Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/309

Rh conforming to the provision of the "civil rights" bill. It refused Federal offices to all prominent civil and military officers of the late Confederacy until pardoned by Congress; enforced the repudiation of all debts or obligations "incurred in the aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States." The States had to accept this amendment or remain without the restoration of civil government. In July, another Freedmen's bureau bill was passed over the president's veto, extending the provisions of the bureau, enlarging the power of the commissioner and appointing agents in almost every locality, and appropriating as much as $6,887,700 for its support. Military protection was given to the agents everywhere to enforce the provisions of the act In fact, every agent was in himself a court with military power back of him. Every agent had to be able to take the ironclad oath which necessarily confined the appointments mainly to newcomers in the different States. A more ingenious law to show distrust and alienate the negroes and whites of the South who had to live together, could not have been framed.

The State of Tennessee was admitted to congressional representation July 24, 1866, having ratified both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.

The committee of fifteen had rendered its report June 18th, and Congress adjourned the latter part of July, 1866. The action of Congress during this session, from December 4, 1865, to July 28, 1866, inaugurated by its legislation a fierce war against the executive branch of the government. There was a great gulf between them. The president considered the war as over, Congress said it was not over and that the lately seceded States had forfeited all claim to protection or appeal to the Constitution; that they were conquered provinces and not "indestructible States of an indissoluble union." This, too, was said in spite of the resolution passed in 1861,