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Reconstruction: Social and Physical The rebellionhas effectedrevolutions in many instances,and none more signally than Washington.The outside American world begins to look in upon this microcosm . People come here from all the Northern States, not simply to get and hold office, but to get and hold lots and houses. For every traitor who has deserted , ten honest people come here to settle down and occupy ten times his former space.With this people comenerve and enterpriseand ambitiousactivity They find slaveryabolished and the old slave ownersfled or quiescent. They see that the Capital,so longcontended for by the rebels,and sobravely held by the patriots , is now, as it were, forever set like a precious jewel in the very center of the diademof the Republic....The capitalof agreat Republic shouldnot onlybe the freestbut the most progressive and beautified in the world. Washington Chronicle,June 3,1864 With peace Washington set the stage nationally for the freedmen's enjoyment of new rights. The city faced competing demands, however, most notably from the need to address the war's devastating wear and tear on its physical fabric. An additional goal voiced for the period, then, was physical improvement. To a considerable degree the politics of the postwar era, including the District's short-lived experiment in territorial government, tied together the potentially charged issue of advancing opportunity for blacks with the physical reconstruction ofthe city. For most of the immediate postwar period, Republicans promoted both goals, despite differences in priorities within their ranks. As Reconstruction evolved, however, Republicans divided, and ultimately the commitment to physical development triumphed over social advances. The issue of granting the franchise to black men animated fierce debate after the war, and in this Washington quickly emerged as the focal point. During the spring of 1865 Republicans in Congress pressing for universal manhood suffragebelieved they had the support of President Andrew Johnson . On May 29, however, the president issued his North Carolina Proclamation , settingup a new governmentwithout extending the suffrage. Leaving that decision to voters clearly hostile to the idea, Johnson issued similar proclamations for seven other Confederate states.When Iowa, Wisconsin, and Connecticut in the North rejected extending the franchise, Radicals turned to the District as a opportunity to advance their cause.' Senator Charles Sumner tried to secure universal manhood suffrage in Montana early in 1865, and when that failed he attempted to secure that right in the District of Columbia in conjunction with the renewal of Washington's charter . Noting the difficulty in securing extensions of the vote in the North, Sumner's Radical colleague in the House, Benjamin Wade, advised him that it was impractical to press the issue in Washington, despite attention given to a petition signed by twenty-five hundred black Washington residents, who pointed to their role as soldiers and taxpayers as evidence of their readiness for the vote.2Sumner continued his effort, however, considering it a symbolic move intended to inaugurate "a policy not only strictly for the District of Columbia, but in some sense for the country at large." Arguing that there would be "more harm in refusing than in conceding the franchise " to blacks who, he stated, were about "as intelligent as the Irish just arrived ," he fended off a woman's suffrage amendment,by which, he claimed, the bill would be "clogged, burdened, or embarrassed."3 The reaction among Washington's racially conservative white politicians was immediate and decisive.In debates in the city council over drawing up a resolution putting the issue of universal manhood suffrage before the city electorate, one councilman urged a quick resolution lest "the nigger bill" pass the Congress before city residents could be heard from. Another member, citing antagonism to the black vote in Connecticut, defended his own opposition to the measure by arguing that the black man "had no more qualification to vote than a brickbat."" As the December 21 date set for the referendum approached, rival Republican papers, the Star and the more radical Chronicle, debated the question . The Star opposed giving black men the vote, sayingthat whites would be degraded by extending the "highest privilege of citizenship to those unready for the responsibility." Claiming that "the proposition is plainly the opening of a war on the rights of white laboring men," the Star asked rhetorically that if there were already those whites who debased the vote, how could one argue for "adding to it . . . illiterate negroes, not one in a thousand of whom could tell if his ballot was...

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