which should re-establish a republican form of government in every Southern State. The ease and harmony with which provisional governors had been established and the Thirteenth Amendment ratified by the States lately in rebellion were largely deceptive. Restoration had been in form, but not in substance.

For our evidence of the truth of these things we must go to the voluminous reports on the condition of the South made to Congress. First of these in importance was the report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction itself when it submitted the resolution, which, changed in the Senate, became at last the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time of its appointment, on the thirteenth of December, 1865, the committee was instructed to inquire into the condition of the States which had formed the so-called Confederacy, and to report what legislation was necessary in order that they might again be represented in the Union. As a result of this investigation, the committee had reported the resolution which became the Fourteenth Amendment and also two bills, one for restoring these States to their political rights, the other for declaring what persons were ineligible to office under the government of the United States. Neither of these bills passed in their original form; expanded and made more rigorous, they ultimately became the four great acts of reconstruction.

Though we learn, from the debates in Congress, many reasons for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, we learn more from the report which the Joint Committee on Reconstruction made when it offered the amendment. At the close of the rebellion the South was in a state of utter exhaustion. Its people had laid down their arms, only when compelled to. The States were bankrupt and individuals were shorn of their private wealth. "They were also necessarily in a state of complete anarchy, without

280

REORGANIZATION OF THE SOUTH.

governments and without the power to form them, except by the permission of those who had been successful in the war." Even the President, when appointing the provisional governors, recognized this condition and proceeded to organize their governments anew. He had no power over the subject save as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United States. Congress alone could provide for the civil contingencies in the South. It was subject to martial law only. These people had withdrawn their representation in Congress, had levied war against the United States, had destroyed their State constitutions in respect to the vital principles which secured the States in their federal relations, and had left nothing of which the United States were bound to take notice.

The President had the alternative of assembling Congress and submitting the whole Southern question to it, or, of continuing military supervision over the South, until Congress should regularly meet. He chose to continue military rule and appointed the provisional Governors. These he commissioned, and they were paid out of funds in the War Department. They had only a military authority. "They had no power to organize civil governments, nor to exercise any authority except that which inhered in their own person under their commissions." So too, the President's power as Commander-in-Chief, was only military. "It was for him to decide how far he would exercise it, how far he would relax it, and when, and on what terms he would withdraw it." It was therefore discretionary with any of these provisional governors, acting in a military capacity, to recognize the people of a State as having resumed relations of loyalty to the Union; but it was not the function of any provisional governor "to decide upon the nature or effect of any system of government which the people of the State might see fit to adopt.”

JOHNSON'S POLICY OF REORGANIZATION.

281

This power belonged exclusively to Congress; therefore, all the acts of the President, relating to the formation of State governments in the South, and the conditions which he had imposed upon them, were nothing more than intimations that as Commander-in-Chief of the army he would consent to withdraw military rule, just in proportion as the Southern people, by their acts, should manifest a disposition to preserve order among themselves; to establish loyal governments, and "to exhibit a settled determination to return to their allegiance; leaving it with the law-making power to fix the terms of their final restoration to all their rights and privileges as States of the Union." "Any other supposition inconsistent with this would impute to the President designs of encroachment upon a co-ordinate branch of the government."

In his annual message, the President in general terms had declared that most of the States lately in rebellion had organized local governments and acceded to his terms, but he had not communicated the details for the information of Congress. Their condition, he said, justified their restoration to the Union; yet Congress was obliged either to act blindly on his opinion, or to obtain information requisite for its intelligent action on this subject. The response of the President to its call for information was long delayed and scanty when made. The new constitutions and ordinances adopted in the South, had not given evidence of the loyalty of those who had participated in the conventions, and only one State, North Carolina, had made provision for submitting the action of its convention to the final judgment of the people.1

Meanwhile, the President had not removed the military force, or suspended military law, or restored the writ of habeas corpus. In all the States excepting Tennessee and

1 See p. 287.

282

CONDITION OF THE SOUTH.

perhaps Arkansas, the elections held for State officers and members of Congress had resulted almost universally in the defeat of candidates who had been true to the Union, and in the election of notorious and unpardoned rebels; men who could not take the prescribed oath of office and who made no secret of their hostility to the National Government. It, therefore, remained for Congress to determine "whether their restoration to their former relations with the United States should only be granted upon certain conditions and guarantees, which would effectually secure the Nation against a re-occurrence of evils so disastrous as those from which it had escaped at so enormous a sacrifice." To secure a basis for the action of Congress, in answer to this inquiry, the condition of the South had been made the object of exhaustive investigation, upon the results of which the Joint Committee made the propositions, which now became the basis and conditions of reconstruction.1

The claim for the immediate admission of Senators and

1 The work was divided and placed in the hands of four subcommittees, the first, on Tennessee, consisting of James W. Grimes of Iowa of the Senate and John A. Bingham of Ohio and Henry Grider of Kentucky of the House. Its report comprises the first part of report No. 30 of the Joint Committee of Reconstruction, House of Representatives, Thirty-ninth Congress, First Session; the second sub-committee, Jacob M. Howard of Michigan of the Senate, Roscoe Conkling of New York and Henry T. Blow of Missouri of the House on Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, whose report comprises part second of the above; the third sub-committee, of Ira Harris of New York of the Senate, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts and Justin S. Morrill of Vermont on Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, whose report comprises part third of the above; the fourth sub-committee, George H. Williams of Oregon of the Senate, E. B. Washburne of Illinois and A. J. Rogers of New York of the House, whose report on Florida, Louisiana and Texas comprises part four of the above.

Representatives of the South, which the committee believed was well founded "either in reason or law," was based on the proposition that the States, having no legal right or support from the Union, still retained their position in it as States; and, therefore, that their people had a right to immediate representation in Congress without the imposition of any condition; and, further, that until they were admitted, Congress had no right to tax them for the support of the Government, and that all legislation affecting their interests would be unjustifiable and oppressive, if not unconstitutional. These propositions the committee declared wholly untenable, and, if admitted, destructive to the government. Whether or not legally and constitutionally, the States did in fact withdraw from the Union and made themselves subjects of another government of their own creation. In thus waging civil war, they necessarily became subject to all the rules, which, by the law of nations, controlled such a contest, and to all its legitimate consequences. "One of these consequences was, that within the limits prescribed by humanity the conquered rebels were at the mercy of the conquerors."

If it was true that from the moment when rebellion laid down its arms, and actual hostilities ceased, all political rights of the rebellious communities were at once restored, then the government of the United States would be powerless for its own protection, and flagrant rebellion, carried to the extreme of civil war, would be a pastime at which any State might play; certain, not only, that it could lose nothing, but that it might even be the gainer by defeat. The question whether the late Confederate States were in or out of the Union was a profitless abstraction. Granting that they were in the Union, and could never be otherwise, it by no means followed that their people might not "place themselves in a condition to abrogate the pow