Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/266

 asking him at the same time to permit me to publish it, on my sole responsibility and in such a manner as would preclude the imputation that the President approved the whole or any part of it. To this request I never received a reply. I should not have made it, had I not suspected that in some way my report might be suppressed. But subsequently it turned out that another expedient had been devised. Congress met early in the following December. At once the Republican majority in both Houses rose in opposition to President Johnson's plan of reconstruction. Even before the President's message was read, the House of Representatives, upon the motion of Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, passed a resolution providing for a joint committee of both Houses to inquire into the condition of the “States lately in rebellion,” which committee should thereupon report “by bill or otherwise,” whether in its judgment those States, or any of them, were entitled to be represented in either House of Congress. To this resolution the Senate subsequently assented. Thus Congress took the matter of the reconstruction of the late rebel States as to its final consummation into its own hands, which, under the Constitution, it had a perfect right to do.

On the 12th of December, upon the motion of Mr. Sumner, the Senate resolved that the President be directed to furnish to the Senate, among other things, a copy of my report. A week later the President did so, but he coupled it with a report from General Grant on the same subject. The two reports were transmitted with a short message from the President in which he affirmed that the rebellion had been suppressed; that peace reigned throughout the land; that “so far as could be done” the courts of the United States had been restored, post-offices re-established and revenues collected; that several of those States had re-organized their State