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By Root 1730 0

insensitive to the opinions of others, unwilling to compromise, and unalterably racist. If anyone was responsible for the downfall of his presidency it was Johnson himself. With Congress out of session until December 1865, Johnson took it upon himself to bring about Reconstruction, establishing new governments in the South in which blacks had no voice whatever. When these governments sought to reduce the freedpeople to a situation reminiscent of slavery, he refused to heed the rising tide of northern concern or to budge from his policy. As a result, Congress, after attempting to work with the president, felt it had no choice but to sweep aside Johnson’s Reconstruction plan and to enact some of the most momentous measures in American history: the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which accorded blacks equality before the law; the Fourteenth Amendment, which put the principle of equality unbounded by race into the Constitution; the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which mandated the establishment of new governments in the South with black men, for the first time in our history, enjoying a share of political power. Johnson did everything in his power to obstruct their implementation. In 1868, fed up with his intransigence and incompetence, the House of Representatives impeached Johnson and he came within one vote of conviction by the Senate.25

It is impossible to imagine Lincoln, had he lived, becoming so isolated from Congress, the Republican party, and the northern public as to be impeached and nearly removed from office. Nor does it seem likely that Lincoln would have implemented a policy and then clung to it in the face of its self-evident failure. Lincoln had changed enormously during the Civil War. Had he “considered it too humiliating to learn in advanced years,” one emancipated slave later wrote, “our race would yet have remained” in bondage. During Reconstruction, Lincoln’s ideas would undoubtedly have continued to evolve. This is why Frederick Douglass, his frequent critic, in 1865 called his death “an unspeakable calamity” for black America.26

“Liberty has been won,” Charles Sumner proclaimed in a eulogy after Lincoln’s death. “The battle for Equality is still pending.”27 Unlike Sumner and other Radicals, Lincoln did not see Reconstruction as an opportunity for a sweeping political and social revolution beyond emancipation. He had long made clear his opposition to the confiscation and redistribution of land. He believed, as most Republicans did in April 1865, that voting requirements should be determined by the states. He assumed that political control in the South would pass to white Unionists, reluctant secessionists, and forward-looking former Confederates. But time and again during the war, Lincoln, after initial opposition, had come to embrace positions first advanced by abolitionists and Radical Republicans. Had he died early in 1862, it would be quite easy to argue today that Lincoln would never have issued a proclamation of emancipation, enrolled black solders in the Union army, or advocated allowing some black men to vote. Whatever the makeup of the new southern governments established during a second Lincoln term, had they passed laws, as those established by Johnson did, severely limiting the ability of the former slaves to choose their employment, acquire property, and enjoy the other basic rights Republicans believed essential to freedom, Lincoln undoubtedly would have listened carefully to the outcry for further protection for the former slaves.

Despite their differences, Lincoln had always tried to find common ground with the Republican majority in Congress. It is entirely plausible to imagine Lincoln and Congress agreeing on a Reconstruction policy that encompassed federal protection for basic civil rights plus limited black suffrage, along the lines Lincoln proposed just before his death. Radicals would have demanded more, but this would have been a far cry from what Lincoln’s successor was willing to tolerate. Perhaps, confronted by a united Republican party and a president willing to enforce the law, white