The Radical Record

Grant's last outrage in Louisiana in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper on January 23, 1875. With nation tired of Reconstruction, Grant remained the lone President protecting African American civil rights.

Concerned that President Johnson was attempting to subvert congressional authority, Republicans took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866. Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen. They were generally in control, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans. the Democrats in Congress had almost no power. Historians generally refer to this period as Radical Reconstruction.

During fall 1865, out of response to the Black codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the former rebellious states to the Congress. Johnson, however, was content with allowing former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. By December 6, 1865, the amendment was ratified and Johnson considered Reconstruction over. Radical Republicans in Congress, however, disagreed. They rejected Johnson's moderate Reconstruction efforts, and organized the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a 15-member panel to devise reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union.

In January 1866, Congress renewed the Freedman's Bureau, which Johnson vetoed in February. Although Johnson had sympathies for the plights of the freedmen, he was against federal assistance. An attempt to override the veto failed on February 20, 1866. This veto shocked the Congressional Radicals. In response, both the Senate and House passed a joint resolution not to allow any Senator or Representative seat admittance until Congress decided when Reconstruction was finished.

Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, leader of the moderate Republicans, took affront at the black codes. He proposed the first Civil Rights Law, because the abolition of slavery was empty if laws were to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent of privileges which were essential to free men. The law stated that African-Americans were to be granted equal rights as citizens in all aspects. Congress later passed the Civil Rights bill. Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27, 1866. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when eleven out of thirty-six states were unrepresented and attempted to fix by Federal law "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every State of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by Federal authority of the rights of the States. It had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, north and south, supported Johnson. However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto. The Senate overrode the veto by the close vote of 33:15, the House by 122:41. Then, the Civil Rights bill became law. Congress also passed another version of Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which Johnson again vetoed. This time, however, Radical Republicans mustered enough congressional support to override Johnson's veto.

The Radical Republicans also passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern Congressmen believed that providing black men with suffrage would be the most rapid means of political education and training. For instance, the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was John Bingham, was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States, except visitors and Indians on reservations, penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states.

While many blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations, white Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, passing laws that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites in the South. Early Supreme Court rulings around the turn of the 19th to 20th century upheld many of these new Southern constitutions and laws, and most blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the 1960s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not occur until passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968).