The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

University of Maryland English professor Levine (The Lives of Frederick Douglass) foregrounds in this enlightening and timely history the efforts of Frederick Douglass to persuade President Andrew Johnson and congressional Republicans to deliver “dignity and equality for Black people” in the years after the Civil War. Sworn into office hours after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Johnson, a Southern Democrat who had freed Tennessee’s enslaved people in 1864, was initially seen as “more radical and progressive” than Lincoln. But he soon declared amnesty for rebel leaders and approved state governments led by ex-Confederate officers. Radical Republicans in Congress, alarmed by the passage of Black Codes restricting the rights of freedpeople, battled Johnson for control of Reconstruction, while Douglass and other Black leaders raised alarms about racist violence and urged the federal government to extend voting and citizenship rights to African Americans. Douglass also believed that Republicans should have explicitly raised “the harm [Johnson] did to Black people” in their 1868 articles of impeachment, and believed Johnson’s acquittal “further encouraged racist outrages.” Brilliantly spotlighting Douglass’s rhetorical strategies and mounting despair over the failure of Reconstruction, this trenchant study speaks clearly to today’s battles over voting rights and racial justice. (Aug.)