Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 159the veto “a declaration of war.” Clearly, cried the outraged Trumbull
on the Senate floor, the President will approve no bill that would pro-
tect “the freedmen in their liberty and their property.” Both the House
and the Senate promptly overrode the veto. The Civil Rights Act of
1866 was the first major piece of legislation in American history to be
enacted over the objections of the President.
It was important in another way. In effect it announced that the
national government had the responsibility of protecting the rights
of citizens, not the states. The concerns about states’ rights that had
plagued the nation for generations were swept away. From now on,
equality before the law would be enforced by the national government.
By his veto, Johnson lost whatever support he had once enjoyed
among moderate Republicans. They quietly drifted over to the side of
the Radicals. Any future vetoes were sure to be overridden. What the
President had done was commit political suicide.
Still, a genuine concern for the constitutionality of the Civil Rights
Act bothered many members, so the Joint Committee of Fifteen pro-
posed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which defi ned
citizenship in a manner that included black males and forbade any state
from infringing the rights of citizens without due process of law. It
abrogated the three-fifths clause of the Constitution in calculating
representation in the lower House of Congress, which thereby added
twelve southern seats when these states were readmitted.
Since this amendment specifically introduced the word “male” into
the Constitution, feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton felt betrayed. Men protected their own rights, they com-
plained, but not the rights of females. Very well, women would now
rely on their own efforts, and in 1869 they formed the National Woman
Suffrage Association, which admitted only women. But the American
Woman Suffrage Association, formed immediately thereafter, wel-
comed both men and women. The two groups subsequently merged
under Stanton’s leadership and became the National Woman Suffrage
Association. The fight for suffrage equality now began in earnest.
Tennessee ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and was immedi-
ately readmitted to the Union on July 24 , 1866. But the other southern
states refused, in the hope that the midterm election in 1866 would re-
sult in a defeat of the Radicals and the election of a Congress that