the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest, was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,―let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

29. ANDREW JOHNSON, OF

TENNESSEE.PRESI

DENTIAL PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION

(Message to Congress, December 4, 1865.)

FOUR distinct theories of political Reconstruction, besides minor variations, were put forward during and following the Civil War.

(1) The theory of "Restoration" was insisted upon especially by the Democrats, who demanded that the seceded States be restored at the end of the war to their constitutional rights, less slavery. On their side they had joint resolutions of Congress, adopted in 1861, declaring that the war was prosecuted "to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired;" and they could also appeal to various acts of both houses of Congress recognizing loyal State governments organized in seceded States. As Representative George H. Pendleton of Ohio stated it (May 4, 1864): "Acts of secession are not invalid to destroy the Union, and yet valid to destroy the State governments and the political privileges of their citizens."

(2) The "Presidential" theory was put forth by Lin

ANDREW JOHNSON. Born in North Carolina, 1808; left an orphan at the age of four, apprenticed to a tailor at the age of ten, and learned to read and write only after attaining manhood; settled at Greenville, Tenn., 1826; elected to Tennessee legislature in 1835 and 1839, and to the State Senate in 1841; Democratic member of Congress, 1843-53; Governor of Tennessee, 1853-57; in U. S. Senate, 1857-62, where he showed pronounced Unionist sentiment; appointed military governor of Tennessee by President Lincoln, 1862; elected Vice-President with Lincoln on Union party ticket, 1864; President, 1865-69; impeached but acquitted, 1888; elected to U. S. Senate, 1875; died, 1875.

coln in 1863, and was acted upon by Andrew Johnson when he succeeded to the presidential office following Lincoln's assassination (April 15, 1865). This theory placed in the President's hands the right to decide when the seceded States had given sufficient evidence of repentance to be restored to their rights in the Union, but recognized that the right of admission of Senators and Representatives belonged to the separate houses of Congress. It did not provide, moreover, for negro suffrage, and gave Congress no participation in reconstruction aside from that stated.

(3) Senator Sumner's theory was that of "State suicide." It held that the ordinances of secession were virtually an abdication by the seceding States of all their rights under the Constitution, though the ordinances could not carry them out of the Union; that thenceforth these States held the status of Territories, and Congress had exclusive jurisdiction over them. He proposed also to extend the suffrage to the former slaves.

(4) Senator Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania advanced the most radical theory of all, which may be called the "conquered provinces" theory. He held that the seceding States had repudiated the Constitution; that they were thereby "estopped" (to use a legal phrase) from pleading it against any action taken by their conquerors; and that Congress had unlimited powers in dealing with them. He would not only insist upon negro suffrage, but in a speech at Lancaster, Pa. (September, 1865), he proposed the confiscation of most of the land of the "rebels," from which every freedman was to receive forty acres, the remainder (estimated at three and one-half billion dollars) to be used in paying off the national debt.

The selection which follows comprises those portions of President Johnson's first message to Congress which dealt with Reconstruction. Its excellent tenor and style, and the

conciliatory attitude here shown toward Congress, made a good impression, but did not disarm the hostility of Sumner and Stevens toward the President's policy. In the end, they were able to carry Congress and the country with them. This was unfortunate, for the sober judgment of history coincides with that of Senator Sherman, who wrote (Recollections, I, p. 361): "After this long lapse of time, I am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reorganization was wise and judicious. It was unfortunate that it had not the sanction of Congress, and that events soon brought the President and Congress into conflict."

As is often the case with presidential messages, the actual composition of this important document was not the work of the President himself. The secret was long successfully kept, but recent investigation among the Johnson manuscripts in the Library of Congress conclusively shows (see American Historical Review, April, 1906) that the real author was the veteran historian, George Bancroft, who, like President Johnson himself, was a life-long Democrat and an ardent Unionist.

F

[ANDREW JOHNSON, message to Congress, December 4, 1865.]

ELLOW CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: To express gratitude to God in the name of the people for the preservation of the United States is my first duty in addressing you. Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason. The grief of the nation is still fresh. It finds some solace in the consideration that he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed term of the Chief Magistracy to which he had been elected; that he brought the Civil War substantially to a close; that his loss was deplored in all parts of the Union, and that foreign nations have rendered justice to