The Reconstruction Congress

This article is a sequel to The Civil War Congress. Both are elements of a continuing study of extrajudicial interpretation of the Constitution, with an emphasis on the debates in Congress. The present installment begins with the accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency upon the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865. The overriding task confronting Congress and the new President was to restore the states that had attempted to secede to their proper place in the Union. The first two years were dominated by issues respecting Reconstruction itself, culminating in the famous Reconstruction Act of 1867. Reconstruction is commonly said to have ended in 1877. That is when, in consequence of the arrangement settling the disputed election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B Hayes the last federal troops were withdrawn from the former Confederate states. It was not long afterwards that the reconstructed governments were back in the hands of the antebellum Southern elite; Reconstruction had effectively been reversed.