American Eloquence, Volume IV | Page 4

the autumn of
1866 showed that the two thirds majorities were to be continued
through the next Congress; and in March, 1867, the first Reconstruction
Act was passed over the veto. It declared the existing governments in
the seceding States to be provisional only; put the States under military
governors until State conventions, elected with negro suffrage and
excluding the classes named in the proposed XIVth Amendment,
should form a State government satisfactory to Congress, and the State
government should ratify the XIVth Amendment; and made this rule of
suffrage imperative in all elections under the provisional governments
until they should be readmitted. This was a semi-voluntary
reconstruction. In the same month the new Congress, which met
immediately on the adjournment of its predecessor, passed a
supplementary act. It directed the military governors to call the
conventions before September 1st following, and thus enforced an
involuntary reconstruction.
Tennessee had been readmitted in 1866. North Carolina, South
Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas were
reconstructed under the acts, and were readmitted in 1868. Georgia was
also readmitted, but was remanded again for expelling negro members
of her Legislature, and came in under the secondary terms. Virginia,

Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, which had refused or broken the first
terms, were admitted in 1870, on the additional terms of ratifying the
XVth Amendment, which forbade the exclusion of the negroes from the
elective franchise.
In Georgia the white voters held control of their State from the
beginning. In the other seceding States the government passed, at
various times and by various methods during the next six years after
1871, under control of the whites, who still retain control. One of the
avowed objects of reconstruction has thus failed; but, to one who does
not presume that all things will be accomplished at a single leap, the
scheme, in spite of its manifest blunders and crudities, must seem to
have had a remarkable success. Whatever the political status of the
negro may now be in the seceding States, it may be confidently
affirmed that it is far better than it would have been in the same time
under an unrestricted readmission. The whites, all whose energies have
been strained to secure control of their States, have been glad, in return
for this success to yield a measure of other civil rights to the freedmen,
which is already fuller than ought to have been hoped for in 1867. And,
as the general elective franchise is firmly imbedded in the organic law,
its ultimate concession will come more easily and gently than if it were
then an entirely new step.
During this long period of almost continuous exertion of national
power there were many subsidiary measures, such as the laws
authorizing the appointment of supervisors for congressional elections,
and the use of Federal troops as a posse comitatus by Federal
supervisors, which were not at all in line with the earlier theory of the
division between Federal and State powers. The Democratic party
gradually abandoned its opposition to reconstruction, accepting it as a
disagreeable but accomplished fact, but kept up and increased its
opposition to the subsidiary measures. About 1876-7 a reaction became
evident, and with President Hayes' withdrawal of troops from South
Carolina, Federal control of affairs in the Southern States came to an
end.
Foreign affairs are not strictly a part of our subject; but, as going to
show one of the dangerous features of the Civil War, the possibility of
the success of the secession sentiment in England in obtaining the
intervention of that country, the speech of Mr. Beecher in Liver-pool,

with the addenda of his audience, has been given.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865.)
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861.
FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES:
In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear
before you to address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath
prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the
President "before he enters on the execution of his office."
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters
of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist, among the people of the Southern States,
that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and
their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There never has
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most
ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open
to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches
when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with