Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

Many Republicans, including Lyman Trumbull himself, had expected the president to approve the Civil Rights Act. Supporting the measure might have helped Johnson isolate those, including Sumner and Stevens, who had made no pretext of cooperating with him and demanded maximal congressional control over the rebel states. But Johnson had other ideas. Looking ahead to the midterm elections of 1866, the president envisioned building a new coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans, and he believed he did not need the majority of the congressional Republicans to do this. Yet Johnson’s vetoes only served to drive the Republicans into even tighter coalition. Northern Republican newspapers indicated that the public was behind Congress and the Civil Rights Act. After a lengthy debate and a dramatic defense of the bill by Trumbull, the Senate overrode the president’s veto on April 6. The House followed suit three days later and the bill became law on April 9, 1866, the first anniversary of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.