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 CHAPTER IV

THE RESTORATION OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

While Tennessee escaped both executive and congressional reconstruction, it did not follow in the restoration of its civil government the plan laid down by President Lincoln. The most distinctive feature of Lincoln's reconstruction policy lay in the fact that it made the old political people in each of the Southern States self-acting nuclei, which were to bring order out of chaos. According to this theory, neither the President nor Congress had the power to reconstruct a State government. The people within a State alone had the right to initiate and carry into effect measures for the rehabilitation of the deranged governmental machinery. It was the duty of the President under Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution, to see that their efforts in this direction did not prove abortive by reason of domestic violence.

The germs of this policy may be seen in the instructions sent to the military governors. It was more fully developed in the amnesty proclamation of Dec. 8, 1863. By the terms of this proclamation, a general pardon was granted to all "who directly or by implication had participated in the rebellion, with certain exceptions specified, upon their taking an oath to henceforth support the Constitution of the United States, and abide by the proclamations of the President and the acts of Congress in relation to slavery." It was further promised, "that whenever a number of persons in any of the rebel States, equal to not less than one tenth of the votes cast in such State in the presidential election of the year 1860, each having taken the oath aforesaid, and not having violated it, and being a qualified voter by the elec