>> Well, okay,
let's go back
to the 14th Amendment.
Congress passes it.
It's got to go
out to three-quarters,
it's got to be ratified
by three-quarters of the states.
The 14th Amendment becomes
the issue, you might say,
in the congressional elections
of 1866.
In that year, in that summer,
fall, Andrew Johnson,
unlike other presidents,
takes a leading role
in supporting candidates,
mostly Democrats,
who are in favor
of his Reconstruction policy.
He tries to form a new
political coalition.
He has something called the
National Union Convention.
But very few Republicans
are willing to go with him.
Most of the people now backing
Johnson are Democrats,
North and South.
Johnson's effort
to mobilize support
in the North is injured
by riots, race riots that break
out in the South in the summer
of 1866, leading to scores
of deaths of African Americans,
and of some white people, too.
In Memphis,
there's the Memphis riot
which leads to 50 deaths,
virtually all blacks,
in a kind of an attack
on black homes
and black schools.
Even worse, the New Orleans riot
in the summer of 1866.
These are images
of the New Orleans riot.
People, often police,
shooting at black people.
The inside of the
convention hall.
What happened
in New Orleans was,
if you remember when I was
talking about Louisiana
in the Civil War,
the Reconstruction of Louisiana
in the Civil War.
They had this constitutional
convention,
it abolished slavery,
didn't give any rights
to blacks, but it said it,
it authorized the president
of the convention to reconvene
if desired.
And in 1866,
with Confederates, basically
in control of Louisiana,
the old constitutional
convention tries to reconvene.
And the meeting of that leads
to a riot where armed whites are
assaulting the building,
including the local police now
allied with these, you know,
ex-Confederates.
And something
like 40 people are killed,
several hundred wounded.
And again, the image
of the South in Northern eyes
that these riots portray,
is one -- you know,
that they are not willing
to accept the results
of the Civil War,
that there is this violence
against African Americans.
Local authorities are not
willing to do anything about it.
The army has to be sent
in to put down the violence.
And these things really
undermine whatever support there
was for Andrew Johnson's
Reconstruction policy.
Johnson breaks with tradition
and goes into the North
campaigning
for congressional candidates
who will support his policy.
This is unprecedented.
The so called "swing
around the circle."
He travels all
around the North, support --
But it turns
into an utter disaster.
Johnson starts exchanging
epithets with people
in the audience.
People yell things out at him.
He starts yelling curses back
at them. [laughter]
Bantering with the crowd.
He's not very dignified
as a president, so to speak.
He tells the Northern people
they're ignorant,
they don't really know what's
going on in Congress.
He becomes more
and more self-pitying.
He starts comparing himself
with Jesus Christ, saying
people want kill -- he's willing
to sacrifice himself
for the nation. [laughter]
And by the time the swing
around the circle is over,
whatever support Johnson had
has evaporated.
Here's an image
of an anti-Johnson,
here's an image of, someone wrote
on a placard of Johnson, you see,
"I am king,"
and put a little crown
on his head.
This is a Democratic cartoon.
It's from the governor's election
in California.
This is the Republican candidate
for Governor, I believe.
But this is overt use of racism
in the campaign.
It's kind of hard to see.
I think it's reproduced
in my book,
I can't remember.
You've got the governor
and you've got a black --
this is negro suffrage
and what's to come --
you've got the governor,
you've got a black guy,
on top of him is a Chinese,
on top of him is sort
of a Native American, you see,
with an arrow.
And then someone is bringing
along a monkey,
saying, well,
if these guys can vote, let's
give monkeys the right to vote.
So this is, you see,
the absolute overt racism as,
you know, the critique
of the Radical policy of black --
black suffrage will lead
to all these other disasters
if followed.
Well, the result
of the elections, of course, is
that the Republicans sweep
to way beyond two-thirds control
of both houses of Congress,
rendering Johnson
totally irrelevant.
And this leaves the question
of the 14th Amendment
up in the air,
because to get three-quarters
of the states,
some Southern states are going
to have to ratify the
14th Amendment.
There are a few leading
Southerners, one guy we'll talk
about next week, James Alcorn,
one of the leading planters
of Mississippi, says, you know,
it looks like the Northern
public actually doesn't support
Andrew Johnson,
and we better really be
prudent here.
Why don't we ratify the
14th Amendment.
Because Congress had said,
if the South ratifies the
14th Amendment,
Southern states, they can come
back into the Union.
And Alcorn says, let's do that,
we really have no alternative.
But most Southern leaders say,
absolutely not,
the 14th Amendment is a
complete violation
of all our liberties.
And so, legislature
after legislature
in the South rejects the
14th Amendment,
by overwhelming majorities.
In the South Carolina legislature,
only one member votes in favor
of ratification.
In Georgia, only two.
The whole South, only 20 or 30,
where 700 or 800 legislators
vote against it.
And they are egged
on by Democrats in the North,
and they're egged
on by Johnson.
Johnson keeps saying,
don't ratify the 14th
Amendment, and they'll never
enact black suffrage.
He keeps telling the South,
don't worry, don't worry.
Of course, it happens,
two months after he starts
saying this, it does happen.
And so he's completely
out of touch
with political reality
by this time.
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This page was last edited on 22 August 2019, at 06:28