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Freedmen's Bureau Bill // Civil Rights Bill

Meanwhile, on February 2, 1866, the Senate had passed the Civil Rights Bill, 33-12, with just three Republicans voting against the measure.  On March 13, it passed the House, 109-38, with only six Republicans among the no votes.  In the March 31 issue of Harper’s Weekly (published March 21), editor George William Curtis justified the Civil Rights Bill as an appropriate response to the situation following adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment; in essence, “this Bill of Rights is necessary, simple, and precise.”  He praised it as “truly a Magna Charta” that “overthrows all hostile legislation of the States against equality of civil rights.”  The editorial appeared two days after Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, but Curtis may have written it before.  In any event, the editor optimistically forecast, “we see no reason to suppose that the President will dissent.”  Similarly, as with the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, Senator Trumbull and other leading Republicans had come away from discussions with the president convinced that he found the Civil Rights Bill acceptable.   

Nevertheless, on March 27, President Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill as an unconstitutional violation of states’ rights, characterizing it as “another step, or rather stride, toward centralization, and the concentration of all legislative powers in the national government.”  Harper’s Weekly editor Curtis reacted in the April 14 issue (published April 4).  He reviewed the history of color and citizenship to explain why a national definition of citizenship was necessary.  He rebutted the president’s objections, concluding that Johnson’s states’ rights policies were inadequate to secure the civil rights of black Americans. 

The president’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill was the fateful action that broke the previously cooperative relationship between Johnson and Republican moderates, such as Trumbull and Fessenden.  Thereafter, they joined forces with the Radicals to resist Johnson’s Reconstruction policies.  On April 6, the Senate again passed the Civil Rights Bill with over a two-thirds majority, 33-15, and the House followed suit three days later, 122-41.  It was the first time in American history that a bill became law by a congressional override of a presidential veto.  Illustrations in the April 28 issue of Harper’s Weekly (published April 18) showed the jubilation expressed outside the House galleries by blacks and white Civil War veterans and by white women.


Harper's Weekly References

1)  February 17, 1866, p. 99, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

2)  March 31, 1866, p. 194, c. 2-3
editorial, “The Civil Rights Bill”

3)  April 14, 1866, p. 226, c.3 and p. 227, c. 1
editorial, “The Civil Rights Bill”

4)  April 21, 1866, p. 247, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

5)  April 28, 1866, p. 269
illustrations (top), “Outside of the Galleries of the House of Representatives during the Passage of the Civil Rights Bill”


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Freedmen's Bureau Bill // Civil Rights Bill

 
 

     
 

 
     
 

 
     
 

 

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