NY Times February 21, 1866
Back in 1861 even small towns celebrated Washington’s Birthday with cannon fire and bells. Five years later there were definitely some fireworks in Washington, D.C. as a crowd looked for a speech from President Andrew Johnson. It was a couple days after the Senate failed to override the president’s veto; Andrew Johnson used the occasion to bash his opponents by likening some named radicals to Southern rebels. Even moderate Republicans viewed the speech as something like a declaration of war. Here is a bit of the impromptu speech (from Teaching American History):
… We find that, in fact, by an irresponsible central directory, nearly all the powers of Government are assumed without even consulting the legislative or executive departments of the Government. Yes, and by resolution reported by a committee upon whom all the legislative power of the Government has been conferred, that principle in the Constitution which authorizes and empowers each branch of the legislative department to be judges of the election and qualifications of its own members, has been virtually taken away from those departments and conferred upon a committee, who must report before they can act under the Constitution and allow members duly elected to take their seats. By this rule they assume that there must be laws passed; that there must be recognition in respect to a State in the Union, with all its practical relations restored, before the respective houses of Congress, under the Constitution, shall judge of the election and qualifications of its own members. What position is that? You have been struggling for four years to put down the rebellion. You denied in the beginning of the struggle that any State had the right to go out. You said that they had neither the right nor the power to go out of the Union. And when you have settled that by the executive and military power of the Government, and by the public judgment, you turn around and assume that they are out and shall not come in. (Laughter and cheers.)
I am free to say to you, as your Executive, that I am not prepared to take any such position. I said in the Senate, at the very inception of the rebellion, that States had no right to go out and that they had no power to go out. That question has been settled. And I cannot turn round now and give the direct lie to all I profess to have done in the last five years. (Laughter and applause.) I can do no such thing. I say that when these States comply with the Constitution, when they have given sufficient evidence of their loyalty, and that they can be trusted, when they yield obedience to the law, I say, extend to them the right hand of fellowship, and let peace and union be restored. (Loud cheers.) I have fought traitors and treason in the South; I opposed the Davises and Toombses, the Slidells, and a long list of others whose names I need not repeat; and now, when I turn round at the other end of the line, I find men I care not by what name you call them (A voice “Call them traitors”) who still stand opposed to the restoration of the Union of these States. And I am free to say to you that I am still for the restoration of this Union; I am still in favor of this great Government of ours going on and following out its destiny. (A voice “Give us the names.”)
A gentleman calls for their names. Well, suppose I should give them. (A voice “We know them.”) I look upon them I repeat it, as President or citizen as being as much opposed to the fundamental principles of this Government, and believe they are as much laboring to pervert or destroy them as were the men who fought against us. (A voice “What are the names?”) I say Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania (tremendous applause) I say Charles Sumner (great applause) I say Wendell Phillips, and others of the same stripe, are among them.
Here is an 1896 summary from The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction by Charles Ernest Chadsey:
On February 22 [President Johnson] made a speech in which he not only attacked by name certain leading politicians, but also criticised in terms the legislative branch of the government. This speech marks a distinct epoch in the history of the struggle between the President and Congress. Prior to it, the latter, although conscious of the rapid divergence of the paths each was following, and determined to render as nugatory as possible the President’s policy, had not permitted the feeling of personal antagonism to influence its actions to any great extent. But from this time forth the lines were sharply drawn, culminating in the impeachment. Johnson bitterly hated the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. The very manner in which it had been authorized—through a concurrent resolution instead of a joint resolution for the purpose of preventing executive action—had embittered him; the principles which its majority represented and the personnel of the committee were equally distasteful to him.
In connection with the speech of February 22, it should be noticed that Mr. Stevens had two days before introduced a concurrent resolution, which passed the House, providing that no senators or representatives were to be admitted until Congress should declare the State entitled to representation. Such a provision, the practical effect of which would be to place the subject in the exclusive control of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Congress, as we have seen, struck out of the resolution authorizing that committee’s appointment. The President had good reason to believe that Mr. Stevens’ resolution would pass the Senate, as it did on the 2d of March, and he looked upon it as one more step in the usurpation of power by an “irresponsible directory.” Sensitive to all tendencies towards centralization, he saw in the power granted to the committee, and the measures proposed by it, a tendency towards the conditions against which he had spoken on April 21, 1865, when he said: “While I have opposed dissolution and disintegration on the one hand, on the other I am equally opposed to consolidation, or the centralization of power in the hands of a few.”
The Dawn of Peace?
Public sentiment in Washington was very hostile to the Freedmen’s Bureau, and on February 22 a mass-meeting was held to express popular approval of the action of the President in vetoing the bill. Adjourning to the White House, the crowd congratulated Johnson with tumultuous enthusiasm. A man more cautious would have limited his reply to a temperate expression of his views; but Johnson, ever eager to pose as the leader of the people, was led by the enthusiasm of the moment to abandon himself entirely to his prejudices, aggravated as they were by the circumstances above mentioned. Thus, on the anniversary of Washington’s birthday, a day when he should have particularly refrained from partisan politics, he took occasion to assail the committee violently, declaring that the end of one rebellion was witnessing the beginning of a new rebellion; saying that “there is an attempt now to concentrate all power in the hands of a few at the federal head, and thereby bring about a consolidation of the Republic, which is equally objectionable with its dissolution. * * * The substance of your government may be taken away, while there is held out to you the form and the shadow.” He described the Joint Committee as an “irresponsible central directory,” which had assumed “nearly all the powers of Congress,” without “even consulting the legislative and executive departments of the Government. * * * Suppose I should name to you those whom I look upon as being opposed to the fundamental principles of this Government, and as laboring to destroy them. I say Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; I say Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts; I say Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts.”
6. After the President had thus publicly stigmatized the opponents of his policy as instigators of a new rebellion, and classed Stevens, Sumner and Wendell Phillips as traitors to be compared with Davis, there could be no hope of reconciliation, and the Republican party grimly settled down to fight for its principles. The first important measure to take effect was the civil rights bill.
