The Fourteenth Amendment 409often intemperate, his handling of opponents inept,
his analysis of southern conditions incorrect. He had
assumed that the small southern farmers who made
up the majority in the Confederacy shared his preju-
dices against the planter class. They did not, as their
choices in the postwar elections demonstrated. In
fact, Johnson’s hatred of the southern aristocracy may
have been based more on jealousy than on principle.
Under the Reconstruction plan, persons excluded
from the blanket amnesty could apply individually
for the restoration of their rights. When wealthy
and socially prominent Southerners flocked to
Washington, hat in hand, he found their flattery and
humility exhilarating. He issued pardons wholesale. “I
did not expect to keep out all who were excluded
from the amnesty,” he explained. “I intended they
should sue for pardon, and so realize the enormity of
their crime.”
The president misread northern opinion. He
believed that Congress had no right to pass laws
affecting the South before southern representatives
had been readmitted to Congress. However, in the
light of the refusal of most southern whites to
grant any real power or responsibility to the freed-
men (an attitude that Johnson did not condemn),
the public would not accept this point of view.
Johnson placed his own judgment over that of the
overwhelming majority of northern voters, and this
was a great error, morally and tactically. By encour-
aging white Southerners to resist efforts to improve
the lot of blacks, Johnson played into the hands of
the Radicals.
The Radicals encountered grave problems in
fighting for their program. Northerners might object
to the Black Codes and to seating “rebels” in
Congress, but few believed in racial equality.
Between 1865 and 1868, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Connecticut, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania all rejected bills granting blacks
the vote.
The Radicals were in effect demanding not
merely equal rights for freedmen but extra rights;
not merely the vote but special protection of that
right against the pressure that southern whites
would surely apply to undermine it. This idea flew
in the face of conventional American beliefs in
equality before the law and individual self-reliance.
Such protection would involve interference by the
federal government in local affairs, a concept at
variance with American practice. Events were to
show that the Radicals were correct—that what
amounted to a political revolution in state–federal
relations was essential if blacks were to achieve real
equality. But in the climate of that day their propos-
als encountered bitter resistance, and not only from
white Southerners.
Thus, while the Radicals sought partisan advan-
tage in their battle with Johnson and sometimes
played on war-bred passions in achieving their ends,
they were taking large political risks in defense of gen-
uinely held principles.Southern Skepticism of the Freedmen’s
Bureauatwww.myhistorylab.comThe Fourteenth Amendment
In June 1866 Congress submitted to the states a new
amendment to the Constitution. The Fourteenth
Amendmentwas, in the context of the times, a truly
radical measure. Never before had newly freed slaves
been granted significant political rights. For example,
in the British Caribbean sugar islands, where slavery
had been abolished in the 1830s, stiff property quali-
fications and poll taxes kept freedmen from voting.
The Fourteenth Amendment was also a milestone
along the road to the centralization of political
power in the United States because it reduced the
power of all the states. In this sense it confirmed the
great change wrought by the Civil War: the growth
of a more complex, more closely integrated social
and economic structure requiring closer national
supervision. Few people understood this aspect of
the amendment at the time.
First the amendment supplied a broad defini-
tion of American citizenship: “All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside.” Obviously
this included blacks. Then it struck at discrimina-
tory legislation like the Black Codes: “No State shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The next section attempted to force the southern
states to permit blacks to vote. If a state denied the
vote to any class of its adult male citizens, its repre-
sentation was to be reduced proportionately. Under
another clause, former federal officials who had
served the Confederacy were barred from holding
either state or federal office unless specifically par-
doned by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Finally, the
Confederate debt was repudiated.
While the amendment did not specifically outlaw
segregation or prevent a state from disenfranchisingReadtheDocument