CHAPTER XXIV

RECONSTRUCTION

THERE is no period of our history more mortifying to our national pride than that just following the Civil War, no time when in the hour of need exalted statesmanship was more nearly in eclipse. We can now only guess what would have been the course of Reconstruction if Lincoln had not died; though we know broadly what he had in view to heal the wounds of war. The charity which permeates the scriptural phrases of the second inaugural is a precious heritage, and is in keeping with constructive plans which he proposed for the regeneration of the South, as well as with his words at Hampton Roads. What he did in Louisiana while the war was on gives us an inkling of what he would have tried to do in other States after the war was over; but the strong opposition to his Louisiana policy in Congress must be accepted as foreshadowing the hostile attitude of radical Republicans if he had sought to carry through a policy like that in time of peace.

He would, no doubt, have found the people with him, for a time, and would have had an influence commensurate with his fame upon Republicans who

against Johnson went almost to the limit of fanaticism. The ultimate result would surely have been better, but at a cost to Lincoln's name. If he had tilted with an intolerant Congress in a time of peace, no matter what the outcome, we almost certainly should have a different Lincoln in our legends than we have to-day.

Lincoln outlined a Reconstruction policy in his message of December, 1863, in accordance with which State Governments were set up in Louisiana and Arkansas by order of the military commander of the department acting under the President's direction. This did not meet the views of Congress. In 1864 a bill was passed providing for appointment of provisional governors in the Confederate States for purposes of civil administration until State Governments should be recognized. No State Governments were to be formed until after the suppression of military resistance to the United States and until the people had "sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws." The bill provided that the President should not proclaim a State Government as reëstablished without the assent of Congress. It emancipated all slaves.

The President did not sign the bill, and after adjournment he gave his reasons in a special proclamation; he was not ready to set aside the free State

Constitutions and Governments recently adopted in Louisiana and Arkansas and to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States.

Lincoln would have treated each case by itself. He would have let the loyal citizens of a State under the protection of the military governor organize a State Government and adopt a constitution. This was done in Louisiana early in 1864. The constitution adopted there abolished slavery forever, and while restricting suffrage to white males, empowered the Legislature to confer the suffrage on colored men according to the principles laid down by Lincoln, that in the reconstructed States the right of suffrage should be given to "very intelligent" colored people and to those who had "fought gallantly in the ranks."

The question came up in the Senate in February, 1865, on a joint resolution recognizing this Government as the legitimate Government of Louisiana. The resolution had the support of all the Republicans in the Senate except five radicals led by Sumner, and it would have been adopted had it not been for Sumner, who, declaring, “I shall regard its passage as a national calamity," prevented a vote before the close of Congress on the 4th of March by dilatory motions.

Thaddeus Stevens would have none of Lincoln's

plan; after the war the South must be treated like any other conquered territory.

Sumner held that the President should not do the work of Reconstruction by military order, but that Congress should do it by law. He wanted Congress to impose indiscriminate negro suffrage on the States which had seceded as a condition precedent to their restoration. Lincoln believed that the State through moral pressure should be induced to give the suffrage to those "colored people who were qualified for it."

It is a striking fact that Lincoln's very last public utterance was on this subject. Speaking on Tuesday evening, April 11, three days before his assassination, to a crowd gathered at the White House, he commented on the constitutional question as to whether the seceded States were still in the Union or out of it, a question which during the next three years occupied a share of executive and legislative attention far out of proportion to its real importance.

"As it appears to me, that question has not been nor yet is a practically material one and that any discussion of it while it thus remains practically immaterial could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad

as a basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all—a mere pernicious abstraction. We all agree that the seceded States, so-called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union and that the sole object of the Government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad."

In the light of history, these words seem reasonable; yet Sumner, writing of them to his friend, Dr. Lieber, said: "The President's speech and other things augur confusion and uncertainty in the future, with hot controversy. Alas! Alas!" And strange as it may seem to us to-day, Sumner was not alone even in that hour of triumph and good-will.

A few hours later and Lincoln was dead. Andrew Johnson in a tragic flash was President of the United States. It was the sport of Fate that to one so totally unlike the gentle, wise, and patient Lincoln should have been assigned the task which he laid down, yet while the nation was still plunged in grief there were not lacking honest-minded men who thought they saw the guiding hand of Providence in what was done.