The Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Edmund G. Ross
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battling against the General Government to maintain that position, must be regarded as a rebel State subject to military occupation and without representation on this floor until it has been readmitted by a vote of both Houses of Congress; and the Senate will decline to receive any such application from any such rebel State until after such a vote by both Houses."
A few weeks later, on the 27th of June, 1864, this resolution was in effect reported back to the Senate by the Judiciary Committee, to which it had been referred, and adopted by a vote of 27 to 6. The same action was had in the House of Representatives on the application of the Representatives-elect from Arkansas for admission to that body.
This was practically the declaration of a rupture between the President and Congress on the question of Reconstruction. It was a rebuke to Mr. Lincoln for having presumed to treat the seceded States as still in any sense States of the Union. It was in effect a declaration that those States had successfully seceded — that their elimination from the Union was an accomplished fact — that the Union of the States had been broken — and that the only method left for their return that would be considered by Congress was as conquered and outlying provinces, not even as Territories with the right of such to membership in the Union; and should be governed accordingly until such time as Congress should see fit (if ever, to use the language of Mr. Stevens in the House) to devise and establish some form whereby they could be annexed to or re-incorporated into the Union.
It was at this point — on the great question of Reconstruction, or more properly of Restoration — that the disagreements originated between the Executive and Congress which finally culminated in the impeachment of Mr. Lincoln's successor; and that condition of strained relations was measurably intensified when, on the following July 4th, a bill was passed by Congress making provision for the reorganization and admission of the revolted States on the extreme lines indicated by the above action of Congress and containing the very extraordinary provision that the President, after obtaining the consent of Congress, shall recognize the State Government so established. That measure was still another and more marked rebuke by Congress to the President for having presumed to initiate a system of restoration without its consultation and advice. Naturally Mr. Lincoln was not in a mood to meekly accept the rebuke so marked and manifestly intended; and so the bill not having passed Congress till within the ten days preceding its adjournment allowed by the Constitution for its consideration by the President, and as it proposed to undo the work he had done, he failed to return it to Congress — "pocketed" it — and it therefore fell. He was not in a mood to accept a Congressional rebuke. He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective Departments of, the Government, and was not willing that his judgment should be revised, or his course censured, however indirectly, by any of its co-ordinate branches.
Four days after the session had closed, he issued a Proclamation in which he treated the bill merely as the expression of an opinion by Congress as to the best plan of Reconstruction — "which plan," he remarked, "it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration."
He further stated in this Proclamation that he had already presented one plan of restoration, and that he was "unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration, and was unprepared to declare that the free State Constitutions and Governments already adopted and installed in Louisiana and Arkansas, shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, and unprepared to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States, though sincerely hoping that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in all the States might be adopted."
While, with these objections, Mr. Lincoln could not approve the bill, he concluded his Proclamation with these words:
"Nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in the bill as one very proper for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall be prepared to give Executive aid and assistance to any such people as soon as military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States — in which Military Governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill."
"It must be frankly admitted," says Mr. Blaine in reciting this record in his 'Thirty Years of Congress,' "that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its respects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of the Republican members, and violent criticism from the more radical members of both Houses. * * * Fortunately, the Senators and Representatives had returned to their States and Districts before the Reconstruction Proclamation was issued, and found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support."
In the last speech Mr. Lincoln ever made, (April 11th, 1865) referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the Louisiana Government, (on the one-tenth basis) he said:
"If we now reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We say to the white man, you are worthless, or worse. We will neither help you or be helped by you. To the black man we say, 'this cup of liberty which these, your old masters hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefiend when and where and how.' If this course, discouraging and paralyzing to both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, they reorganize and sustain the new Government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand men to adhere to their work and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and with energy and daring to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise. He will yet it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it than by running back over them. Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."
It is manifest that Mr. Lincoln intuitively foresaw the danger of a great body of the people becoming accustomed to government by military power, and sought to end it by the speediest practicable means. As he expressed it, "We must begin and mould from disorganized and discordant elements: nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction."
Louisiana was wholly in possession of the Union forces and under loyal influence in 1863, and in his judgment the time had come for reconstructive action in that state — not merely for the purpose of strengthening and crystallizing the Union sentiment there, at a great gate-way of commerce, that would become a conspicuous object-lesson to foreign governments in behalf of more favorable influences abroad, but also to the encouragement of Union men and the discouragement of the rebellion in all the other revolted States. He had fortified his own judgment, as he frankly declared, "by submitting the Louisiana plan in advance to every member of the Cabinet, and every member approved it."
The steps taken in Louisiana were to be but a beginning. The nature of subsequent proceedings on his part must be governed by the success of this — that under then existing conditions it was inexpedient, in view of further possible complications, to forecast further proceedings, and especially to attempt to establish, at the outset, and under the chaotic conditions of the time, a general system of reconstruction applicable to all the States and to varying conditions. So the beginning was made in Louisiana. It is manifest that the purpose of this immediate action was two-fold — not only to restore Louisiana to the Union at the earliest practicable day — but also to so far establish a process of general restoration before Congress should reconvene at the coming December session, that there would be no sufficient occasion or excuse for interfering with his work by the application of the exasperating conditions that had been foreshadowed by that body.
On this point Mr. Welles, his Secretary of the Navy, testifies that at the close of a Cabinet meeting held immediately preceding Mr. Lincoln's death, "Mr. Stanton made some remarks on the general condition