to the United States Government, but they have never changed their minds as to the justice of the cause they fought for. They fought for liberty regulated by law, and against the idea that there can be, under our system, any higher law than the Constitution of our country. That the Constitution should always be the supreme law of the land, they still believe, and the philosophic student of past and current history should be gratified to see the tenacity with which Southern people still cling to that idea. It suggests that not only will the Southerners be always ready to stand for our country against a foreign foe, but that whenever our institutions shall be assailed, as they will often be hereafter by visionaries who are impatient of restraints, the cause of liberty, regulated by law, will find staunch defenders in the Southern section of our country. CHAPTER X RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN-JOHNSON PLAN AND CONGRESSIONAL. PRES RESIDENT LINCOLN'S theory was that acts of secession were void, and that when the seceded States came back into the Union those who were entitled to vote, by the laws existing at the date of the attempted secession, and had been pardoned, should have, and should control, the right of suffrage. Mr. Lincoln had acted on this theory in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, and he further advised Congress, in his message of December, 1863, that this was his plan. Congress, after a long debate, responded in July, 1864, by an act claiming for itself power over Reconstruction. The President answered by a pocket veto, and after that veto Mr. Lincoln was, in November, 1864, re-elected on a platform extolling his "practical wisdom," etc. etc. Congress, during the session that began in December, 1864, did not attempt to reassert its au thority but adjourned, March 4, 1865, in sight of the collapse of the Confederacy, leaving the President an open field for his declared policy. But unhappily, on the 14th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and his death just at this time was the most appalling calamity that ever befell the American people. The blow fell chiefly upon the South, and it was the South the assassin had thought to benefit. Had the great statesman lived he might, and it is fully believed he would, like Washington, have achieved a double success. Washington, successful in war, was successful in guiding his country through the first eight stormy years of its existence under a new constitution. Lincoln had guided the country through four years of war, and the Union was now safe. With Lee's surrender the war was practically at an end. Gideon Welles says that on the 10th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln, "while I was with him at the White House, was informed that his fellow-citizens would call to congratulate him on the fall of Richmond and surrender of Lee; but he requested their visit should be delayed that he might have time to put his thoughts on paper, for he desired that his utterances on such an occasion should be deliberate and not liable to misapprehension, misinterpretation, or misconstruction. He therefore addressed the people on the following evening, Tuesday the 11th, in a carefully prepared speech intended to promote harmony and union. "In this remarkable speech, delivered three days before his assassination, he stated he had prepared a plan for the reinauguration of the sectional authority and reconstruction in 1863, which would be acceptable to the executive government, and that every member of the cabinet fully approved the plan," etc.1 In view of his death three days later, this, his last and deliberate public utterance, may be regarded as Abraham Lincoln's will, devising as a legacy to his countrymen his plan of reconstruction. That plan in the hands of his successor was defeated by a partisan and radical Congress. That it was a wise plan the world now knows. Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, was one 1 Gideon Welles in an essay, "Lincoln and Johnson," The Galaxy, April, 1872. of the most influential of those who succeeded in defeating it, and yet he lived to say, in his book published in 1895,1 Andrew Johnson "adopted substantially the plan proposed and acted on by Mr. Lincoln. After this long lapse of time I am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reorganization was wise and judicious. It was unfortunate that it had not the sanction of Congress and that events soon brought the President and Congress into hostility." And the present senator, Shelby Cullom, of Illinois, who as a member of the House of Representatives voted to overthrow the Lincoln-Johnson plan of Reconstruction, has furnished us further testimony. He says in his book, published in 1911:2 "To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of Reconstruction was a firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party and, by restoring the Democracy to power, bring back Southern supremacy and Northern vassalage." 1" John Sherman's Recollections," vol. I, p. 361. |