Second Congressional Reconstruction

Abstract

When Republican congressmen reassembled in December 1866, for the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, anger, bewilderment and confidence struggled for possession of their minds. Their anger was directed against the President and the South, bewilderment sprang from failure to produce a policy for Reconstruction, and confidence fed upon the results of the congressional elections. The President showed no sign of seeking an accommodation with Congress; the leaders of the South seemed willing neither to recognize the authority of Congress nor to do of their own free will what was required of them, and the Republican electoral victory in the North had been overwhelming. Congressmen, who might have wavered before the election, were now re-assured by the evidence of popular approval and could throw upon their constituents the responsibility for decision; yet in the South the ruling groups seemed equally assured of their ability to make a settlement on their own terms, and they too were fortified by the support of their own people. Johnson has been blamed for encouraging Southern resistance, but his actions were a symptom rather than a cause of the common interests which were drawing all white Southerners together.