Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been brought before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of 1866-67 it was rejected by all of them.There was strong opposition to it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the principal reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were not sure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later.
While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded and struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state government), were also in the throes of reconstruction.Though there was less military interference in these than in the other states, many of the problems were similar.All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negro race, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every state, except Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and "ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each state there were signs of the political revolution which a few years later was to put the radicals out of power.
The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln and adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all the states which had seceded.A military governor was appointed in each state by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief.This official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported by the United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the state administration and after a few months turned the state and local governments over to regularly elected officials.Restoration should now have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senators and representatives of these states, and entered upon a fifteen months' struggle with the President over details of the methods of the reconstruction.Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented in Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from Federal authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments nonexistent.
The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success.The original plan restored to political rights only a small number of Unionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant.But in spite of the threatening speeches of Johnson, he used his power of pardon until none except the most prominent leaders were excluded.The personnel of the Johnson governments was fair.The officials were, in the main, former Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable and conservative, but not admired or loved by the people.The conventions and the legislatures were orderly and dignified and manifested a desire to accept the situation.
There were no political parties at first, but material for several existed.If things had been allowed to take their course, there would have arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the upcountry and the low country, between the slaveholders and the nonslaveholders.The average white man in these governments was willing to be fair to the Negro but was not greatly concerned about his future.In the view of most white people, it was the white man who was emancipated.The white districts had no desire to let the power return to the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the vote of the Negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former masters.
Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the radicals had failed to control him.He and they had little in common; they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish individuals; they were not troubled by constitutional scruples, while he was the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought principally of the Negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the emancipated white man.It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded, but for Johnson the task proved too great.
