User:Jengod/Moses speech

Andrew Johnson made what is remembered as the Moses speech in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 24, 1864. Then military governor of Tennessee and a candidate for Vice President on the Lincoln Unionist ticket, "before an audience of ten thousand colored men...amidst cheers which shook the sky," Johnson proclaimed that he would act for their benefit and advancement as a race now that the slaves of the United States had been emancipated.

"I will indeed be your Moses, and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage, to a fairer future of liberty and peace. I speak, too, as a citizen of Tennessee. I am here on my own soil, and here I mean to stay and fight this great battle of truth and justice to a triumphant end. Rebellion and slavery shall, by God's good help, no longer pollute our State. Loyal men, whether white or black, shall alone control her destinies: and when this strife in which we are all engaged is past, I trust, I know, we shall have a better state of things, and shall all rejoice that honest labor reaps the fruit of its own industry, and that every man has a fair chance in the race of life."Johnson refers to the Biblical figure Moses from the book of Exodus, who leads the enslaved Jews of ancient Egypt out of bondage with the aid of his god, who parts the Red Sea so that they may pass and then releases the waters upon their pursuers.

Johnson betrayed those who trusted in this campaign promise. As a 1989 book review put it, "Nowhere was Johnson’s duplicitous nature more cruelly evident than on questions of race." Per Robert S. Levine, "...Johnson worked to undermine the Freedmen's Bureau, to dismantle other Reconstruction initiatives, and to prevent African Americans from attaining equal rights through federal legislation." The betrayal, which contributed to the failure of Reconstruction and another 100 years of racial oppression, continues to be a central focus of historians, but was recognized and criticized in his own time. Congressmen referenced the Moses speech during the Andrew Johnson impeachment hearings:

"Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of tyrannical Slave Power. In him it lives again. He is the lineal ancestor of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. And he gathers about him the same supporters...It is the old troop of slavery...ready as of old for violence ...With the President at their head, they are now entrenched in their executive Mansion...The enormity of his conduct is aggravated by his barefaced treachery. He once declared himself the Moses of the colored race. Behold him now, the Pharoah."

- Charles Sumner