It is my honor to be the director of this symposium. I have been with the u. S. Capitol Historical Society for the past decade. This afternoon, we will begin with a paper by peter wallenstein. Peter is a professor of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and state university, known to the rest of the world as virginia tech. He has written a number of books on the history of the south, starting with his first book, from slaves south to new south Public Policy in 19thcentury georgia. And he has written a book on the history of interracial marriage, and has another book out on the famous case of loving versus virginia, which will be out in 2014, called race, sex, and freedom to marry loving versus virginia. It is an honor and a privilege to introduce peter to all of you and turn the podium over to him. [applause] thank you, paul. And thank you all for coming out today. Why are you in here, anyway . I cannot speak for the other speakers, but it is rare for me at least to have the u. S. Senate imposed on the structure i am standing behind. It is a privilege and an honor, and i am happy to be here. Congress came together in december 1865 for the First Time Since early march. The war had ended, we were told, and slavery was over too, we were told, but that made for Big Questions left unanswered. And if we assume, as it is so easy to do, that former slaves must clearly not the citizens, we somehow conflate the turbulent events over the next year or two, or three. And i want to catch the wave early on in that unfolding history. The 13th amendment had been shepherded through congress the previous january, thanks to congressman spielberg. Congress had to face its implications. When they met that first week of december, they had reason to think, and rightly so, that word would come real soon than the amendment had actually been ratified. What next . It had become increasingly clear across the war that the abolition of slavery was a likely outcome. And of course, the objective of winning that war had always been a primary pursuit. Suddenly, you get the two in combination, and each left a huge combination to be addressed. What would the now suddenly former Confederate States be . And how to treat them. And who would the nowformer slaves be . What should be their status. Lawmakers, federal or state, had multiple models to work from as they tried to address the question of former slaves. One was white freedom. The same rights, responsibilities, and resources that accrued to anybody, regardless of race. Not regardless of race. Regardless of gender. Never regardless of gender. Of class, of locale, of all the kinds of things. But it requires the antecedent adjective. There was black slavery to be moved away from to some degree. How far remained to be seen here. At least two models between countries the former slaves could populate. One would be, pick a random state from the nonsouth as to what the prewar status of people of color would be. Always restricted in various ways, sometimes far more in some places than others, but never in equation with white freedom. And there was the status of people of color who, not slaves, had recently had freedom in former slave states. Mississippi supplied one model. There were less than a thousand people captured in the eight 1860 census of both free and black in mississippi. Other states, virginia among them, had far greater numbers. In every case, black freedom lay somewhere between black slavery and white freedom. Which model should be followed . This was a big question. And we could say that the struggle of reconstruction was over which of these multiple models should be adopted. Who gets to say . How would it play out . And that is the question that dominates the literature, popular understanding of reconstruction. Historians understanding as well. We look to that as the central question, but it may not be the only question. It may not even be, for purposes of understanding politics of reconstruction, the best place to look. What if. Historians of the civil war era often ask about Abraham Lincoln. What would he have done, had he lived the entire length of his second term as president . Had he lived even through the first several months of what might have been . Less often asked is the question, what if congress had been in session during that time, and not had to wait to gin toer to be address these questions. You catch them in december at the end of that year. That he is stevens and his colleagues in the house of representatives closed shop the first week of march, the first day of lincolns second administration. The day of his inaugural address. The second inaugural. We can refer to things he said. We would have seen what reconstruction policy he would have pursued. Maybe and maybe not. Think about it. Nine months had passed. 1888, the first time voters in president ial elections, how many were conceived and born during that interlude . That is a long period of time. Johnson, the new president , new knew the inaugurated Vice President and now suddenly president was in charge. He meant to take charge, and he did. What did Congress Members now in ow in december that they could not have known back in march . And what might they have known in december that was at least foreseeable back in march . These kinds of materials, they had to work with when they came into session. There are two places i want to take you, to give a sense of what it is they thought was imperative to act upon. One, we will take you to mississippi. If it is ok by you, off to mississippi. They would have known, that december, about a new Civil Rights Act passed just days before it became law in mississippi in late november. There were two schools of thought among the only mississippians making policy. One had to do with tailoring black freedom to the narrowest possible calibrated to the smallest margin of difference between slavery and whatever would follow it. Then, there were the moderates, with a more generous, expansive idea of what black freedom might entail. They were committed to a proposition that former slaves should have some rights of property and mobility that went beyond a more restrictive alternative. That both were in full agreement, as the leader of the more moderate action said, black mississippians will never be citizens, and absolutely never be voting citizens. This was the expansive version of black freedom in early postwar in mississippi. Andrew johnson, for his part, sent a message to the government, saying, you know, if you cannot guarantee former slaves more freedom than it looks like you are prepared to, when it comes to protecting themselves and their property, i property, then my troops are going to have to stay there until you do. This is andy johnson. What will we make of a more expansive model of black freedom, if that had become the norm, if that had been accepted, if that had become the basis for postwar settlement . You have this bunch of o, buticans, democrats especially republicans, representing constituencies across the nonsouth, committed to some kind of free labor ideology, a notion of how society should function and what former slaves ought to experience, no longer slaves. Standing out as the centerpiece of the new Civil Rights Act of mississippi was a provision widely understood to deny that black mississippians could ever own land in rural areas. There are other markers to slavery decide this one. Besides this one. This is central. If you are bound to continue to work on someone elses land, how free are you . How can we tell you are not a slave . How can we tell that slavery is actually over . How can we assume that that kind of issue wont arise again . That is threatening to the republic, as it has so recently proven. Black southerners had their own version of the future, and it looked rather different. And i will take here as one example a Convention Meeting in early june in norfolk, virginia. I had to learn how to say that, norfolk. [laughter] and they meet and they put together an extraordinary set of we could call them demands. This is their manifesto. It is the world they envision. Its the one they insist upon. They argue for its rightness and its necessity. It includes such observations to the opposition that, you claim a lot of our people are seeking alms, getting rations. But dont you think there are a lot of former wives and children of soldiers who went off and fought for the union and for their communitys freedom . And wouldnt it be right . And certainly, they mean to collapse, as far as possible, the distinction between black freedom and white freedom. But having gone through a series of scenarios, one of which rarely comes into view, they point out there are many thousands of recent black soldiers trained for war, who just might be prepared to put up resistance, should they see their family members and communities being pressed back toward slavery. But moving away from that to another main category of consideration, this manifesto points out that in your own to anst, this is directed audience of policymakers in the Nations Capital the nation we are talking about is washington, d. C. , not the one in richmond. You have an interest, and this is what it is. I brought a script along because i need to read this to you. What they said warrants reading verbatim. You have not unreasonably complained of the operation of that clause of the constitution which has not permitted the south to wield the little political influence which would be represented by a white population equal to 3 5 of the whole negro population. You complained about that a long time. At least up until this year, you knew it was important. Maybe it still is. That slavery is now abolished, and henceforth the representation will be proportioned to the enumeration of the whole population of the south, including the people of color, which is to say 3 5 will suddenly convert to 5 5. So again i digress from the verbatim, right . But think about what people in congress are thinking about when, as republicans, they look upon a landscape where the consequence of winning that horrifically expensive war, they dragged back kicking and screaming states that tried to get away, could not. And as the penalty for having tried and lost, their representatives in congress will be far more numerous. Their ability to cause mischief ever so much greater than it was before. Back to the verbatim. It is worth your consideration, if it is desirable, that the creators of this rebellion against the union, which has been crushed at the expense of so much blood and treasure, should find themselves after defeat more powerful than ever. The political influence enhanced by the additional voting power of the other 2 5 of the colored population, which means four southern votes will balance at least 7 northern votes. That converts directly to the electoral college, to this selection of the president , which translates pretty directly into the selection of the federal judiciary. 3 5 is implicated in the operations of american governance, and suddenly the rules have changed, because slavery was gone. And so the group from which you would measure 3 5 of a number in this fictitious formula, 5 5, not 3. In the 1860s and 1960s, it can be very different. And that is one major burden of what i wished to say today. My major point is this. Historians commonly misperceive what was at issue in 1865 and 1866, by taking for granted the issues must be those more recent, where the 3 5 compromise clause plays no particular role in the public discourse. You probably dont hear that much. But they continue the question of the equation between black freedom and white freedom. That is out there every day and will be for some considerable time. Perhaps, just maybe, we are confusing, when we look act in this way, what was important then and what has been important since. The long history, the prewar history of the 3 5 this is what the framers of the manifesto in norfolk had in mind. Calling attention to things people already knew but might let escape from the focus of their attention. The Hartford Convention anyone here from hartford . It is a deep south state. I am sure you have heard of connecticut. During the war of 1812, times were tough. It is an unpopular war. It is devastating to the local economy. You feel like you are powerless. Other people are running the government and doing destructive things with it. You have this meeting, the conference. We could call the Mississippi State legislature or the california secession convention, or the convention of black members of the norfolk community. But here in hartford, representatives of several Northern New EnglandStates Hartford is a Northern England state, right . I mean the whole of new england is represented in this convention. Its demands are quite simple. We need to have more power in running the government. The core of our problem is this. The 3 5 clause inflates the power of guys who happen to be running it, but not righteously. It would be in far better hands ours, and more likely if we had 0 5, so that is what they proposed. They made other demands designed to neutralize the overwhelming power of virginians to find another president , who would serve not just one term like john adams, but two. They make quite clear what they demand. They make it clear they do demand it, because they say that if in the months ahead the war has not gone away, the damage does not diminish, that we will meet at a specified time and decide what to do then. I have never seen anybody do this, but think about the model, the first continental congress. We do not like the way the government is operating. We have demands we wish to bring to your attention. We hope they will be addressed. If they are, good. If they are not, we will meet again. What do they do when they meet again . That is called the declaration of independence. This is new england in the winter of 1815, 50 years before we pick up the scene in 1865. Now, we move to congress i will take as my representative hero william [indiscernible]. Not a name that trips up the lips of your teenage kids. Here is someone who had been in the cabinet of president lincoln in the closing months of the war, closing months of his first term, as secretary of the treasury. And now as senator elect from the sovereign state of maine is making his way south to back where hec. , spent so much time. His view of the world was one in which clearly black freedom was going to have to take a more expansive turn than it was beginning to seem president johnson was willing to permit. Nonetheless, he appears to be confident that they can work this out. He says this for public consumption and in private letters. Here is one quote, on christmas eve, 1865, several weeks after congress was convened. He writes, matters can be satisfactorily arranged to the great bulk of union men throughout the states. We still can make this work. On another occasion, and he continued to hold to this for another couple of months, into february, when johnson vetoes bureau act and itus ac is clear there is no possible reconciliation. Congress is on a hook and will have to make wallace the best they can, and to do that will require what kind of margin . If you are going to override a president s veto or propose an amendment . 2 3, right . I mean, you have got to have 2 3 no matter what. And in the meantime, you cannot permit the other team to inflate its value. You cannot possibly recognize you cannot permit the restoration of those congressmen and senators from those 11 states, even if they have to be counted when it comes to legitimizing the ratification of a constitutional amendment. So, he says he is ready to support johnson to the best of my ability, as every gentleman around me is, in good faith and with kind feeling in all that he may desire that is consistent with my views of duty to the country. There is the rub, people. Kind feeling. Good faith. Up to this limit. It is not quite clear, when he writes that, that johnson will go beyond that limit. Republicans in congress could differ over all kinds of things about land distribution and political enfranchisement. At some point, they had to give up their differences on that last one. Congressman thaddeus stevens, and he came back to congress with a proposal in the front of his mind, the first day, he and a number of colleagues proposed that representation be based on voters. Not saying who those voters will be, but if they are not voting, you are not counting them. Right . So here is the resolution. That in the opinion of this committee, the insurgent states cannot be allowed to participate in the government until the basis of representation shall have been modified, and the rights of all persons amply secured. Now, the rights of all persons amply secured we could see that as the first section of the 14th amendment. The basis of representation that is clearly the second section of the 14th amendment. These are not standalone things. They are mediated by the right to vote. But even in the absence of that, the first item there the second item in the amendment, that is nonnegotiable. Among the republicans to voice the need for revisiting the basis of representation, along the lines of the statement at norfolk last june, here is a member of congress from new york and a member of the joint committee on reconstruction. He says, shall the death of slavery add 2 5 to the entire power which slavery had when slavery was living . Shall one white man have as much share in the government as three other white men merely because he lives where blacks outnumber whites twotoone . Shall this inequality exists only in favor of those who without cause drenched the land with blood and covered it with mourning . Shall such be the reward of those which did the foulest act in the annals of recorded time . No sir, not if i can help it. This is mainstream Public Opinion is being offered up as a possible basis for considering what the postwar world should look like. Senator john sherman wrote his brother, general William Tecumseh sherman, a private letter. Who shall exercise this additional political power . Shall the rebels do so . On another occasion, senator sherman thundered this is one of my favorite statements ever. But one thing i know that never by my consent shall these rebels gained by this war increased political power, and come back to wield that in some other form against the safety and integrity of the country. You see where i am going with this . It seems to me this is the absolute centerpiece of post war politics. Without this, we cannot come to grips with what the politics of reconstruction were all about. We are missing one voice. Heres m