by both houses, the Senate reconsidered its vote on the Brown amendment, and the House bill was adopted. But the President withheld his signature, and it failed to become a law. On the 9th of July, 1864, a few days after the adjournment of Congress, President Lincoln issued his proclamation, annexing the bill which had just passed both houses by such decisive majorities, giving his reasons for withholding his signature, and presenting certain considerations and propositions concerning the general subject of reconstruction. The reasons given for not signing the bill were lack of time, "less than one hour" intervening between its passage and the adjournment of Congress, and the fact that he was unprepared by formal approval of this bill either to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of reconstruction, thus setting aside the free State governments of Arkansas and Louisiana, and thereby repelling their citizens from further efforts in the same direction, or to "declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States," though he expressed the hope that a constitutional amendment would be adopted, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. He, however, expressed himself fully satisfied with the proposition of the bill for the restoration of a State to any who might choose to adopt it, and he pledged executive co-operation to any who might avail themselves of its provisions to return to their places in the Union. There were, however, many who took exceptions to this proclamation of the President, doubted its wisdom and authority, and objected to its terms. They contended that the latter were too liberal, and that the proffer should have originated with Congress and not with the executive. A few days after its appearance there was published a paper, signed by "B. F. Wade, Chairman of Senate Committee, and H. Winter Davis, Chairman of Committee of House of Representatives on the Rebellious States," and addressed "To the Supporters of the Government." It was an able, elaborate, and impassioned document, well calculated to produce, by its authorship, subject, and mode of treatment, a profound impression upon the popular mind. Its signers began with the assertion that they have read "without surprise, but not without indig nation," the President's proclamation, and they proceeded to criticise and condemn with great sharpness and plainness of speech his reasons for not signing the bill, and what they were pleased to characterize the unauthorized assumptions, proposals, and promises which he had made. To the plea derived from the shortness of time, they interposed the fact that the bill had been under discussion for nearly two months, and the undoubted willingness of Congress to have prolonged the session, had it been hinted that the President desired longer opportunity to consider it. Indeed, they more than obscurely hinted that there had been influences at work to prevent earlier action in the Senate thereon. The assertion of the President that he now laid the bill, which he had refused to sign, before the seceded States, and his professed readiness to "proceed according to" it, if any chose to accept its provisions, they condemned very severely, inasmuch as, they said, without his signature it was not a law, and could be, when thus presented, only an executive assumption, if not an usurpation. They characterized, too, his alleged purpose" to pro ceed according to the bill" as a "makeshift and a delusion," while of his general position and proposition they said, “a more decided outrage on the legislative authority has never been perpetrated." The governments of Arkansas and Louisiana, which the President described as "free," and which he said he was unprepared to see "set aside and held for naught," though Con gress had shown its estimate by rejecting the Senators and Representatives sent therefrom, they stigmatized as "shadows," "creatures of his will," "oligarchies imposed on the people by military orders under the forms of an election," which election they characterized as a "farce." At some length, and with great force of expression, they drew a "contrast" between the bill the President had refused to sign and the plan he had sent to Congress at the opening of the ses sion, "the one," they said, "requiring a majority, and the other satisfied with one tenth of the voters; the one ascertaining who the voters were by registering and the other by guess; the one governing by law and the other by military governors; the one protecting the nation against the return to power of the guilty leaders of the Rebellion, the continuance of slavery, and the burden of the Rebel debt," the other "silent respecting the Rebel debt and the political exclusion of Rebel leaders, leaving slavery exactly where it was by law" at the time of secession. They denounced the President's course as "a blow at the friends of the administration, at the rights of humanity, and the principles of republican government"; and they closed by calling upon all supporters of the administration to "consider the remedy for these usurpations, and, having found it, to fearlessly execute it." This paper, so deliberate and determined in its tone and purpose, in its allegations and arraignments, coming, too, from men so conspicuous for their abilities and their political and official prominence, could not but produce a marked impression upon the popular mind and heart, rejoicing the enemies and disturbing the friends of the administration. The former greedily seized it as an indorsement of their charges that the President was substituting his own will for the guidance of the Constitution, while arrogating to the executive what belonged alone to Congress. The latter felt the injury inflicted on the Union cause through the confessed weakness of divided counsels and the seeming diminution of popular confidence in the administration. That the President made mistakes none were more willing to admit than himself. That his veto was not a mistake— now that events have taken the turn which resulted from his early death, the strange and reactionary policy of his successor, and the brood of ills to which it has led-even his warmest friends will not unhesitatingly claim. But that he was influenced by any mere wilfulness of purpose, by the low ambition of having his own way, with any overweening confidence in his own judgment, few now believe. Not consciously deficient in the power of perception and judgment, and occupying a position from which he thought he could more accurately survey the situation than others, it is probable that he felt that he could better comprehend its intrinsic difficulties and the dangers to be apprehended from divided counsels and conflict ing purposes. He gave, too, frequent expression to a conviction that seemed very firmly established in his mind that there were certain official responsibilities resting upon him that he must discharge according to his own ideas of what was right and best, and not according to those of others, that he could not rightly delegate to another what he was elected to do himself, or vacate the high commission he had accepted from his countrymen. That thought he had frequently expressed in connection with the subject of emancipation and the employment of colored soldiers. In a letter to an Arkansas gentleman, dated February 18, 1864, he used these significant words: "When I formed a plan for an election in Arkansas, I did it in ignorance that your convention was at the same work. Since I learned the latter fact, I have been constantly trying to yield my plan to them. . . . . Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything; and General Steele, commanding the military, and being on the ground, is the best man to be that master." Such a man may have made mistakes, may indeed have claimed for the executive what belonged to the legislative departments of government; but it is hard to conceive of him as anything but patriotic and thoroughly devoted to the best interests of his country. CHAPTER XXXVIII. RECONSTRUCTION. The President's desire. -- Davis. -- - General Banks's proclamation to the people of Louisiana. -Response. Arkansas. Lane's bill and failure. Trumbull's bill. - Report. Debate. Sumner's amendment. - Powell in opposition. Republican opposition. - Sumner, Howard. What is a State ? -- Wade. Bill defended. Henderson. House. Ashley's bill. - Debate. - Dawes, opposition of. - Substitute. H. Winter Davis. Amendments proposed. - Bill laid on the table.-J. F. Wilson's bill for supremacy of Constitution. - Substitute. Brief debate. Laid upon the table. - Wood. THERE were two thoughts which seemed to occupy the mind of the President in regard to the work of reconstruction: first, that of the great importance of making a beginning; and, secondly, of the impolicy, as expressed in his veto message, of fixing upon any single plan to which all must conform. Without the light now shining upon the subject, in ignorance of what has since transpired, he could not regard the work to be done as other than experimental and tentative, and he was in haste to make a beginning. Consequently, on the 11th of January, 1864, General Banks, commanding at New Orleans, "in pursuance," he said, "of authority vested in him by the President of the United States," issued a proclamation to the people of Louisiana, proposing an election on the 22d of February for State officers, and, on the 1st of April, a similar election for "delegates to a convention for the revision of the constitution." The qualifications of voters invited to participate in the election for State officers were "the oath of allegiance prescribed by the President's proclamation, with the condition affixed to the elective franchise by the constitution of Louisiana." The officers then chosen, he declared, should "constitute the civil government |