Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/306

290 and county officers. Great prudence and good taste were displayed in the elections. Generally those who had opposed secession and were considered as Union in sentiment were elected to the new offices. Those who had been in any way prominent in urging resistance took back seats and did not aspire to official positions. It is true, however, that nearly all who had originally opposed separate State action went with their States in the war and determined to share the common fate.

The people, however, did not stultify themselves by electing Republicans to office; in fact, there was none to be elected then. Welded together by common misfortunes, there was but one party in the South, the white man's party. While all were ready to accept the results in a dignified and manly way, they were not ready to humiliate themselves by any voluntary act reflecting on the motives which impelled them to go into the war.

The States had repealed their ordinances of secession which had taken them out of the Union. Five of the States had ratified the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, making in all eleven of the former slave-holding States and sixteen free States, and their votes were accepted and counted to make up the necessary two-thirds needed to ratify it and make it law. Civil law was in force. State and county officers were in the exercise of the functions of their offices. The president, by a proclamation issued April 2, 1866, finally announced the full restoration of every one of the seceded States, stating that "no organized armed resistance" existed anywhere; that the laws "can be sustained and enforced therein by proper civil authority, State and Federal; that the people of said States are well and loyally disposed, and have conformed or will conform in their legislation to the condition of affairs growing out of the amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery within the borders and jurisdictions of the United States." He named Georgia, South Carolina,