A History of the American People

assisted by most of the Republican majority. It was clear that the President had the backing only
of the small minority of Democrats. The majority promptly excluded all senators and
representatives from the South, however elected, appointed a joint committee to investigate conditions' in theinsurrectionary states,' and passed a law extending the mandate of the
Freedman's Bureau. Johnson promptly vetoed this last measure, lost his temper, and denounced
leading Republican members of Congress, by name, as traitors. When Congress retaliated by
passing a Civil Rights Bill, intended to destroy much of the Black Codes, especially their
vagrancy laws, Johnson vetoed that too. Congress immediately passed it again by a two-thirds
majority, the first time in American history that a presidential veto had been overriden on a
measure of importance. Thus the breach between the White House and Congress was complete.
As Johnson had never been elected anyway, and had no personal mandate, his moral authority,
especially in the North, was weak, and Congress attempted to make itself the real ruler of the
country, rather as it was to do again in the 1970s, after the Watergate scandal.
The consequence was an unmitigated disaster for the South, in which the blacks ultimately
became even greater victims than the whites. By June 1866, the Joint Committee reported on the
South. It said that the Johnson state governments were illegal and that Congress alone had the
power to reconstruct what it called the rebel communities.' It said that the South wasin
anarchy,' controlled by unrepentant and unpardoned rebels, glorying in the crime which they had committed.' It tabled the Fourteenth Amendment, already described, and insisted that no state government be accorded recognition, or its senators and representatives admitted to Congress, until it had ratified it. All this became the issue in the autumn 1866 mid-term elections. Johnson campaigned against it, but the vulgarity and abusive language of his speeches alienated many, and he succeeded in presenting himself as more extreme, in his horrible way, than his opponents. So the radical Republicans won, and secured a two-thirds majority in both Houses, thus giving themselves the power to override any veto on their legislation which Johnson might impose. The radicals were thus in power, in a sense, and could do as they wished by law. In view of this, the governments of the Southern states would have been prudent to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. But, as usual, they responded to Northern extremism by extremism of their own, and all but one, Tennessee, refused. To break this impasse, the dominant northern Radicals now attacked, with the only weapon at their disposal, the law. In effect, they began a second Reconstruction. Their object was partly altruistic-to give justice to the blacks of the South by insuring they got the vote-and partly self- serving, by insuring that blacks cast their new votes in favor of Republicans, thus making their party dominant in the South too. As it happened, most Republicans in the North did not want the blacks to get the vote. Propositions to confer it in the North were rejected, 1865-7, in Connecticut, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Kansas, all strong Republican states. But the Republican majority insisted nonetheless on forcing black voters on the South. In March July 1867 it pushed through Congress, overriding Johnson's veto, a series of Reconstruction Acts, placing what they called theRebel States' under military government, imposing rigid oaths
which excluded many whites from electoral rolls while insuring all blacks were registered, and
imposing a number of conditions in addition to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, before
any `Rebel State' could be readmitted to full membership of the Union. It also made a frontal
assault on the powers of the executive branch, in particular removing its power to summon or not
to summon Congress, to dismiss officials (the Tenure of Office Act) and to give orders, as
commander-in-chief, to the army. Fearing obstruction by the Supreme Court, it passed a further
Act abolishing its jurisdiction in cases involving the Reconstruction Acts. Much of this