But it wasn't always so.

On July 4, 1864, as the Civil War raged not far from the nation's Capitol, members of Congress were engaged in one of the most significant -- if now mostly forgotten -- debates in American history. The good guys won, only to be vanquished in the end by the man they had made president.

While Washington was at its usual summer boil, historian John C. Waugh recalls, "Inside the icy-looking dome (of the Capital), it was oven-hot.'' And Waugh was not talking merely about the summer weather. He was referring to "the daily rise of both the thermometer and congressional tempers.''

At issue was the question of how the armies of the Republic, which were slowly gaining the upper hand over the armies of the Confederacy, would treat the former slave states they had occupied. Would the Unionist government permit a gentle postwar reconstruction in which slavery might even be permitted in some states -- or, at the least, sharecropping and other forms of structural economic repression that were really just slavery-lite? Or would there be radical reconstruction designed to banish slavery, sharecropping and other forms of racial and economic discrimination in order to form a new and more perfect union?

While President Abraham Lincoln, desperate to reunite a broken nation, went ahead with a mild form of reconstruction, the Congress opted for a radical remake that would banish slavery once and for all and bring a measure of justice to the South.

Led by Maryland's Henry Winter Davis in the House and Ohio's Benjamin Franklin Wade in the Senate, the radical reconstructionists pushed through legislation crafted to push Lincoln toward a more militant position -- with the purpose of ensuring that the postwar South would not return to its old ways. By July 2, 1864, both the House and Senate had passed the legislation.

Lincoln had until July 4 to sign the reconstruction bill. But the president did not intend to do so; rather, he determined to let it die with a "pocket veto'' -- effectively killing the measure by failing to sign it by the time Congress adjourned.

As the clock ticked down, the great battlers against slavery trooped to the president's office and begged him to do the right thing. But Lincoln rejected their entreaties. When Michigan Sen. Zachariah Chandler told the president of the bill's key element -- "The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed states'' -- Lincoln replied, "That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act,'' the deed was done.

Surely, there is much for which to honor Abraham Lincoln. But in an honest democracy, it is worthy to question even our icons. And, on this issue, Wisconsin's radical Republicans angrily challenged Lincoln -- as did their allies in other passionately anti-slavery states -- on that bitter July 4 of 1864.

The vision of a radical reconstruction that might have succeeded in transforming the land in those difficult postwar years was doomed by Lincoln on this day 136 years ago, and with it the hope that America would soon achieve the promise of "liberty and justice for all.''

John Nichols is the editorial page editor of The Capital Times.

© 2000 The Capital Times

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