproot and destroy,” charged the Anti-Slavery Standard in April. “Were the Democrats in power, they could not possibly be worse.”27 In an effort to improve the climate of public opinion and exert pressure on Congress, the Boston Emancipation League reorganized in March 1866, as the Impartial Suffrage Association. The Association sponsored lectures and aided George Stearns in the circulation of newspapers and pamphlets throughout the nation.²⁸

Disturbed by Congress’s failure to propose an effective reconstruction program, Robert Dale Owen came to Washington at the end of March and laid before Thaddeus Stevens a comprehensive plan. Owen proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit discrimination in civil rights, enact impartial suffrage in every state after July 4, 1876, and provide for proportional reduction of the representation of any states that denied Negro suffrage before that date. Stevens professed enthusiasm for the plan, but Sumner and the abolitionists disliked the postponement of equal suffrage until 1876. Even this modest Negro suffrage proposal, however, was too strong for the Joint Committee. With the congressional elections of 1866 looming on the horizon, they were extremely sensitive to political considerations. The Committee rewrote Owen’s amendment. On April 30 Fessenden and Stevens reported to Congress a constitutional amendment that prohibited states from abridging the civil rights of citizens or denying any person the equal protection of the laws; provided for the proportional reduction of the congressional representation of any state that abridged or denied suffrage to any of its male citizens; disfranchised until 1870 all persons who had voluntarily supported the rebellion; and forbade payment of the Confederate debt. Congress struck out the section disfranchising all rebels and substituted a provision to disqualify from political office certain classes of leading Confederates. Otherwise the proposal submitted on April 30 was substantially the same as the measure eventually adopted as the Fourteenth Amendment.²⁹

The Anti-Slavery Standard denounced the Joint Committee’s proposed Amendment as a “fraud.” On the central issue of Negro suffrage it was no better than the Amendment defeated in March. “It is a substitute for suffrage and citizenship,” said the Standard. “It is the blighted harvest of the bloodiest sowing the fields of the world ever saw.” Phillips told Thaddeus Stevens that the report of the Joint Committee was “a fatal & total surrender. The South carries off enough of the victory to enable her to control the Nation, mould its policy & shape its legislation for a dozen years to come.” Tilton vigorously criticized the Amendment in the columns of the Independent.30

Not all abolitionists reacted so sharply to the action of the Joint Committee. George Stearns expressed unwillingness “to accept as a finality any thing less than Impartial Suffrage,” but thought that Congress should pass the Amendment “rather than have ‘no policy.’ ” Adoption of the Amendment would not preclude radicals “from asking all we need at a future time…. Our support of Congress would be more efficient and direct, if, without denouncing this scheme we claim all we ought to have.” The Boston Commonwealth regretted that Negro suffrage had not been incorporated into the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. But with an eye to the 1866 elections, the editor commended the Amendment as the best that could be obtained at this time. The Right Way considered it “criminal and idiotic” to enfranchise rebels and withhold the ballot from black loyalists. Nevertheless adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment would be “of great value for national security and national justice.” Meanwhile, declared the Right Way, abolitionists should urge the inclusion of Negro suffrage in the enabling acts admitting southern states and the adoption of a Fifteenth Amendment incorporating equal manhood suffrage into the Constitution.³¹

Abolitionists therefore were divided into two camps in their attitudes toward the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. Neither group approved the measure as the final condition of reconstruction. One faction, led by Phillips, condemned the Amendment unequivocally and hoped for its defeat, fearing that adoption would lead to the admission of southern states when they had ratified the Amendment. The other faction, led by George Stearns, approved the Amendment as far as it went, urged its passage, and hoped by an enabling act or a Fifteenth Amendment to secure Negro suffrage.

The House passed the Fourteenth Amendment in its original form on May 10. While the Senate deliberated, Phillips and his followers stepped up their attacks. In Anti-Slavery Standard editorials Phillips charged that by failing to enact Negro suffrage Congress had, in effect, surrendered to President Johnson and the South. The vaunted “practical statesmanship” of Fessenden, Trumbull, and other Republican leaders who had formulated the Fourteenth Amendment was nothing but “hypocrisy, fear, and a compromise.” In a series of powerful sermons and discourses, several of which were published in pamphlet form, George Cheever excoriated the Amendment as a fraud, a sham, a political trick, and a “robbery of the colored race.” Frederick Douglass considered the measure a personal insult to every Negro. “For to tell me that I am an equal American citizen, and, in the same breath, tell me that my right to vote may be constitutionally taken from me by some other equal citizen or citizens, is to tell me that my citizenship is but an empty name,” declared Douglass. “To say that I am a citizen to pay taxes … obey the laws, support the government, and fight the battles of the country, but, in all that respects voting and representation, I am but as so much inert matter, is to insult my manhood.”32 The New England Anti-Slavery Society resolved that admission of rebel states under the proposed Fourteenth Amendment would be “total surrender” and “an unworthy trick to mislead the nation.” In a speech at the Society’s annual convention Phillips expressed hope for defeat of the Republican party if it fought the 1866 elections on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment. “The Republicans are occupied chiefly in keeping up their own organization,” charged Phillips. “Let that party be broken that sacrifices principle to preserve its own existence.”33

Garrison, Oliver Johnson, and McKim condemned Phillips’ anti-Republican speeches and called for support of Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment. They professed to be no less ardent in their desire for Negro suffrage than Phillips, but declared that this objective would sooner be reached by cooperating with the Republican majority than by defying it. Stearns organized a mass meeting at Faneuil Hall on May 31 under the auspices of the Impartial Suffrage Association. The meeting adopted resolutions endorsing the Fourteenth Amendment and urging Congress to pass enabling acts requiring southern states to enact impartial suffrage before returning to the Union.³⁴

Meanwhile a Senate Republican caucus bound all Republicans to vote for the Fourteenth Amendment on the Senate floor. Sumner and a few other radicals were opposed to the Amendment. But they were bound by the caucus decision and voted for the measure when it passed the Senate on June 8. The battle line for radicals now became the enabling act setting forth the conditions under which former Confederate states would be readmitted. Sumner introduced a bill drafted by abolitionist lawyer Samuel Sewall requiring equal suffrage as a condition of readmission. Congressional radicals rallied behind this measure, and Tilton gave it the support of the powerful Independent. But moderate Republicans considered Negro suffrage in an enabling act just as much a political liability as in a constitutional amendment. A majority of Republicans were reluctant to commit themselves to any final conditions of readmission. They preferred to go to the country on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment as it stood, leaving the final terms of reconstruction to the next session of Congress after the 1866 elections. Congress adjourned in July without passing any enabling legislation.³⁵

Most abolitionists were not reluctant to see this issue postponed until the next session, hoping that time, circumstances, and an improved state of public opinion would make Congress more radical in December. But in the last weeks of the 1865-66 session Tennessee, having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, knocked on the congressional door for readmission. Moderate Republicans seized upon Tennessee’s application as an opportunity to display the good faith of Congress and the success of its reconstruction policy by admitting the state with no other conditions than those contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. Sumner in the Senate and Boutwell in the House tried to incorporate an equal suffrage provision in the act of admission, but their motions were defeated. Tennessee was restored to the Union by joint resolution on July 23. Sumner was deeply discouraged and many abolitionists were sullen. Tilton feared that Tennessee’s restoration would create a precedent for the admission of other southern states without Negro suffrage. “Tennessee is permitted to deny to her blacks a voice in the state, while she herself is permitted to resume her voice in the nation,” he wrote in the Independent. “The spectacle is a national humiliation.”36

Meanwhile Phillips had been thinking over his statement of May 31 that a Republican defeat in the 1866 elections would be better than a victory on the platform of the Fourteenth Amendment. Phillips’ radical friends warned him that expression of such opinions could destroy his influence in the Republican party. At a Fourth of July celebration in Framingham, Massachusetts, Phillips renewed his attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment. But this time instead of calling for the defeat of the Republican party, he proclaimed his belief that the Amendment would not be ratified. He predicted that the South would reject it. Phillips announced that his radical Republican friends did not want the Amendment ratified; they considered it nothing more than a platform for the fall elections, and hoped to enact a more thorough reconstruction program at the next session of Congress. Phillips therefore hoped the Republican party would succeed. “I know no other channel, this summer, in which to work. I cannot tell you to desert the Republican party; I know nowhere else for you to go.”

This advice was not entirely welcome to some abolitionists. Gerrit Smith said that he could never support a party that campaigned on the basis of the infamous Fourteenth Amendment. Stephen S. Foster introduced a resolution declaring that abolitionists would support no party that did not recognize the absolute equality of all men before the law. Phillips hastily replied that he had not meant that abolitionists should give unqualified support to the party. They should condemn Republican shortcomings, as they had always done, but “let us support any one in that organization who does maintain, and promises to support, the true ideas of freedom.” In the end Foster’s resolution was adopted unanimously, with the understanding that it did not preclude abolitionist support of individual radical Republicans who were true to the idea of equality.37

As election day approached, abolitionists toned down their criticism of Republicans and concentrated their fire on President Johnson and his supporters, who were making a determined bid for electoral endorsement of Johnson’s reconstruction policy. In June, conservatives issued a call for a National Union convention on August 14 in Philadelphia to rally all of Johnson’s supporters in a new party. Republicans and abolitionists directed their main attacks on this new conservative threat. The Anti-Slavery Standard described the National Union movement as a bid for power by those who “agree that this is a white man’s government…. It is virtually a movement for the re-establishment of slavery.”³⁸

One of the major issues of the 1866 campaign was the increasing oppression of freedmen in the South. In May a mob of white men in Memphis, aided by part of the police force, went on a drunken, murderous rampage against the city’s Negro population, burning, raping, and pillaging in the colored section of town and killing 46 Negroes. Northerners were appalled. Republicans charged that the riot was the inevitable result of Johnson’s reconstruction policy. With Memphis as an example, observed the New York Tribune sarcastically, “who doubts that the Freedmen’s Bureau ought to be abolished forthwith, and the blacks remitted to the paternal care of their old masters, who ‘understand the nigger, you know, a great deal better than the Yankees can?’ ”39 The Republican and abolitionist press continued to publish reports of outrages against freedmen all through the summer. Despite conservative charges that the Republican press exaggerated these reports for political purposes, the atrocity stories had some basis in fact. In September 1866, the assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Arkansas reported officially that crimes against freedmen had increased sharply since March. He stated that southern whites felt that “any effort to secure justice for the Freedmen is simply the work of ‘abolitionists’ … and [was] in direct opposition to the wishes of the President of the United States.”⁴⁰

The most spectacular anti-Negro violence occurred in New Orleans on July 30. A convention of radical whites and Negroes which had been called to consider a Negro suffrage amendment to Louisiana’s Constitution was attacked by a mob of New Orleans whites containing many policemen and former Confederate soldiers. Scores of Negroes and their white allies were killed or wounded by the cold-blooded assault. In the North the affair redounded with great discredit to President Johnson and his policy. Republicans were quick to depict the riot as the inevitable consequence of Johnson’s reconstruction program. Some abolitionists went even further and blamed the affray partly on the conservative policy of Congress. Gerrit Smith hoped that the New Orleans murders had “opened the eyes of Congress to its folly in restoring Tennessee, & to the folly of restoring any other Rebel State whilst such State was continuing to oppress the negro.” Most radicals joined Elizur Wright in hoping that the riots would prove a blessing in disguise by rousing the people to the necessity of a thorough reconstruction.41

Abolitionists unleashed a volley of ridicule and denunciation of the National Union convention when it met in Philadelphia on August 14. The convention adopted a resolution stating that “there is no section of the country where the Constitution and the laws of the United States find more prompt and entire obedience than in [the former Confederate] States.” Gerrit Smith was appalled by the mendacious effrontery of this resolution. “This is said of that half of our country in every part of which it is unsafe to be a black man or the friend of a black man,” wrote Smith. “Can the people respect the men who so trifle with truth?” Another radical described the Philadelphia convention as “a meeting of marvelous odds and ends, the reconstructed shreds and patches of rebellion; cunning men from down East, … gangs of rough and ready men from New York, freebooters in politics; several solemn old men from Pennsylvania, who will stand by the Constitution as it ought to have been two thousand years ago; … old pro-Slavery fossils from North Carolina; South Carolina implacables, with the whip-hand itching; … Mississippi gentlemen, who are determined to reconstruct by burying the negro.” These men had come together “to stand by the Union, and the Constitution, and Andrew Johnson, to defend the New-Orleans massacre, and indorse the policy which gave us the murders at Memphis.”⁴²

To counter the National Union movement, a convention of Southern Loyalists met in Philadelphia in early September. Hundreds of northern Republicans attended as observers and as “honorary” delegates. The issues of Negro suffrage and the Republican party’s relation to the Negro nearly broke up the convention. Trouble began when Rochester Republicans elected Frederick Douglass as a delegate. Many Republicans feared that Douglass’ attendance would hurt the party in parts of the North where “social equality” was anathema. One Republican urged Thaddeus Stevens to use his influence to keep Douglass away from Philadelphia. “If he goes it will certainly injure our cause and we may lose some Congressmen in doubtful districts.”43

Douglass was not deterred by the fears of white Republicans. He told Governor Oliver Morton of Indiana that if he was prevented from attending the convention the Republican party would gain a reputation for “hypocrisy and cowardice.” Failing to persuade Douglass to stay away from Philadelphia, Republican leaders decided to ignore him as much as possible at the convention. When the delegates assembled at Independence Hall for a grand procession to National Hall where the convention was to be held, all Republicans but General Butler shied away from Douglass. The delegates were supposed to march two abreast, but it appeared that Douglass would have to walk alone until Theodore Tilton came up, locked arms with Douglass, and marched proudly with him down streets lined with cheering onlookers.⁴⁴ Despite the cheers, many Republicans were alarmed by the incident. “A good many people here are disturbed by the practical exhibition of racial equality in the arm-in-arm performance of Douglass and Tilton,” wrote Thaddeus Stevens to Congressman William D. Kelley. “It does not become radicals like us particularly to object, but it was certainly unfortunate at this time. The old prejudice, now revived, will lose us some votes.”⁴⁵

At the convention itself there was some reluctance to seat Douglass as a delegate, and a motion to invite him to sit on the platform was ignored. But Douglass and a Negro delegate from Louisiana were finally seated. The significance of their presence, however, was soon overshadowed by the mighty struggle over Negro suffrage. Without Negro votes, Republicans from the deep South would be politically powerless. Most of the delegates from former Confederate states, therefore, wanted a declaration by the convention in favor of Negro suffrage. They were encouraged in this direction by a number of abolitionists at the convention. Under the leadership of Tilton the New York delegation passed a Negro suffrage resolution. But the “practical politicians” of the Republican party exerted all their influence to prevent any statement on the suffrage question. A caucus of northern Republican governors resolved that the question of Negro suffrage must be kept out of the campaign. Governor Samuel Cony of Maine said that he favored equal suffrage as much as any man in the country, “but I don’t believe in making negro suffrage an issue now. Our great object now is to secure the next Congress. If we don’t get that, then all is lost; if we do get it, then all is safe.”46

In this temper the convention spent three days attacking Andrew Johnson and the Democrats. But on the fourth day the Committee on Unreconstructed States submitted a report that included an endorsement of Negro suffrage. Border-state delegates tried to force an adjournment, and failing that, most of them withdrew, leaving an unorganized and confused mass of delegates from former Confederate states. Seizing the opportunity, Theodore Tilton, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Dickinson marched to the platform and proposed a reorganization of the convention into a popular mass meeting. The enthusiastic southerners agreed, and selected Tilton as chairman. Douglass, Dickinson, and Tilton made rousing speeches that evoked thunderous cheers from the crowd. The southerners, most of whom had never before heard a woman speak in public, were absolutely entranced by Anna Dickinson. After several hours of oratory the meeting broke up in high spirits. The next morning the Southern Loyalists met again formally and the Committee on Unreconstructed States again submitted its Negro suffrage resolutions. At the climax of the debate which followed, reported Tilton, Dr. Randolph, the Negro delegate from New Orleans, “leaped to the stage, and made an electric speech, picturing the wrongs of his race, demanding redress, claiming the ballot, and, suddenly turning to a colossal portrait of Mr. Lincoln behind the platform, exclaimed, ‘We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!’ The effect was irresistible. The house sprang to its feet, and gave cheer after cheer.” The Negro suffrage resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority. Moderate northern Republicans were chagrined, but abolitionists were jubilant. The endorsement of Negro suffrage by southern Republicans was an important victory for the radical cause. Many observers agreed that had it not been for the prompt action and persuasive eloquence of Tilton, Douglass, and Dickinson the Southern Loyalists would have adjourned in confusion without declaring for Negro suffrage.47

In a campaign speech at Cleveland on September 3, President Johnson repeated his familiar argument that northern radicals who opposed restoration of the Union under his reconstruction policy were traitors. “He who is opposed to the restoration of this Government and the reunion of the States is as great a traitor as Jeff Davis or Wendell Phillips,” shouted Johnson. “I would ask you, Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?”⁴⁸ Phillips laughed off the president’s bloodthirsty question. But Johnson’s designation of Phillips and Stevens as his greatest enemies pointed up an important fact: despite his strictures of the Republican party, Phillips was an influential leader of the party’s radical wing. It was an era highly charged with excitement; Phillips was a bold, exciting, uncompromising spokesman for radicalism, and every word he uttered attracted attention. He might have been elected to Congress in 1866. He was nominated for Congress by a workingmen’s party in Boston, and a word from Phillips probably would have given him the Republican nomination also. But the great orator declined, believing that he could be more influential as an independent, unfettered spokesman of radicalism than as a member of Congress where he would be hampered by party responsibilities and the exigencies of party politics.⁴⁹

Phillips was not the only abolitionist held in high regard by radical Republicans. The party recruited an army of abolitionist speakers for the 1866 campaign, headed by Anna Dickinson. But despite the participation of abolitionists in the campaign, Republican strategy in most parts of the North was to avoid the Negro question and concentrate on excoriating Johnson and extolling the Fourteenth Amendment. The Amendment was praised not so much as a benefit to the Negro but as a defense of the North from the renewed ascendancy of the South in national politics. The Anti-Slavery Standard complained in September that “most Republicans on the stump, and most Republicans in the press, are alike in this: they denounce the President unsparingly, praise the Congress and its proposed Amendment unmeasuredly, and threaten the rebels unfearingly. But the negro is, with them, nowhere remembered: ‘The South Carolina rebel shall not have two votes to the New York loyalist’s one;’ but whether the loyalist of South Carolina shall have one or not, our halting Republican friends do not say. Northern Unionists—being all white—are to be protected; Southern Unionists—being nineteen-twentieths black—are to be left to rebel discretion.”50

The question whether the Fourteenth Amendment constituted Congress’s final terms of reconstruction emerged as a major campaign issue. Moderate Republicans insisted in stump speeches and newspaper editorials that Congress would readmit southern states when they had ratified the Amendment. They pointed to Tennessee as an example. “There can be no question that the amendment was proposed with the distinct intention of submitting: it as the final condition of restoration,” declared the influential Boston Advertiser. The Nation stated that enough Republican candidates had committed themselves on the issue to insure southern readmission in return for ratification. Even the New York Tribune, while continuing to plead for impartial suffrage and universal amnesty, conceded that readmission on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment was favored by a majority of the party. In September the Republican National Committee issued an official address which proclaimed the Amendment to be “a just and safe plan of reconstruction” upon acceptance of which the southern states would be readmitted.51

Abolitionists and radical Republicans were alarmed by this renewed evidence of Republican perfidy to the Negro. They hastened to denounce the moderates and to deny that the Fourteenth Amendment constituted the final terms of reconstruction. Congress had made no formal commitment, argued the Right Way, and the admission of Tennessee was in no way a binding precedent. “We know personally every prominent member of Congress, and we know that the leaders do not mean to admit the unadmitted States on the mere adoption of the amendment,” asserted Theodore Tilton emphatically. “In the name of the radical party, whose heart we know, and whose voice we speak, we repudiate the Committee’s pledge to the rebels as wholly unauthorized, invalid, and void…. The radical party … can assent to no reconstruction short of Impartial Suffrage.”⁵²

In a rousing New York speech on October 25, Phillips unleashed another broadside against the Fourteenth Amendment. “The Constitutional amendment, so far as the negro is concerned, is a swindle,” he said. “The absent, the unheard, the disfranchised race is sacrificed between the upper and nether millstones of Rebeldom, while the Republican party knowingly, systematically and persistently sacrifice it to preserve their political supremacy.”⁵³ But despite their anger with the Republicans, abolitionists were gratified by the overwhelming Republican victory in the 1866 congressional elections. “The House of Representatives can send a dozen members off to a picnic,” exulted Tilton, “and yet leave a majority large enough to pass a radical measure over the President’s veto.” Both Tilton and Phillips interpreted the election results as a thumping repudiation of Johnson but not necessarily a popular endorsement of the Fourteenth Amendment as the final condition of reconstruction. “The Radical men of the North are neither to be conquered by the Democratic, nor trifled with by the Republican, party,” wrote Tilton. Phillips declared that Congress, “which abdicated leadership and postponed action till they were ‘certain sure’ what the elections would be, can now resume their places. Let them go back and, throwing this chaff of Reconstruction out of one window and swindling amendments out of the other,” enact a thorough reconstruction program granting the ballot to the freedmen.54

The New York Daily News affirmed that “where Mr. Phillips stood a few months ago the Radicals stand to-day; where he stands to-day they will doubtless be a few months hence.” But despite this comment, most of the evidence in November 1866, indicated that if southern states ratified the Amendment, the moderate Republican majority would admit them to the Union with few if any additional conditions. If this happened the future of Negro suffrage would be dark. Abolitionists and radicals looked hopefully to the South for negative action on the Fourteenth Amendment and girded themselves for a sharp struggle in Congress.⁵⁵

1 James D. Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents (20 vols., Washington, 1897-1913), VIII, 3551-60; N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 9, 30, 1865, Jan. 6, 27, 1866; Commonwealth, Dec. 9, 23, 30, 1865, Jan. 20, 1866; Liberator, Dec. 15, 1865; Independent, Jan. 4, Feb. 8, 1866.

2 Right Way, Jan. 27, 1866.

3 Tilton to Thaddeus Stevens, Dec. 6, 1865, Stevens Papers, LC.

4 Liberator, Dec. 22, 1865.

5 Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 277-79.

6 Liberator, Dec. 15, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 16, 30, 1865, Jan. 27, Feb. 3, 1866; Commonwealth, Jan. 20, 1866; Right Way, Dec. 23, 1865, Jan. 20, 27, 1866; Independent, Jan. 25, 1866.

7 Edward McPherson, Political History of the United States of America during the Period of Reconstruction (Washington, 1871), 81-83; Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (4 vols., Boston, 1877-94), IV, 284-86; Independent, Feb. 8, Mar. 15, May 3, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, May 12, 19, 1866; Right Way, Apr. 28, 1866; Commonwealth, Jan. 27, Apr. 21, 28, May 5, 19, 1866.

8 Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley, Nineteenth Century Crusader (Phila., 1953), 342-43; Right Way, Dec. 16, 1865; Stearns to Johnson, Dec. 14, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Henry G. Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew (2 vols., Boston, 1904), II, 276-87.

9 N.A.S. Standard, Jan. 20, Feb. 3, 1866. See also Phillips to Sumner, Dec. 25, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Principia, Jan. 11, 1866; and Commonwealth, Jan. 27, 1866.

10 Washington Chronicle, Feb. 8, 1866. One of Johnson’s private secretaries reported to a friend that after the “darkey delegation” had left his office, the president “uttered the following terse Saxon: ‘Those d----d sons of b----s thought they had me in a trap! I know that d----d Douglass; he’s just like any nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.’ ” P. Ripley to Manton Marble, Feb. 8, 1866, quoted by LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963), 163.

11 Washington Chronicle, Feb. 8, 1866. An account of the interview and a copy of Douglass’ reply are in McPherson, History of Reconstruction, 52-56. See also New York Tribune, Feb. 12, 1866.

12 N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 17, 1866. See also ibid., Feb. 24, 1866; Commonwealth, Feb. 17, 1866; Independent, Feb. 15, Mar. 1, 1866; Right Way, Feb. 24, Mar. 3, 1866.

13 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 284; New York Tribune, Feb. 14, 15, 1864; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 24, 1866; McKim to Joseph Simpson, Feb. 16, 1866, McKim letterbook, I, 273, McKim Papers, Cornell.

14 N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 24, 1866; Tilton to Greeley, Feb. 21, 1866, Tilton Papers, Misc. Mss, NYPL; New York Tribune, Feb. 20, 21, 23, 1866.

15 Samuel May, Jr., to McKim, Feb. 20, 1866, McKim Papers, NYPL; McKim to Joseph Simpson, Feb. 28, 1866, McKim letterbook, I, 398-400, McKim Papers, Cornell. See also Right Way, Mar. 3, 1866; Oliver Johnson to Garrison, Feb. 20, 1866, Garrison Papers, BPL; George Thompson to Oliver Johnson, Feb. 22, 1866, Dickinson Papers, LC.

16 Garrison to W. P. Garrison, Feb. 22, 1866, Garrison Papers, BPL; Independent, Mar. 1, 1866.

17 The speech is reprinted in McPherson, History of Reconstruction, 58-63.

18 Samuel May, Jr., to McKim, Mar. 5, 1866, McKim Papers, NYPL; McKim to Arthur Albright, Mar. 23, 1866, McKim Papers, BPL; New York Tribune, Feb. 28, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 10, 1866; Independent, Mar. 29, April 26, 1866. See also McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 295.

19 Commonwealth, Feb. 24, 1866; New York Tribune, Mar. 5, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 3, 10, 24, 1866; Philadelphia Press, Feb. 27, 1866; Right Way, Mar. 17, 1866.

20 Kelley quoted in N.A.S. Standard, May 12, 1866; Sumner to Phillips, Mar. 17, 1866, quoted by Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips: The Agitator (New York, 1890), 353. See also N.A.S Standard, Mar. 10, 17, 1866.

21 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 298-324; Independent, Mar. 22, 29, Apr. 5, 12, 1866; New York Tribune, Mar. 28, Apr. 9, 10, 1866; Francis Jackson Garrison to Fanny Garrison Villard, Apr. 8, 1866, F. G. Villard Papers, HU; David Plumb to Sumner, Apr. 12, 1866, Sumner Papers, HU.

22 Independent, Feb. 8, 1866; Gerrit Smith’s Reply to Henry Wilson, Mar. 26, 1866, broadside (Peterboro, 1866); N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 7, 14, 1866.

23 Joseph James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana, I11., 1956), 55-56; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 336-37.

24 Gerrit Smith to Senator Sumner, Feb. 5, 1866, published letter (Peterboro, 1866); Tilton to Sumner, Feb. 2, 1866, Sumner Papers, HU; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 3, 1866. See also Commonwealth, Jan. 27, 1866; Principia, Feb. 8, 1866; Independent, Feb. 1, 8, 15, 1866.

25 Pierce, Sumner, IV, 277-81; “Memorial of a Delegation Representing the Colored People,” House Misc. Docs., #109, 39 Cong., 1 Sess.; Commonwealth, Feb. 10, 17, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 17, Mar. 24, Apr. 21, 1866. There are nearly a dozen letters from abolitionists to Sumner praising his speech against the proposed Fourteenth Amendment in the Summer Papers, HU.

26 Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., 1,224-35, 1,275-89; Commonwealth, Mar. 17, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 17, 1866.

27 N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 14, 1866. See also ibid., Apr. 21, June 23, 1866; Independent, Apr. 19, 1866.

28 Loring Moody to Gerrit Smith, Mar. 20, 1866, Smith Papers, SU; Right Way, Mar. 17, 31, Apr. 14, May 5, 1866.

29 James, Framing of Fourteenth Amendment, 100-02, 109-16; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 343-49.

30 N.A.S. Standard, May 5, 1866; Phillips to Stevens, Apr. 30, 1866, Stevens Papers, LC; Independent, May 3, June 14, 1866.

31 Stearns to Sumner, May 1, 1866, Sumner Papers, HU; Commonwealth, May 5, 19, 26, June 2, 1866; Right Way, May 12, June 9, 1866.

32 N.A.S. Standard, May 27, June 2, June 30, 1866; George B. Cheever, Impartial Suffrage a Right; and the Infamy of the Revolution Against It in the Proposed Amendment of the Constitution (New York, 1866), Protest Against the Robbery of the Colored Race by the Proposed Amendment of the Constitution (New York, 1866), The Republic or the Oligarchy? Which? An Appeal Against the Proposed Transfer of the Right to Vote from the People to the State (New York, 1866); Douglass’ statement quoted in N.A.S. Standard, July 7, 1866.

33 N.A.S. Standard, June 9, 1866.

34 Oliver Johnson to Garrison, June 16, 1866, Garrison Papers, BPL; McKim to John Bingham, July 20, 1866, McKim letterbook, II, 144, McKim Papers, Cornell; N.A.S. Standard, June 23, 1866; Commonwealth, June 2, 1866; Right Way, June 9, 1866.

35 James, Framing of Fourteenth Amendment, 142-52, 169-70; S. E. Sewall to Sumner, June 1, 1866, Sumner Papers, HU; Sumner to Tilton, June 27, 1866, Tilton Papers, NYHS; Independent, June 7, 21, 1866; Commonwealth, June 16, July 14, 1866. In line with the decision of the Republican majority to play down the suffrage issue, the Senate quietly shelved the House bill granting the ballot to colored men in the District of Columbia. The Anti-Slavery Standard could hardly find words to express its disgust with Republicans for this new act of cowardice. N.A.S. Standard, June 23, July 28, 1866.

36 James, Framing of Fourteenth Amendment, 171-72; Pierce, Sumner, IV, 286-87; Sumner to Moncure Conway, July 30, 1866, Conway Papers, CU; Right Way, July 28, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, July 28, Aug. 11, 1866; Commonwealth, July 28, 1866; Independent, July 26, 1866.

37 N.A.S. Standard, July 14, 1866. See also New York Tribune, July 6, 1866; Commonwealth, July 7, 14, 1866; and N.A.S. Standard, July 28, Aug. 4, 11, 18, 1866.

38 New York Tribune, July 6, 1866; Independent, July 12, 19, 1866; Commonwealth, July 7, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, July 7, 1866.

39 Independent, May 17, 1866; New York Tribune, May 22, 1866.

40 Quoted in George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Phila., 1955), 158.

41 Gerrit Smith to Garrison, Aug. 5, 1866, Garrison Papers, BPL; article by Wright in Independent, Aug. 16, 1866. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 422-27, is the best brief discussion of the New Orleans riot and its political consequences.

42 Article by Gerrit Smith in N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 1, 1866; New York Tribune, Aug. 14, 1866. See also Independent, Aug. 23, 30, 1866.

43 Samuel Shock to Thaddeus Stevens, Aug. 27, 1866, Stevens Papers, LC.

44 Philip S. Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (4 vols., New York, 1950-55), IV, 25-26; Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, 1948), 229-31.

45 Stevens to Kelley, Sept. 6, 1866, Stevens Papers, LC.

46 New York Herald, Sept. 5, 6, 1866; Independent, Sept. 13, 1866; Foner, Douglass, IV, 26-27; Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (2nd ed., New York, 1958), 185-86.

47 Independent, Sept. 13, 1866. See also New York Herald, Sept. 7, 8, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 15, 22, 1866; Commonwealth, Sept. 15, 1866; Frederick Douglass to E. C. Stanton, Feb. 6, 1882, Douglass Papers, Anacostia; Douglass to Anna Dickinson, Sept. 10, 1866, Ben Butler to Anna Dickinson, Sept. 8, 1866, Whitelaw Reid to Anna Dickinson, Nov. 11, 1866, Dickinson Papers, LC. Miss Dickinson received many letters of praise and thanks from Southern Loyalists for her part in the convention.

48 McPherson, History of Reconstruction, 135.

49 Commonwealth, Aug. 18, 1866; Independent, Sept. 13, Oct. 4, 1866; New York Times, Aug. 28, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 15, 29, Oct. 6, 1866; New York Herald, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, Oct. 6, 1866.

50 N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 8, 1866. Republican speakers tailored their remarks to the temper of the area in which they were speaking. In the middle states and the Old Northwest they carefully avoided any mention of Negro suffrage. In New England and parts of upstate New York, northern Ohio, etc., where antislavery sentiment had always been strong, Republican orators frequently advocated equal suffrage. As one Ohio correspondent of Chief Justice Chase explained: “In the Reserve counties, some of our speakers have openly advocated impartial suffrage, while in other places it was thought necessary, not only to repudiate it but to oppose it.” B. R. Cowan to Chase, Oct. 12, 1866, Chase Papers, LC.

51 Boston Advertiser, Sept. 29, 1866; Nation, III (Oct. 4, 1866), 270; New York Tribune, Sept. 26, 1866; address of the Republican National Committee reprinted in Right Way, Sept. 29, 1866. For a discussion of the part this issue played in the 1866 election, see James, Framing of Fourteenth Amendment, 169-73.

52 Right Way, Sept. 29, 1866; Independent, Sept. 27, 1866. See also Commonwealth, Sept. 29, Oct. 6, 13, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, 13, 1866.

53 New York Tribune, Oct. 26, 1866.

54 Independent, Nov. 15, 1866; N.A.S. Standard, Nov. 17, 1866.

55 New York Daily News, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, Nov. 24, 1866; James, Framing of Fourteenth Amendment, 174-77; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 449-54.