States." The House passed this resolution by an overwhelming majority; and then adjourned without allowing a motion by Mr. Niblack of Indiana, to the effect that "pending the question as to the admission of persons claiming to have been elected representatives to the present Congress from the States lately in rebellion, such persons be entitled to the privileges of the floor of the House," the usual privilege accorded contestants, to come to a vote.

The view of the House that Reconstruc

tion could not

be effected by

the Executive.

The view of the House was thus manifest from the start. It was that Reconstruction could not be effected by the Executive Department of the Government, but was a problem for Congress, and that this was a matter entirely separate from the power of each House to judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its members, a matter to be decided by the whole Congress prior to the consideration of the question of the elections, returns, and qualifications of the members of each House. word, it was the question of the admission, or the readmission, of "States" into the Union, or more correctly the question of the establishment or re-establishment of the "State" system of local government upon territory of the United States under the exclusive power of the central Government.

There is no question that in sound political science the House was entirely correct in its theory, and that the objection of the Senate to that part of the Stevens resolution which provided that no member should be received into either House from any of the so-called Confederate States until the report of the Committee on Reconstruction should have been finally acted on by Congress, as trenching upon the exclusive power of the Senate to judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its members, rested upon a confounding of the

Passage of

resolution as a

function of Congress to admit "States "into the Union with the power of each House to judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of those claiming the Stevens to represent 66 States" or constituencies in concurrent "States " about whose position in the Union there was no question. The Senate finally swung into line, however, by passing this part of the House resolution as a concurrent resolution instead of as a joint resolution.

resolution.

constructed

cerning

the

freedmen, and

the Freed

men's Bureau.

There were two other considerations which moved the Republicans in Congress to assume this attitude in reLegislation gard to Reconstruction. One was the legisof the relation of the "States" reconstructed by the "States" con- President concerning the status and the status of the rights of the freedmen. On the 3d of March preceding, Congress had passed an act organizing a bureau in the War Department for the care of refugees and freedmen in the districts in rebellion or in the territory embraced in the operations of the army. This bureau was officered by a chief commissioner and assistant commissioners for each of the "States" declared to be in insurrection. These officers were authorized to take possession of the abandoned lands within these "States," and other lands belonging to the United States, and parcel them out to the loyal male refugees and freedmen, not more than forty acres to each, and protect them in the use and enjoyment of the same for the term of three years. They were also authorized to issue under the direction of the Secretary of War provisions, clothing and fuel to such loyal refugees and freedmen as were destitute.

There is no question that this was a most humane measure. It would have been a moral outrage for the Government of the United States to have taken the slaves away from the support and protection accorded

But

The administration of the Freedmen's

Bureau.

them by their masters, and to have thrown them upon their own resources without any means of sustenance during the transition into the new status. there is also no question that this measure was so administered as to do the race for whose benefit it was intended almost as much harm as good. When the Government began to furnish them with food, clothes, fuel and shelter gratis, they, like the children that they were, conceived of this, to them, very agreeable state of things as something that was to last forever, as the New Jerusalem. They gathered about the depots of the Freedmen's Bureau and could not be induced to go away in search of work or livelihood. The belief became quite general that the Government intended to give every man forty acres of land and a mule, and otherwise to support him permanently. The danger was that the newly emancipated would quit work altogether and throw themselves entirely upon the charity of the United States Government. Many did do so, and formed thus a sort of privileged class throughout the whole South under the special protection of the Government of the United States.

apprenticeship

structed

When, now, the newly reorganized "States" came to assume jurisdiction over matters concerning the freedmen, they found themselves driven to Vagrancy, some legislation to prevent the whole negro and civil rights race from becoming paupers and criminals. in the reconIt was in the face of such a situation that "States." the legislatures of these "States" passed laws concerning apprenticeship, vagrancy and civil rights, which were looked upon at the North as attempts to re-enslave the newly emancipated, and served to bring the new "State" governments at the South into deep reproach.

It must be remembered, however, that at the time of the passage of the Stevens resolution by the House of

vagrancy acts,

etc.

Representatives, only two of Mr. Johnson's reconstructed "States" had passed any laws upon these subjects. Examina- These two were Mississippi and South Carotion of these lina; and a close examination of the text of these enactments will hardly justify the interpretations placed upon them by the radical Republicans. The South Carolina Preliminary Act came first in the order of time. It provided that “all free negroes, mulattoes, and mestizos, all freed women, and all descendants through either sex of any of these persons, shall be known as persons of color, except that every such descendant, who may have of Caucasian blood seven-eighths, or more, shall be deemed a white person; that the statutes and regulations concerning slaves are now inapplicable to persons of color; and although such persons are not entitled to social or political equality with white persons, they shall have the right to acquire, own, and dispose of property, to make contracts, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to sue and be sued, and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property"; and "that all rights and remedies respecting persons or property, and all duties and liabilities. under laws civil and criminal, which apply to white persons, are extended to persons of color, subject to the modifications made by this act and the other acts hereinbefore mentioned.”

The acts to which this one was preliminary were not passed until the latter half of December, and could not have served, except by prevision, as grounds for the Stevens resolution. Moreover there was little in this Act which was really calculated to arouse any pronounced hostility at the North. It evidently recognized the emancipation of the former slaves, and the prohibition of future slavery, as fixed facts, and provided for substantial equality in civil rights between persons of color

and white persons.

The discriminations which it referred to, rather than made, were those of a social and political nature, matters which to that time had been controlled, if controlled at all, wholly by the "States," except of course in those parts of the country in which "States" had not been erected.

The Mississippi acts were all passed in November. They were the acts which were before the view of Congress and the country in the beginning of December, 1865, and, with the exception of the South The MissisCarolina Preliminary Act just commented sippi Acts. on, the only ones. They require, therefore, a somewhat fuller treatment. They consist of "An Act to regulate the relation of master and apprentice relative to Freedmen, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes, passed November 22, 1865"; the "Vagrant Act of November 24, 1865"; an "Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen and for other purposes," passed November 25, 1865; a supplementary Act to this, passed November 29, 1865; and another supplementary Act, passed December 2, 1865.

The first Act provided that freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes under the age of eighteen years, being orphans, or the children of parents who could not, or would not, support them, should be apprenticed by the clerk of the Probate court in the county where found to competent and suitable persons, and on such terms as the court should direct; under the restrictions, that the former owner of the minor should be selected by the court as the master or mistress if, in the judgment of the court, he or she were competent and suitable; that the terms fixed by the court should have the interest of the minor particularly in view; and that the apprentice should be bound by indenture, to run, in the case of males, until the completion of the twenty-first year,