United States House of Representatives elections, 1866

United States House of Representatives elections, 1866

June 4, 1866 - September 6, 1867[Note 1]

All 224[Note 2] seats to the United States House of Representatives 113 seats were needed for a majority   Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Schuyler Colfax Samuel Marshall Nathaniel Boyden Party Republican Democratic Conservative Leader's seat Indiana-9th Illinois-11th North Carolina-6th Last election 137 seats 38 seats 0 seats Seats won 175[Note 3] 47 2 Seat change 38 9 2

Speaker before election Schuyler Colfax Republican Elected Speaker Schuyler Colfax Republican

Elections to the United States House of Representatives were held in 1866 to elect Representatives to the 40th United States Congress.

The elections occurred just one year after the American Civil War ended when the Union defeated the Confederacy.

The 1866 elections were a decisive event in the early Reconstruction era, in which President Andrew Johnson faced off against the Radical Republicans in a bitter dispute over whether Reconstruction should be lenient or harsh toward the vanquished South.

Most of the congressmen from the former Confederate states were either prevented from leaving the state or were arrested on the way to the capital. A Congress consisting of mostly Radical Republicans sat early in the Capitol and aside from the delegation from Tennessee who were allowed in, the few Southern Congressmen who arrived were not seated.

Background

Johnson, a War Democrat, had been elected Vice President in the 1864 presidential election as the running mate of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. (The Republicans had chosen not to re-nominate Hannibal Hamlin for a second term as Vice President).

Lincoln and Johnson ran together under the banner of the National Union Party, which brought together Republicans (with the exception of some hard-line abolitionist Radical Republicans who backed John C. Frémont, who eventually dropped out of the race after brokering a deal with Lincoln) and the War Democrats (the minority of Democrats who backed Lincoln's prosecution of the war, as opposed to the Peace Democrats, or Copperheads, who favored a negotiated settlement with the Confederates).

After the assassination of Lincoln, Johnson became President. He immediately became embroiled in a dispute with the Radical Republicans over the conditions of Reconstruction; Johnson favored a lenient Reconstruction, while Radical Republicans wanted to continue the military occupation of the South and force Southern states to give freedmen (the newly freed slaves) civil rights (and the right to vote).

Campaign and results

Johnson stumped the country in a public speaking tour known as the Swing Around the Circle; he generally supported Democrats but his speeches were poorly received.

The Republicans won in a landslide, capturing enough seats to override Johnson's vetoes. Only the border states of Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky voted for Democrats. Recently Reconstructed Tennessee sent a Republican delegation. The other 10 ex-Confederate states did not vote. As a percentage of the total number of seats available in the House of Representatives, the Republican majority attained in the election of 1866 has never been exceeded in any subsequent Congress. The Democratic Party was able to achieve similar success only in the political environment of the era of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Election summaries

Seven former Confederate States were readmitted during this Congress, filling 32 vacancies. There remained 19 vacancies at the end of the 40th Congress, 17 in the three states that had not yet been readmitted, and one vacancy each in Georgia (GA-06) and Kentucky (KY-02) that lasted the entire 40th Congress.^[1] (Note: Georgia was readmitted to the House for the 40th Congress, but not to the Senate.)

State	Type	Date	Total seats	Republican	Democratic	Others
				Seats	Change	Seats	Change	Seats	Change
Delaware	At-large	November 6, 1866 (Election Day)[Note 4]	1	0		1		0
Illinois	District + 1 at-large		14	11		3		0
Kansas	At-large		1	1		0		0
Maryland	District		5	1	1	3	1	1[Note 5]	2[Note 6]
Massachusetts	District		10	10		0		0
Michigan	District		6	6		0		0
Minnesota	District		2	2		0		0
Missouri	District		9	8		1		0
Nevada	At-large		1	1		0		0
New Jersey	District		5	3	1	2	1	0
New York	District		31	21[Note 3]	1	10	1	0
Wisconsin	District		6	5		1		0
Indiana	District	October 9, 1866	11	8	1	3	1	0
Iowa	District	October 9, 1866	6	6		0		0
Maine	District	September 10, 1866	5	5		0		0
Nebraska	At-large	October 9, 1866	1	1		0		0
Ohio	District	October 9, 1866	19	17		2		0
Oregon	At-large	June 4, 1866	1	1		0		0
Pennsylvania	District	October 9, 1866	24	18	3	6	3	0
Vermont	District	September 4, 1866	3	3		0		0
West Virginia	District	October 25, 1866	3	3	3	0		0	3[Note 6]
1867 elections
California	District	September 6, 1867	3	1	2	2	2	0
Connecticut	District	April 1, 1867	4	1	3	3	3	0
Kentucky	District	May 4, 1867	9[Note 7]	1	1	7	2	0	4[Note 8]
New Hampshire	District	March 12, 1867	3	3		0		0
Rhode Island	District	April 3, 1867	2	2		0		0
Tennessee	District	August 3, 1867	8	8	8	0		0	8[Note 9]
Readmitted States
Alabama	District	February 4–8, 1868	6	6	6	0		0
Arkansas	District	March 13, 1868	3	3	3	0		0
Florida	At-large	May 5, 1868	1	1	1	0		0
Georgia	District	April 23, 1868	7[Note 7]	4	4	2	2	0
Louisiana	District	April 8, 1868	5	4	4	1	1	0
North Carolina	District	April 23, 1868	7	6	6	0		1[Note 10]	1
South Carolina	District	April 14–16, 1868	4	4	4	0		0
Secessionist States not yet readmitted
Mississippi	District		5
Texas	District	October 15, 1866[Note 11]	4
Virginia	District		8
Total[Note 2]			224 19 vacancies[Note 12]	175[Note 3] 77.4%	38	47 20.8%	9	2[Note 13] 0.9%	16[Note 14]

The party affiliations of the 4 Representatives elected in Texas' rejected elections are unknown.

List of races

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

California

Ohio

Democrats gained one seat this election in Ohio. It was later contested and awarded to the Republican for a net gain of zero.

See also

• United States Senate elections, 1866
• 40th United States Congress

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Howard K. Beale. The Critical Year (1930)
• Patrick W Riddleberger. 1866, the critical year revisited (1979)
• Hans L. Trefousse. Andrew Johnson: A Biography 1989.
• Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction (1875) large collection of speeches and primary documents, 1865–1870, complete text online (the copyright has expired).
• Dubin, Michael J. (March 1, 1998). United States Congressional Elections, 1788-1997: The Official Results of the Elections of the 1st Through 105th Congresses. McFarland and Company. ISBN 978-0786402830. 
• Martis, Kenneth C. (January 1, 1989). The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789-1989. Macmillan Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0029201701. 
• Moore, John L., ed. (1994). Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (Third ed.). Congressional Quarterly Inc. ISBN 978-0871879967. 
• "Party Divisions of the House of Representatives* 1789–Present". Office of the Historian, House of United States House of Representatives. Retrieved January 21, 2015. 

External links

• Office of the Historian (Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives)