That was the approach Britain commonly took in dealing with Irish rebels. It was such a brilliant success. Ha ha!
How radical can reconstruction get?
- Thread starter Orko
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That was the approach Britain commonly took in dealing with Irish rebels. It was such a brilliant success. Ha ha!
It wasn't their decision.
The Constitution laid down that Congress should meet at least once every year, and that this should be on the first Monday in December "unless they shall by law appoint a different day". The old Congress having expired in March, the new one could meet before December only if summoned by the President, and Andrew Johnson did not choose to do so.
It was not obvious at first that they needed to meet earlier. Johnson's hostile attitude to traitors - "must be impoverished" and all that - made him appear a safe pair of hands, and one or two Radicals even suggested that he might be better than Lincoln in this regard (!!). At least some of the ferocity with which they turned on him may have been due to a feeling that they had been duped.
Not that an earlier meeting of Congress would necessarily have been good news for the Freedmen. As I noted before, it might have led to the 14th Amendment being passed a year earlier, at a time when the South was still too dazed and shaken to dare reject it. And had they ratified it straight off, Congress might well have readmitted them without feeling the need to touch the political "hot potato" of Black suffrage.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
So, they can meet more often if they so choose?
Tell you what, I'm going to look up Article 1 of the United States Constitution which talks about Congress. If you or anyone else would like to look up Article 2 which talks about the Presidency, please, be my guest.
Not only can, but did.
During their quarrel with Andrew Johnson, the outgoing 39th Congress passed (over his veto) an act providing that the new one should meet on March 4, 1867, ie as soon as the old one ended.
!n March 1865, of course, there was no obvious reason to do this, so it wasn't done.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I'm going to be charitable and say it was war weariness.
Or, they thought the hard part was the war. Nay, the hard part was the peace.
Or just that most of them didn't see the need.
They'd had occasional spats with Lincoln, over stuff like the Wade-Davis Bill, but no one anticipated the "war to the knife" that developed with Andrew Johnson. Even after the assassination, virtually no one expected this.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Did the U.S. Congress consider themselves as if they were the city council of a small town? ? And as long as the city manager's doing a okay job, there's no need for them to do much work.
Or, to ask it this way, can you imagine if the U.S. Congress were out of session from Sept. '45 to May '46 ? ! ? And I would argue that the post-Civil War absence was just as serious if not more so.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
So, Congress was playing catch-up.
I guess that could have been a winning situation. When they came back in December 1865, they could have come back with even more energy.
Maybe.
I guess that could have been a winning situation. When they came back in December 1865, they could have come back with even more energy.
Maybe.I will agree with you on one thing as pointed out on this page http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeepSouth this trope is over used. There is a lot of bigotry against the South and bigotry is wrong no matter who it is against. It is no longer 1933 or even 1972, the KKK is about as dead in the South as anywhere else (There are about 5,000 members spread across the entire US) and cities like Atlanta , Miami and Houston do exist and are pretty large even by Northern standards.
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So, Congress was playing catch-up.
I guess that could have been a winning situation. When they came back in December 1865, they could have come back with even more energy.
Yeah, they probably thought they didn't need to and could work with Johnson for quite a while.
On March 3, 1865 (the last day they could have done it [1]) Johnson was not yet President. Lincoln still had about six weeks to live.
The nine-month recess may seem odd today, but was perfectly normal then. Lincoln had summoned the 37th Congress early after the Battle of Bull Run, but even then it had adjourned on August 6, and not met again until December. And that was the first such early session since 1841.
Nor, of course, had Johnson yet blotted his copybook by turning up for the inauguration "under the influence".
[1] And if passed later than Feb 21, Lincoln could kill it by a pocket veto.
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
It seems utterly bizarre!
Reminds me of something from years ago in which a fellow member of a church angrily said, "I do have a problem with the minister only working five months out of the year." The minister would take off one Sunday a month, plus he would take the whole Summer off. Not sure how the brother calculated only five months of work, but maybe the minister took off other time as well.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
My reading of Article I of the United States Constitution is that Congress can easily summon itself.
You could divide the South into military districts, have land redistribution for blacks, a greater military presence, mass education of blacks and poor whites, imprisonment and/or execution of traitors, and rescission of voting rights for those that owned slaves or participated in the war.
But it can only do so "by law", and to pass a law they have to be in session. So in 1865 the latest they could do so would be March 3 (if Lincoln signed it) or Feb 20 (if he didn't). After that they cannot reassemble until December unless summoned by the POTUS.
But why should anybody bother?
The purpose of the war and reconstruction was to bring the southerners back into the Union as loyal US citizens. Had they been permanently disaffected - as Irish Catholics were from the UK - your approach might make sense, but events soon showed that they weren't, so that such measures were unnecessary
Keep in mind that emancipation was a means to the end of restoring the Union, not (except for a few abolitionists) an objective in itself. So once it became clear that promoting Black rights wasn't necessary to get the Union running smoothly again, this was soon abandoned. This is no doubt irritating to a later generation who had subsequently to deal with the matter, but for (white) contemporaries it was a perfectly sensible decision.
Republicans might bother for these reasons. Firstly because the planter class deserved to be punished for treason
Secondly ensuring black voting rights would be giving them a chance of winning Southern states
Secondly ensuring black voting rights would be giving them a chance of winning Southern states
Never much of a priority.
When discussing the 14th Amendment, the HoR did pass a version disfranchising ex-Rebs, but only till 1870. And even that was too much for the Senate, which watered it down to OTL's Section 3. And this, in turn, was effectively rescinded as early as 1872.
The "Radicalism" of these Congresses is largely a myth promoted by the Dunning school. The Radicals made a lot of noise, but never set the agenda.
But only worth pursuing so long as it didn't cost them anything in the North, where their core support lay. And the policies manitobot suggests would certainly do that.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
That's not my reading of Article I (Legislative branch).
Now, if members of Congress are looking for an excuse to be passive, I guess saying they have to pass a law ahead of time will work as well as any.
But if they're looking for ways to be active, that's there, too.
It might be clearer if you quoted the rest of the Article. "- - - and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall be law appoint a different day".
If Congress wants to meet at another time, they have to do it by law. The only way for them to be called at any other time is if the President convenes it "- on extraordinary occasion - " (Article 2, Section 3).
How exactly do you envisage Congress meeting any other way? The Constitution gives no one the power to summon it except the President. Can you find a precedent for anything of the kind?
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