Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/661

 1866] Victory of the Radicals. 629 the ballot. A bill introduced simultaneously provided that any State ratifying the amendment should be restored to representation. This amendment now became the issue in the Congressional elections in the fall of 1866. No more important campaign ever took place in the country; for the fate of the South hung in the balance. The rupture in the Union party was complete; and the Radicals fought with despera- tion to retain a two-thirds majority in Congress, since anything less would permit Johnson's veto to block all action. Each side made great efforts to rally popular support by holding Union conventions and soldiers 1 and sailors' conventions; and Johnson himself "took the stump" in the Western States with a series of passionate speeches whose vulgarity and extravagance did infinite damage to his cause. But, in any case, the unwise tactics of the Johnson Unionists in demanding immediate recogni- tion for the Southern States as a constitutional right decided the contest. The feeling of the North, still bitter and unforgiving, supported the Congressional party, and returned an increased Radical majority in both Houses, thereby deciding the history of the country for the next genera- tion. Had the Southern States been wise enough to read their fate in this vote and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, they might have escaped years of bitterness ; but the events of 1865 had restored their political hopes ; and now, in the face of the repudiation of Johnson's plan by the North, all of them, except Tennessee, refused the offer of Congress by rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment with overwhelming majorities. When Congress assembled in December, 1866, the triumphant majority found their proposal thrown back at them by a defiant South. Clearly nothing was to be expected from the President and his followers. Matters appeared to be at a deadlock. Then the leaders of the Radicals took control of affairs with relentless energy. They had come to the conclusion that the South must be re- constructed a second time; that Secessionists must be excluded from political life ; and that negroes must receive votes, partly in order to defend themselves, and partly to guarantee a large body of loyal," that is Republican, voters in the South. That their party, as a whole, did not favour negro suffrage in itself is shown by the fact that propositions to confer it in Northern States were defeated at the polls in Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in 1865, and in Ohio, Kansas, and Minnesota in 1867, all these being strong Republican States. But its introduction in the South was urged by philanthropists as an act of justice to an oppressed race, by vindictive Northerners as a punishment for secession, and by partisan politicians as a party manoeuvre. So the majority, contemptuously overriding Johnson's veto, forced through Congress, in March and July, 1867, a series of Reconstruction Acts, by which the "Rebel States," so-called, were placed under military government in five districts, and a registration of voters was decreed, from which a rigid oath was to exclude all classes meant to be disfranchised by the