^Andrew Johnson and the Philadelphia Election of 1866

^Andrew Johnson and the Philadelphia Election of 1866 HE TRADITIONAL image of Andrew Johnson's campaign tour during the congressional elections of 1866—the "swing Taround the circle," as it was called—is one of an ill-tempered, illiterate, semi-insane, and thoroughly undignified President thrash- ing madly through the North, harassed on all sides by gangs of ruffians instigated by the Radicals. The conclusion is that Johnson failed politically because he was unable to present his ideas in a sufficiently decorous manner. But it is questionable, when all is said and done, that political success is the natural result of political dig- nity. Certainly, the utterances of Thad Stevens or, better yet, Ben Butler during this campaign were not notably dignified, and, in any case, Johnson had spoken often in the North during the war and had been well received. What this suggests is that perhaps the real clue to his failure, in Philadelphia in particular and in the North in general, lies in what he was saying rather than in any fault of delivery. The essential issue was that of the Negro. The status of the Negro (the basic issue of Reconstruction and therefore of the 1866 election) was not decided in isolation but rather within the apprehensive atmosphere of the i86o's. Thus the "swing around the circle" should be viewed in the context of the Negro question and the general anxiety of the northern voter. The stage for the congressional elections of 1866 had been set by the clash between President Johnson and Congress in the spring of that year. By the time the 39th Congress adjourned in July, it was quite evident that the President had lost the first round. The Radi- cals had succeeded in marshalling enough votes to pass a Freedman's Bureau Bill and a Civil Rights Bill over his veto, and had proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Foiled in Congress, Johnson looked to the fall elections for an op- portunity to recover lost ground. As had been his custom from the earliest days of his political experience in Tennessee, the President 365 366 CHARLES D. CASHDOLLAR July determined to carry his fight to the people, confident that they would respond favorably, as indeed they always had. Early in June he had accepted an invitation to attend the corner- stone ceremony for a monument to the late Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Before long the idea emerged of expanding this trip to Chicago into a campaign tour of the North. The presidential party, including the military heroes Grant and Farragut as well as several cabinet officials, would go to Chicago by way of Baltimore, Phila- phia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, and Cleveland, making whistle stops at smaller towns along the way. The policy which Johnson was planning to carry to Philadelphia and the other northern cities reflected a deep psychological conflict within the President. Consistent with his background as a Jackson- ian Democrat, he bore a deep-seated desire to raise the status of the southern poor white and a correspondingly intense antagonism to the special privilege of the slaveholding aristocracy.1 For Johnson's purposes, the abolition of slavery seemed an ideal means of helping the poor white. The emancipation of slaves, he remarked, would "break down an odious and dangerous aristocracy ... [and] free more whites than blacks in Tennessee."2 In this frame of mind, he became one of the most vehement advocates of a harsh policy toward the southern confederacy which was dominated by that slaveholding gentry he hated. But his plans for a postwar southern society based upon greater economic and social equality had one tragic flaw: they contained no provision for the Negro. At this point his Jacksonianism, basically a secular, materialistic philosophy, fell apart. Faced with the highly emotional, moral dilemma of Negro equality, it proved no better guide to Johnson than it had to the Democratic Party in i860. Johnson, like the Democrats, found himself in an irreconcilable quandry. He had never been more than secondarily interested in the Negro; emancipation was merely a convenient method of crushing the slave- 1 For the best account of Johnson's Jacksonian philosophy, see Kenneth Stampp, Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New York, 1965), 50-82. 2 Quoted by Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era (Cambridge, 1929), 34. For the best account of Johnson and the Negro during Reconstruction, see La Wanda and John Cox, Politics, Prin- ciple, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: The Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963). 1968 PHILADELPHIA ELECTION OF I 866 367 holder. It had not been so much a question of helping the Negro, but of helping the poor white. It became evident, however, that a rise in the status of the poor white by abolition also meant a rise in the status of the Negro. Here Johnson balked. It had been all well and good to talk of equality between white gentry and white small farmers, but to include the Negro in that equality was quite another matter. So it was that he vetoed the Freedman's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill in the spring of 1866. Of course, many others shared Johnson's seemingly contradictory phobias for the southern slaveholder and the slave. Yet Johnson alone was forced, despite what must have been a great sense of personal frustration, to articulate a policy—and it had to be done by the time he left for Chicago. Yet, in a real sense, Johnson never resolved that dilemma: his "swing around the circle" showed again and again that he was simply avoiding the realities and focusing on constitutional technicalities. The result was that he was unable to speak meaning- fully to either those favoring Negro equality or to those opposing it. In Johnson's state of perplexity, it was not at all atypical for him to seek to redirect himself to a different, and less exasperating goal, one that seemed to embody good political strategy. He decided to take his stand on the Constitution and the Union; certainly no one could oppose him on those points. If the nation was fearful of war, he would speak of peace and the Union. If the nation was anxious about the future, he would talk of stability and the Constitution. There was no need to stir up controversy or further fears. It was easier to forget, forget the Negro and the Rebels, in fact, forget the whole frustrating war. What could be safer than to stand with one foot firmly on the Constitution, the other on the Union, and speak of peace? The Radical Republicans, however, were not to permit Johnson's evasive strategy to pass unnoticed. "They forget the 300,000 graves of our slain, and the hundred glorious battlefields, of the war" one was to deplore. "They forget it, but we do not."3 The Radicals also recognized the inseparable connection between the status of the southern white and the Negro. Yet for them it held the promise of ful- fillment rather than frustration. It is a hard and extremely crucial 3 Speech at the Southern Loyalists' Convention, Sept. 3, 1866, by Horace Maynard, Public Ledger, Sept. 4, 1866. All newspapers listed in the notes were printed in Philadelphia unless otherwise noted. 368 CHARLES D. CASHDOLLAR July fact of the entire Civil War and Reconstruction period that the ma- jority of the northern voters shared Johnson's Negrophobia and did not favor racial equality. As William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania candidly remarked: "The enemy that we are grappling with is pride of race, unchristian and anti-republican prejudice against all races of men save our own."4 For the Radicals, then, fear of the South became the phobia which they would use to camouflage their desire for Negro equality. They would exploit the fear of the South and do everything possible to minimize the fear of the Negro. So long as nothing aroused the latent northern antipathy for the Negro, the strategy was perfect. The Radicals' greatest fear was that Johnson would force the Negro issue into the campaign. If the President was going to avoid the Negro, the Radicals were, for once, happy to follow his lead. It is this combination of contradictory fears which holds the key to an understanding of the Philadelphia which Johnson was about to visit. In the summer of 1866 Philadelphia was an uneasy city. Each day the two-penny newspapers carried reports on the progress of the cholera epidemic in the Mid-West. August 20: 648 had died during the past week in St. Louis alone and there was talk of the epidemic spreading eastward. August 27: the death toll in St. Louis was 919, unofficial estimates for the week were running as high as 1,300. Cincinnati had been hit with the cholera and had declared a state of ^emergency. Then came the horrible reality: five were dead in Philadelphia; the next day seven more had died and twenty-one new cases of cholera had been discovered. Where would it stop? What was the health department going to do ?5 The spread of the cholera panic to Philadelphia was symbolic of the myriad of fears and uncertainties the citizens of the city faced that summer. Philadelphians followed the progress of the Fenian raids along the Canadian border and read about the President's de- cision to arrest the Irish-American leaders. They read about Maxi- milian and the threats of war with Mexico. And ever before them, like a nightmare that refused to vanish with the dawn, was the South. Reports of unrest poured in from the old confederacy.

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