By the end of the Civil War in 1865 Indiana's Republicans were faced with a crucial dilemma. Republican Moderates were urging party rank and file to support a constitutional amendmdnt to change the basis of apportionment in the House of Representatives so that the South would not gain more seats by reason of the fact that the emancipation of the four million slaves had rendered the three-fifths compromise null and void. In other words, the Moderates were acutely aware that the South would now be able to count all of its black population for the purpose of apportionment in the House, and that this increase would also be reflected in the electoral college. The Radical Republicans, on the other hand, were urging the enfranchisement of southern Negroes because they felt that the creation of a voting block of loyal blacks would be the most practical way to offset the South's increased representation. The Radicals also believed enfranchisement was needed to protect the civil rights of thousands of uneducated and largely illiterate southern blacks.The Negro suffrage issue was particularly explosive in Indiana where white prejudice was of sufficient strength to make Indiana's Republicans fearful of a white backlash for enfranchising southern blacks. The way in which Indiana's Republican legislators reacted toward their party's dilemma was determined by studying votes in both the General Assembly and in the House of Representatives. Also evaluated were the speeches of the leading Republican and Democratic politicians in the state, newspaper editorials, private manuscripts, and the results of the 1866 nominating conventions and the general election in Indiana.From this study these conclusions emerged:1. President Andrew Johnson was partially to blame for the 1867 Reconstruction Act which imposed Negro suffrage and military occupation on the South because he encouraged a splinter political movement that forced Indiana's Republicans to resort to extreme measures as a means of self-protection.2. Indiana's Democrats must also accept part of the blame for reconstruction measures that after 1867 proved to be vindictive because their virulent Negrophobia helped to prevent any compromise with Republicans where the future of the black man was concerned.3. The study of Republican roll call votes in the House of Representatives (1863-1867) made by David Donald and published as The Politics of Reconstruction, (1965) was incomplete because Donald measured Republican Radicalism largely on the basis of votes in the second session of the 39th Congress rather than on those of the first session when the Negro suffrage issue clearly marked the demarcation line between Radicals and Moderates.4. The 1866 election in Indiana was not so much monopolized by claptrap issues raised by Republicans, as contended by Howard K. Beale in The Critical Year (1930), as by Democratic charges that Republicans were seeking racial equality.5. Indiana's Republicans did not favor Negro suffrage until the South had rejected the Fourteenth Amendment and President Johnson had failed to provide guarantees that the ex-Confederate states would not be restored to the Union with their representation and electoral votes increased.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/181454 |
| Date | January 1971 |
| Creators | Tomlinson, Kenneth Larry |
| Contributors | Schmidt, Lester F. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | ii, 244 leaves ; ill. ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us-in |
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