Concluding his remarks to an audience loath to leave and eager to hear every word from lips which seemed then to be those of an oracle, Mr. Lincoln dwelt with great seriousness, even with solemnity, upon this subject which now wholly engrossed his mind. The contest of arms was over, but the President realized that the great pressure of duty which had been weighing him down was not removed by the coming of peace. Its character was changed, its exactions were perhaps less urgent, but withal he felt that the war would have been in vain unless, in exchange for all its agonies and all its burdens, there should come to the institutions of the country some great reforms, and to the people a new baptism of patriotic interest and philanthropic duty. He dwelt with deep solicitude on the situation in the rebellious States, and, unable to speak as fully as he desired, and with evident emotion, "It may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper."
The "new announcement" to the South was never made. Three days after it was promised, Mr. Lincoln met his fate. What changes might have been wrought if he had lived to make the promised exposition can only be surmised. It may be well believed however that the confidence reposed in him universally in the North, and the respect he had as universally won in the South, would have given such commanding power to his counsel as would have seriously influenced, if not promptly directed, the mode of reconstruction. Mr. Lincoln's position when he spoke his closing words was very different from that which he held when Senator Wade and Henry Winter Davis ventured upon a controversy with him the preceding summer—boldly assailing his measures and challenging his judgment. He was at that time a candidate for re-election, undergoing harsh criticism and held rigidly accountable for the prolongation of the war. Now he stood triumphant in every public relation—chosen by an almost unprecedented vote to his second term, the rebellion conquered, the Union firmly re-established! Never since Washington's exalted position at the close of the Revolution, or his still more elevated station when he entered upon the Presidency, has there been a man in the United States of so great personal power and influence as Mr. Lincoln then wielded.
It was perhaps not unnatural that from the day of Mr. Lincoln's death, his views as to the proper mode of reconstruction should become a subject of warm dispute between the partisans of different theories; yet no controversy could be less profitable for the single reason that it was absolutely incapable of settlement. Beyond his experiment with the "Louisiana plan" Mr. Lincoln had never given the slightest indication either by word or deed as to the specific course he would adopt in the rehabilitation of the insurrectionary States. His characteristic anecdote of the young preacher who was exhorted "not to cross 'Big Muddy' until he reached it" was a perfect illustration of the painstaking, watchful habit in which he dealt with all public questions. He invariably declined to anticipate an issue or settle a question before it came to him in its natural, logical order. Louisiana was wholly in the possession of the Union troops in 1862-3, and presented a question that to his view had ripened for decision. Hence his prompt and definite procedure in that State. Severely challenged for what his accusers deemed a blunder, Mr. Lincoln defended himself with fair and full statements of fact, and was apparently justified in adopting the policy he had chosen. He had fortified his own judgment, as he frankly declared, "by submitting the Louisiana plan in advance to every member of the Cabinet, and every member approved it." His "promise was out," he said, to sustain this policy, but "bad promises," he significantly added, "are better broken than kept, and I shall treat this as a bad promise and break it whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest."
It is apparent therefore that Mr. Lincoln had no fixed plan for the reconstruction of the States. Pertinently questioned on the subject by one whose personal relations entitled him to unreserved confidence, the President answered by one of his homely and apt illustrations: "The pilots on our Western rivers steer frompoint to pointas they call it—setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see; and that is all I propose to myself in this great problem." This position was practically re-affirmed in the speech, already copiously quoted. "So great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and so unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed in details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would only become a new entanglement." Such was the latitude of judgment which the President reserved to himself, such the liberty of action which he deemed essential to the complex problem, for whose solution there was no prescribed rule, no established precedent. On all questions of expediency the President maintained not only the right but the frequent necessity of change. "Principle alone," said he, "must be inflexible."
Encouraged by the result of the controversy, if it may be so termed, between the President and Congress as to the mode of reconstruction, Andrew Johnson determined to re-organize the government of his State. Though Vice-President he was still discharging the functions of military governor of Tennessee. A popular convention, originating from his recommendation and assembling under his auspices, was organized at Nashville on the ninth day of January, 1865. Membership of the body was limited to those who "give an active support to the Union cause, who have never voluntarily borne arms against the Government, who have never voluntarily given aid and comfort to the enemy." The manifest purpose, indeed the proclaimed intention, was to re-organize the State, so as to bring all its powers distinctly and unreservedly under the control of that small minority of the population which had remained loyal to the Government of the Union. The preamble which prefaced their action cited the Declaration of Rights in the constitution of Tennessee to the effect that "all power is inherent in the people, and the people have an inalienable right to alter, reform, to abolish the Government in such manner as they may think proper." This was followed by a declaration which might well be viewed as anon sequitur. "Therefore," said the convention, "a portion of the citizensof the State of Tennessee and of the United States of America in convention assembled do propound the following amendments to the Constitution, which when ratified by the sovereign, loyal people shall be and constitute a part of the permanent constitution of the State of Tennessee."
It was very easy by strict logic to state grave objections to this mode of procedure. It was easy to say that "a portion of the people" did not constitute "the people" in the sense in which the phrase was used in the constitution of Tennessee. It was easy to charge that the proposed mode of proceeding embodied all the heresy of the Dorr Rebellion of Rhode Island in 1842-43, which had fallen under the animadversion of every department of the United States Government. But in answer to such objections, Governor Johnson, and those who co-operated with him, could urge that the objections and cavilings of all critics seemed to ignore the controlling fact that they were acting in a time of war, and were pursuing the only course by which the power of civil government in Tennessee could be brought to the aid of the military power of the National Government. Tennessee, as Johnson bluntly maintained, could only be organized and controlled as a State in the Union by that portion of her citizens who acknowledged their allegiance to the Government of the Union.
Under this theory of procedure the popular convention proposed an amendment to the State constitution "forever abolishing and prohibiting slavery in the State," and further declaring that "the Legislature shall make no law recognizing the right of property in man." The convention took several other important steps, annulling in whole and in detail all the legislation which under Confederate rule had made the State a guilty participant in the rebellion. Thus was swept away the ordinance of Secession, and the State debt created in aid of the war against the Union. All these proceedings were submitted to a popular vote on the 22d of February, and were ratified by an affirmative vote of 25,293 against a negative vote of 48. The total vote of the State at the Presidential election of 1860 was 145,333. Mr. Lincoln's requirement of one-tenth of that number was abundantly complied with by the vote on the questions submitted to the popular decision. Small as was the ratio of avowed Union men at the time, Mr. Johnson argued with much confidence that Tennessee, freed from coercion, would adhere to the Union by a large majority of her total vote. His faith was based on the fact that when the plain and direct question of Union or Disunion was submitted to the people in the winter of 1860-61, the vote for the former was 91,813, and for the latter only 24,749.
Under this new order of things, William G. Brownlow, better known to the world by hissoubriquetof "Parson" Brownlow, was chosen governor without opposition on the fourth day of March, 1865, the day of Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration. The new Legislature met at Nashville a month later, on the 3d of April, and on the 5th ratified the Thirteenth Amendment; thus adding the abolition of slavery by National authority to that already decreed by the State. The Legislature completed its work by electing two consistent Union men, David T. Patterson and Joseph S. Fowler, to the United-States Senate. The framework of the new Government was thus completed and in operation before the death of Mr. Lincoln. It had not received the recognition and approval of the National Government in any specific or direct manner. But Andrew Johnson was inaugurated as Vice-President on the 4th of March, and the only form of government left in Tennessee was that of which Brownlow was the acknowledged head. The crucial test would come when the senators and representatives, elected under the Brownlow government, should apply for their seats in Congress.
The course pursued in Tennessee afforded a significant index to Mr. Johnson's conception of what was deemed necessary to prepare a State that had been in rebellion, for its full rehabilitation as a member of the Federal Union. His position was rendered still more pronounced and positive by his declarations in the remarkable speech delivered by him when he took the oath of office as Vice-President: "Before I conclude this brief Inaugural address in the presence of this audience, . . . I desire to proclaim that Tennessee, whose representative I have been, is free. She has bent the tyrant's rod, she has broken the yoke of slavery, she stands to-day redeemed. She waited not for the exercise of power by Congress; it was her own act; and she is now as loyal, Mr. Attorney-General, as the State from which you come. It is the doctrine of the Federal Constitution that no State can go out of this Union. Thank God, Tennessee has never been out of the Union! It is true the operations of her government were for a time interrupted; there was an interregnum; but she is in the Union, and I am her representative. This day (March 4, 1865) she elects her Governor and her Legislature, which will be convened on the first Monday of April, and her senators and representatives will soon mingle with those of her sister States; and who shall gainsay it, for the Constitution provides that to every State shall be guaranteed a Republican form of government."
The very positive declaration by Mr. Johnson that "Tennessee has never been out of the Union" indicated the side he would take in a pending controversy which was waxing warm between the disputants. Whether the act of Secession was voidab initioand really left the State still a member of the Union, or whether it did, however wrongfully, carry the State out of the Union as claimed by those engaged in the Rebellion, was one of the purely abstract political questions concerning which men will argue without ceasing,—reaching no conclusion because there is no conclusion to be reached. Both propositions were at the time affirmed and denied with all the earnestness, indeed with all the temper, which distinguished the mediæval theologians upon points of doctrine once regarded as essential to salvation, but the very meaning of which is scarcely comprehended by modern ecclesiastics. With his mental acumen and with his never-failing common sense, Mr. Lincoln declined to take part in the discussion. In his last public speech he treated this question with admirable perspicuity, and with his wonted felicity of homely illustration: "I have been shown what is supposed to be an able letter," said he, "in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. . . . It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret to learn that as it appears to me, that question has not been and is not a practically material one, and that any discussion of it could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing friends. As yet, whatever it may become, the question is bad as the basis of a controversy—a merely 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 is to get them back into their proper practical relation. I believe it is easier to do this without deciding or even considering whether those States have ever been out of the Union. The States finding themselves once more at home, it would seem immaterial to me to inquire whether they had ever been abroad."
The essential difference between the upholders and the opponents of this theory was not shown in the practical treatment proposed for the States which had been in rebellion. It was in truth a difference only in degree. The stoutest defenders of the dogma that the States had not been out of the Union did not propose to permit the re-organization of their local governments except upon conditions prescribed by the National authority, and did not assert the rightfulness of their claims to representation in the Senate and House until the prescribed conditions were complied with. Those who protested against the dogma did not assert the right to keep the States out of the Union, but only claimed an unrestricted power to exact as the prerequisite of re-admission such conditions as might be deemed essential to the public safety—especially such as would most surely prevent another rebellion against National authority. The two schools in short marked the dividing line between the radical and the conservative. Perhaps another feature might still more clearly indicate the difference between the two. The conservatives thought the process of reconstruction could be accomplished under the sole authority and direction of the Executive Department of the Government, while the radicals held it to be a matter for the exclusive determination of Congress, affirming that the President's right of intervention was limited to approval or veto of the bills which Congress should send to him, and to the execution of all laws which should be constitutionally enacted.
An extra session of Congress seemed specially desirable at the time, and had one been summoned by the President, many of the troubles which subsequently resulted might have been averted. The propriety of ordering an earlier assemblage of the Thirty-ninth Congress than that already provided by the Constitution had been discussed to a very considerable extent among the members of the Thirty-eighth, as its final adjournment (March 3, 1865) approached. The rebellion seemed tottering to its fall, and it was the belief of many of the leading men both of the Senate and the House, that it might be a special advantage if Congress should be in session when the final surrender of the Confederate forces should be made. But the prevailing opinion was in favor of leaving the matter to Mr. Lincoln's discretion. It was felt by the members that if the situation should demand the presence of Congress, Mr. Lincoln would promptly issue his proclamation, and if the situation should not demand it, the presence of Congress might prove hurtful, and would certainly not be helpful. The calamity of Mr. Lincoln's death had never entered into the public mind, and therefore no provision was made with any view of its remotest possibility.
Mr. Johnson, however, is scarcely to be blamed for not calling an extra session of Congress. Aside from his confidence in his own power to deal with the problems before him, he shared, no doubt, in the general dislike which Presidents in recent years have shown for extra sessions. Indeed, to the Executive Department of the Government, Congress, even in its regular sessions, is a guest whose coming is not welcomed with half the heartiness with which its departure is speeded. But an extra session, especially at the beginning of an Administration, is looked upon with almost superstitious aversion, and is always to be avoided if possible. It was remembered that all the woes of the elder Adams' Administration, all the intrigues which the choleric President fancied that Hamilton was carrying on against him in connection with our French difficulties, had their origin in the extra session of May, 1797. It was remembered also that the unpopularity which attached to the Presidency of Mr. Madison was connected with the two extra sessions which his timid Administration was perhaps too ready to assemble. So deeply was the hostility to extra sessions implanted in the minds of political leaders by the misfortunes of Adams and Madison that another was not called for a quarter of a century. In September, 1837, Mr. Van Buren inaugurated the ill-fortune of his Administration by assembling Congress three months in advance of its regular session. John Tyler in turn never recovered from the dissensions and disasters of the extra session of May, 1841,—though it was precipitated upon him by a call issued by President Harrison. All those extra sessions except the one in Mr. Van Buren's Administration had been held in May, and even in his case the proclamation summoning Congress was issued in May. No wonder, therefore, that ill-luck came to be associated with that month. When the necessity of assembling Congress was forced upon Mr. Lincoln by the firing on Sumter, Mr. Seward warned him that in any event he must not have the session begin in May. It must be confessed therefore that the precedents were sufficiently alarming to influence Mr. Johnson against an extra session. Nor was there any popular demand for it because the President's policy had not as yet portended trouble or strife in the ranks of the Republican party.
Declining to seek the advice of Congress in the embarrassments of his position, President Johnson necessarily subjected himself to the counsel and influence of his Cabinet. He had inherited from Mr. Lincoln an organization of the Executive Department which, with the possible exception of Mr. Seward, was personally agreeable to him and politically trusted by him. He dreaded the effect of changing it, and declined upon his accession to make room for some eminent men who by long personal association and by identity of views on public questions would naturally be selected as his advisers. He had not forgotten the experience and the fate of the chief magistrates who like himself had been promoted from the Vice-Presidency. He instinctively wished to avoid their mistakes and to leave behind him an administration which should not in after years be remembered for its faults, its blunders, its misfortunes.
The Federal Government had existed fifty-two years before it encountered the calamity of a President's death. The effect which such an event would produce upon thepersonnelof the Government and upon the partisan aspects of the Administration was not therefore known prior to 1841. The Vice-President in previous years had not always been on good terms with the President. In proportion to his rank there was no officer of the Government who exercised so little influence. His most honorable function—that of presiding over the Senate—was purely ceremonial, and carried with it no attribute of power except in those rare cases when the vote of the Senate was tied—a contingency more apt to embarrass than to promote his political interests. He was, of course, neither sought nor feared by the crowds who besieged the President. He was therefore not unnaturally thrown into a sort of antagonism with the Administration—an antagonism sure to be stimulated by thecoteriewho, disappointed in efforts to secure favor with the President, were disposed to take refuge in the Cave of Adullam, where from chagrin and sheer vexation the Vice-President had too frequently been found. The class of disappointed men who gathered around the Vice-President held a political relation not unlike that of the class who in England have on several occasions formed the Prince of Wales' party—composed of malcontents of the opposition, who were on the worst possible terms with the Ministry.
John Tyler, as President Johnson well knew from personal observation, began his Executive career with an apparent intention of following in the footsteps of the lamented Harrison, to which course he had been indeed been enjoined by the dying President in words of the most solemn import. Tyler gave assurances to his Cabinet that he desired them to retain their places. But the suggestion—which he was too ready to adopt—was soon made, that he would earn no personal fame by submissively continuing in the pathway marked out by another. With this uneasiness implanted in his mind, it was impossible that he should retain a Cabinet in whose original selection he had no part, and whose presence was the symbol of a political subordination which constantly fretted him. A cause of difference was soon found; difference led to irritation, irritation to open quarrel, and quarrel ended in a dissolution of the Cabinet five months after Mr. Tyler's accession to the Executive chair. The dispute was then transferred to his party, and grew more angry day by day until Tyler was driven for political shelter and support to the Democratic Party, which had opposed his election.
Mr. Fillmore had not been on good terms with General Taylor's Administration, and when he succeeded to the Presidency he made haste to part with the illustrious Cabinet he found in power. He accepted their resignations at once, and selected heads of departments personally agreeable to himself and in political harmony with his views. He did not desert his party, but he passed over from the anti-slavery to the pro-slavery wing, defeated the policy of his predecessor, secured the enactment of the Fugitive-slave Law, and neutralized all efforts to prohibit the introduction of slavery in the Territories. In this course Mr. Fillmore had the support of the great leaders of the party, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, but he disregarded the young Whigs who under the lead of Mr. Seward were proclaiming a new political dispensation in harmony with the advancing public opinion of the world. Mr. Fillmore did not leave his party, but he failed to retain the respect and confidence of the great mass of Northern Whigs; and his administration came to an end in coldness and gloom for himself, and with the defeat, and practically the destruction, of the party which had chosen him to his high place four years before. His faithlessness to General Scott gave to the Democratic candidate an almost unparalleled victory. Scott encountered defeat. Fillmore barely escaped dishonor.
With the ill-fortune of these predecessors fresh in his memory, Mr. Johnson evidently set out with the full intention not merely of retaining the Cabinet of his predecessor, not merely of co-operating with the party which elected him, but of espousing the principles of its radical, progressive, energetic section. A Southern man, he undoubtedly aspired to lead and control Northern opinion—the opinion which had displayed the moral courage necessary to the prolonged anti-slavery struggle in Congress, and had exhibited the physical courage to accept the gage of battle and prosecute a gigantic war in support of deep-rooted convictions. The speeches of the President had defined his position, and the Nation awaited the series of measures with which he would inaugurate his policy. Public interest in the subject would indeed have caused greater impatience if public attention had not in every Northern State been intently occupied in welcoming to their homes the troops, who in thinned ranks and with battered standards were about to close their military career and resume the duties of peaceful citizens.
The personal character and political bias of the members of the Cabinet, and especially their opinions respecting the policy which the President had indicated, became therefore a matter of controlling importance. The Cabinet had undergone many changes since its original organization in March, 1861. The substitution of Mr. Stanton for Mr. Cameron and of Mr. Fessenden for Mr. Chase has already been noticed; but on the day of Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration Mr. Fessenden returned to the Senate, resuming the seat which he had left the July previous, and which had in the interim been filled by Nathan A. Farwell, an experienced ship-builder and ship-master of Maine, who possessed an extraordinarily accurate knowledge of the commercial history of the country. Mr. Farwell is still living, vigorous in health and in intellect.
When Mr. Fessenden left the Treasury, he was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch, whose valuable service as Comptroller of the Currency had secured for him the promotion with which Mr. Lincoln now honored him. Mr. McCulloch was a native of Maine, who had gone to the West in his early manhood, and had earned a strong position as a business man in his Indiana home. He was a descendant of that small but prolific colony of Scotch and Scotch-Irish who had settled in northern New England, and whose blood has enriched all who have had the good fortune to inherit it. Mr. McCulloch was a devoted Whig, and was so loyal to the Union that during the war he could do nothing else than give his influence to the Republican party. But he was hostile to the creed of the Abolitionist, was conservative in all his modes of thought, and wished the Union restored quite regardless of the fate of the negro. He believed that unwise discussion of the slavery question had brought our troubles upon us, and that it would be inexcusable to continue an agitation which portended trouble in another form. The policy which he desired to see adopted was that which should restore the Rebel States to their old relations with the Union upon the freest possible conditions and within the shortest possible time.
Mr. Stanton, though originally a pro-slavery Democrat, had by the progress of the war been converted to the creed of the most radical wing of the Republican party. The aggressive movement, the denunciatory declarations made by Mr. Johnson against the "rebels" and "traitors" of the South, immediately after his accession to the Presidency, were heartily re-echoed by Mr. Stanton, who looked forward with entire satisfaction to the vigorous policy so vigorously proclaimed. Mr. Stanton's tendency in this direction had been strengthened by the intolerance and hatred of his old Democratic friends,—of whom Judge Black was a type,—who lost no opportunity to denounce him as a renegade to his party, as one who had been induced by place to forswear his old creed of State rights. Such hostility should, however, be accounted a crown of honor to Mr. Stanton. He certainly came to the public service with patriotic and not with sordid motives, surrendering a most brilliant position at the bar, and with it the emolument of which in the absence of accumulated wealth his family was in daily need.
Mr. Stanton's observation and wide experience through the years of the war had taught him to distrust the Southern leaders. Now that they had been subdued by force, yielding at the point of the bayonet when they could no longer resist, he did not believe that they should be regarded as returning prodigals to be embraced and wept over, for whom fatted calves should be killed, and who should be welcomed at once to the best in their father's house. He thought rather that works meet for repentance should be shown by these offenders against the law both of God and man, that they should be held to account in some form for the peril with which they had menaced the Nation, and for the agony they had inflicted upon her loyal sons. Mr. Stanton was therefore, by every impulse of his heart and by every conviction of his mind, favorable to the policy which the President had indicated, if not indeed assured, to the people.
Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, was a member of the original Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln. He belonged by habit of thought and former affiliation to the Democratic party: he had united with the Republicans solely upon the slavery issue. With the destruction of slavery his sympathies with the party were lessened. The industrial policy which the Republicans had adopted during the war was distasteful to Mr. Welles in time of peace. He had been a bureau-officer in the Navy Department during Mr. Polk's administration, and believed in the wisdom of the tariff of 1846, to which he gave the support of his pen. He possessed a strong instinct, but manifested little warmth of feeling or personal attachment to any one. He was a man of high character, but full of prejudices and a good hater. He wrote well, but was disposed to dip his pen in gall. He was careful as to matters of fact, fortified his memory by an accurate diary, and had an innate love of controversy. With slavery abolished, the tendency of his mind was towards a lenient policy in Southern matters and for the promptest mode of reconstruction.
James Harlan of Iowa was Secretary of the Interior. Caleb B. Smith, who was a member of Mr. Lincoln's original Cabinet, had resigned in order to accept a Federal judgeship in Indiana, and his able assistant-secretary, John P. Usher, had been promoted to the head of the department, fulfilling his trust to Mr. Lincoln's satisfaction. He in turn resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Harlan who was nominated by Mr. Lincoln, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on the 9th of March—the confirmation to take effect on the 15th of May. It was an exceptional form of appointment; but when the date was reached, President Johnson insisted that the new Secretary should assume the duties of the office. Mr. Harlan was a well-educated man with strong natural parts. He had shown admirable capacity for public affairs in various positions in Iowa, and had served that State efficiently in the Senate of the United States, which he entered March 4, 1855, at thirty-five years of age. He was a pronounced and unflinching Republican, ready from personal attachment to Mr. Lincoln to follow him in any public policy, and while somewhat distrustful of Johnson was undoubtedly gratified and re-assured by the tone of his speeches. Mr. Harlan was not hasty in judgment but thoughtful and reflective, and aimed always to be just in his conclusions.
William Dennison of Ohio was Postmaster-General. He had succeeded Montgomery Blair during the Presidential campaign of 1864, when that officer's resignation was asked by the President as a means of appeasing the unreasonable and unreasoning body of men who had attempted to divide the Republican party at the height of the war by the nomination of General Frémont as a candidate for the Presidency. Mr. Dennison was an amiable man of high principles and just intentions, but he was not endowed with executive force or the qualities of a leader. He had secured the warm friendship of Mr. Lincoln during his service as war governor of Ohio. His selection of president of the convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln a second time was due to the zeal and the warmth with which he had supported the National Administration. His sympathies and associations were all with the strong Republican element of the country, and he was sure to be firm and exacting in his views of a reconstruction policy.
James Speed was Attorney-General. He had succeeded Edward Bates in December, 1864, and was selected for reasons which were partly personal, partly public. He was a Kentuckian and a Clay Whig, two points in his history which strongly attracted the favor of Mr. Lincoln. But more than all, he was the brother of Joshua Speed, with whom in young manhood, if not indeed in boyhood, Mr. Lincoln had been closely associated in Illinois. Of most kindly and generous nature, Mr. Lincoln was slow to acquire intimacies, and had few close friendships. But those who knew him well cannot fail to remember the kindling eye, the warmth of expression, the depth of personal interest and attachment with which he always spoke of "Josh Speed," and the almost boyish fervor with which he related incidents and anecdotes of their early association. James Speed, to whom Mr. Lincoln had been thus drawn, was a highly respectable lawyer, and was altogether a fit man to succeed Mr. Bates as the Border-State member of the Cabinet. As a Southern man, he was expected to favor a lenient policy towards his offending brethren, and was supposed to look coldly upon much that was implied in the President's declarations.
Of the six Cabinet ministers thus enumerated, it will be seen that three—Mr. McCulloch, Mr. Welles, and Mr. Speed—might be regarded as favoring a conservative plan of reconstruction, and three—Mr. Stanton, Mr. Harlan, and Mr. Dennison—a radical plan. These positions were thus assigned from circumstantial evidence rather than from direct declarations of the gentlemen themselves. At a time so critical, responsible officials were naturally reserved and cautious in the expression of opinions. But it was instinctively perceived by close observers of public events, that in correctly estimating the influence of the Cabinet upon the policy of President Johnson, great consideration must be given to the attitude which Mr. Seward might assume. If his strength should go with Mr. Stanton and the radical wing of the Cabinet, the President would be readily and completely confirmed in the line of policy frequently forecast in his speeches. If on the other hand, Mr. Seward should follow the generally anticipated course, and take ground against the harsh and vengeful spirit indicated by the President, a struggle would ensue, of which the issue would be doubtful.
During the period in which Mr. Johnson had been copiously illustrating the guilt of treason, and avowing his intention to punish traitors with the severest penalty known to the law, Mr. Seward lay wounded and helpless. His injuries, received at the hands of the assassin, Payne, at almost the same moment in which Booth fired his fatal shot at the President, were at first considered mortal. The murderous assault came only a short time after a severe injury Mr. Seward had received in consequence of being violently thrown from his carriage. The shock to his nervous system from the attack of the assassin was so great that his physicians did not for some days permit him to learn the fate of the President, or even to know that his own son, Mr. Frederick Seward, who had been his faithful and able assistant at the State Department, was also one of the victims of the plot of assassination, and was lying, as it was feared, and indeed generally believed, at the point of death.
To the joy no less than to the surprise of the entire country Mr. Seward rallied and regained his strength very rapidly. He was wounded on the night of the 14th of April. By the first of May he had so far recovered as to be informed somewhat minutely of the sorrowful situation. By the tenth of the month he received visits from the President and his fellow-members of the Cabinet, and conferred with them on the engrossing questions that pressed upon the Administration. On the 20th he repaired to the Department of State—which then occupied the present site of the north front of the Treasury building—and held conference with foreign ministers, especially with the minister of France, touching the complication in Mexico. From that time onward, though still weak, and bowed down with grief by the death of Mr. Lincoln and the possibly impeding death of one still nearer to him, Mr. Seward gave close attention to public affairs. The need of action and of energy so pressed upon him that he found no time to utter lamentation, none to indulge even in the most sacred personal grief. The heroic element of the man was displayed at its best. His moral strength, his mental fibre, his wiry constitution were all tested to their utmost, and no doubt to the serious shortening of his days.
Mr. Seward feared that the country was in danger of suffering very seriously from a possible, if not indeed probable, mistake of the Administration. In the creed of his own statesmanship, there was no article that comprehended revenge as a just motive for action. No man had suffered more of personal obloquy from the South than he, no one living had received deeper personal injury from the demoniac spirit, the wicked inspiration of the rebellion. But he did not for one moment permit those causes which would have powerfully influenced lower natures to control his action, or even to extort a single word of passionate resentment.
It had been Mr. Seward's fortune at different epochs in the country's history and in different phases of his own career to incur the harshest censure from political associates. He had been accused at one time of urging the anti-slavery cause so far as to endanger the Union; and, when the Union was endangered, he was accused of being willing to sacrifice the anti-slavery cause to save it. "The American people," said he in February, 1861, "have in our day two great interests,—one the ascendency of freedom, the other the integrity of the Union. The slavery interest has derived its whole political power from bringing the latter object into antagonism with the former. Twelve years ago Freedom was in danger, and the Union was not. . . . To-day practically Freedom is not in danger, and the Union is. With the loss of the Union, all would be lost." Mr. Seward, influenced by this belief, went farther in the direction of conciliation for the avoidance of war than his associates were willing to follow. His words gave offense to some who had long been his most earnest supporters,—a fact thus pointedly recognized by him: "I speak now singly for Union, striving if possible to save it peaceably; if not possible, then to cast the responsibility upon the party of slavery. For this singleness of speech, I am suspected of infidelity to freedom." But Mr. Seward held his course firmly, and waited for vindication as men of rectitude and true greatness can afford to wait. "I refer myself not to the men of my time, but to the judgment of history."
A similar dedication of himself to the judgment of history was in Mr. Seward's opinion again demanded of him. He was firmly persuaded that the wisest plan of reconstruction was the one which would be speediest; that for the sake of impressing the world with the strength and the marvelous power of self-government, with its Law, its Order, its Peace, we should at the earliest possible moment have every State restored to its normal relations with the Union. He did not believe that guarantee of any kind beyond an oath of renewed loyalty was needful. He was willing to place implicit faith in the coercive power of self-interest operating upon the men lately in rebellion. He agreed neither with the President's proclaimed policy of blood, nor with that held by the vast majority of his own political associates, which, avoiding the rigor of personal punishment, sought by exclusion from political honor and emolument to administer wholesome discipline to the men who had brought peril to the Government and suffering to the people.
Mr. Seward was undoubtedly influenced in no small degree in these conclusions by the habit of mind he had acquired in conducting the foreign affairs of the Government during the period of the war. He had keenly felt the reproach, the taunt, and the open or ill-disguised satisfaction reflected by a large number of the public men of Europe that we were no longer and could never again be "theUnitedStates of America." He felt that the experiment of Imperial Government in Mexico, then in progress under Maximilian, was a disturbing element, and tended by possible conflicts on this continent to embroil us with at least two great European powers. The defense against that unwelcome alternative, and the defense against its evil result, if it should come, would in his judgment be found in a completely restored Union—with the National Government supreme, and all its parts working in harmony and in strength. He believed moreover that the legislation which should affect the South, now that peace had returned, should be shared by representatives of that section, and that as such participation must at last come if we were to have a restored Republic, the wisest policy was to concede it at once, and not nurture by delay a new form of discontent, and induce by withholding confidence a new phase of distrust and disobedience among the Southern people.
Entertaining these views, and deeply impressed with the importance of incorporating them in the plan of reconstruction, Mr. Seward rose from his sick-bed, pale, emaciated, and sorrowful, to persuade his associates in the Government, of the wisdom and necessity of adopting them. He had undoubtedly a hard task with the President. The two men were naturally antagonistic on so many points that agreement and cordiality seemed impossible upon a question in regard to which they held views diametrically opposite. Mr. Johnson inherited all his political principles from the Democratic party. He had been filled with an intense hatred of the Whigs and with an almost superstitious dread of the Federalists. Mr. Seward and he were therefore political antipodes. The one was the eulogist and follower of John Quincy Adams, the other was a sincere believer in the creed and the measures of Andrew Jackson. As Adams and Jackson had agreed only in devotion to the Union, so now Seward and Johnson seemed to have no other principle of Government in common, and that principle was equally strong in each.
Not only was this obstacle of inherent difference of political view in Mr. Seward's way, but he also encountered an intense personal prejudice which even while he was disabled by wounds had been insinuated into the President's mind. Nor had Mr. Seward any force of popularity at the time with the Republican party of the country. It had fallen to his lot during the four eventful years of the war to assume unpleasant responsibilities and to perform ungracious acts. He was not at the head of a department where popular applause awaited his ablest work, or where popular attention was attracted by the most brilliant triumphs of his diplomatic correspondence.
The successful placing of a vast loan among the people redounded everywhere to the praise of Mr. Chase. The gaining of a victory in the field reflected credit upon Mr. Stanton. But a series of diplomatic papers far outreaching in scope and grasp those of any statesman or publicist with whom he was in correspondence, recalling in skill the best efforts of Talleyrand, and in spirit the loftiest ideals of Jefferson, did not advance the popularity of Mr. Seward because the field of his achievements and triumphs was not one in which the masses of the people took an active interest. The most difficult and in many cases the most successful of diplomatic work is necessarily confidential for long periods. In legislative halls, discussion on questions of interest enlists public attention and holds the popular mind in suspense before the fate of the measure is decided. But the dispatches and arguments of a minister of Foreign Affairs, which may lead to results of great consequence to his country, are not gazetted till long after they have borne their fruit; and the public rejoicing in the conclusion, seldom turns to examine the toilsome process by which it was attained. It was from the comparative isolation of the Department of State, four years removed from active contact with the people, that Mr. Seward now assumed the task of controlling the new President and directing his policy on the weightiest question of his Administration.
Those who thoroughly knew Mr. Seward through all the stages of his political career were aware that, great as he was in public speech, in the Senate, at the Bar, before popular assemblies, cogent and powerful as he had so often proved with his pen, his one peculiar gift, greater perhaps than any other with which he was endowed, was his faculty, in personal intercourse with one man or with a small number of men, of enforcing his own views and taking captive his hearers. With the President alone, or with a body no larger than a Cabinet, where the conferences and discussion are informal and conversational, Mr. Seward shone with remarkable brilliancy and with power unsurpassed. He possessed a characteristic rare among men who have been long accustomed to lead,—he was a good listener. He gave deferential attention to remarks addressed to him, paid the graceful and insinuating compliment of seeming much impressed, and offered the delicate flattery, when he came to reply, of repeating the argument of his opponent in phrase far more affluent and eloquent than that in which it was originally stated.
In his final summing up of the case, when those with whom he was conferring were, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "talked out," Mr. Seward carried all before him. His logic was clear and true, his illustration both copious and felicitous, his rapid citation of historical precedents surprising even to those who thought they had themselves exhausted the subject. His temper was too amiable and serene for stinging wit or biting sarcasm, but he had a playful humor which kept the minds of his hearers in that receptive and compliant state which disposed them the more readily to give full and generous consideration to all the strong parts of his argument. It might well indeed be said of Mr. Seward as Mr. Webster said of Samuel Dexter, "The earnestness of his convictions wrought conviction in others. One was convinced and believed and assented because it was gratifying and delightful to think and feel and believe in unison with an intellect of such evident superiority."
Equipped with these rare endowments, it is not strange that Mr. Seward made a deep impression upon the mind of the President. In conflicts of opinion the superior mind, the subtle address, the fixed purpose, the gentle yet strong will, must in the end prevail. Mr. Seward gave to the President the most luminous exposition of his own views, warm, generous, patriotic in tone. He set before him the glory of an Administration which should completely re-establish the union of the States, and re-unite the hearts of the people, now estranged by civil conflict. He impressed him with the danger of delay to the Republic and with the discredit which would attach to himself if he should leave to another President the grateful task of reconciliation. He pictured to him the National Constellation no longer obscured but with every star in its orbit, all revolving in harmony, and once more shining with a brilliancy undimmed by the smallest cloud in the political heavens.
By his arguments and his eloquence Mr. Seward completely captivated the President. He effectually persuaded him that a policy of anger and hate and vengeance could lead only to evil results; that the one supreme demand of the country was confidence and repose; that the ends of justice could be reached by methods and measures altogether consistent with mercy. The President was gradually influenced by Mr. Seward's arguments, though their whole tenor was against his strongest predilections and against his pronounced and public committals to a policy directly the reverse of that to which he was now, almost imperceptibly to himself, yielding assent. The man who had in April avowed himself in favor of "the halter for intelligent, influential traitors," who passionately declared during the interval between the fall of Richmond and the death of Mr. Lincoln that "traitors should be arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged," was now about to proclaim a policy of reconstruction without attempting the indictment of even one traitor, or issuing a warrant for the arrest of a single participant in the Rebellion aside from those suspected of personal crime in connection with the noted conspiracy of assassination.
In this serious struggle with the President, Mr. Seward's influence was supplemented and enhanced by the timely and artful interposition of clever men from the South. A large class in that section quickly perceived the amelioration of the President's feelings, and they used every judicious effort to forward and develop it. They were ready to forget all the hard words of Johnson, and to forgive all his harsh acts, for the great end to be gained to their States and their people by turning him aside from his proclaimed policy of punishing a great number of rebels with the utmost severity of the law. Johnson's wrath was evidently appeased by the complaisance shown by leading men of the South. He was not especially open to flattery, but it was noticed that words of commendation from his native section seemed peculiarly pleasing to him.
The tendency of his mind under such influences was perhaps not unnatural. It is a common instinct of mankind to covet in an especial degree the good will of the community among whom the years of childhood and boyhood are spent. Applause from old friends and neighbors is the most grateful that ever reaches human ears. When Washington's renown filled two continents, he was still sensitive respecting his popularity among the freeholders of Virginia. When Bonaparte had kingdoms and empires at his feet, he was jealous of his fame with the untamed spirits of Corsica, where among the veterans of Paoli he had received the fiery inspiration of war. The boundless admiration and gratitude of American never compensated Lafayette for the failure of his career in France. This instinct had its full sway over Johnson. It was not in the order of nature that he should esteem his popularity among Northern men, to whom he was a stranger, as highly as he would esteem it among the men of the South, with whom he had been associated during the whole of his career. In that section he was born. There he had acquired the fame which brought him national honors, and after his public service should end he looked forward to a peaceful close of life in the beautiful land which had always been his home.
Still another influence wrought powerfully on the President's mind. He had inherited poverty in a community where during the slave system riches were especially envied and honored. He had been reared in the lower walks of life among a people peculiarly given to arbitrary social distinction and to aristocratic pretensions as positive and tenacious as they were often ill-founded and unsubstantial. From the ranks of the rich and the aristocratic in the South, Johnson had always been excluded. Even when he was governor of his State or a senator of the United States, he found himself socially inferior to many whom he excelled in intellect and character. His sentiments were regarded as hostile to slavery, and to be hostile to slavery was to fall inevitably under the ban in any part of the South for the fifty years preceding the war. His political strength was with the non-slave-holding white population of Tennessee which was vastly larger than the slave-holding population, the proportion indeed being twenty-seven to one. With these a "good fellow" ranked all the higher for not possessing the graces or, as they would term them, the "airs" of society.
As Mr. Johnson grew in public favor and increased in reputation, as his talents were admitted and his power in debate appreciated, he became eager to compel recognition from those who had successfully proscribed him. A man who is born to social equality with the best of his community, and accustomed in his earlier years to its enjoyment, does not feel the sting of attempted exclusion, but is rather made pleasantly conscious of theprestigewhich inspires the adverse effort and can look upon its bitterness in a spirit of lofty disdain. Wendell Phillips, descended from a long line of distinguished ancestry, was amused rather than disconcerted by the strenuous but futile attempts to ostracize him for the maintenance of opinions which he lived to see his native city adopt and enforce. But the feeling is far different in a man who has experienced only a galling sense of inferiority. To such a one, advancing either in fortune or in fame, social prominence seems a necessity, without which other gifts constitute only the aggravations of life.
It was therefore with a sense of exaltation that Johnson beheld as applicants for his consideration and suppliants for his mercy many of those in the South who had never recognized him as a social equal. A mind of true loftiness would not have been swayed by such a change of relative positions, but it was inevitable that a mind of Johnson's type, which if not ignoble was certainly not noble, should yield to its flattering and seductive influence. In the present attitude of the leading men of the South towards him, he saw the one triumph which sweetened his life, the one requisite which had been needed to complete his happiness. In securing the good opinion of his native South, he would attain the goal of his highest ambition, he would conquer the haughty enemy who during all the years of his public career had been able to fix upon him the bade of social inferiority.
On the 29th of May (1865), nineteen days after Mr. Seward's first interview with President Johnson, and nine days after his first visit to the State Department, two decisive steps were taken in the work of reconstruction. Both steps proceeded on the theory that every act needful for the rehabilitation of the seceded States could be accomplished by the Executive Department of the Government. This was known to be the favorite doctrine of Mr. Seward, and the President readily acquiesced in its correctness. There in nothing of which a public officer can be so easily persuaded as of the enlarged jurisdiction which pertains to his station. If the officer be of bold mind, he arrogates power for purposes of ambition; and even with timid men power is often assumed as a measure of protection and defense. Mr. Johnson was a man of unquestioned courage, and was never afraid to assume personal and official responsibility when circumstances justified and demanded it. Mr. Seward had therefore no difficulty in persuading him that he possessed, as President, every power needful to accomplish the complete reconstruction of the rebellious States.
The first of these important acts of reconstruction, upon the expediency of which the President and Mr. Seward had agreed, was the issuing of a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to "all persons who have directly or indirectly participated in the existing Rebellion" upon the condition that such persons should take and subscribe an oath —to be registered for permanent preservation—solemnly declaring that henceforth they would "faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the union of the States thereunder;" and that they would also "abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamation which have been made during the existing Rebellion, with reference to the emancipation of slaves." It was the first official paper which Mr. Seward attested as Secretary of State under President Johnson. He undoubtedly intended to signalize his return to health and his resumption of official duty by public participation in an act which he regarded as one of wisdom and mercy —an act which was wise because merciful.
The general declaration of amnesty was somewhat narrowed in its scope by the enumeration, at the end of the proclamation, of certain classes which were excepted from its benefit. In naming these classes a keen discrimination had been made as to the character and degree of guilt on the part of those who had participated in the Rebellion.
—First, "All diplomatic officers and foreign agents of the Confederate Government" were excluded. Their offense was ranked high because of their efforts to embroil us with other nations.
—Second, "All who left judicial stations under the United States to aid the Rebellion." They were held to be specially culpable because they had been highly honored by their Government, and because they could not, like many, plead in excuse the excitement and antagonisms which spring from an active participation in political affairs.
—Third, "All military and naval officers of the Confederacy above the rank of colonel in the army or lieutenant in the navy." The men who actually bore arms were, of course, the chief offenders; but holding officers only of high grade accountable, was intended as an act of marked and significant leniency to the multitude of the rank and file.
—Fourth, "All who left seats in the Congress of the United States to join the Rebellion." These should, indeed, have been first named, for they, above all other men, fomented the Rebellion in its early stages.
—Fifth, "All who resigned, or tendered resignations, in the Army orNavy of the United States to evade duty in resisting the Rebellion."These men were even more culpable than those who joined the Rebellion.They were not openly traitors, but were popularly and significantlytermed "sneaks."
—Sixth, "All who have been engaged in treating otherwise than as lawful prisoners of war, persons found in the United-States service as officers, soldiers, or seamen." This was specially directed against those who had maltreated negro troops and attempted, by personal cruelty, to frighten them from the National service.
—Seventh, "All persons who have been, or are, absentees from the United States for the purpose of aiding the Rebellion." The men who had misled public opinion in England, and who hovered along the Canadian border during the war, concocting schemes for burning Northern cities, and for spreading the infection of yellow-fever and the plague of small-pox in the loyal States, were especially aimed at in this exclusion.
—Eighth, "All officers in the rebel service who had been educated at the United-States Military or Naval Academy." These men had received the bounty of the Government, shared its confidence, and were under peculiar obligation to defend it.
—Ninth, "All men who held the pretended offices of governors of States in insurrection against the United States." As the civil war had for its basis the dogma ofState-rights, the chief executive officers of States represented in an especial manner the guilt of the Rebellion.
—Tenth, "All persons who left their homes within the jurisdiction and protection of the United States, and passed beyond the Federal military lines into the pretended Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the Rebellion." The personal guilt of these men lay in the fact that, according to their own theory ofState-rights, they were traitors. They did not adhere to the States which gave them birth, or to the States of which they were citizens.
—Eleventh, "All persons who have been engaged in the destruction of the commerce of the United States upon the high seas, and all persons who have been engaged in destroying the commerce of the United States upon the lakes and rivers that separate the British Provinces from the United States." The acts of these men were specially reprobated because they did not proceed according to the laws of war. In the popular mind they were held amenable to the charge of piracy.
—Twelfth, "All persons who, at the time when they seek to obtain amnesty and pardon, are in military, naval, or civil confinement, as prisoners of war, or persons detained for offenses of any kind either before or after conviction." Many prisoners in the custody of the Government were charged with acts of peculiar cruelty or perfidy, especially with the committal of personal outrages which did not, in any degree, affect the fortunes of the war, and were not therefore entitled to the excuse of having been the necessities of a bad cause.
—Thirteenth, "All participants in the Rebellion, the estimated value of whose taxable property is over twenty thousand dollars." The intention of this exception was to draw the line between the men who could exert influence in their respective communities, and those who were necessarily led by others. Fixing this partition between voluntary and involuntary guilt on the property line was a favorite measure with President Johnson. It met with much opposition from the loyal as well as the disloyal.
A fourteenth class was excepted, not from the benefits of the proclamation of amnesty, but from the necessity of taking the oath demanded from the other classes. Full pardon was granted, without further act on their part, to all who had taken the oath prescribed in President Lincoln's proclamation of December 8, 1863, and who had thenceforward kept and maintained the same inviolate. The status of every man in the Confederate States was thus determined and proclaimed, —a procedure which was intended to be the corner-stone of the work of reconstruction.
Standing naked and unqualified these thirteen exceptions might seem to imply a harshness of treatment inconsistent with the spirit of forgiveness and generosity upon which Mr. Seward had been insisting, and to which the President had apparently assented. The classes excepted were more numerous and far more comprehensive than those excluded from amnesty under the proclamation issued by Mr. Lincoln on the 8th of December, 1863. That proclamation not only embodied the views of Mr. Lincoln, but was approved by Mr. Seward in whole and in detail. The difference between the two proclamations was not, however, radical, and was readily reconcilable with Mr. Seward's purpose. He had indeed equalized their attributes of mercy by inducing President Johnson to insert a proviso declaring that "special application may be made to the President for pardon by any person belonging to the excepted classes," and the assurance was added that "such clemency will be liberally extended for amnesty and pardon." Applications came in great numbers from the South. In the archives of the State Department there are some twenty-four large volumes recording the pardons granted in less than nine months after the proclamation. The aggregate number is nearly fourteen thousand, and the list includes prominent men of all classes in the South, who, recognizing the fact that the Rebellion had failed, turned, as the only alternative, to the Government which had conquered and was now ready to extend a magnanimous forgiveness. Many of those sought to place themselves in harmony with the restored Union, and looked forward hopefully to the events of the future. Many others, as it must be regretfully but truthfully recorded, appeared to have no proper appreciation of the leniency extended to them. They accepted every favor with an ill grace, and showed rancorous hatred to the National Government even when they knew it only as a benefactor.
Having by the proclamation extended amnesty on the simple condition of an oath of loyalty to the Union and the Constitution, and obedience to the Decree of Emancipation, the President had established a definite and easily ascertainable constituency of white men in the South to whom the work of reconstructing civil government in the several States might be intrusted. A circular from Mr. Seward accompanied the proclamation, directing that the oath might "be taken and subscribed before any commissioned officer, civil, military, or naval, in the service of the United States, or before any civil or military officer of a loyal State or Territory, who, by the laws thereof, may be qualified to administer oaths." Every one who took the oath was entitled to a certified copy of it, as the proof of his restoration to all civil rights, and a duplicate, properly vouched, was forwarded to the State Department, to be "deposited and remain in the archives of the Government." Mr. Seward had thus adapted the simplest, most convenient, and least expensive process for the administration of the oath of loyalty. Indeed the certifying officer was almost brought to the door of every Southern household. The mercy and grace of the Government fell upon the great mass of those who had been engaged in rebellion as gently and as plenteously as the rain from heaven upon the place beneath the feet of the offenders.
With these details complete, a second step of great moment was taken by the Government on the same day (May 29). A proclamation was issued appointing William W. Holden provisional governor of the State of North Carolina, and intrusting to him, with the co-operation of the constituency provided for in the first proclamation, the important work of reconstructing civil government in the State. The proclamation made it the duty of Governor Holden "at the earliest practicable period, to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for assembling a convention—composed of delegates who are loyal to the United States and no others—for the purpose of altering or amending the Constitution thereof, and with authority to exercise, within the limit of said State, all the powers necessary and proper to enable the loyal people of the State of North Carolina to restore said State to its constitutional relations to the Federal Government and to present such a Republican form of State Government as will entitle the State to the guaranty of the United States therefor and its people against invasion, insurrections, and domestic violence."
It was especially provided in the proclamation that in "choosing delegates to any State Convention no person shall be qualified as an elector or eligible as a member unless he shall have previously taken the prescribed oath of allegiance, and unless he shall also possess the qualifications of a voter as defined under the Constitution and Laws of North Carolina as they existed on the 20th of May, 1861, immediately prior to the so-called ordinance of secession." Mr. Lincoln had in mind, as was shown by his letter to Governor Hahn of Louisiana, to try the experiment of negro suffrage, beginning with those who had served in the Union Army, and who could read and write; but President Johnson's plan confined the suffrage to white men, by prescribing the same qualifications as were required in North Carolina before the war. The convention that might be chosen by the voters whose qualifications were thus preliminarily defined, or the Legislature which the convention might order to meet, were empowered to prescribe the permanent qualifications of voters and the eligibility of persons to hold office under the Constitution and Laws of the State—"a power," as the President was careful to declare, "which the people of the several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the Government to the present time."
The military commander of the Department of North Carolina and all officers and persons in the military and naval service of the United States were directed to aid and assist in carrying the proclamation into effect, and they were specially ordered to "abstain from hindering, impeding, or discouraging the loyal people in any manner whatever from the organization of a State Government as herein authorized." The several heads of the Executive Departments were directed to re-establish the entire machinery of the National Government within the limits of North Carolina. The Secretary of the Treasury was directed to nominate for appointment, collectors of customs, assessors and collectors of internal revenue, and such other officers of the Treasury Department as were authorized by law. The Postmaster-General was directed to re-establish the post-offices and postmasters. The United-States district judge was directed to hold courts in North Carolina, and the Attorney-General was ordered to "enforce the administration and jurisdiction of the Federal courts." In short, every power of the National Government in North Carolina was re-asserted, every function re-established, every duty re-assumed. In making appointments for office, it was ordered in the proclamation that "preference shall be given to qualified loyal persons residing within the districts where their respective duties are to be performed. But if suitable residents of the districts shall not be found, then persons residing in other States or districts shall be appointed."
A fortnight later, on the 13th of June, a proclamation was issued for the reconstruction of the civil government of Mississippi, and William L. Sharkey was appointed provisional governor. Four days later, on the 17th of June, a similar proclamation was issued for Georgia with James Johnson for provisional governor, and for Texas with Andrew J. Hamilton for provisional governor. On the 21st of the same month Lewis E. Parsons was appointed provisional governor of Alabama, and on the 30th Benjamin F. Perry was appointed provisional governor of South Carolina. On the 13th of July the list was completed by the appointment of William Marvin as provisional governor of Florida. The precise text of the North-Carolina proclamation,mutatis mutandis, was repeated in each one of those relating to these six States. The process was designed to be exhaustive by fully restoring every connection existing under the Constitution between the States and the National Government. Viewed merely as a theory it was perfect. The danger was that in the test of actual practice it might end like so many similar experiments in other countries. An opponent wittily characterized it as Government bydiagram, accurately drawn on an Executive blackboard.
For the reconstruction of the other four States of the Confederacy different provisions were made. In Virginia Francis H. Pierpont had been made governor after the State had seceded and the State of West Virginia had been established. He was the head of the Loyal Government of Virginia, which gave its assent to the division of the State. His Government, the shell of which had been preserved after West Virginia's separate existence had been recognized by the National Government, with its temporary capital at Alexandria, was accepted by President Johnson's Administration as the legitimate Government of Virginia. All its archives, property, and effects, as was afterwards said by Thaddeus Stevens, were taken to Richmond in an ambulance. As early as the 9th of May President Johnson had issued a proclamation recognizing Mr. Pierpont as governor of the State, and assuring him that he would be "aided by the Federal Government, so far as may be necessary, in the lawful measures he may take for the extension and administration of the State Government throughout the geographical limits of said State." The same proclamation declared that "All acts and proceedings of the political, military, and civil organizations which have been in a state of insurrection and rebellion within the State of Virginia against the laws and authority of the United States are declared null and void." The proclamation further declared that any person assuming to exercise any authority in Virginia by virtue of a military of civil commission issued by Jefferson Davis, President of the so-called Confederate States, or by John Letcher, or William Smith, Governors of Virginia, "shall be deemed and taken as in rebellion against the United States, and dealt with accordingly."
A course not dissimilar to that adopted in Virginia was followed in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In all of them the so-called "ten per cent" governments established under Mr. Lincoln's authority were now recognized. Governor Hahn was held to be the true executive of Louisiana,—a concession all the more readily made, because, under the revised constitution of the State, the people would be called upon in the approaching autumn to choose his successor. In Arkansas also, the Government, with Isaac Murphy at its head, was now recognized; and in Tennessee the authority of William G. Brownlow as governor was promptly accepted as constitutional and regular. This Government, as already narrated, had been brought into existence by the earnest effort of Mr. Johnson in the period which had elapsed between his election and inauguration as Vice-President. The direct committal of the President to the legality of his own work was the controlling cause which led to the recognition of the Governments of the four States under consideration. But for the impossibility of disowning or in any way discrediting the existing Government of Tennessee, it is probably that the plan by which provisional governments were established in seven of the rebellious States would have been uniformly applied to the entire eleven which formed the Confederacy. The same executives would doubtless have been selected for provisional service, but there would have been evident advantage in treating all the States in precisely the same manner.
The scope and design of the President's reconstruction policy were thus made fully apparent. The work was committed to the white men of the several States, who, outside of the excepted classes, were ready to take the oath of allegiance to the Government. They were empowered to form the Convention which should shape the organic law of the State, and in that law they were authorized to establish the basis of suffrage,—a right which the President held to belong to the State, to be, indeed, inalienable from the State. It was, therefore, evident that the white men who were allowed to regain all the rights of citizenship by a mere oath of fidelity would not, in framing an organic law for the State, exclude the classes whom the President had excepted from pardon. The excluded classes had been the leaders, the commanders, the men of position, the friends and the patrons of those who, only less guilty because less influential and powerful, were now intrusted with the initial work in the re-establishment of civil Government in their respective States.
It was not a possible supposition that these men, when they assembled in convention, would exclude the entire leading class of the South, or even one member of it, from the full constitutional privileges and benefits of the civil Government they were about to re-organize. The suffrage conferred on others would, in like manner, be conferred on them: the offices of rank and emolument in the new Government would likewise be open to them, and it would thus be made evident that the President's exclusion of these classes was merely an inhibition from doing a preliminary work which others would do equally well for them. Unless, therefore, some other form of denial or exclusion should be announced,—and none other apparently was intended,—the President's policy would end in promptly handing over to the authors and designers of the Rebellion the complete control of the States whose civil power they had willfully perverted and turned against the National authority. Mr. Seward's magnanimity, his boundless confidence in human nature, had led him to believe that this was wise policy. He believed it so firmly that he had persuaded the President—against his own will and purpose —to adopt it, and to attempt its enforcement.
It soon became evident that President Johnson realized how completely he had excluded men of the colored race from any share of political power in the Southern States by his process of reconstruction. It is true that he stood loyally by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had been submitted to Congress before his accession to the Presidency but had not yet been ratified by the States. He used his influence, which was commanding, to induce the Southern States to accept it in good faith. But he saw, as others had seen before him, that this was not going far enough to satisfy the reasonable desire of many in the North whom he felt it necessary to conciliate. To emancipate the negro and conceded to him no possible power wherewith to protect his freedom would, in the judgment of many Northern philanthropists, prove the merest mockery of justice. This sentiment wrought on Mr. Johnson so powerfully that against his own wish he was compelled to address a circular to his provisional governors, suggesting that the elective franchise should be extended to all persons of color "who can read the Constitution of the United States, and write their names, and also to those who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollar, and pay taxes thereon."