measures of statute law were passed by Congress, all of which must be more nearly considered in order to keep the thread of the narrative of ReconMoreover the debate upon the

The activity of Congress in struction. the interim

between the subject of Reconstruction was at the same appointment of the Com- time in progress and the view of the subconstruction ject held by the leading Republicans was port of the becoming more clear and fixed.

mittee on Re

and the Re

Committee.

on Reconstruc

tion.

Mr. Stevens opened this debate in the House on the 18th of December (1865). In a powerful speech, he developed anew his doctrine that the terriThaddeus tory once covered by the " States," which Stevens's ideas had seceded from the Union, was nothing now but a conquered district, whose future condition depended upon the will of the conqueror. If "States" should ever be erected there again, it must be accomplished, he contended, by virtue of that provision in the Constitution which declares that " new States may be admitted by Congress into this Union." This theory involved the admission that secession had been temporarily successful. This Mr. Stevens frankly acknowledged. He said: "Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between the two acknowledged belligerents severed their original contracts, and broke all the ties that bound them together."

Stevens's view

of the Admin

This was the extreme doctrine on the one side. It was in blunt contradiction to the doctrine upon which Contradic- the Administration was acting, the doctrine tion between that the attempt at secession was entirely and the view abortive, and that the " "States where it was attempted were still in the Union as "States," and had never been anywhere else or anything else, in fact could not be; that the rebellion was the work of private individuals combined as truly against the realStates" in which it existed as against the

istration.

United States; and that, therefore, the overthrow of these combinations and the cessation of the military rule of the President must be followed by the resumption on the part of the "States" concerned of all their rights and powers of local self-government and of participation in the United States Government, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, unimpaired, and without any action whatever on the part of Congress. Mr. Raymond represented this view on the floor of the House of Representatives. He was a Republican of the Seward school, and sympathized entirely with his patron upon this subject. It was a great embarrassment to him that the Democrats immediately gave in their adherence to this view. It helped to prevent him from gaining any following at all for it among the Republicans.

But while the Republicans of the House repudiated entirely Mr. Raymond's principles, the great mass of them were not able to accept Mr. Stevens's view of the temporary validity of secession, and the temporary existence of the Southern Confederacy as a foreign power. Their feelings and instincts required a principle of reconstruction which, at the same time that it did not recognize secession as having any validity for the shortest moment, yet regarded the "States" in which it was attempted, as having thereby become something other than "States" of the Union, and as requiring the assent of Congress to the rightful resumption of that status.

Mr. Shellabarger's the

It was Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, who did more than anybody else to give the proper logical interpretation to these feelings and invent the theory of Reconstruction on which the Republicans or of Reconcould plant themselves. Briefly stated that struction. theory was that, while secession was a nullity legally from the beginning, and could not take the territory

occupied by the "States " attempting it, or the people inhabiting that territory, out of the Union, or from under the rightful jurisdiction of the United States Government and Constitution for one instant, yet it worked the loss of the "State" status in the Union, and from a legal point of view left this territory and the inhabitants of it subject exclusively to the jurisdiction of the United States Government, a status from which they could be relieved only by the erection of "States" anew upon such territory, an operation which could be effected, under the Constitution of the United States, only by the co-operation of Congress with the loyal inhabitants of such territory.

Mr. Sum

Reconstruc

tion.

This was sound political science and correct constitutional law. It could not fail to command the assent of the great majority of the Republicans in the House and in the country. This same doctrine was, at the same time, developed in the Senate by Mr. Sumner, Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Wilson, and it was easy to see ner's theory of that it had become the theory of the Republican party in Congress long before the final report of the Committee on Reconstruction promulgated it. Even Stevens and his radical followers were in line with it in so far as practical results were concerned. That is, the Republicans all stood together on the principle that Reconstruction could only be effected by Congressional acts, since it was tantamount to a conferring, or reconferring, of the "State" status upon a population at the moment subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Government of the United States. This meant that the entire Republican party in Congress, with the exception of the four members of the Senate already named, and of Mr. Raymond and one other in the House (and this constituted a majority of two-thirds in each House) would antagonize the plan of Executive Reconstruction

The Repub

licans in Con

gress almost

unanimously ShellabargerSumner plan.

in favor of the

devised by Lincoln and Seward and persisted in by Johnson and, to that moment, by his cabinet. How far the Republicans in Congress would go in the attempt to set aside Executive Reconstruction depended chiefly upon the moderation of the President, and the sincerity of the people in the South. It depended also in some degree, to say the least, upon what would be necessary to keep the Republican party, which conceived itself to be the only really loyal party to the Union, in power.

There is no doubt that the Sumner-Shellabarger theory of Reconstruction was correct. The only question was how exacting Congress would be in realizing it. Under such a situation it behooved the President to act with great caution and moderation, and to do nothing to provoke a conflict in which he was certain to be worsted. And it also behooved the people of the South to make no opposition to the bestowal of a large measure of civil liberty upon the freedmen, nor to such an adjustment of the basis of political representation as would not necessitate negro suffrage, and not to insist upon sending to Congress, at the outset, the men who had made themselves particularly obnoxious to loyal feeling. How both the President and the persons in authority at the South disregarded these considerations of prudence, and how the position assumed by them upon these subjects drove Congress into more and more radical lines, is the further subject of the next three chapters.

CHAPTER V

THE CONGRESSIONAL PLAN (Continued)

The Freedmen Codes in the South-The Reports of Grant and Schurz in Regard to the Status in the South-The Freedmen's Bureau Bill of 1866-The President's 22d of February Speech -The Civil Rights Bill-The Veto of the Bill-The Veto Overridden-The Fourteenth Amendment-The Discussion of the Proposition in Congress-The President's Attitude toward the Proposed Amendment-Mr. Seward's Acts in Regard to Ratification-The Requirement that the Ratification of the Proposed Amendment should be the Condition of the Admission of the Senators and Representatives-elect to Seats in Congress-The Tennessee Precedent.

The Freed

the South.

We have reviewed the acts of the new legislature of Mississippi concerning the civil status of the freedmen. It is sufficient to say that during the winter men codes in of 1865–66, the other reconstructed legislatures followed the example of the legislature of Mississippi. These movements forced upon the Republican party in Congress the conviction that the civil rights of the freedmen must be secured by national law. As yet there existed only the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution upon which to base Congressional statutes, and this, as we know, simply abolished and prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, and empowered Congress to pass appropriate laws for the execution of the Amendment. By virtue of the war powers still exercised by the Administration several of the Union Generals, as we shall see, had set aside this legislation in