Stanley K. Schultz and William P. Tishler

Reconstructing the Nation

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Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) 17th President of the United States. Appointed Governor of Tennessee in 1862. Johnson, a Southern Democrat loyal to the Union, ran as Abraham Lincoln's vice presidential candidate in 1864 and took over as President in 1865 when Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson is the first U.S. president to have been impeached.

As matters turned out, there were four different theories of Reconstruction that came to be advanced competing with one another for the sympathy of the nation as well as the nation's legislators.

In the Presidential theory, Andrew Johnson stated that Southern states had never been out of the Union, but "only been sleeping." What was needed, Johnson said, was not Reconstruction but "Restoration." Southern states had acted treasonably, however, and under the Constitution the president had the full say over so-called Reconstruction. Johnson promised to use his pardoning power and to appoint provisional governors sympathetic to the Southern cause, wake the sleeping states, bring them back into the Union. The Southern theory argued that the results of the war proved secession could not take place and that therefore Southern states never had left the Union. There was no Constitutional question. Everything should revert to its pre-war status. The Conquered Provinces theory represented the most extreme viewpoints of Radical Republicans. Its greatest airing came from Thaddeus Stevens, a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, and a leading abolitionist. Stevens' argument was that the actions of Southern states and Southern individuals had been so criminal they had shattered the Constitution. If the Constitution did not apply, then Congress had the right to reconstruct Southern states in any way it chose. Southern states, Stevens said, must be treated as conquered provinces under international law.

And, that leads us to our fourth theory, the Forfeited Rights theory, the one that ultimately would govern Reconstruction. It declared secession null and void while also emphasizing that governments had rebelled against the Union. Because Southern governments had rebelled, they had forfeited their rights under the United States Constitution. Under the Constitution it would be both the duty and right of Congress to ensure every state a republican form of government. This Forfeited Rights theory ultimately gained the support of a sufficient number of people in Congress known as the Radicals to become the theory that underlay the Reconstruction Acts of 1867.

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