Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/418

384 that all participants in the rebellion should be regarded as loyal men if they would take the oath of allegiance, fourteen specially enumerated classes excepted. Thus, while the ballot-box was withheld from the loyal blacks, it was placed in the hands of a vast majority of those who had stood up against the Government of the Republic. Then the President opened his special pardon bank, and one after another the leaders of the rebellion were declared loyal, and enabled to place themselves once more at the head of their political followers.

A child might have foreseen the consequences. The true Union element was everywhere helplessly overwhelmed by rebel majorities. The conventions and legislatures fell into the hands of those who had stood against us in the civil war. The elective executive offices of the States were presently exercised by the leaders in the rebellion, and the whole machinery of the State governments was restored to their control.

Thus the reaction was fairly started. It commenced when the President first opened to the late rebels the road to power, and gained in strength as that power was obtained. It is true Andrew Johnson himself deemed it necessary to impose upon them conditions precedent to their full restoration. He demanded that their State conventions should declare the secession ordinances null and void, which, however, not all of them did. But that was a mere matter of form—good as far as it went. Such declarations in words, however, would never prevent another rebellion. He demanded that they should repudiate the rebel debt, a demand which was but partially complied with. But not insisting upon a provision to be embodied in the Federal Constitution, the President left it open to have a repeal at any time of the State laws by which the rebel debt was set aside. He demanded of them that their legislatures should ratify the