“Reconstruction” in Atlantic Monthly 18 (1866)

Summary

Frederick Douglass, born a slave in Maryland in 1818, escaped to Massachusetts and freedom in 1838, and from there emerged as one of the most noted and eloquent orators for abolition in the nation. He relentlessly pressed for converting the Civil War into “an abolition war,” and hailed President Lincoln’s movement towards that goal. But Lincoln’s assassination in April, 1865, brought the reluctant Andrew Johnson to the Presidency, and Douglass’s interview with Johnson in February, 1866, made it apparent that Johnson was opposed to anything that moved African Americans toward full and equal citizenship. Douglass took heart from how the November, 1866, elections repudiated Johnson’s policies, and in the Atlantic Monthly, Douglass urged the upcoming second session of the 39th Congress to undo the “sham” state governments Johnson sponsored in the defeated Confederacy and affirm voting rights for the Freedmen.
 

Selected by

Allen C. Guelzo

Director, Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

Darrell A.H. Miller

Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law

Document Excerpt

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent result…or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.

…All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature. The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal Government can put upon the national statute-book. …The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection. …[N]o republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war.

…In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is now the popular passport to power.

…It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

…Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. …[T]he Constitution of the United States…declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.