American Eloquence, Volume IV | Page 3

assent of Virginia to the erection of the new State of West
Virginia; and the Senators and Representatives of the new State
actually sat in judgment on the reconstruction of the parent State,
although the legality of the parent government was the evident measure
of the constitutional existence of the new State. Such inconsistencies
were the natural results of the changes forced upon the Federal policy
by the events of the war, as it grew wider and more desperate.
The first of these changes was the inevitable attack upon slavery. The
labor system of the seceding States was a mark so tempting that no
belligerent should have been seriously expected to have refrained from
aiming at it. January 1, 1863, after one hundred days' notice, President
Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves
within the enemy's lines as rapidly as the Federal arms should advance.
This one break in the original policy involved, as possible
consequences, all the ultimate steps of reconstruction. Read-mission
was no longer to be a simple restoration; abolition of slavery was to be
a condition-precedent which the government could never abandon. If
the President could impose such a condition, who was to put bounds to
the power of Congress to impose limitations on its part? The President
had practically declared, contrary to the original policy, that the war
should continue until slavery was abolished; what was to hinder

Congress from declaring that the war should continue until, in its
judgment, the last remnants of the Confederate States were
satisfactorily blotted out? This, in effect, was the basis of
reconstruction, as finally carried out. The steady opposition of the
Democrats only made the final terms the harder.
The principle urged consistently from the beginning of the war by
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, was that serious resistance to the
Constitution implied the suspension of the Constitution in the area of
resistance. No one, he insisted, could truthfully assert that the
Constitution of the United States was then in force in South Carolina;
why should Congress be bound by the Constitution in matters
connected with South Carolina? If the resistance should be successful,
the suspension of the Constitution would evidently be perpetual;
Congress alone could decide when the resistance had so far ceased that
the operations of the Constitution could be resumed. The terms of
readmission were thus to be laid down by Congress. To much the same
effect was the different theory of Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts.
While he held that the seceding States could not remove themselves
from the national jurisdiction, except by successful war, he maintained
that no Territory was obliged to become a State, and that no State was
obliged to remain a State; that the seceding States had repudiated their
State-hood, had committed suicide as States, and had become
Territories; and that the powers of Congress to impose conditions on
their readmission were as absolute as in the case of other Territories.
Neither of these theories was finally followed out in reconstruction, but
both had a strong influence on the final process.
President Lincoln followed the plan subsequently completed by
Johnson. The original (Pierpont) government of Virginia was
recognized and supported. Similar governments were established in
Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and an unsuccessful attempt was
made to do so in Florida. The amnesty proclamation of December,
1863, offered to recognize any State government in the seceding States
formed by one tenth of the former voters who should take the oath of
loyalty and support of the emancipation measures. At the following
session of Congress, the first bill providing for congressional
supervision of the readmission of the seceding States was passed, but
the President retained it without signing it until Congress had adjourned.

At the time of President Lincoln's assassination Congress was not in
session, and President Johnson had six months in which to complete the
work. Provisional governors were appointed, conventions were called,
the State constitutions were amended by the abolition of slavery and
the repudiation of the war debt, and the ordinances of secession were
either voided or repealed. When Congress met in December, 1865, the
work had been completed, the new State governments were in
operation, and the XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been
ratified by aid of their votes. Congress, however, still refused to admit
their Senators or Representatives. The first action of many of the new
governments had been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws
which looked much like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority
in Congress felt that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen
were necessary before the war could be truly said to be over.
Early in 1866 President Johnson imprudently carried matters into an
open quarrel with Congress, which united the two thirds Republican
majority in both Houses against him. The elections of