Free Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy by David O. Stewart Page B

Johnson to dig in even deeper. In late March, Trumbull’s Civil Rights bill cleared Congress. Once more the president vetoed, offering a pastiche of objections that pandered to many prejudices. The bill would guarantee civil rights not only for blacks, he warned, but also for “the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, [and] the people called Gipsies.” He criticized the statute’s supposed discrimination against immigrants, was saddened that blacks were not yet worthy of citizenship, and feared that the law would incite racial intermarriage. His real dismay, however, was that the law “would operate in favor of the colored and against the white race,” which would “resuscitate the spirit of rebellion.”
    This time the veto did not stand. Johnson’s inflammatory language and unwillingness to compromise was stiffening his opponents in Congress. The law’s author, Trumbull of Illinois, meticulously dissected Johnson’s veto message, adding his own feelings that the president had deceived him. Having invited the president to comment on the draft legislation, Trumbull reported, he never received “the least objection to any of the provisions of the bill.” By a single vote in the Senate, the bill was enacted over Johnson’s objection. Over a glass of claret with an aide, the president was unrepentant. “Sir, I am right,” he declared. “I know I am right and I am damned if I do not adhere.”
    For many, Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights bill of 1866 would stand as his defining political blunder, setting a tone of perpetual confrontation with Congress that prevailed for the balance of his presidency. That veto, along with his veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau legislation and Washington’s Birthday speech, fundamentally eroded his support among congressional Republicans. For Andrew Johnson, there would be no compromises and no negotiations with his congressional adversaries. The political life of the nation would be reduced to a simple contest of will and power.
    Congress responded in kind. When a vacancy arose on the Supreme Court in the spring of 1866, Johnson nominated Henry Stanberry of Ohio, the lawyer who drafted much of the veto message on the Civil Rights Act. Rather than allow the president to place his man on the high court, Congress eliminated the seat. To ensure that Johnson would never appoint a judge to the Supreme Court, the legislation provided that the Court would shrink to seven justices when the next vacancy occurred. A pattern for ineffective government was forming. Dismayed by Johnson’s exercise of presidential powers, Congress would eliminate or hedge those powers, thereby infuriating the man in the White House even more.
     
     
    Over the next three months, two bloody incidents undermined the president’s sunny vision of conditions in the South and reinforced the Radicals’ insistence that only federal action could protect the freedmen and Southern supporters of the Union (often called Unionists). First, in early May 1866, came a three-day riot in Memphis, in Johnson’s home state. After a dispute over a carriage collision, white police and firemen stormed through black neighborhoods of South Memphis while nearby federal troops did nothing. Forty-six blacks and two whites were killed. Hundreds of buildings burned. When it was over, a local newspaper wrote, “Thank Heaven the white race are once more rulers in Memphis.” General Ulysses Grant had a different reaction. Southern whites were becoming more defiant, he warned the New York Times : “A year ago they were willing to do anything; now they regard themselves as masters of the situation.”
    Equally bloody was an episode in New Orleans in late July, when white police attacked a black political meeting. At least 47 blacks were killed and over 100 wounded; 1 policeman died of sunstroke. Arriving a day after the mayhem, General Philip Sheridan reported that the attack was “so unnecessary and atrocious as to