carrying a Confederate flag to enter such ports, harbours, and waters." The surrender of the Shenandoah, in November, was one of the consequences of this order, taken in conjunction with the inability of the Southern privateers to maintain themselves any longer on the open seas. On the 6th of June, the French Government followed the example of England in recognising the cessation of the civil war, and the extinction of the Confederacy as a belligerent Power.

The Army of the Potomac, and the greater part of the forces under Sherman, were marched to the neighbourhood of Washington in the course of May, and on the 22nd and 23rd of that month a

In

grand review took place in the Federal capital. This was immediately followed by the mustering of the men out of service, and by the 1st of July nearly 800,000 soldiers had been discharged. The guerilla organisations in the Southern States likewise disappeared with extraordinary quickness, owing probably to orders issued by the War Department, declaring that all persons found in arms against the authority of the United States after a specified date would be treated as robbers and outlaws. The Southern ports were officially opened, excepting in respect of contraband of war; and, with relation to military prisoners, those who had been liberated on parole were declared exchanged, and those confined in the Northern States were, on the 29th of July, released on taking the oath of allegiance. A reduction of the naval force was made at the time the armies were disbanded, when large numbers of men were discharged, and all vessels not needed for future service were sold. most countries of the old world, the sudden casting on society of so enormous a body of men would have produced evils of the gravest kind; but in America employment is never wanting, and these myriads of soldiers and sailors, who for some years past had been unaccustomed to anything but the work of slaughter, were enabled very shortly to fall back into their industrial pursuits, with no great shock to the community. In some respects, however, the country was in a state of feverish disturbance. Men's passions had not yet had time to calm down, and the ground-swell of the mighty storm still heaved and foamed in many quarters. Savage riots between whites and negroes broke out at New York in June, 1865, and it soon appeared that Mr. Johnson would not go far enough in his opposition to the South to please the Republican party, which had the majority in Congress. The money obligations of the nation were appalling, and a vista of prolonged and heavy taxation spread out before the people. The estimated Federal debt at the close of 1865 was £600,000,000 sterling. Such was the cost which a rebellion of slave-owners had imposed upon the land; but the end had been attained, and the people of the United States had sufficient confidence in the elasticity of their resources to bear with cheerfulness the enormous burden which a few years had accumulated on their shoulders.

A general fast for the death of President Lincoln was observed on the 1st of June, 1865, and a national thanksgiving for peace was solemnised on the 2nd of November. The reorganisation of the State Governments of the South proceeded during the year, and in September, October, and November,

several of those States passed ordinances annulling secession, abolishing slavery, and renouncing the Confederate debt. On the 1st of December, the Habeas Corpus Act was restored in all the Northern States; and when the thirty-ninth Congress met, three days later, the country had to some extent been restored to its usual condition. The President's Message was more than usually long, and touched with great minuteness both on the present and the future. Mr. Johnson was in favour of the most rigorous maintenance of the Union, together with the recognition of all State rights which did not conflict with that compact. "So long as the Constitution of the United States endures," he affirmed, "the States will endure: the destruction of the one is the destruction of the other; the preservation of the one is the preservation of the other." On succeeding to power, he had found the States suffering from the effects of a civil war, and he had had to consider whether or not the rebellious States should be held as conquered territory, under military authority emanating from the President, as head of the army. Against such a method of encountering the difficulty he speedily made up his mind. He considered that it would result in incalculable injury to the freedom of the citizen, and, instead of restoring affection, would envenom hatred. hatred. The true theory, in his opinion, was that all pretended acts of secession were from the beginning null and void. The States could not commit treason, nor screen individual citizens who might have committed that crime, any more than they could make valid treaties with a foreign Power. "The States attempting to secede," he added, "placed themselves in a condition where their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions suspended, but not destroyed." His policy had therefore been to restore the individual life of the States wherever practicable; to re-establish the laws of the Union over the territories lately in secession; and to invite the Southern States to participate in the high office of amending the Constitution. "All parties in the late terrible conflict," he proceeded, "must work together in harmony. It is not too much to ask, in the name of the whole people, that, on the one side, the plan of restoration shall proceed in conformity with a willingness to cast the disorders of the past into oblivion; and that, on the other, the evidence of sincerity in the future maintenance of the Union shall be put beyond any doubt by the ratification of the proposed amendment to the Constitution which provides for the abolition of slavery for ever within the limits of our country." On the propriety of attempting to make the freedmen electors by the

THE history of the United States for several years after the conclusion of the great rebellion is a history of painful struggles, more or less successful, to reconstruct the political system of the Republic on those new conditions which the civil war had

imposed and rendered necessary. Resistance to the authority of the Federation was at an end; slavery also was at an end; but the position of the insurrectionary States had yet to be determined, and the rights of the black man were still to be defined. The difficulties resulting from a state of war had been succeeded by others not less formidable. Partisanship found an ample field for its own methods of attack in the numerous questions which now came up for settlement; and in no community has partisanship been carried to more extreme lengths than in America. The Republicans were in a majority in Congress; but the Democrats were sufficiently strong, both there and in the country, to cause considerable embarrassment. Andrew Johnson, whom an unexpected catastrophe had lifted into the highest post, was at issue with the Legislative body; and the inherent perplexities of the time were increased by want of harmony among the several departments of the Government. To some extent, the South had done what was required of her. The proposition to amend the Federal Constitution, so as to prevent the existence of slavery within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction, had been ratified by the requisite number of States, and on the 18th of December, 1865, it was officially declared to

Mr.

have become valid as a part of the general Constitution. The States lately in insurrection amended their own Constitutions to the same effect, repudiated secession and the debts accruing from it, and in other respects made arrangements for meeting the new order of things. Yet to many it remained a matter of doubt whether those States, after so long and determined a resistance to Federal authority, ought at once to be placed in the same position as before the rebellion.

Should the Southern States be re-admitted to the Union on terms of equality with the North, or should they be excluded for a time, and be ruled, or over-ruled, by the Federal Executive? That was the question in debate between the President and the majority in Congress. It was a question in which all the generosity and fairness seemed to be on one side, and all the vindictiveness and oppression on the other. Yet, while giving Mr. Johnson every credit for humane motives in his wish to restore the South to its former constitutional position, the wisdom of his statesmanship may be doubted; and, while admitting that some of the Republican party may have been influenced by an unworthy desire of revenge, it seems difficult to deny that the policy of that party, in the main, was supported by many cogent reasons. It is true that Virginia, the Carolinas, and their companions in rebellion, had a right, under the ordinary operation of the Constitution, to be represented in the Federal Congress; but it was contended with great force that they had forfeited that right by their own

act, and that they could not, to suit their purposes, reject the Union one day, and claim its privileges the next. Besides, it was very doubtful whether a speedy return to the status quo ante would not be fraught with peril to the new order. The Southern States were in too disorganised a condition to render them fitting agents for the immediate exercise of supreme political functions. The people were too much inflamed by resentment, where they were not stupefied by despondency, to be admitted at once, without undergoing any probation, to a share in that political system which only four years earlier they had endeavoured by treachery and violence to destroy. They had friends in Congress among the Democrats of the Northern, Western, and Middle States, and, in union with these, might reverse by legislative action much that the sword had painfully accomplished. It was impossible to say whether the most extreme interpretation of State Rights would not be revived and enforced. It might be difficult even to sustain the abolition of slavery; and with the re-imposition of negro bondage the old feud would be once more opened for another term of mutual hatred and civil strife. To admit a rebellious member, on the very morrow of his rebellion, to equal rights with the loyal, was a novel proposition in the science of government, and one which had nothing but a sentimental generosity to recommend it.

Mr. Johnson's dogma, put forward in his Message of December 4th, 1865, that "all pretended acts of secession were from the beginning null and void," and that therefore "the States could not commit treason," seems to have been a mere metaphysical subtlety, ending in a sophism. It was an attempt to create an inexplicable distinction between a State and the people composing that State. From From the Federal point of view, the acts of secession were of course null and void as regarded any legal effect; but they were facts none the less, and they constituted the crime of treason. In the opinion of the Republican majority in Congress-now called the Radical party-the commission of that offence should deprive the offenders for some time of their right to take part in the direction of Federal affairs. Violent debates occurred in the early days of the thirty-ninth Congress, and on the 29th of December, 1865, eighty-five members from Southern States were excluded by the vote of the greater number. The President had by that time restored local government to all the Southern States, except Texas and Florida; but the Republicans were determined that the reconstructed Union should not be imperilled by the presence of the disloyal. Not only were certain States excluded, but a test-oath

was imposed on every member of Congress, which shut out all who had been in any way connected with the Confederate Government. Such were among the earliest measures which were taken, not so much to punish the South, as to protect the Union against reactionary influences.

Another subject of dissension between the President and the Legislature had reference to the position of the blacks. At the end of January, 1866, the Reconstruction Committee appointed by the House of Representatives reported to that House in favour of submitting to the Legislatures of the several States an amendment to the Federal Constitution, to the effect that representation and direct taxes should be apportioned according to the respective numbers within each State, excepting only Indians not taxed; and that whenever the elective franchise should be denied or abridged, on account of race or colour, all persons of such race or colour should be excluded from the basis of representation. By the original Constitution of the United States, the individual States were entitled to representatives in Congress in proportion to their population, and, in determining the extent of that population, the blacks in the slave-holding States were reckoned as five to three; in other words, five blacks were counted as three whites. Thus, the negroes, though of course having no vote of their own, added to the voting power of their masters in the Federal Legislature, and, by a refinement of injustice and oppression which has probably never been equalled, were made to strengthen their tyrants against themselves, and to turn the scale against the free communities of the North. As the representation stood at the commencement of 1866, the fourteen States in which slavery had previously existed could lay claim to seventy-six members the proposed amendment reduced that number to fifty-two. This deprivation of power excited great discontent at the South; but the amendment was carried through both branches of Congress. To any such policy the President was vehemently opposed, and a great deal of excited discussion ensued, in which all parties forgot their own dignity, equally with the respect due to others. Some of the extreme Republicans hinted that in former times the President would have lost his head for endeavouring to obstruct the course of legislation. The President, in addressing a public meeting at Washington in February, distinctly accused his political enemies of inciting desperadoes to assassinate him. 66 They have not the honour or the courage," he said, "to obtain their ends otherwise than by assassins' hands. I know they are willing to wound, but they fear to strike." At the

1866.]

end of June, however, Mr. Johnson consented to transmit copies of the Reconstruction Amendment to the Governors of the States, so that the proposed alteration might be submitted to the several Legislatures. But this did not still the commotion, and in the final days of July a serious riot occurred at New Orleans, owing to the endeavours of the Radicals to revive the State Convention which was held there in 1864.

An Act of Congress, extending the operation of a Bill passed the previous year, and subjecting to martial law any one who wrongfully used a negro or freedman, was vetoed by the President on the 21st of February, 1866, on the ground that it interfered to a dangerous degree with civil liberty. This was the Freedman's Bureau Bill, one of the objects of which was to provide food, clothing, and land for destitute negroes. An attempt was made to pass the Bill over the Presidential veto; but the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution was not obtained. Another measure, called the Civil Rights Bill, the object of which was to place the blacks on the same footing as the whites with respect to the privileges of citizenship, was also vetoed by Mr. Johnson, who sent in his reasons against it on the 27th of March. On this topic the strictures of the President were not without reason; for a population of four millions of black men, ignorant, untrained, and but recently delivered from slavery, seemed a very doubtful addition to the electoral body of a commonwealth. It must be borne in mind, however, that moderate Republicans would have been content to waive the question of negro suffrage, had not the South required that the black part of their population should be counted in the apportioning of seats in Congress, while at the same time the negro was to be denied the privileges of a citizen. This being the temper of the sometime Confederate States, the North was compelled to insist that, if the blacks were to be regarded from a legislative point of view at all, they should vote for themselves as a part of the general constituency. Congress therefore adhered to its measure, which was passed, in spite of the President, on the 9th of April. Six days earlier, Mr. Johnson proclaimed the rebellion at an end, and, in July, Tennessee was re-admitted to the Union, on the understanding that she was to exclude all rebels from the suffrage and from office, and to ignore the rebel debt. Congress adjourned on the 28th of July, and conventions of the States-two representing Radical and one Conservative opinions-were held shortly afterwards in Philadelphia. In the early autumn, the President made a tour through the Northern and Western States, and delivered several

605

speeches characterised by extreme bitterness and violence towards the Radical leaders, who at various public meetings retorted with equal personality and venom. Mr. Johnson's argument was that the Federal Congress was dealing with a great many subjects which properly belonged to the States; but it was answered that the rebellion had introduced the rule of force, and that the rights of the South were suspended.

The elections to Congress in October gave the Republicans a very large majority, and put Mr. Johnson at a still greater disadvantage. Yet he held his ground none the less, and in his Annual Message of December 3rd, 1866, still persisted in his advocacy of State Rights. It was not long ere the dissensions between the Chief Magistrate and the House of Representatives came to a direct issue. Early in January, 1867, Mr. Ashley, the member for Ohio, impeached Mr. Johnson of high crimes and misdemeanours, of usurpation of power and violation of law; and moved that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorised to inquire into the official conduct of the person so charged. The resolution was carried by 107 against 39 votes; but the Judiciary Committee, in the month of June, decided, by a majority of five to four, not to recommend so grave a step. It was resolved, however, that the President should be censured; and with this trifling result the movement for impeaching Mr. Johnson came to an end for the time, but only for the time. In the meanwhile, the feud continued with even greater acrimony. Several Bills were vetoed by the President, and passed again by the requisite majorities; among them, a measure by which the power to dismiss members of the Cabinet, which until then had been the sole prerogative of the President, was made subject to the approval of the Senate. Towards the end of February, Congress passed a Reconstruction Bill for the South, by the provisions of which five military districts were established for the supervision of the States which had seceded. When, however, those States had adopted the amendment with respect to the negroes, they were to be restored to their former places in the Union. The Bill furthermore enacted that the existing Governments of those States should be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount authority of the United States, which might at any time abolish, modify, control, or supersede them. The franchise was conferred on whites and blacks alike, and taken away from all leaders of the late rebellion; and the right of Habeas Corpus was suspended, unless the writ was endorsed by the military officer in command of the district. The President's veto was