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HISTORY 1865-1910] the radicals, violently attacked the president. The triumph of Lincoln in the election of 1864 did not clearly signify the will of the people upon the conditions of Reconstruction, or upon the organ of government to formulate them, for the declaration of the Democratic convention that the war was a failure overshadowed the issue, and the Union party which supported Lincoln was composed of men of all parties.

269. On January 31st 1865 the House concurred in the vote of the Senate in favour of the Thirteenth Amendment to the

Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the Union. Four years earlier Congress had submitted to the states another Thirteenth Amendment by the terms of which no amendment should ever authorize Congress to interfere with slavery within the states. But owing to the war this amendment had remained unratified, and now Congress proposed to place beyond constitutional doubt, or the power of states to change it, the emancipation of slaves. By the 18th of December 1865 the amendment had been ratified and was proclaimed in force.

270. In the meantime, Louisiana, in accordance with Lincoln's proclamation, had adopted a constitution and abolished slavery within the state. Owing to the obstructive tactics of Sumner, aided by Democrats in the Senate, Congress adjourned on the 4th of March 1865 without having recognized this new state government as legitimate. “If we are wise and discreet,” said Lincoln, “we shall reanimate the states and get their governments in successful operation with order prevailing and the Union re-established before Congress comes together in December.”

271. Such was the situation when Johnson took up the presidency upon Lincoln's death. After an interval of uncertainty, in which he threatened vengeance against various Southern leaders and gave the radicals some hope that he would favour negro suffrage, President Johnson accepted the main features of Lincoln's policy. Congress not being in session, he was able to work out an executive Reconstruction on the lines of Lincoln's policy during the summer and autumn of 1865. On the 29th of May he issued a proclamation of amnesty, requiring of those who desired to accept its provisions an oath to support the Constitution and Union, and the laws and proclamations respecting the emancipation of slaves. Certain specified classes of persons were excepted, including certain additions to those excluded by Lincoln, especially “all persons who have voluntarily participated in said rebellion and the estimated value of whose taxable property is over twenty thousand dollars.” This provision was characteristic of Johnson, who disliked the Southern planting aristocracy, and aimed at placing the preponderant power in the hands of the Democratic small farmers, who had been his supporters. To those of the excepted classes who would ask pardon from the president, he promised a liberal clemency. As part of his system he issued

another proclamation in which he appointed a governor for North Carolina and laid down a plan for Reconstruction. By this proclamation it was made the duty of the governor to call a convention chosen by the loyal people of the state, for the purpose of altering the state constitution and establishing a state government. The right to vote for delegates to this convention was limited to those who had taken the oath of amnesty and who had been qualified to vote prior to the secession of the state. To the state itself was to be left the determination of the future qualifications of electors and office-holders.

272. Already Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas had governments which had been recognized by Lincoln. Between the 13th of June and the 13th of July 1865 Johnson applied the same process which he had outlined for North Carolina to the remaining states of the Confederacy. Before Congress met in December all the Confederate states, except Texas (which delayed until the spring of 1866), had formed constitutions and elected governments in accordance with the presidential plan. All of their legislatures, except that of Mississippi, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.

273. Gradually, however, the South turned to its former leaders to shape its policy, and the radical Republicans of the North were alarmed at the rapidity of the process of restoration on these principles. The disorganized and idle condition of the former slaves constituted a serious element in the Southern situation, as Lincoln had foreseen. The negroes expected a grant of land from confiscated Southern estates, and it was difficult to preserve order and to secure a proper labour supply.

274. Under these conditions the efforts of the South to provide security for their communities by bodies of white militia were looked upon with apprehension by the North, and there was sufficient conflict between the two races to give colour to charges that the South was not accepting in good faith the emancipation of the slaves. Especially irritating to Northern sentiment were the so-called “black codes” or “peonage laws,”

passed by the newly elected Southern legislatures. They rested on the belief that it was necessary that the former slaves should be treated as a separate and dependent class, and varied in severity in the different states. Some of these imposed special disabilities upon the negro in the matter of carrying weapons and serving as witnesses. Vagrancy laws and provisions regarding labour contracts which had precedents in colonial and English legislation, but were specifically framed to restrain the negroes only, were common. Mississippi denied them the right to own land, or even to rent it outside of incorporated towns; South Carolina restricted them to husbandry and to farm or domestic service, unless specially licensed. Although several of the Southern states, perceiving that their course was likely to arouse the North to drastic measures, repealed or mitigated the most objectionable laws, the North had received the impression that an attempt had been made to restore slavery in disguised form.

275. The problem of succouring and protecting the negroes had forced itself upon the attention of the North from the

beginning of the war, and on the 3rd of March 1865 Congress had created the (q.v.), with the power to assign abandoned lands, in the states where the war had existed, to the use of the freedmen; to supervise charitable and educational activities among them; to exercise jurisdiction over controversies in which a freedman was a party; and to regulate their labour contracts. The local agents of the bureau were usually Northern men; some of them gave the worst interpretation to Southern conditions and aroused vain hopes in the negroes that the lands of the former masters would be divided among them; and later many of them became active in the political organization of the negro.

276. Although the national government itself had thus recognized that special treatment of the freedmen was necessary, Congress, on assembling in December 1865, was disposed to regard the course of the South in this respect with deep suspicion. Moreover, as the Thirteenth Amendment was now ratified, it was seen that the South, if restored according to the presidential policy, would return to Congress with added representatives for the freed negroes. Only three-fifths of the negro slaves had been counted in apportioning representatives in Congress; though now free they were not allowed to vote.

277. Under the leadership of the Radicals Congress refused, therefore, to receive the representatives of the states which had met the conditions of the president's proclamations. A joint committee of fifteen took the whole subject of Reconstruction under advisement, and a bill was passed continuing the Freedmen's Bureau indefinitely. When this was vetoed by President Johnson (Feb. 19, 1866) Congress retaliated by a concurrent resolution (March 2) against admitting any reconstructed state until Congress declared it entitled to recognition, thus asserting for the legislative body the direction of Reconstruction.

278. While the measure was under consideration the president in an intemperate public address stigmatized the leaders of the radicals by name as labouring to destroy the principles