the principles of human liberty that the negro should not only be released from slavery but should also receive full civil rights, including the right to vote on an equality with the whites. This group was also ready to revolutionize Southern society by destroying the old ascendancy of the great planter class. Of this idealistic school of radical Republicans, Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, was the spokesman in the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, in the House.
262. For many years before the war parties had differed on such important questions as the tariff, internal improvements and foreign policy; and the South had used its alliance with the Northern Democracy to resist the economic demands of the industrial interests of the North. A return of Southern congressmen, increased in numbers by the inapplicability to the new conditions of the constitutional provision by which they had representation for only a fraction of the slaves, might mean a revival of the old political situation, with the South and the Northern Democracy once more in the saddle.
263. Any attempt to restore the South to full rights, therefore, without further provision for securing for the freedmen Northern Attitude towards the South. the reality of their freedom, and without some means of establishing the political control of the the victorious party, would create party dissension. Even Lincoln had aroused the bitter opposition of the radical leaders by his generous plan of Reconstruction. Johnson could have secured party support only by important concessions to the powerful leaders in Congress; and these concessions he was temperamentally unable to make. The masses of the North, especially in the first rejoicings over the peace, were not ungenerous in their attitude; and the South, as a whole, accepted the results of defeat in so far as to acquiesce in the permanence of the Union and the emancipation of the slaves, the original issues of the war.
264. In the settlement of the details of Reconstruction, however, there were abundant opportunities for the hatred engendered by the war to flame up once more. As it became clear that the Northern majority was determined to exclude the leaders of the South from political rights in the reconstruction of the Union, and especially as the radicals disclosed their purpose to ensure Republican ascendancy by subjecting the section to the rule of the loyalist whites and, later, to that of the emancipated negroes, good will disappeared, and the South entered upon a fight for its social system. The natural leaders of the people, men of intelligence and property, had been the leaders of the section in the war. Whatever their views had been at first as to secession, the great majority of the Southern people had followed the fortunes of their states. To disfranchise their leaders was to throw the control into the hands of a less able and small minority of whites; to enfranchise the blacks while disfranchising the white leaders was to undertake the task of subordinating the former political people of a section to a different race, just released from slavery, ignorant, untrained, without property and fitted only to follow the leadership of outside elements. The history of this attempt and its failure constitutes much of that of the Reconstruction.
265. These underlying forces were in reality more influential than the constitutional theories which engaged so much of the discussion in Congress, theories which, while they afford evidence of the characteristic desire to proceed constitutionally were really urged in support of, or opposition to, the interests just named.
266. The most extreme northern Democrats, and their southern sympathizers, starting from the premise that Theories Regarding the Status of the Southern Whites. constitutionally the Southern states had never been out of the Union, contended that the termination of hostilities restored them to their former rights in the Federal Union unimpaired and without further action. This theory derived support from President Lincoln's view that not states, but assemblages of individuals, had waged war against the government. The theory of the extreme Republican Radicals was formulated by Sumner and Stevens. The former contended that, while the states could not secede, they had by waging war reduced themselves to mere Territories of the United States, entitled only to the rights of Territories under the Constitution. Stevens went further and, appealing to the facts of secession, declared the Southern states conquered provinces, subject to be disposed of under international law at the will of the conqueror. In the end Congress adopted a middle ground, holding that while the states could not leave the Union, they were, in fact, out of normal relations, and that the constitutional right of the Federal government to guarantee republican governments to the various states gave to Congress the power to impose conditions precedent to their rehabilitation.
267. It is necessary to recall the initiation of Reconstruction measures by President Lincoln rightly to understand the position President Lincoln's Policy. which was taken by President Johnson. Impatient of theoretical discussion, Lincoln laid down practical conditions of restoration in his proclamation of the 8th of December 1863. In this he offered amnesty to those who would take an oath of loyalty for the future and accept the acts of Congress and the proclamation of the president with reference to slaves. From the amnesty he excepted the higher military, civil and diplomatic officers of the Confederacy as well as those who had relinquished judicial stations, seats in Congress, or commissions in the army or navy to aid the rebellion, and those who had treated persons in the Federal service otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war. The proclamation provided, further, that when in any of the seceding states (except Virginia, where the president had already recognized the loyal government under Governor Francis H. Pierpont) a number of persons not less than one-tenth of the voters in 1860 should have taken the above described oath, and, being qualified voters under the laws of the state in 1860, should have established a state government, republican in form, it should be recognized. Lincoln's comprehension of Southern difficulties was shown in his declaration in this proclamation that the president would not object to such provisions by the states regarding the freedmen as should, while declaring their freedom and providing for their education, recognize their condition as a labouring, landless and homeless class.
268. Although Lincoln expressly pointed out that the
Attitude of Congress;
the First Reconstruction Bill.
admission of the restored states to representation
in Congress rested exclusively with the respective
houses, and announced his readiness to consider
other plans for Reconstruction, heated opposition
by the radicals in Congress was called out by
this proclamation. They feared that it did not sufficiently
guarantee the abolition of slavery, which up to this time rested
on the war powers of the president, and they asserted that it
was the right of Congress, rather than that of the president,
to determine the conditions and the process of Reconstruction.
In a bill which passed the House by a vote of 73 to 59 and
was concurred in by the Senate, Congress provided that
Reconstruction was to be begun only when a majority of the white
male citizens of any one of the Confederate States should take
oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The
president should then invite them to call a constitutional
convention. The electors of this convention would be required to
take an oath of allegiance which excluded a much larger class
than those deprived of the benefit of the amnesty proclamation,
for it eliminated all who had voluntarily borne. arms against
the United States, or encouraged hostility to it, or voluntarily
yielded support to any of the Confederate governments. In
addition to entrusting the formation of a constitution to the
small minority of thorough-going loyalists, the bill required
that the state constitution should exclude a large proportion
of the civil and military officers of a Confederate government
from the right of voting, and that it should provide that
slavery be for ever abolished and that state and Confederate
debts of the war period should never be paid. In July 1864
Lincoln gave a “pocket veto” to the bill and issued a proclamation
explaining his reasons for refusing to sign, whereupon
Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis (q.v.), leaders of
