I also wrote about this in The Death of Reconstruction, West from Appomattox, and To Make Men Free.
Thank you for responding. I appreciate the broader political framing — Johnson’s campaign against the Amendment certainly shaped the climate of 1866, and the midterm results strengthened Congress’s ability to enforce what followed.
Replies
-
My point is strictly chronological: the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted between January and April 1866 and passed Congress in June — several months before the election. (See Levine, The Failed Promise, ch. 3, esp. pp. 112–120.)