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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?” |
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Harper's Weekly
References |
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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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