What 3 sources of national power did Republicans contemplate exercising over the former Confederate states? Territorial powers War powers Guaranty clause How was each of these actually conservative in nature?
Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, [...] Republican is not pure democracy? James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, "Hence it is that such [pure] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. 1. Popular rule 2. Not a monarchy (and no titles of nobility) 3. Rule of law
"Grasp of War" Speech Richard Henry Dana, Jr. June 21, 1865 Delivered at a meeting held in Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts A war is over when its purpose is secured. It is a fatal mistake to hold that this war is over, because the fighting has ceased. [Applause.] This war is not over. We are in the attitude and in the status of war to-day. There is the solution of this question. Why, suppose a man has attacked your life, my friend, in the highway, at night, armed, and after a death-struggle, you get him down what then? When he says he has done fighting, are you obliged to release him? Can you not hold him until you have got some security against his weapons? [Applause.] Can you not hold him until you have searched him, and taken his weapons from him? Are you obliged to let him up to begin a new fight for your life? The same principle governs war between nations. When one nation has conquered another, in a war, the victorious nation does not retreat from the country and give up possession of it, because the fighting has ceased. No; it holds the conquered enemy in the grasp of war until it has secured whatever it has a right to require. [Applause.] I put that proposition fearlessly. The conquering party may hold the other in the grasp of war until it has secured whatever it has a right to require.
(cont.) But what have we a right to require? We have no right to require our conquered foe to adopt all our notions, our opinions, our systems, however much we may be attached to them, however good we may think them; but we have a right to require whatever the public safety and public faith make necessary. [Applause.] That is the proposition. Then we come to this. We have a right to hold the rebels in the grasp of war until we have obtained whatever the public safety and the public faith require. [Applause, and cries of "good."] Is not that a solid foundation to stand upon? Will it not bear examination? and are we not upon it to-day? We have a right to require, my friends, that the freedmen of the South shall have the right to hold land. [Applause.] Have we not? We have a right to require that they shall be allowed to testify in the state courts. [Applause.] Have we not? We have a right to demand that they shall bear arms as soldiers in the militia. [Applause.] Have we not? We have a right to demand that there shall be an impartial ballot [Great applause.]
(cont.) I know, fellow citizens, it is much more popular to stir up the feelings of a public audience by violent language than it is to repress them; but on this subject we must think wisely. We have never been willing to try the experiment of a consolidated democratic republic. Our system is a system of states, with central power; and in that system is our safety. [Applause.] State rights. I maintain; state sovereignty we have destroyed. [Applause.] Therefore, although I say that, if we are driven to the last resort, we may adopt this final remedy; yet wisdom, humanity, regard for democratic principles, common discretion, require that we should follow the course we are now following. Let the states make their own constitutions, but the constitutions must be satisfactory to the Republic [applause], and ending as I began by a power which I think is beyond question. The Republic holds them in the grasp of war until they have made such constitutions. [Loud applause.]
2 Radical plans for Reconstruction 1. Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 14 th Amendment
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction June 20, 1866 It cannot, we think, be denied by any one, having tolerable acquaintance with public law, that the war thus waged was a civil war of the greatest magnitude. The people waging it were necessarily subject to all the rule which, by the law of nations, control a contest of that character, and to all the legitimate consequences following it. One of those consequences was that, within the limits prescribed by humanity, the conquered rebels were at the mercy of the conquerors. That a government thus outraged had a most perfect right to exact indemnity for the injuries done, and security against the recurrence of such outrages in the future, would seem too clear for dispute.
(cont.) It did not seem just or proper that all the political advantages derived from their becoming free should be confined to their former masters, who had fought against the Union, and withheld from themselves, who had always been loyal. Doubts were entertained whether Congress had power, even under the amended Constitution, to prescribe the qualifications of voters in a State, or could act directly on the subject. It was doubtful whether the States would consent to surrender a power they had always exercised, and to which they were attached. As the best if not the only method of surmounting the difficulty, and as eminently just and proper in itself, your committee came to the conclusion that political power should be possessed in all the States exactly in proportion as the right of suffrage should be granted, without distinction of color or race. This it was thought would leave the whole question with the people of each State, holding out to all the advantage of increased political power as an inducement to allow all to participate in its exercise. Such a provision would be in its nature gentle and persuasive, and would lead, it was hoped, at no distant day, to an equal participation of all, without distinction, in all the rights and privileges of citizenship, thus affording a full and adequate protection to all classes of citizens, since all would have, through the ballot-box, the power of self-protection.
(cont.) [The committee resolved ] That the States lately in rebellion were, at the close of the war, disorganized communities, without civil government, and without constitutions or other forms, by virtue of which political relations could legally exist between them and the federal government. That Congress cannot be expected to recognize as valid the election of representatives from disorganized communities, which, from the very nature of the case, were unable to present their claim to representation under those established and recognized rules, the observance of which has been hitherto required.
(cont.) That Congress would not be justified in admitting such communities to a participation in the government of the country without first providing such constitutional or other guarantees as will tend to secure the civil rights of all citizens of the republic; a just equality of representation; protection against claims founded in rebellion and crime; a temporary restoration of the right of suffrage to those who had not actively participated in the efforts to destroy the Union and overthrow the government, and the exclusion from positions of public trust of, at least, a portion of those whose crimes have proved them to be enemies to the Union, and unworthy of public confidence.
14 th Amendment (1867) Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
14 th Amendment Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Speech by Carl Schurz, September 10, 1866: When the civil war had come to a close, the problem presented itself, of what is commonly called reconstruction. The principal difficulty of that problem consisted then, and consists now, in this: The political system of this Republic rests upon the right of the people to control their local concerns in their several States by the operations of self-government, subject to certain restrictions imposed by the National Constitution, and in the right to co-operate with one another in the government of the whole. This system was not to be changed in the work of reconstruction; but it was evident also that if reconstruction was to accomplish only the mere setting in motion again of the machinery of Government as it had been previous to the war, and nothing else, it would have forthwith invested the very people who had been in rebellion against the Government with the power in a great measure to control the very results which had been won, and against which they had struggled; and this would have been a surrender of the consequences of our victory to the discretion of the defeated.
(cont.)... all those who had been faithful to the national cause during the war substantially agreed, at its close, on two points with almost unbroken unanimity. First. That as speedily as possible all the attributes of our Democratic system of government should be restored; but, second, that the Rebel States could not be reinstated in the full control of their local affairs, in their full participation in the Government of the Republic, until, by the imposition of irreversible stipulations, it should have been rendered impossible for them to subvert or impair any of the results of the war, or to violate any of the obligations the Republic had taken upon herself.
Lyman Trumbull defends the Civil Rights Act of 1866: The bill may be assailed as drawing to the Federal Government powers that properly belong to States ; but I apprehend, rightly considered, it is not obnoxious to that objection. It will have no operations in any State where the laws are equal, where all persons have the same civil rights without regard to color or race. Jacob D. Cox, conservative Republican governor of Ohio: If these rights are in good faith protected by State laws and State authorities, there will be no need of federal legislation on the subject, and the power will remain in abeyance; but if they are systematically violated, those who violate them will be themselves responsible for all the necessary interference of the central government.
2 Radical plans for Reconstruction 1. Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 14 th Amendment 2. Military Reconstruction Acts of 1867 In response to the Johnson governments
Bingham, on Blaine Amendment: I wish thereby to notify in the most solemn form the men who constitute perhaps the majority of the people in those ten lately insurgent States, and who themselves were in open armed rebellion, that what they have to do and all they have to do in order to get rid of military rule and military government is to present to the Congress of the United States a constitutional form of State government ^ in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Constitution and laws of the United States, together with a ratification of the pending constitutional amendment.
THE TRUE PROBLEM. The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XIX, No. CXIII (March, 1867), pp. 371-378. by Carl Schurz... Nor can it be truthfully said that a constitutional amendment like the one here proposed would put the government upon the course of a centralization of power. It leaves the States to arrange their home concerns, subject to certain injunctions and restrictions. Such restrictions are by no means without precedent. The Constitution says, that no State shall grant any title of nobility, or coin money, or maintain a military force in time of peace, or enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, etc. Why all these restrictions? Because the things prohibited would violate the ruling principles and impair the stability of our system of government. Why then not prohibit other things which would violate the principles of the government in no less flagrant a manner? Would the granting of titles of nobility, distinguishing a few persons, be more dangerous to the Republic than a restriction of the franchise, degrading and rendering politically helpless millions of citizens?
(cont.) Nor can it be said that a constitutional provision demanding the establishment and maintenance of a system of common schools in all the States would put the government upon the course of consolidation. It demands only what most of the States have already done, and what all of them ought to have done. That it is the interest as well as the duty of a democratic State to promote the education of the people, no thinking man will deny. Will it render a State weaker, if it does something to make its citizens more intelligent? On the contrary, it will render the State stronger in culture, in justice, and in all that constitutes true moral power. Far from desiring a centralization repulsive to the genius of this country, it is in the distinct interest of local self-government and legitimate State rights that we urge these propositions; and nothing can be more certain than that this is the only way in which a dangerous centralization of power in the hands of our general government can be prevented.
When continued violence in the South after 1868 forced many Republicans to endorse come permanent broadening of national power a constitutional position which was truly radical most Republicans tried to limit the degree of the expansion, and many others refused to make this new departure at all (67). The goal of the first Republican program of Reconstruction was to protect freedmen s rights in the South with the minimum possible coercion of white southerners and least possible alteration of the traditional boundaries of state and federal jurisdiction (81).
Slaughterhouse cases (1873): Read Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the "privileges or immunities" conferred by virtue of the federal United States citizenship to all individuals of all states within it, but not those privileges or immunities incident to citizenship of a state the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a state is clearly recognized and established.... It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a state, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a state, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual the next paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several states
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
United States v. Cruikshank (1876)