hands but compelled them, as well as the whites, to use it in a particular way. Unless they formed State constitutions, containing prescribed articles, and elected legislatures which should ratify the amendment, neither whites nor blacks could be relieved from the slavery which the bill imposed upon them. Aside from the impolicy of Africanizing the South, why thus violate the manifest, well known and universal principle of constitutional law that the Federal Government has no jurisdiction, authority or power to regulate the franchise for any State. "To force the right of suffrage out of the hands of the white people and into the hands of the negroes was an arbitrary violation of this principle." Equally unconstitutional was its practical exclusion of the South from representation in Congress indefinitely. But the bill, notwithstanding the President's objection, was passed over the veto, though by a diminished majority in each House.

On the twenty-third, a supplementary act was passed prescribing the details of the administration of the first act, and, particularly, for the calling of conventions.1 No convention could be held unless a majority of all the registered voters in the State had voted on the question and at the places of registration. The elections and returns. in each district were to be under registration boards appointed by the commanding general. If a constitution was ratified by a majority of the votes cast, one-half of the voters voting, it should be sent to the President, be by him transmitted to Congress and become the basis of the reconstruction of the State and of its admission to representation.2

1 Statutes at Large, XV, 2-5.

2 This bill (H. R., 33) was introduced in the House by James F. Wilson, of Iowa, from the Committee on the Judiciary, March 11, 1867, (House Journal, p. 35) passed immediately to a third reading and was adopted by 117 yeas to 27 nays; 16 members

The bill was passed, in conference, on the twentieth and returned to the House by the President with a veto message, three days later. The act of March second, he said, had prescribed the qualifications of voters in the South; this bill added an oath to be taken by every person before his name could be registered as a voter, that he had not been disfranchised for participation in the rebellion. It, therefore, imposed upon every person the necessity and responsibility of deciding for himself under the peril of punishment by the military commission. If he made a mistake as to what worked disfranchisement by participation in rebellion and what amounted to such participation. Almost every man, black as well as white, resident in the ten States during the rebellion had at some time and in some way, voluntarily or involuntarily, participated in resistance to the General Government. The question which the citizen was thus called upon to answer on oath was, therefore, a fearful one, which if answered in a wrong manner, though innocently, would submit him to the pains of martial law. The entire machinery of the election was to be under the command and control of the military in each district. Conventions worked out in

not voting. (Journal, p. 36.) It was amended in the Senate and passed March 16th by 38 yeas and 2 nays. (Journal, p. 55.) The House agreed to the amendment of the Senate and passed the bill with further amendment, March 18th, 99 yeas to 29 nays. (Journal, p. 58.) The Senate disagreed to some of the House amendments, but the House insisted upon them and asked a conference March 19th, appointing James F. Wilson, George E. Boutwell and Samuel S. Marshall. The conference report was agreed to by the Senate. (Its managers were Lyman Trumbull, C. D. Buckalew and Henry Wilson, March 19th, Journal, p. 66.) And the House on the following day. (Journal, p. 76.) It was returned by the President to the House with a veto message on the 23rd, and was passed over the veto by a vote of 114 to 25 (Journal, p. 98-102), and by the Senate on the same day by a vote of 40 to 7. (Journal, p. 88.)

CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT IN CONTEST. 331

this manner could not represent the wishes of the inhabitants of these States. The board of registration might, at will, exclude the great body of people from the polls and from every opportunity to vote for delegates who would faithfully reflect their sentiments. The whole purpose of this legislative machinery was to establish military law and military coercion. Under the test of a republican government, which Congress compelled these States by this act to make, no State in the Union was republican. If Congress, in order to secure such a government, could prescribe universal suffrage for negroes as well as whites, as a preliminary condition, the work of reconstruction might as well begin in Ohio as Virginia; in Pennsylvania as in North Carolina. In brief, the bill proposed a “fearful and untried experiment of complete negro enfranchisement,—and white disfranchisement almost as complete." It compelled millions of American citizens to submit indefinitely to the rigor of martial law. "A military republic, a government founded on mock elections supported by the sword," said the President, quoting from Webster,— was "a movement indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement from the regular old-fashioned and monarchical system.1

Reconstruction had now become a contest between the President and Congress, which, in July, passed a second supplementary act declaring illegal the governments in the ten States; empowered the District Commanders to suspend or remove any civil or military officers and appoint others in their places, and admitted negroes to serve as members of any board of registration.2 On the same 1 Richardson, VI, 531-535.

2 July 19, 1867; Statutes at Large, XV, 14-16. This was H. R., 123, introduced by Thaddeus Stevens, July 7, and passed that day by a vote of 122 to 34, twelve members not voting. (Journal, pp. 175-177.) It passed the Senate two days later by 32 to 6 in an

day Congress appropriated one million dollars to carry its reconstruction acts into effect. The President promptly vetoed both bills.2 The new act, he objected, extended military government over ten States and gave it unlimited authority, which no longer confined to the preservation of the public peace, the administration of criminal law, the registration of voters and the superintendence of elections, was made paramount to the existing civil governments; a more intolerable state of society could not be conceived and yet to this condition, Congress would reduce twelve millions of American citizens. It denied these the sacred guarantee of the Constitution. Not a person in the South could have the protection of the writ of habeas corpus; and thus a power which all the departments of the Federal Government acting in concert or separately had not hitherto tried to exercise Congress now attempted to confer on a subordinate officer. The District Commander was transformed into a civil officer, and however unfit for the duties, he might be made a law-maker or judge. The officer, or soldier, thus detailed to fill a civil

amended form. (Journal, p. 149.) The House agreed to the Senate amendment and further amended the bill, which was now disagreed to by the Senate and a conference asked. (Senate Journal, July 12, p. 152.) The House insisted upon its amendments, but agreed to the conference report by 111 to 23. The managers on the part of the House were Thaddeus Stevens, George S. Boutwell and W. Holman; on the part of the Senate Lyman Trumbull, George F. Edmunds and Thomas A. Hendricks. The Senate also agreed July 13, by 31 to 6. (Journal, p. 155.) The bill was returned to the House by the President with a veto message on the 19th and was reconsidered and passed by 109 to 25, thirty-seven members not voting. (Journal, pp. 232239.) It passed the Senate on the same day by a vote of 30 to 6. (Journal, p. 177.)

1 Statutes at Large, Vol. XV, p. 30.

2 For the two veto messages, July 19, 1867, see Richardson, VI, 536-545.

office must execute its duties according to the law of the State, yet he was not required to give bond, or to have any of the qualifications which the State law prescribed. He would perform civil duties as a State officer as a federal agent. Thus the Federal Government, by the agency of its own sworn officers, would assume, in fact, the civil government of the State.

Here clearly there was a contradiction, as Congress declared the local State governments of the South to be illegal and yet provided that they should be carried on by federal officers, who were to perform the very duties which the State imposed on its own officers. "It certainly would be a novel spectacle if Congress should attempt to carry on a State government by the agency of its own officers," and it would be yet more strange if it attempted to carry on an illegal State government by the same

agency.

The construction which the proposed law would undoubtedly require, in practical administration, was to be made by the soldiers and officers assigned to perform civil duties under it; and yet, even if the opinion of the District Commander was appealed to, he would be attempting duties with which he was altogether unfamiliar. Even he, by the bill, was not required to be bound by a judicial decision. Was it not too late to say that these ten political communities were not States of the Union? Congress, by its legislation, had again and again recognized them, as by apportioning representation and by dividing them into judicial districts.1 Congress had called upon them to act through their legislatures upon the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, the first of which had been ratified by seven of these ten States. If their ratification was not legal, then slavery still existed in them, unless it had been 1 Referring to the act of July 23, 1866.