The 1866 Midterm Election
Shownotes
TOctober 31, 2026
Andrew Johnson traveled around the country in advance of the 1866 midterm election, to drum up support for his party, He denounced Congress and called certain Republican members of Congress traitors, and compared himself to Jesus Christ, The Democrats were the party of slavery and secession, and Johnson, a former Democrat who became president in April 1865, after Lincoln’s assassination, opposed the young Republican party’s plans for a future where every man would have the right to the fruits of his own labor, Johnson pardoned all but about fifteen hundred former Confederates, He refused to endorse Black voting, and by requiring little of the southern States, he guaranteed that the same men who had taken the South out of the Union would be responsible for bringing it back in, They joined Johnson in trying to re-create the world of the Old South, and in each state, through the Black Codes, they guaranteed the dominance of white people in the South, But Republicans had no intention of allowing the South to become more powerful, and Congress refused to seat the South’s representatives, A committee of fifteen members was assigned to come up with a better plan for rebuilding the nation, and introduced the joint resolution that would become the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Both chambers of Congress agreed to the amendment on June 18, 1866 and sent it to the states for ratification, Johnson hated the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, Johnson told southern politicians to ignore Congress, He set out on a railroad tour to whip up support for Democrats before the 1866 election, But white supremacist violence and everything that Johnson stood for were too much for voters, Rather than turning against the Republicans in the election, voters gave the Republicans a two-thirds majority of Congress, enabling them to override Johnson, and in 1868 the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
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