Page:Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction.djvu/140

 The three acts just outlined contain all the essential principles of the process by which reconstruction was actually accomplished. The chief features of the process were: first, the overthrow of ten state governments that had been organized under the Presidential proclamations; second, the establishment of military government in the disorganized districts; and third, the determination by Congress of the qualifications of voters, not only for the immediate purpose of reorganization, but also for all the future existence of the commonwealths.

As to the first point, the action of Congress was entirely consistent with the ground it had taken at the beginning of its struggle with the President. It had steadily declined to recognize the organizations set up under Mr. Johnson's guidance as anything more than provisional. The status of a state that had forfeited its rights precluded the exercise of self-government until those rights had been restored. Under the radical tendency imparted to the legislature by the autumn elections of 1866, Stevens succeeded in embodying his conquered-province theory in the preamble to the first military bill as it passed the House. The Senate, however, toned down the clause so as to avoid declaring the states extinct. In its final form, the act stigmatized them as rebel states. Exactly what a "rebel state" is was not stated.