The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation

Chapter 5: Defining Postwar Republicanism: Congressional Republicans and the Boundaries of Citizenship

The period after the Civil War afforded the Republican party both the opportunity and the necessity of renegotiating the basic legal, constitutional , and political principles of American society.1 In a national government they dominated, the Republicans framed and implemented new policies and structures for all blacks—newly freed slaves in the South and border states as well as free Negroes throughout the United States. At the same time, Republicans rejected the argument that voting was an entitlement of citizenship and thereby refused to expand the rights of women. Republicans also legislated the temporary arrangements defining the degree of political inclusion for their former enemies, the Confederates. By 1865 the Republicans, the super-majority party from 1865 to 1870, comprised a loose coalition of believers and voters as well as opinion makers such as editors and writers. It had none of the formal national machinery or committee structures that between elections sustain our parties and coordinate party functions today, although it did have a fundraising national congressional committee. And it boasted a patronage army of thousands of zealous partisans, especially in the Post Office and Treasury departments, available to contribute money and work to the party. But most important, it included a group of experienced representatives and senators at a time of great political malleability when changes in the status of various groups, most obviously African Americans , were necessitated by the results of the war. In many ways, it was to these experienced legislators that the process of redefining the meaning of American public life fell. CHAPTER FIVE Defining Postwar Republicanism: Congressional Republicans and the Boundaries of Citizenship Jean H. Baker The questions were endless and unavoidable. Which categories of individuals would be included as the equals of white adult males? What measure of equality would be permitted black freedmen in the South? What was the meaning of emancipation? Did it carry entrance into the body politic in terms of voting, office holding, jury serving, and participation in legal rights? And what of the white southerners who, in Charles Sumner’s contested definition, had committed treason, whose states had engaged in an act of state suicide, and who were therefore no longer Americans ? What should their immediate and future status be? And what of Asians who were denied political liberty on the West Coast, or for that matter, immigrants, many of whom had fought in the Union army? And after two decades of women’s conventions and political activism by leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, what about women? What level of “belonging” would they have in this postwar civic community that members of the majority party in Congress would establish in their efforts to begin the nation anew? And once a civil right was legislated and the boundaries of citizenship expanded as they would be for black males, how would the new dimensions of citizenship be enforced?“Victory was nothing,”warned the Philadelphia Press, “unless you secure its fruits.”2 This chapter considers the extensions and limitations on the boundaries of citizenship as defined by congressional Radical Republicans from 1865 to 1870 for two of these groups—black males and women of both races.3 In these two cases decisions made for one group were intertwined with policies developed for others—for example, what the Republicans legislated for black males had an impact on their decisions about the definitions of citizenship for women. Certainly, the actions of former Confederates influenced future policies for black males. In the most obvious example, the inclusion of blacks in the body politic as persons, not three-fifths of a person, meant that the representation of the Confederate South would increase by at least fifteen seats in the House of Representatives —hardly a supportable result of victory after a bitter civil war. Such a partisan imperative affected the decision of Republicans to extend voting rights to black males, although politics should not obscure the principled commitment of Republicans to protecting blacks through their enfranchisement. As Representative William Kelley, who was committed to black male voting before some of his colleagues, concluded, “Party expediency and exact justice coincide for once.”4 Defining Postwar Republicanism 129 Republicans also were convinced that black suffrage would help black males defend their economic rights. They subscribed to the republican ideal that every man was endowed by God with...