and prejudices (it may be without offense to say), and those of the greater part of their own race. If this has been a blessing to the colored race, and no evil to the white, and time shall prove it to have been greatly beneficial to the Nation and the world, the courageous men of the "Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses" who brought it about should richly deserve, and would have thrust upon their memory and their deed, the praises which are yet cautiously bestowed. No doubt the judgment of time will be correct. On the 4th of March, 1869, with the incoming of the new Administration, Congress convened in extraordinary session according to previous provision. The Government for the last three or four years had virtually been under the administration of Congress, and the good that was done must be accredited mainly to that body. What President Johnson would have done, he could not do, and the good or evil of his policy must, to some extent, remain a question among good judges. One thing is, however, certain. He started out in the exact tracks of President Lincoln in his reconstruction plans, using, indeed, the very paper prepared by his predecessor, or using it as a foundation for his first steps in Virginia and North Carolina; and the general spirit that actuated his course gradually prevailed under his successor. He claimed with characteristic bitterness, that the Congressional plan was not only vicious and wicked, but that it was an utter failure. Still such is not the judgment of history. Doubts as to its being the best which could have been devised, may be admitted. But General Grant and others who were sent South at the close of the Rebellion and who favored President Johnson's plan at the outset, believed later, when they saw a change in the disposition of the rebels, that his plan could not possibly result well for the country. And this opinion was confirmed by the appeals and the sufferings of Southern Unionists. The policy of Congress was severely disciplinary. But was that discipline not necessary? Slavery, the thing on which the Rebellion was based, had been struck down. Could this past source of all evil be left to the uncertain chances by which it was naturally surrounded? Would it have been wise to leave the work so incomplete, or the battle to be fought again? Where are to be found the indubitable proofs that all of this discipline and hardship to the South, and all of this vexatious military and political turmoil, were not necessary and best in the work of securing perpetual and eternal good to the regenerated Nation? Were not the blood of the war and the ills of reconstruction a price for the condition of permanent peace and union? Yet all of this admitted does not preclude the reflection that there might have been a more perfect way. A REVIEW CHAPTER XIX. - THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS PLANS OF RECONSTRUCTION-WHO WAS RIGHT?-PRESIDENT ATTRACTIVE PICTURE. T may be admitted as a fair and honest matter IT of dispute to-day whether the plan of reconstruction proposed and attempted by President Johnson was not preferable to the one adopted by Congress and put in its place. The opinion very largely prevalent at that time that Congress had the right to do anything it chose with the insurrectionary States was, perhaps, one of the many errors of the moment. A class of men favored the plan of reducing the rebellious States to territorial condition, and under military rule passing them gradually, after a long probation, by the usual steps, to the condition of loyal Free States. It may not yet be clear that this course would not have been better than the one which was taken. But the difficulty about the whole matter was that Congress had no right or power to do anything of the kind. It was a great error to suppose that the rebellion of a State gave the General Government the right to do what it pleased with the State after putting down the rebellion. Neither rebellion nor anything else could ever confer such power on Congress. Under the true theory of the Constitution a State once established as such in the Union must always remain such; and no power in the Constitution or act of the State could take it out of the Union, or make it anything else than a State. The use of the sword and the trials of the times had given rise to a sentiment not based upon the organic character of the Government, the real demands of the occasion, or the better and more elevated instincts of mankind. To put down rebellion and put in operation means to restore States to their active loyal position as States in the Union, were Constitutional and moral duties. The General Government and the States have no Constitutional right to destroy each other. They are perpetual, one in the other. The General Government has no right to impair or suspend the activities of a State longer than it fails to exert them in the spirit and letter of the, Constitution It was held by men claiming intelligence that the President and Congress overstepped the boundaries of exact justice and right in treating as null and void the acts of the States while they were engaged in the Rebellion. But this was the utmost folly and drivel, und unworthy of mention otherwise than as making a part of the extravagance of the times. About the scope and character of the pardoning power there was much diversity of sentiment. But if a rebel against the Government, an assassin of the State, was not in need, and a subject, of this power nobody could be. Perhaps the President took the true view of this case, and the rebels, at least, had no right to complaim of his course. Mr. Johnson's plan of reconstruction left out of consideration negro suffrage, and it was such as to bring speedily to the management of the affairs of the States those who had been among the leaders of the Rebellion. But in the main it was the course sanctioned by the Constitutional conditions of the Government, the Nation. And as to these two points, negro suffrage and those who should control the affairs of the States, recently in Rebellion, and share in the management of national politics, how did it finally result? The Republican Congress began at once to agitate the subject of negro suffrage, starting the work where it had undisputed rights, in the District of Columbia. But was this work of making this vast horde of persons, just liberated from centuries of bondage, the highest and best thing to be accomplished? Voting is no certain evidence of freedom, patriotism, manhood, or intelligence. Has universal suffrage accomplished what was claimed, what is yet claimed for it in this country? Have the Republicans gained for their party all they hoped to gain by giving the negroes this privilege? Like West Virginia, was it not a party error? But it can not be so coolly assumed that those who favored and brought about negro suffrage had no higher or better motive than advancing the interests of their party as a mere party. No, many earnest men believed the faithfulness of the negro to the cause of the Union, his efforts for its success, rendered the gift |