Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/203

 the anticipation of a policy of hanging and impoverishing, while the other appointed a provisional governor for North Carolina, whose duty it would be “at the earliest practicable period, to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for convening a convention composed of delegates, to be chosen by that portion of the people of said State who are loyal to the United States, and no others, for the purpose of altering or amending the constitution thereof, and with authority to exercise within the limits of said State all the powers necessary and proper to enable the loyal people of the State of North Carolina to restore said State to its constitutional relations to the Federal Government,” etc. The proclamation provided, also, that in “choosing delegates to any State convention, as aforesaid, no person shall be qualified as an elector or shall be eligible as a member of such convention unless he shall have previously taken and subscribed the oath of amnesty as set forth in the President's proclamation of May 29, A. D. 1865, and as a voter qualified as prescribed by the constitution and laws of the State of North Carolina in force immediately before the 20th day of May, 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of secession.” The convention that might be elected by such voters, or the Legislature that might be subsequently elected by virtue of the State Constitution as amended by the convention, was to have the power to prescribe the permanent qualifications of voters and their eligibility to office.

And who were the loyal persons that were to be entrusted with such far-reaching powers? Not only the men who during the war had abstained from giving aid and comfort to the rebellion and that maintained their loyalty to the United States, but also those who, having given aid and comfort to the rebellion, had subsequently cleared themselves by taking the oath