The United States Congress remained the national legislature for the United States of America during the CiviL War years. As a legislative body, Congress had wrestled with slavery and sectionalism since 1789 with varying degrees of success. But the expansion of the “peculiar institution” into new territories acquired after the Mexi-can-American War of 1846-48 escalated the tempo of confrontation between North and South. The election of Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in fall 1860 set in motion an irrevocable slide toward civil war. Congress made several determined but essentially futile attempts to head off armed confrontation, most notably the Senate’s Crittenden Compromise. But by the time South Carolina seceded that December, the middle ground had vanished. In spring 1861 the secessionist crisis reached critical mass: Seven Southern states departed, and most southern Democrats vacated their seats in Congress. An important exception was Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, but Republicans completely dominated the new session when it reconvened.
During the interim recess, most congressmen returned to their states and districts to attend prowar rallies and foment support for both the Union and an aggressive war policy. On July 4, 1861, President Lincoln summoned a special session of the 37th Congress to secure emergency war measures necessary to confront the new Confederate States of America. Both Republicans and Democrats readily complied, passing pro-forma approval of the volunteer recruitment and other measures Lincoln had already implemented in their absence. Short but memorable, the session set a tone of general cordiality, cooperation, and effectiveness that distinguished the Union Congress from its Southern counterpart, the Confederate Congress.
In this respect, Congress became a full and bona fide partner in the war to preserve the Union.
The regular session of the 37th Congress, gathered in December 1861, approved additional wartime and fiscal measures at Lincoln’s behest, including the first income tax and the issuance of “greenback” currency as legal tender. In addition, Republicans passed several significant acts meant to shore up their political capital. Foremost among these was the Homestead Act. Previously tied up by Southern opposition, the act was part of the Republican Party’s 1860 election platform. It guaranteed 160 acres to any frontier settler who cultivated a plot for five years. Congress then passed the Morrill Land-Grant Act to establish land-grant colleges and universities, voted for the Pacific Railroad Act to fund the first transcontinental railroad, and established the Department of Agriculture as a nod to the nation’s economic future. These three acts yielded benefits that lasted far beyond the Civil War years and reflected the party’s desire for internal improvement to facilitate national growth. Overall, congressional leaders deliberately ignored the complaints of many state leaders and increased the powers of the federal government at their expense in the interest of successfully prosecuting the war.
The striking initial support of Congress for administration policies broke up as the war ground on and its unpopularity mounted. In particular, the Democratic Party split into two distinct and increasingly vocal factions. The War Democrats, who supported military victory over the Confederacy, were cool toward Lincoln’s push to emancipate slaves, while the Peace Democrats, branded by the Northern press as “Copperheads,” sought accommodation with the Confederacy, even at the expense of preserving the Union. The Republican majority underwent similar divisions, with moderates more or less in agreement with the president’s political and military objectives. However, the new and rising Radical Republican faction waxed critical of many of Lincoln’s policies, especially Reconstruction, which they deemed far too lenient toward the South.
The Radicals condemned Lincoln’s December 1863 general proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction for occupied areas of the Confederacy, which promised to restore civilian authority once 10 percent of the electorate took an oath of allegiance to the United States. They countered with the Wade-Davis Bill of July 1864. This measure stipulated that states could not be readmitted until 50 percent of the population submitted to the oath, and it denied both the executive branch and the military any future role in Reconstruction. When Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill, he was roundly denounced by Radicals. Radical Republicans also dominated the powerful Committee on the Conduct of the War, which was empowered to investigate and castigate any military figure who failed to produce expected results on the battlefield; authorized to harass or humiliate generals it identified as treasonous, some contend that the committee did the war effort more harm than good. Finally, Radicals did support Lincoln’s proposal to provide government assistance for newly freed African Americans, but Congress ultimately approved the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865. This marked the first time that the federal government involved itself directly in the social well-being of any segment of its citizens. In general, even as Congress criticized Lincoln’s wartime expedients—such as conscription, emancipation, and the suspension of habeas corpus—it ultimately signaled its acceptance of the same, however grudgingly.
Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. When his successor, Andrew Johnson, tendered a blanket amnesty to former Confederates and removed several commanders to mitigate the burden of military governance in the conquered South, he bore the brunt of Radical Republican fury. Johnson, possessing none of Lincoln’s political finesse when dealing with Congress, waged a long and losing battle with the Republicans that culminated in his impeachment. Until the election of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, executive power was eclipsed by a resurgent legislative branch, a state of affairs that would have been unthinkable while Lincoln occupied the White House.
In sum, the U. S. Congress during the Civil War, while fractious at times, helped form the policies that ultimately brought about Northern victory. Its relationship with the commander in chief in matters of war and public policy was by no means without tension or strife, but it was still a productive partnership capable of winning the war and planning for the postwar period.
Further reading: Michael S. Green, Freedom, Union, and Power: Lincoln and His Party During the Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004); William-james Hoffer, To Enlarge the Machinery of Government: Congressional Debates and the Creation of America's Second State, 1855-1891 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); James L. Huston, Stephen A. Douglas and the Dilemmas of Democratic Equality (Lanham, Md.: Roman & Littlefield, 2007); Mark E. Neely, The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Susan Radomsky, The Secret Life of Politics: Washington's Official Society and the Emergence of a National Political Elite, 1800-1876 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Adam I. P Smith, No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
