Handout K: Andrew Johnson’s First Annual Message to Congress
Handout K: Andrew Johnson’s First Annual Message to Congress, December 1865
The Union of the United States of America was intended by its authors to last as long as the States themselves shall last. “The Union shall be perpetual” are the words of the Confederation. “To form a more perfect Union,” by an ordinance of the people of the United States, is the declared purpose of the Constitution…
The maintenance of the Union brings with it “the support of the State governments in all their rights,” but it is not one of the rights of any State government to renounce its own place in the Union or to nullify the laws of the Union…
The best security for the perpetual existence of the States is the “supreme authority” of the Constitution of the United States. The perpetuity of the Constitution brings with it the perpetuity of the States; their mutual relation makes us what we are, and in our political system their connection is indissoluble…
The next step which I have taken to restore the constitutional relations of the States has been an invitation to them to participate in the high office of amending the Constitution…The adoption of the amendment reunites us beyond all power of disruption; it heals the wound that is still imperfectly closed: it removes slavery, the element which has so long perplexed and divided the country; it makes of us once more a united people, renewed and strengthened, bound more than ever to mutual affection and support…
When, at the first movement toward independence, the Congress of the United States instructed the several States to institute governments of their own, they left each State to decide for itself the conditions for the enjoyment of the elective franchise…
But while I have no doubt that now, after the close of the war, it is not competent for the General Government to extend the elective franchise in the several States, it is equally clear that good faith requires the security of the freedmen in their liberty and their property, their right to labor, and their right to claim the just return of their labor…
Our Government springs from and was made for the people–not the people for the Government. To them it owes allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. But while the Government is thus bound to defer to the people, from whom it derives its existence, it should, from the very consideration of its origin, be strong in its power of resistance to the establishment of inequalities… Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry.
Critical Thinking Question
- Why did Johnson support the Thirteenth Amendment? Why did he oppose the Fourteenth Amendment?