DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
29 December 2008
Congressional Reconstruction
The post-Civil War Congress enacts strong civil rights measures
This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 elevated Vice President Andrew Johnson to the presidency. Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat chosen as Lincoln’s 1864 running mate to signal moderation and a desire for postwar reconciliation, moved swiftly to readmit the former Confederate states to full membership in the Union. Southern states were obliged to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery. But they were not required to protect the equality and civil rights of their African-American populations. White-dominated southern state governments organized under Johnson’s guidelines swiftly adopted Black Codes — punitive statutes that closely regulated the behavior of supposedly “free” African Americans. These laws typically imposed curfews, banned possession of firearms, and even imprisoned as vagrants former slaves who left their plantations without permission. Meanwhile, Johnson ordered the restoration of abandoned southern plantations to their former slave-master owners.
Many northerners were outraged. Surely, they argued, they had not fought and died only to re-empower the racist southern aristocracy. The 1866 congressional election returned large numbers of “Radical Republicans” determined to ensure greater civil rights for blacks, and, more generally, through government power to reconstruct the South along northern lines. This 40th Congress refused to seat members elected under Johnson-authorized southern state governments. It then overrode Johnson’s veto to enact several important civil rights laws.
One such law extended the operations of the Freedman’s Bureau. Established before Lincoln’s death, this federal agency helped ease the freed slaves’ transition to freedom. It supplied medical care, built hundreds of schools to educate black children, and helped freed slaves negotiate labor contracts with their former owners and other employers.
A second law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. African Americans thus were entitled to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, and own property.
Because Johnson opposed and arguably attempted to subvert the application of these and other measures, the House of Representatives in 1868 impeached (indicted) Johnson, thus initiating the constitutionally proscribed method for removing a president from office. The Senate acquitted Johnson by one vote, but for the remainder of his term, he mostly refrained from challenging Congress’s reconstruction program.
Most important of all, Congress made clear that the formerly rebellious states would not be permitted to regain their congressional representation until they ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment would supply the legal bedrock on which the modern civil rights movement would stake its claim for racial equality. The first 10 amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, had protected Americans against encroachments by the federal government. This afforded African Americans little or no protection against racist laws enacted by state governments. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in July 1868, remedied this. “No State,” it reads, shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted shortly afterward, declared that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
