page_title: Reconstruction era
section_title: Johnson's vetoes
hierarchical_section_title: Reconstruction era / Johnson's presidential Reconstruction / Johnson's vetoes
caption_attribution_description: TITLE: The Freedman's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man. Twice vetoed by the President, and made a law by Congress. Support Congress &amp; you support the Negro Sustain the President &amp; you protect the white man CALL NUMBER: Broadside Collection, portfolio 159, no. 9a c-Rare Bk Coll REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-40764 (b&amp;w film copy neg.) SUMMARY: One in a series of racist posters attacking Radical Republicans on the issue of black suffrage, issued during the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election of 1866. (See also "The Constitutional Amendment!," no. 1866-5.) The series advocates the election of Hiester Clymer, who ran for governor on a white-supremacy platform, supporting President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies. In this poster a black man lounges idly in the foreground as one white man ploughs his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread," and "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." Above in a cloud is an image of the "Freedman's Bureau! Negro Estimate of Freedom!" The bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work." Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy," "Rum, Gin, Whiskey," "Sugar Plums," "Indolence," "White Women," "Apathy," "White Sugar," "Idleness," "Fish Balls," "Clams," "Stews," and "Pies." At right is a table giving figures for the funds appropriated by Congress to support the bureau and information on the inequity of the bounties received by black and white veterans of the Civil War. MEDIUM: 1 print&#160;: woodcut on wove paper&#160;; 45.5 x 58.1 cm (image) CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1866. NOTES: Title appears as it is written on the item. Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston&#160;: G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1866-6.
context_page_description: The Reconstruction era was the period in American history that lasted from 1863 to 1877 following the American Civil War and is a significant chapter in the history of American civil rights. Reconstruction ended the remnants of Confederate secession and abolished slavery, making the newly freed slaves citizens with civil rights ostensibly guaranteed by three new constitutional amendments. Reconstruction also refers to the attempt to transform the 11 Southern former Confederate states, as directed by Congress, and the role of the Union states in that transformation.
  Three visions of Civil War memory appeared during Reconstruction: the reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought; the white supremacist vision, which included racial segregation and the preservation of white political and cultural domination in the South; and the emancipationist vision, which sought full freedom, citizenship, male suffrage, and constitutional equality for African Americans.
context_section_description: Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27, 1866. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented and attempted to fix by federal law "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every state of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by federal authority of the rights of the states; it had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. It was a "stride toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government."
  The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, North and South, supported Johnson. However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto (the Senate by the close vote of 33–15, and the House by 122-41) and the civil rights bill became law. Congress also passed a watered-down Freedmen's Bureau bill; Johnson quickly vetoed as he had done to the previous bill. Once again, however, Congress had enough support and overrode Johnson's veto.
  The last moderate proposal was the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was Representative John Bingham. It was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but it went much further. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States (except Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most important, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It guaranteed the federal war debt would be paid (and promised the Confederate debt would never be paid). Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states since three-fourths of the states were required for ratification (the amendment was later ratified). The moderate effort to compromise with Johnson had failed, and a political fight broke out between the Republicans (both Radical and moderate) on one side, and on the other side, Johnson and his allies in the Democratic Party in the North, and the conservative groupings (which used different names) in each Southern state.
caption: The debate over Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that the bureau kept the Negro in idleness at the expense of the hardworking white taxpayer. A racist caricature of an African American is depicted.[98]
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