However, the Radical Republicans were able to get the Reconstruction Acts passed in 1867 and 1868. Sumner also urged an extensive programme of economic aid, land distribution and free education for freed slaves. The majority report written by George H. Williams contained a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting from the illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress, denying the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment . Driven from the legislative chambers, driven from the field of war, this monstrous power has found a refuge in the executive mansion, where, in utter disregard of the Constitution and laws, it seeks to exercise its ancient, far-reaching sway. All this is very plain.
Nobody can question it.
Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of the tyrannical slave power. In him it lives again. Sumner was bitterly disappointed when the Senate vote was one short of the required two-thirds majority for conviction. Sumner and other Radical Republicans were angry that not all the Republican Party voted for a conviction and Benjamin Butler claimed that Johnson had bribed two of the senators who switched their votes at the last moment. President Ulysses S. Grant was also criticised by Sumner for not doing more for black civil rights .