him. You cannot long, in this country, deny to a man any civil right for which he is manifestly qualified." It will be a sufficient beginning if the vote is given to such as can read and write and have acquired a certain amount of property. As a beginning, a stepping-stone to larger things, it might suffice even to give the suffrage to black men who have borne arms for the Union. And, emphatically, the negroes should be given such education as will make them worthy of citizenship. "You may pass laws declaring that black men are men, and that they are our equals in social position; but unless you can make them thoughtful, industrious, self-respecting, and intelligent; unless, in short, you can make them what you say they have a right to be, those laws will be in vain." The work of education should be done for black and white alike; the South is not to be treated as a pagan land to which missionaries are to be sent, but as part of our common country, to which the richer and more prosperous section ought to give aid. "I do not think it would be wise for the North to pour ministers, colporteurs and schoolmasters into the South, making a too marked distinction between the black people and the white. We ought to carry the gospel and education to the whites and blacks alike. Our heart should be set toward our country and all its people, without distinction of caste, class, or color."

Governor Andrew had been the fit leader of Massachusetts through the war period. He was strong as an administrator; he inspired and voiced the patriotism of the people; he supported the forward policy without harassing the President; and he was the first governor to organize negro troops. Now, on his retirement to private life, he gave a valedictory address, January 4, 1866, which was a worthy sequel to his inaugural of five years before. He specially emphasized the need of a generous and inclusive

policy toward the Southern people and their recent leaders. "I am confident we cannot reorganize political society with any security: 1. Unless we let in the people to a co-operation, and not merely an arbitrarily selected portion of them. 2. Unless we give those who are by intelligence and character the natural leaders of the people, and who surely will lead them by-and-by, an opportunity to lead them now. The truth is, the public opinion of the white race in the South was in favor of the rebellion." The loyalists were not in general the strongest minds and characters, and when the revolution came they were swept off their feet. For present purposes, there should be no discrimination. "The capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage, talents, and will, entitle them to lead, will lead. Why not try them? They are the most hopeful subjects to deal with in the very nature of the case. They have the brain and experience and the education to enable them to understand the exigences of the present situation."

The ideals thus presented by Beecher and Andrew,-as practical, we see now after forty years, as they were lofty, -were at the time somewhat like what Catholic theologians call "counsels of perfection "-precepts of conduct too high to be practiced except by the saintly. They fell on the ears of a people whose two sections had long been struggling in deadly opposition, and who still surveyed each other through eyes inflamed by the bitter struggle. Could it be hoped that the North would invite co-operation as of fellow-patriots from those whom they had been denouncing as arch-traitors? And was it to be expected that the South, which had seceded and battled on the ground that the negro was fit only for slavery, should at once begin heartily and practically to establish and elevate him as a freeman?

CHAPTER XXX

CONGRESS AND THE "BLACK CODES"

CONGRESS assembled at the beginning of December, 1865, and at the very outset declared that the work of reconstruction must pass under its hands. Before the President's message was read, Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the House, moved that a joint committee of fifteen on reconstruction, be appointed by the House and Senate; and that until that committee had reported no senator or representative from the lately seceded States should be admitted. This action was taken at once, by a large majority in both houses, and the committee was promptly appointed, with Senator Fessenden at its head. Then the President's message was read,—a very able paper, broad and statesmanlike in tone, recounting the President's action and the choice of conventions and Legislatures in the seceded States; their repudiation of secession and slavery; the inauguration of loyal State governments;-this, with an invitation to Congress to accept and co-operate in this policy, and a hopeful view of the general situation. The message was favorably received, and for a moment it looked as if the President and Congress might work in harmony.

But the claim of Congress to a paramount voice in the settlement was well based, not only in constitutional theory, but in the immediate facts. Congress came fresh from the people; its members knew how the currents of popular thought and feeling ran. The President was comparatively out of touch with the nation; he had, so to speak, no personal constituency; he was a Southern loyalist, apart from

the mass of both South and North. Further, this Congress was personally a strong body of men. They represented in an unusual degree not merely the average sentiment but the better sentiment of the North. To glance at a few of their leaders: Thaddeus Stevens was a Pennsylvanian, a leader at the bar, active in anti-slavery politics, conspicuous by his successful defense of the State's public school system; a man of strong convictions and strong passions, a natural fighter; skillful in parliamentary management; vigorous and often bitter in debate; not scrupulous in political methods; loyal to his cause and his friends, and vindictive to his enemies; an efficient party leader, but in no high sense a statesman. Up to his death in 1868 he exercised such a mastery over the Republican majority in the House as no man since has approached. He is sometimes spoken of as if he had been the ruling spirit in reconstruction, but this seems a mistake. He was a leader in it, so far as his convictions coincided with the strong popular current; but his favorite ideas were often set aside. He was an early advocate of a wide confiscation, but that policy found no support; and at the crucial points of the reconstruction proceedings he was often thwarted and superseded by more moderate men.

Charles Sumner was a high-minded idealist and a scholar, devoted to noble ends, but not well versed in human nature. He was a lover of Man, but with men he was not much acquainted. His oratory was elaborate and ornate, and he unduly estimated the power of words. Sometimes, says Senator Hoar, he seemed to think the war was to be settled by speech-making, and was impatient of its battles as an interruption-like a fire-engine rumbling past while he was orating. But he had large influence, partly from his thoroughly disinterested character, and partly because beyond any other man in public life he represented the ele

ments of moral enthusiasm among the people. His counterpart was Henry Wilson, his colleague in the Senate. Wilson had risen from the shoe-maker's bench, and knew the common people as a cobbler knows his tools. He was genial in temperament; public-spirited and generous in his aims; a most skilful tactician, and not over-scrupulous. He joined the Know-nothings, with no sympathy for their proscriptive creed, but in the break-up of parties using them for the anti-slavery cause, and to secure his own election to the United States Senate. He was a good fighter, but without rancor; and he was an admirable interpreter of the real democracy. Senator Hoar, in his autobiography, graphically describes how at some crisis Wilson would travel swiftly over the State, from Boston to Berkshire, visit forty shops and factories in a day, talk with politicians all night, study the main currents and the local eddies; and after a week or two of this-seeming meanwhile to be backing and filling in his own mind-would strike a blow which had in it not only the vigor of his own arm, but the whole vigor and strength of the public sentiment which he had gathered and which he represented."

Prominent in the Senate was "bluff Ben Wade" of Ohio, an old-time anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a stout friend and foe. Another conspicuous radical was Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in New Hampshire, went West early in life, and was a chief organizer and leader of the Republican party in Michigan. He was a mixture of Yankee shrewdness and Western energy; patriotic, masterful, somewhat coarse-grained and materialistic; and, like many of his associates, better suited for controversy and war than for conciliation and construction. Of a higher type were three men who stood near the head in the Senate,-John Sherman of Ohio, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. In the