III RESTORATION BY THE PRESIDENT INTRODUCTION PRESIDENT LINCOLN, holding that it was the duty of the executive to initiate Reconstruction, established during the war provisional governments in three of the states - Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In Virginia he recognized the so-called "reorganized" government. A new state was set up in West Virginia. Congress opposed the policy of Lincoln but had not definitely rejected it when the war ended. After Lincoln's death, Congress not being in session, President Johnson had a clear field for a trial of his plan of restoring the Union. For a month he made no move except to reject the Sherman-Johnston convention. Meanwhile in the lower South the state officers began a movement looking toward reorganization for the purpose of asking for readmission to the Union. About May 20, 1865, Johnson ordered that this movement be crushed by the arrest of all who should take part in it. On May 29 with the publication of the Amnesty Proclamation and the appointment of a provisional governor for North Carolina, he began his work of reorganizing the southern communities. For each of the seceded states, except Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Virginia, he appointed a governor who organized a provisional administration and called a constitutional convention, which was required by the President: (1) to abolish slavery, declare the ordinance of secession null and void, and repudiate all debts incurred in aid of the war; (2) to provide for a new state government based on the constitution and laws of 1861, without slavery. Next in each state were held elections of local and state officials, legislators and congressmen. Presidential governors and their administrations now gave way to those elected by the people. The legislatures, under pressure from Washington, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, and elected United States senators. The process of restoration was now complete if Congress would admit the Southern representatives. But Congress refused to do this, and the state governments in the South continued as provisional only and subject to constant interference by the President. The breach between the President and Congress rapidly widened. The Civil Rights and Freedmen's Bureau acts were passed over the veto. Finally Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment as a sort of compromise: if they should ratify it the Southern States would be recognized but the leading whites would be disfranchised by it. The President opposed it. Tennessee alone ratified it and was readmitted. The other Southern States after rejecting the Amendment prepared a modified form of it which they were willing to accept, but nothing came of this attempt. The year of 1866 was a year of campaigning, North and South, on the question of Reconstruction. Individuals and parties declared for Congress or for the Presidential policy. The so-called Radical party was organized in the South to advocate negro suffrage and to secure its fruits. The President himself took part in the campaign, but his policy was condemned at the polls in the North. The Presidential state governments continued in the South more or less under the control of the army and the Freedmen's Bureau until Congress passed the Reconstruction acts in March, 1867. |