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Letters Relating to the Efforts to Impeach Governor Harrison Reed During the Reconstruction Era
(From: Governor, State Governors' Incoming Correspondence, 1857-1888,
Series 577)
Document 1 |
Document 2 |
Document 3 |
Document 4
Harrison Reed (1813-1899), a native of Littleton, Massachusetts, served as Florida governor from 1868 until 1873. Reed lived in Wisconsin until 1861, when he came to Washington, D.C. to work in the Treasury Department. He was appointed Direct Tax Commissioner for Florida and moved to Union-occupied Fernandina in 1863. At the close of the war he became a Federal postal agent for Florida. In 1868 he won election to governor, but during his term he faced virulent opposition from Democrats and even from factions within the Republican Party. The latter groups made two attempts to remove him from office.
Document 1 relates to the first effort to oust Reed,
which occurred in 1868. In the fall of that year, an anti-Reed faction in the
state legislature attempted to remove the governor, but the legislature adjourned
on November 7 before the Senate could conduct an impeachment trial. Lieutenant
Governor William H. Gleason proclaimed himself governor and, though was barred
from the capitol by Reed supporters, he established an office and issued documents
signed as the state's chief executive. On November 24, the Supreme Court of
Florida ruled that Reed had never been officially impeached because a quorum
did not exist when the Senate originally charged him. Reed then successfully
moved to oust Gleason as lieutenant governor on the grounds that he failed to
meet the state's residency requirements. Gleason would subsequently be removed
from office the following month.
Documents 2 and 3 relate to
a second effort to remove Governor Harrison Reed in 1872. Reed was impeached
by the Florida House of Representatives in February 1872. Considering himself
suspended until a trial was concluded, Reed left Tallahassee for his home near
Jacksonville. In Reed's absence, Lieutenant Governor Samuel T. Day proclaimed
himself acting governor. After the legislature adjourned without bringing Reed
to trial, the governor assumed that this was the equivalent of an acquittal.
In April 1872, when Day had briefly left Tallahassee, Reed returned and declared
himself the chief executive. Once more Reed asked for a decision from the Florida
Supreme Court on who was governor. The justices upheld Reed's claim to the office
and stated that Day was "in no sense Governor." An attempt by day to hold a
special session of the legislature to vote on the impeachment charges ended
on May 4, 1872 with a dismissal of the charges against Reed. The controversial
governor would complete his term, which ended in early 1873.
Readmission of Florida into the Union, 1868
As a result of the Military Reconstruction Act, passed on March 2, 1867, congressional
Republicans effectively took control of Reconstruction away from President Andrew
Johnson. The Act's provisions divided the ex-Confederate States (except Tennessee)
into five military districts, required black suffrage and ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and called for conventions to establish new constitutions
in each of the affected states. Delegates to the Florida Constitutional Convention
were elected in November 1867. The bitterly divided convention met in Tallahassee
the following January, and after much controversy, a new constitution, with
black suffrage, was adopted and approved by the voters in May 1868. Republican
Harrison Reed was elected governor, and on July 2 he wrote a letter (Document
4) to the military commander of Florida, Colonel John T. Sprague, informing
him that Florida had completed the requirements to be readmitted to the Union.
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