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Congressional Reconstruction

The 1866 election results ensured the Congress would control the Reconstruction process, instead of the president.  It also prompted 14 other state legislatures to vote for ratification in January and February 1867, bringing the total to 19.  At that point, however, the Fourteenth Amendment had been approved by no former Confederate state except for Tennessee and by only two of the five Border States—Missouri and West Virginia.   

In its issues of December 1866, Harper’s Weekly covered the largely negative reaction to the Fourteenth Amendment from Southern governors and legislatures.  The December 1 issue reported Governor Robert Patton urging the Alabama legislature not to pass the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Georgia legislature’s overwhelming rejection of the measure.  The December 8 issue noted similar negative assessments of the Fourteenth Amendment from Governor Jonathan Worth of North Carolina and Governor David Walker of Florida, with Governor Isaac Murphy of Arkansas suggesting that the proposal might be the best terms that Congress would allow.  The December 15 issue included the negative response from Governor James Orr of South Carolina.   

More upbeat news for proponents appeared in the December 22 issue in which Governor Francis Pierpont of Virginia endorsed the amendment and Governor Patton changed his mind to support passage for fear that the more radical incoming Congress would impose stricter requirements before seating the Southern states.  The bad news for supporters returned with the December 29 issue reporting that passage in South Carolina was unlikely, and that the Alabama legislature rejected Governor Patton’s revised advice and voted overwhelmingly against the amendment.  The same issue noted that the Georgia legislature adjourned without reconsidering the amendment and that the parting words of the Speaker of the State House were ones of hope that the nation’s “trial of fanaticism [i.e., Reconstruction] would exhaust itself.”  

In the December 1, 1866 Harper’s Weekly, editor George William Curtis countered the Southern argument that the Fourteenth Amendment was not legitimate because the former Confederate states were not represented in the Congress that proposed it.  He pointed out that their absence had been the case for the past five years ever since the South seceded and its representatives removed themselves from Congress.  If the federal representatives of the loyal states had the legitimacy to legislate during the Civil War, they still did.  Curtis argued that opposition to the amendment ostensibly based on states’ rights was really grounded in the state sovereignty view that justified secession in the eyes of the South, but which had been rendered obsolete by Confederate defeat in the Civil War.  Finally, the editor dismissed the loud wail that accepting the Fourteenth Amendment would humiliate the South:  “After a tremendous struggle to overthrow a Government in which you fail, how can you be humiliated by accepting, as the condition of resuming a share in that Government, that it shall be upon equal terms with all others?”  Are the rebels humiliated if “they have not gained increased political power?”

Harper's Weekly References

1)  December 1, 1866, p. 755, c. 3-4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

2)  December 8, 1866, p. 771, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

3)  December 15, 1866, p. 787, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

4)  December 22, 1866, p. 803, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

5)  December 29, 1866, p. 819, c. 3
“Domestic Intelligence” column

6)  December 1, 1866, p. 754, c. 2-3
editorial, “The Amendment at the South”


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Congressional Passage // Freedmen's Bureau Act // Race Riots
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Congressional Reconstruction
 
 

     
 

 
     
 

 
     
 

 

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