XVI MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT

THE prestige and influence of the abolitionists climbed to new heights after the 1866 elections. The mood of the North reached a postwar peak of radicalism in the winter of 1866-1867, and as the chief exponents of this mood the abolitionists saw their popularity increase correspondingly. Abolitionist lecturers reaped a rich harvest. Phillips, Anna Dickinson, Tilton, and Frederick Douglass embarked on ambitious tours of the Middle West, delivering an average of nearly one hundred political lectures apiece during the season. Everywhere they went these orators enriched the treasuries of local lecture bureaus. During the winter of 1866-67 the small town of Mount Pleasant in southeastern Iowa enjoyed a rare treat. No less than five prominent abolitionist lecturers spoke there: Anna Dickinson, C. C. Burleigh, Tilton, Douglass, and Phillips. Joseph Dugdale, a local abolitionist, reported that the words of these speakers had made such an impression in the small Iowa town that the people abandoned their policy of school segregation and allowed the community’s Negro children to attend the new school on the same basis as whites.1

Phillips was by far the most popular and influential abolitionist lecturer. By 1867 he had become practically a national institution. On his tour of the Middle West he lectured in many towns where he had never before appeared, and delighted the audiences with his quiet but penetrating voice, his magnetic personality, his sharp thrusts at prominent politicians, and his bold ideas. Thousands of St. Louis’ leading citizens came to hear him speak in that city, where he put on one of his best performances. Afterwards even the hostile St. Louis Dispatch remarked that Phillips was “a man who, as a private citizen, has exercised a greater influence upon the destinies of this country than any public man or men of his age.” After listening to a Phillips lecture the editor of the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate City wrote: “It is easy to understand why Wendell Phillips had so large a share in abolitionizing New England. His arguments grow upon you. … Impracticable? Fanatical? Why, he is one of the most entirely plain, common-sense, practical and practicable men we ever heard…. He gives you clear-impressed, new-minted, intellectual coin…. The difference between Wendell Phillips and other men, on the score of character, is his boldness. He speaks what other men think.”2

Phillips’ weekly editorials in the Anti-Slavery Standard also reached a wide audience. His terse, trenchant prose, so different from the ornate style of many editorial writers of the day, made Phillips’ written words almost as popular as his lectures. The New York Times, the New York Herald, and dozens of smaller papers frequently reprinted Phillips’ editorials. Senator Sumner testified to the good effect of the Standard among radical congressmen, to whom it was sent gratis every week. The moderate Times commented in May 1867, that “the political history of the past two years has been little more than a record of the triumphs of what was originally the abolition party, and which has since become the ultra absolutist element in the Republican party.” Thus “it becomes a matter of considerable importance to watch carefully all indications as to what this restless, insatiate and potent element of the dominant party proposes to do next. What they propose today may be law tomorrow.” The Democratic New York World observed ruefully that radicalism was like a marching army: “Mr. Weed lags in the rear; Mr. Raymond is only six months behind Mr. Greeley, and Mr. Greeley is only six weeks behind Thad Stevens, and Thad Stevens is only six days behind Wendell Phillips, and Wendell Phillips is not more than six inches from the tail and the shining pitchfork of the master of them all.”³

Phillips was not the only abolitionist who commanded respect among the politicians. Early in the 1866-67 session of Congress, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax wrote to John G. Whittier: “I respect your good opinion so highly that I take the liberty of enclosing you the last speech made by me on political questions, to be certain that it shall fall under your eye.” Phillips modestly told the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society that his wide influence was not due so much to personal qualities as to the fact that he was a spokesman for organized abolitionism. “What do you suppose ever entitled me to the distinction of having the President wish I were hung?” asked Phillips. “I was not a Senator, like Charles Sumner…. I did not have the Republican party behind me. I had nothing but the Anti-Slavery Society behind me; but as long as I had that, the President knew it weighed as heavy as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, because the people had learned to look at it and give it respect, and heed its teachings.”4

By the fall of 1866 several abolitionists were calling for the impeachment of President Johnson. In a speech at Cooper Union on October 25, Phillips declared that it was necessary to go one step beyond the defeat of the president’s policy: the author of that policy must be removed from office. A thorough reconstruction program enacted by Congress would be worth little if its enforcement was left in the hands of an executive wholly unsympathetic to it. “The very first task I would set before the reassembled Congress,” said Phillips, “is to impeach the Rebel at the White House. (Loud Cheers) …What is the advantage? Then we run the machine. (Laughter)” Phillips branded as irrelevant the argument that President Johnson had committed no specific impeachable act. An ordinary citizen could be indicted only for a specific crime, he said, “but an officer may be impeached for any grave misuse of his powers, or any mischievous nonuse of them—for any conduct which harms the public or perils its welfare.”⁵

Most abolitionists fell into line with Phillips’ demand for impeachment. The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society unanimously adopted an impeachment resolution. The Commonwealth began urging Congress to depose Johnson. The Right Way deprecated the impeachment agitation at first, fearing that it might weaken the Republicans by making a martyr of Johnson, but in January 1867, that journal also committed itself to impeachment. Garrison came out strongly for the deposition of Johnson, declaring that while the president remained in office “neither Union men nor negroes will possess any rights on Southern soil that rebels will be bound to respect.”6 There was a certain amount of popular support for the removal of Johnson. Phillips’ audiences cheered his references to impeachment. But the New York Tribune and other Republican journals approached the question with caution. The House of Representatives directed the Judiciary Committee to investigate Johnson’s conduct and determine whether he had done anything impeachable. The Committee undertook its task, but nothing came of the matter at the 1866-67 session of Congress.⁷

Phillips’ suggestions to Congress went far beyond impeachment. In 1865 he had thought that when Negro suffrage was enacted, the southern states could be safely readmitted. But by November 1866, he had modified his ideas on this point. Even with Negro suffrage, he said, “you cannot govern the South against its educated classes…. Four millions of uneducated negroes, with none of that character which results from position, with none of that weight that comes from one or two generations of recognized manhood, cannot outweigh that element at the South.” Through no fault of their own the freedmen were illiterate, landless, penniless. It would be criminal of the North, Phillips now thought, to turn them over to their former masters with nothing more than the ballot to protect them. “This is primarily a social revolution,” he said. “You must plant at the South the elements which make a different society. You cannot enact four millions of slaves, ignorant, down-trodden, and despised, into personal equals of the old leaders of the South.” The nation must hold the former Confederate states as national territory for several years. During that time the federal government should enact measures to provide the freedmen with education, land, and economic independence. “We do not mean to leave the negro at the bottom of the ladder,” proclaimed Phillips. “We mean to make a thoroughly developed reconstruction. We mean that Northern brains and ideas and capital shall go down there, and help him … until he actually gets education and wealth; until he actually stands on his feet in comparative equality with the white race. We mean to hold [those states] in some shape, until that is done.”8

The First Vote. A. R. Waud in Harper’s Weekly

Phillips’ speeches and editorials on this subject attracted widespread attention and condemnation. His policy of indefinite territorialization of the South was too radical for most antislavery men. But a few abolitionists endorsed portions of Phillips’ program. The Boston Commonwealth, for example, urged legislation “to secure education and land” as well as the ballot “to the poor and ignorant masses at the South. For without education and land even suffrage would be found, for the immediate future, a somewhat illusory boon…. We have no doubt of the power of Congress to do whatever is best for the welfare of the South and the country—to cut up and divide among the poor and loyal the great plantations of the rebels … to enforce, if need be, universal education under loyal auspices … in short, to do everything to civilize and assimilate the South.”9

At the end of 1866, however, the Fourteenth Amendment was still at the center of the reconstruction controversy. Moderate Republicans urged southern legislatures to ratify the Amendment. “There is no one thing so much dreaded to-day by Wendell Phillips, Sumner, Boutwell, Stevens, and the rest of that school,” declared the New York Times, “as the acceptance of the Constitutional Amendment by the Southern States—followed, as they know it would be, in spite of their opposition, by the admission of the Southern members into Congress.”¹⁰ When Congress convened in December, three southern states had already rejected the Amendment. Prospects appeared bright for the radical cause. But moderate Republican leaders were still committed to the Amendment as the final condition of readmission. Senator Sherman, Congressman Bingham, and many other moderates reaffirmed their belief that Congress would admit southern states if and when they ratified the Amendment. Harper’s Weekly anticipated no other conditions of reconstruction than adoption of the Amendment. The Nation stated flatly that most of the party considered the Fourteenth Amendment the final condition of restoration. This opinion was not confined to moderates, for on December 14, in reply to a direct question by Sumner, Senator Benjamin Wade stated his intention to vote for readmission when the South accepted the Amendment.11

Abolitionists and radical leaders were alarmed by these developments. They feared that the moderate Republican assurances might induce southern states to reconsider their actions, ratify the Amendment, and apply successfully for readmission to Congress. Phillips warned of dire consequences for the Negro if this should happen, and urged Congress “to give the negroes land, ballot and education and to hold the arm of the Federal government over the whole Southern Territory until these seeds have begun to bear fruit beyond any possibility of blighting.”¹²

Abolitionists took direct action to counter the apparent Republican willingness to reconstruct on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment. Henry Cheever in Massachusetts and George Cheever in New York circulated petitions to their respective state legislatures urging them not to ratify the Amendment. The Equal Rights Association led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony memorialized the New York legislature to reject the Amendment on the grounds that it would permit the continued disfranchisement of both Negroes and women. On January 24 Wendell Phillips appeared before a Massachusetts legislative committee and uttered an eloquent protest against ratification of the Amendment by the Old Bay State. Behind the scenes, Massachusetts radicals and abolitionists were struggling successfully to postpone the state’s ratification.¹³ By this time, however, the question had become academic. With the exception of Massachusetts, every northern state had ratified the Amendment by February 7, 1867, and every former Confederate state (except Tennessee) had refused to ratify it. With the encouragement of President Johnson the South had rejected the Amendment. They had cut the ground from under congressional moderates and had given radicals and abolitionists a new lease on life.14

As it became clear that southern states were unconditionally rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress settled down to formulate a comprehensive reconstruction policy.¹⁵ After a bewildering series of amendments and counteramendments, the House on February 13 finally passed a bill sponsored by George Julian and Thaddeus Stevens providing for the simple territorialization and indefinite military administration of the unreconstructed South. The measure contained no provision for the readmission of southern states to the Union. Phillips was delighted with the bill. It was similar to the program he had been advocating since November. “We consider Stevens’s bill the best thing yet offered,” he wrote on February 16.¹⁶

Several abolitionists and radicals agreed with Phillips, but political exigencies dictated some provision for the readmssion of southern states when they had fulfilled certain requirements. Moderate Republicans in the Senate passed on February 17 the Sherman substitute for the Julian-Stevens bill. The Sherman substitute would have readmitted southern states when they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and adopted new constitutions guaranteeing Negro suffrage. Radicals and abolitionists were opposed to the Sherman bill for two reasons: it did not disfranchise any former rebel leaders, who would take the lead in the reconstruction process and perhaps nullify the effects of Negro suffrage unless they were disfranchised; and it made the reorganization of civil government permissive instead of mandatory, thus allowing the Johnson governments in southern states to continue in power indefinitely if they so wished. Under Stevens’ leadership the House refused to concur in the Senate bill. The deadlock was finally broken on February 20 by passage in both Houses of the Wilson and Shellabarger amendments disfranchising all persons disqualified from officeholding under the Fourteenth Amendment and declaring the existing southern state governments “provisional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States.” Johnson vetoed this Reconstruction Act on March 2, but it was immediately passed over his veto. The reconstruction process was still permissive, and to remedy this defect the Fortieth Congress on March 23 passed over Johnson’s veto an act making civil reorganization mandatory and authorizing military commanders to register voters and set the machinery in motion for the convening of constitutional conventions.17

There was some abolitionist dissatisfaction with the Reconstruction Acts as finally passed. Phillips would have been happier with the Julian-Stevens bill. Several abolitionists pointed out that once those southern states with white majorities were readmitted to the Union, there would be nothing to stop them from disfranchising their Negroes. Others urged Congress to enact legislation to guarantee universal public education in the South and to help the freedmen obtain land of their own. Numerous abolitionists denounced Congress for failing to impeach Johnson. They affirmed that the Reconstruction Acts would be little more than a dead letter with an unsympathetic president to administer them. These complaints were outweighed, however, by abolitionist jubilation over the adoption of Negro suffrage and the belief that additional measures necessary to safeguard the Negro’s freedom would be enacted in the future. It was reported on good authority from Washington that Johnson would faithfully administer the Reconstruction Acts as the law of the land, and radicals temporarily dropped their cry of impeachment and settled back to await events. There was a general mood of confidence among abolitionists in the spring of 1867. At the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May, Phillips addressed his auditors in an unwonted tone of optimism. “We seem to be on the very eve,” he said, “of the accomplishment of all that the friends of freedom have ever asked of the nation; … that is, the absolute civil and political equality of the colored man under our institutions of government.”18

But abolitionists did not rest on their oars. The greatest single shortcoming of the Reconstruction Acts, in their eyes, was the fact that the question of Negro suffrage still rested with the individual states. Abolitionists renewed their demand for a Fifteenth Amendment. “The friends of the negro will never rest satisfied with any scheme that does not place that right [suffrage] beyond contingency,” proclaimed the Independent. “They demand that it be incorporated into the Federal Constitution.” The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society affirmed that it would accept “no schemes of reconstruction which will leave [the Negro’s] highest right of citizenship at the mercy of State legislation or action, after the Southern States shall be restored to sovereignty.”¹⁹

Before a Fifteenth Amendment could be passed, however, the majority of northern people who opposed Negro suffrage in their own states must be persuaded to overcome their prejudices. “The states that now need reconstruction are the Northern,” declared Tilton in an Independent editorial entitled “A Beam to be Plucked from Our Own Eyes.” The Commonwealth denounced northern Republicans who had voted for Negro suffrage in the South but refused to support it in their own states as “hypocrites and cowards.”20 Abolitionists launched a drive to convince northern voters of the moral and political necessity of equal suffrage in every state. New York held a state constitutional convention in the summer of 1867, and abolitionists mobilized their resources to put equal suffrage into the new constitution. They had a staunch ally in Horace Greeley, who served as chairman of the convention’s suffrage committee. Although Greeley refused to heed the pleas of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for woman suffrage, he persuaded the committee to report in favor of universal manhood suffrage (at this time New York Negroes had to meet a $250 property qualification in order to vote). The full convention accepted the committee’s report, but over Greeley’s protest the convention voted to submit the suffrage article to the voters separately from the rest of the constitution, thereby virtually assuring its defeat.²¹

The question of the Negro’s status in the North was important for the future of reconstruction, but in 1867 it was overshadowed by events in the South. In the wake of the Reconstruction Acts, conservative southern leaders, following the example of Wade Hampton, began urging the enfranchised freedmen to vote in harmony with their old masters. Hampton told South Carolina Negroes that the planter class was in the best position to help them achieve stability and prosperity in freedom. Northern Republicans viewed this development with ill-concealed alarm. Some abolitionists declared that the Negro’s right to vote was the important thing, and professed unconcern whether he voted Republican or not. But one of the political reasons for the enactment of Negro suffrage had been the hope of extending Republican power into the South. Abolitionist Reuben Tomlinson, serving as superintendent of education for the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, wrote that “I am a universal suffrage man, but I do not care a cent for it unless we can keep Northern influence here along with it.” A Democratic victory in the Connecticut state election in April 1867, startled Republicans out of their lethargy and convinced them of the need to organize and control the southern Negro vote.22

Radical leaders Henry Wilson and William D. Kelley immediately started on a southern speaking tour to explain the virtues of Republicanism to the freedmen. Republican officials urged Phillips, Tilton, and Anna Dickinson to speak in the South also. Despite considerable Republican pressure, they refused. They valued their position as radical spokesmen independent of partisan politics. Tilton stated privately that the massive Republican effort in the South was nothing more than “a crusade of politicians—a stumping tour of the old stagers” looking toward the 1868 presidential election. This was important work, but it was not the work of reformers.²³

Many other abolitionists, however, did not recognize the fine line between reform and politics drawn by Tilton, and proceeded to make their influence felt in southern affairs. Frederick Douglass and Frances E. W. Harper (a Negro abolitionist and poet) undertook speaking tours of the South in the summer of 1867, urging the freedmen to vote for the party that had emancipated and enfranchised them. In April 1867, John Mercer Langston, prominent Negro abolitionist from Ohio, was appointed inspector of schools of the Freedmen’s Bureau. For more than two years he traveled through the South inspecting the facilities of the Bureau and helping to organize the freedmen into the Republican party and the Republican-sponsored Union Leagues. In the spring of 1867 Loring Moody of Boston, a onetime Garrisonian who later became a political abolitionist, was appointed general agent of the National Union League. He was put in charge of organizing Union Leagues throughout the South to marshal votes for the Republican party. In the summer of 1867 a delegation of northern Republicans, including abolitionists John Jay and Charles W. Slack, intervened to quell a factional struggle in the Virginia Republican party.24

Uncounted dozens of abolitionists residing in the South were also active in politics. Nearly every official and teacher of the freedmen’s aid societies was to some degree a Republican organizer. Edwin M. Wheelock, one of the creators of the Louisiana public school system (see Chapter XIII), moved to Texas after the war where he served successively as the state superintendent of education, reporter of the state supreme court, and superintendent of the state Institute for the Blind. Reuben Tomlinson was elected state auditor of South Carolina in 1868 and was politically prominent in the state until the end of Reconstruction. Gilbert Pillsbury, the abolitionist brother of Parker Pillsbury, came to South Carolina in 1863. In 1867 he was one of the architects of the new South Carolina Constitution, and was later elected mayor of Charleston. Henry Purvis, son of the wealthy Philadelphia Negro abolitionist Robert Purvis, was a member of the South Carolina legislature during Reconstruction. These are only a few examples of the activities of the many abolitionists who became permanent or semipermanent residents of the South after the war.²⁵

Southern whites soon realized that an overwhelming majority of the freedmen would vote Republican. Most whites ceased their abortive attempt of 1867 to persuade the freedmen to cooperate with the Democratic party. They began to stage anti-Republican riots and to break up Republican meetings with increasing frequency in the spring and summer of 1867. The Democratic party reverted to its old belief that, in the words of the New York Express, “this is a Democratic government of white men, made for white men, and exclusively for white men.”26

In Washington, meanwhile, the Johnson administration was taking steps to curtail the effectiveness of the Reconstruction Acts. Military commanders enforcing these Acts in the South had overruled the provisional state governments on many points and had issued orders to prevent the swearing of false oaths by former Confederates who hoped to qualify for voting. On June 20, 1867, Johnson issued a set of counter-orders prohibiting boards of registry from challenging a man’s oath and directing military commanders to cooperate with existing state governments. If carried out these orders would have given the Johnson governments in the South a large measure of control over the reconstruction process. General Philip Sheridan declared that Johnson’s orders opened “a broad macadamized road for perjury and fraud to travel on.” Abolitionists praised Sheridan and renewed their demand for Johnson’s impeachment. Republicans who had expected President Johnson to carry out the Reconstruction Acts in good faith were startled into convening Congress in July to pass a third Reconstruction Act to nullify the effect of the president’s orders. Radicals urged Congress to impeach Johnson, but moderate counsels prevailed and the legislators confined themselves to passing a bill declaring that the existing state governments in the South were subject to the absolute authority of Congress and the military commanders.²⁷

In July 1867, President Johnson offered the post of commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau to Frederick Douglass. One can only guess at the president’s motives in making this offer. Perhaps he hoped to stifle the radical cry of impeachment by appointing a Negro to a prominent government position. He may have planned to wreck the Bureau by placing a Negro in charge of its operations, hoping that this would provoke many white officials to resign. At any rate Douglass, after pondering the offer, rejected it. He explained to friends that he was unwilling to “facilitate the removal of a man as just and good as General Howard and especially to place myself under any obligation to keep the peace with Andrew Johnson.” Abolitionists applauded Douglass’ decision. “The greatest black man in the nation,” said Theodore Tilton, “did not consent to become the tool of the meanest white.”28 When Douglass refused, Johnson offered the job to John Mercer Langston, who also turned him down. Finally the president approached Robert Purvis. Purvis sought the advice of Wendell Phillips, who urged him to reject the offer. Nothing could make him happier than to see a Negro in such a high position, said Phillips, but he thought the president’s offer “only a cunning trick. Johnson wishes just now to confuse & divide the loyal sentiment.” Purvis accepted Phillips’ advice and turned down the proposal. General Howard remained at the head of the Bureau.²⁹

In August the president moved against the most important administrators of the Republican reconstruction policy. On August 12 he suspended Stanton and appointed General Grant as ad interim secretary of war. He followed this act by removing Generals Sheridan and Sickles from their commands of southern military districts and replacing them with conservative generals. Johnson’s action gave a strong fillip to the impeachment drive. “It is now universally recognized that there will be no peace, no restoration, no business stability, till something is done to prevent Andrew Johnson from enthroning perpetual turmoil,” declared the Commonwealth. Impeachment sentiment increased sharply among all segments of the Republican party in August and September.30

The approach of the important 1867 state elections temporarily eclipsed the drive for impeachment. Negro suffrage amendments were on the ballots in Ohio, Kansas, and Minnesota. Abolitionist lecturers canvassed Ohio and Kansas on behalf of the amendments, and the Republican parties in all three states officially endorsed Negro suffrage. But the voters rejected the amendments in every state. The issue of Negro suffrage also played an important part in the Pennsylvania and New York elections, both of which were won by the Democrats.³¹ Abolitionists were dismayed by this renewed demonstration of northern race prejudice. “Deep & malignant & murderous is the hatred of the Negro” in Ohio, reported Henry Wright. Parker Pillsbury could hardly find words strong enough to express his disgust with northern people who supported Negro suffrage in the South but rejected it at home. “Our whole demeanor toward the southern states,” he wrote, “is like that of the Pharisee toward the Publican.”³²

“I almost pity the Radicals,” wrote one of President Johnson’s supporters after the elections of 1867. “After giving ten states to the negroes, to keep the Democrats from getting them, they will have lost the rest…. Any party with an abolition head and a nigger tail will soon find itself with nothing left but the head and tail.”³³ Moderate Republicans began whispering that the party must hold back on the Negro question, especially in the North, if it wished to remain in power. Abolitionists denounced this tendency toward conservatism. “The cowardly friends of a political party are more to be dreaded by it than its bravest foes,” declared Theodore Tilton in the Independent. “If the Republican party is not to stand for the negro’s rights, then it has no better mission than the Democratic.” Phillips maintained that the party’s failure to take a bold, uncompromising stand on the questions of a national Negro suffrage amendment and impeachment was the reason for its electoral losses in 1867. The remedy for Republican weaknesses, according to Phillips, was more radicalism, not less. He urged adoption of three constitutional amendments to enfranchise the Negro in every state, guarantee a public school system in every state, and make national and state citizenship synonymous under the aegis of the federal government.34

Impeachment emerged as the main political issue during the 1867-68 session of Congress. Abolitionists circulated petitions demanding the removal of Johnson. On November 20 the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend impeachment. Abolitionists hailed this action and urged Congress to do its duty. But Democratic gains in the 1867 elections had made Republican politicians wary. “We shall have burdens enough to carry in the next campaign,” said Horace Greeley, “without making Mr. Johnson a martyr and carrying him also.” The full House defeated the impeachment resolution on December 7.³⁵

The impeachment question would have disappeared from politics after this vote had Johnson not chosen to make fresh assaults on Congress and its reconstruction policy. In his annual message the president excoriated the Reconstruction Acts and launched into a racist diatribe on the evils of Negro rule. On December 18 he publicly endorsed the actions of Winfield Hancock, a Democratic general who had replaced Sheridan and had issued orders asserting the supremacy of civil over military government in direct defiance of the Third Reconstruction Act. A few days later Johnson removed Generals Pope and Ord from command of southern military districts and replaced them with more conservative officers. Radicals writhed in anger as Johnson committed these provocative acts with impunity. “It is pitiful,” wrote Frank Bird, “to see Congress floundering along, from one expedient to another, vainly endeavoring to tie the hands which they should have chopped off a year ago.”36

On February 21 Johnson committed the act that finally caused his impeachment. Defying the Senate vote restoring Stanton to the War Department, the president dismissed Stanton and appointed Lorenzo Thomas secretary of war ad interim. Nearly the whole of the Republican party now clamored for impeachment. Construing the removal of Stanton as a breach of the Tenure of Office Act, the House on February 24 impeached Johnson. Abolitionists hailed the House vote with joy. Conviction of Johnson by the Senate, said the Anti-Slavery Standard, would mean “the emancipation of the Northern mind from the dominion of Southern, pro-slavery influence. It will end the ‘Border State’ policy in politics.”³⁷

National attention focused on the Senate, where for more than two months the trial of President Johnson proceeded amidst mounting drama and tension. Theodore Tilton, Gilbert Haven, Richard Hinton, Edmund Quincy, and other abolitionists descended on the capital to cover the trial for abolitionist and Republican newspapers. All of them served as lobbyists in behalf of impeachment. Tilton was especially active, flitting here and there, buttonholing senators in corridors and cloakrooms, urging upon them the necessity for the president’s removal.³⁸ In reply to the skillful defense of Johnson by his lawyers, abolitionists and radicals asserted that impeachment should be construed as a political rather than as a narrowly legal process. Johnson should be removed, said Phillips, because of his persistent efforts to restore the rebel South to power, his attempts to frustrate the congressional plan of reconstruction, and his sanction of the murder and oppression of southern freedmen. “If the executive will not execute,” wrote Elizur Wright, “there is no possible reasonable remedy but to have the law-making power replace him with something that will execute.”39

In March and April abolitionists expressed confidence that Johnson would be convicted. But as the date for the Senate vote approached, it became clear that several Republican senators considered impeachment a legal process and were unconvinced that Johnson had committed any impeachable acts. When the decisive vote was taken on May 16, seven Republicans voted with the Democrats and President Johnson was acquitted. Abolitionists were enraged. They excoriated the recalcitrant senators in bitter language. The New England Anti-Slavery Society resolved that in failing to convict Johnson “the Republican party records judgment against its own capacity, and justifies the Nation for distrusting its leadership.” Wendell Phillips regarded the failure of impeachment as a sign of conservative resurgence. He urged radicals to gird themselves for a renewed struggle on behalf of justice and equality for the freedmen.⁴⁰

In many ways the end of the impeachment struggle cleared the air. The Republican party began to close ranks in preparation for the presidential election of 1868. This election was crucial for the cause of Negro suffrage, but before turning to the campaign of 1868, it is necessary to consider two other measures that abolitionists deemed essential: education and land for the freedmen.

1 Independent, Mar. 14, May 2, 1867; New York Tribune, Feb. 22, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 29, 1866, Mar. 30, June 15, 1867. The Mt. Pleasant incident was recounted in ibid., Mar. 30, 1867.

2 St. Louis Dispatch and Keokuk Gate City, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 27, 1867; see also the issues of Mar. 2, Apr. 6, May 18, June 15, 1867.

3 N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 8, 1866; New York Times, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, May 11, 1867; New York World, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, May 25, 1867. See also Phillips to Gerrit Smith, Jan. 19, 1867, Smith Papers, SU. The circulation of the Standard was less than 8,000, but its influence reached far beyond its circulation.

4 Colfax to Whittier, Dec. 13, 1866, Whittier Papers, Essex Institute; N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 8, 1866.

5 New York Tribune, Oct. 27, 1866. There is a copy of Phillips’ Cooper Union address in the Andrew Johnson Papers, LC.

6 N.A.S. Standard, Dec. 1, 1866; Commonwealth, Nov. 10, 1866; Right Way, Oct. 27, Nov. 24, 1866, Jan. 12, 19, 1867; Garrison’s statement published in Independent, Jan. 10, 1867.

7 New York Tribune, Jan. 8, 1867; Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 491-93.

8 N.A.S. Standard, Nov. 17, 24, Dec. 1, 8, 1866.

9 Commonwealth, Dec. 15, 1866.

10 New York Times, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, Nov. 10, 1866.

11 Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 2 Sess., 124-28, 500, 1,104; Harper’s Weekly, X (Nov. 17, 1866), 722; Nation, III (Dec. 20, 1866), 485. For a discussion of this issue, see Joseph James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana, Ill., 1956), 164-77, and McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 450-55.

12 N.A.S. Standard, Jan. 5, 1867. See also Phillips to Sumner, Dec. 27, 1866, Sumner Papers, HU; Commonwealth, Dec. 22, 1866; Right Way, Dec. 22, 29, 1866; Independent, Jan. 17, 1867.

13 Henry Cheever to Gerrit Smith, Dec. 22, 1866, Smith Papers, SU; James L. Child to Henry Cheever, Dec. 26, 1866, Henry Cheever to Elizabeth C. Washburn, Dec. 27, 1866, Cheever Papers, AAS; S. B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass, Dec. 15, 1866, Douglass Papers, Anacostia; Alma Lutz, Susan B. Anthony, Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (Boston, 1959), 125; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 2, 1867; Sumner to Frank Bird, Jan. 10, 1867, Bird Papers, HU; Phillips to Sumner, Feb. 1, 1867, Frank Bird to Sumner, Mar. 7, 8, 1867, Sumner Papers, HU; Boston Commonwealth, Mar. 9, 16, 1867. Massachusetts finally ratified the Fourteenth Amendment after the Reconstruction Act of March 2 had made Negro suffrage the basis of reconstruction.

14 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 469-72.

15 During the session Congress passed over Johnson’s veto two bills enacting Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia and admitting Nebraska as a state with a provision for equal suffrage. President Johnson allowed another bill forbidding the denial of suffrage on grounds of race or color in all the territories to become law without his signature. Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America during the Period of Reconstruction (Washington, 1871), 154-66, 184.

16 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 474-81; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 16, 1867.

17 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 481-85; George Julian, Political Recollections (Chicago, 1884), 306-08. See also Lewis Tappan to Julian, Feb. 19, 1867, Giddings-Julian Correspondence, LC; Whittier to Sumner, Feb. 27, 1867, Sumner Papers, HU; Commonwealth, Feb. 9, 23, Mar. 2, 16, 23, 1867; Right Way, Feb. 16, 1867; New York Tribune, Feb. 18, 21, 25, 1867; Independent, Feb. 21, 28, Mar. 14, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 23, Mar. 2, 9, 1867.

18 Independent, Feb. 28, Mar. 7, 14, Apr. 4, 1867; Commonwealth, Mar. 9, 16, 23, 1867; Samuel May, Jr., to Richard Webb, Apr. 2, 1867, Samuel May, Jr., Papers, BPL; E. L. Pierce to McKim, Apr. 20, 1867, McKim Papers, Cornell; N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 2, 9, 23, 30, 1867. Statement by Phillips published in ibid., May 18, 1867. The Right Way, founded as a spokesman for equal suffrage, ceased publication after passage of the Reconstruction Acts. A shortage of funds was the main reason for the paper’s demise, but the achievement of Negro suffrage in the South was also an important factor in the decision to cease publication. Right Way, Mar. 2, 1867; Frank P. Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns (Phila., 1907), 377-78. George Stearns, main financial backer of the Right Way and one of the most respected abolitionists during the early years of Reconstruction, died suddenly of pneumonia in April 1867.

19 Independent, Feb. 21, 1867; Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (Phila., 1867), 22. See also N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 9, 16, 23, Apr. 6, 27, May 11, 1867.

20 Independent, Apr. 18, 1867; Commonwealth, Mar. 2, 1867.

21 Van Deusen, Greeley, 361-64. See also Independent, Apr. 11, Aug. 1, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, May 25, July 6, Sept. 28, 1867; New York Tribune, Apr. 3, 4, June 20, 26, 28, July 10, 13, 17, 19, 26, 31, Aug. 6, 9, Sept. 27, Oct. 12, 1867.

22 Francis Butler Simkins and Robert H. Woody, South Carolina during Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1932), 85-86; Reuben Tomlinson to J. M. McKim, Dec. 4, 1866, McKim Papers, Cornell. See also New York Tribune, Mar. 27, 29, Apr. 3, 4, 12, 22, 1867; Independent, Mar. 14, 1867; New York World, Apr. 19, 1867; Commonwealth, Apr. 13, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, Apr. 20, May 11, 1867; Henry Wilson to Angelina G. Weld, Apr. 12, 1867, Weld Papers, LC.

23 New York Tribune, Apr. 22, 1867; L. Edwin Dudley, secretary of the Union Republican Congressional Executive Committee, to Anna Dickinson, May 7, June 15, 26, 1867, S. B. Anthony to Anna Dickinson, May 15, 1867, Dickinson Papers, LC; the quotation is from Tilton to Anna Dickinson, May 16, 1867.

24 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, Apr. 24, 1867, Douglass Papers, Anacostia; Douglass to Anna Dickinson, May 21, 1867, Dickinson Papers, LC; John M. Langston, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital (Hartford, Conn., 1894), 258-95; George Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Phila., 1955), 187-89; information on the activities of Loring Moody obtained from the Loring Moody Papers, BPL, which include several dozen letters relating to his activities as an organizer for the National Union League in 1867; Union League Club of New York, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference at Richmond, June 11 and 12, 1867 (New York, 1867), in John Jay, Slavery and the War, #18.

25 Charles Kassel, “Edwin Miller Wheelock,” Open Court, XXXIV (Sept. 1920), 569; Simkins and Woody, South Carolina during Reconstruction, 125-26, 204, 449, 464-68; Reuben Tomlinson to Ellen Collins, May 14, 1869, McKim Papers, Cornell; Tomlinson to E. D. Cheney, July 27, 1868, Cheney Papers, BPL; Gilbert Pillsbury to S. P. Chase, Sept. 24, 1867, Chase Papers, LC; Liberator, July 21, 1865; N.A.S. Standard, Aug. 29, Sept. 19, 1868; Freedmen’s Record, Iv (May 1868), 73.

26 New York Express, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, July 6, 1867. See also the Jackson (Miss.) Democrat, quoted in N.A.S. Standard, Aug. 17, 1867; New York Tribune, May 18, June 20, 1867; and Independent, May 30, 1867.

27 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 493-94; New York Tribune, July 7, 11, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, June 29, Aug. 17, 24, 1867; Independent, June 27, July 4, 11, 1867.

28 Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, 1948), 237-40; Wm. Slade to Douglass, July 29, Aug. 18, 1867, Douglass to Slade, Aug. 12, 1867, Douglass Papers, Anacostia; Douglass’ statement quoted from Douglass to Tilton, Sept. 2, 1867, Tilton Papers, NYHS; Tilton’s statement quoted in Quarles, Douglass, 239.

29 Bentley, Freedmen’s Bureau, 196; Phillips to Purvis, Sept. 13, 1867, Weston Papers, BPL.

30 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 494-98; Commonwealth, Aug. 17, 1867. See also Senator Richard Yates of Illinois to Anna Dickinson, Aug. 21, 1867, Dickinson Papers, LC; George Cheever to Henry Cheever, Aug. 28, 1867, Cheever Papers, AAS; N.A.S. Standard, Aug. 17, 1867; New York Tribune, Aug. 28, 1867; Independent, Sept. 19, 1867.

31 N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 14, Oct. 12, Nov. 9, 1867; New York Tribune, Oct. 12, 1867; Independent, Oct. 17, 31, 1867; Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (Phila., 1868), 15-16.

32 Wright to Garrison, Nov. 23, 1867, Garrison Papers, BPL; Pillsbury to Gerrit Smith, Nov. 27, 1867, Gerrit Smith Papers, SU. See also W. H. Furness to Sumner, Nov. 24, 1867, Sumner Papers, HU; and Parker Pillsbury, Letter to a Radical Member of Congress, Oct. 20, 1867, published letter, copy in Gerrit Smith Papers, SU.

33 Quoted in Ira Brown, “Pennsylvania and the Rights of the Negro, 1865-1887,” Pennsylvania History, XXVIII (Jan. 1961), 51.

34 Independent, Nov. 14, Dec. 5, 1867; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 21, Nov. 30, 1867.

35 New York Tribune, Dec. 9, 1867. See also McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 498-99; N.A.S. Standard, Sept. 28, Oct. 5, 26, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, 14, 21, 1867; Independent, Dec. 19, 1867.

36 James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents (20 vols., Washington, 1897-1913), IX, 3762-63; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction 499-500; N.A.S. Standard, Jan. 11, 1868; Commonwealth, Jan. 11, 1868; Frank Bird to Sumner, Jan. 11, 1868, Sumner Papers, HU.

37 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 501-05; N.A.S. Standard, Feb. 29, 1868.

38 Zion’s Herald, Mar. 5, 26, Apr. 9, 1868; New York Herald, May 13, 1868; Independent, May 7, 1868; Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols., New York, 1960), III, 357.

39 N.A.S. Standard, Mar. 14, 1868; Wright’s statement published in Commonwealth, Mar. 14, 1868.

40 Resolution of New England Anti-Slavery Society published in N.A.S. Standard, June 6, 1868; Phillips’ statement published in issue of May 23, 1868. See also Independent, May 21, 1868; Commonwealth, May 23, 1868; and Tilton to E. C. Stanton, May 28, 1868, Stanton Papers, LC.