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ment was imminent. By the Constitution, the right of removal was secured as the plain prerogative of the President. The Tenure Act, made into law in the heat of the controversy, required concurrent action on the part of the Senate for removing as well as appointing constitutional officers. The law was generally held to be illegal, but had not yet been so reported by the competent tribunal. The President sought to force an opinion from the Supreme Court by having the secretary ad interim refuse to obey the operation of the Tenure Act, which, according to the senatorial view, restored Stanton, as his removal had not been approved by the conferring body. To regard the law as void, and have the position ratified by the court, was the policy of the Executive. Grant determined to yield the place on the theory that all laws legally enacted were binding, until overset by judicial process. The plan of the President was revolutionary; that of Grant in conformity to the soundest precepts of law and order. It was an emergency fraught with the most alarming symptoms. The body politic was in an excited and inflammable state. The least mistake would lead to deplorable results. To yield to the President would have been a dangerous precedent in the direction of Executive innovation. The hatred of the contending powers was as relentless as the hostility that Rome held for Carthage. It was fortunate for both the liberties and the integrity of the republic that the secretary ad interim was

the real power in the land. Holding with firm hand the army; having the profoundest respect for the law; keeping step to the loyal needs of the hour, he declined to second the President in his open disregard of statutes rightfully passed; and thus by his patriotic conduct he held the nation to its constitutional restraints.

Grant wrote to the President a letter, of which the following is the conclusion:

"The course you would have it understood I agreed to pursue was in violation of law, and without orders from you; while the course I did pursue, and which I never doubted you fully understood, was in accordance with law, and not in disobedience of any orders of my superior.

"And now, Mr. President, when my honor as a soldier and integrity as a man have been so violently assailed, pardon me for saying that I can but regard this whole matter from the beginning to the end as an attempt to involve me in the resistance of law, for which you hesitated to assume the responsibility in orders, and thus to destroy my character before the country. I am in a measure confirmed in this conclusion by your recent orders directing me to disobey orders from the secretary of war-my superior and your subordinate - — without having countermanded his authority to issue the orders I am to disobey. With the assurance, Mr. President, that nothing less than a vindication of my personal honor and character could have induced this correspondence on my part,

"I have the honor to be very respectfully your obedient servant,

"U. S. GRANT, General."

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CHAPTER XV.

THE CHANGED CONSTITUTION.

THE North was forced by events to take ultra ground on Reconstruction. Many who hesitated at first were compelled to yield their objections. The attitude of the late rebels had become so offensive and unbearable, that popular indignation was at white heat. Northern justice recoiled with horror at the saturnalia of blood in New Orleans, where Republicans, white and black, were shot down like cattle. "Conciliation" sounded farcical, and "hand-shaking" seemed a mockery when one political opinion was reason for murder, and a meeting of freemen the occasion of massacre. The press of the South was saturated with venom, and full of loathsome abuse of "the institutions and people" of the loyal States. Persecution, terrible and relentless, was dealt out to the loyalists of the South. Sworn testimony gave it that "the national banner is openly insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at public meetings." It was an open revolt on the part of the South against the proposed methods of settlement, only suppressed by the superior military status of the

central government. The blacks were the subject of "malicious hatred" by the whites. The predjudice against color, being deep-seated, manifested itself in a “denial of civil equality" to the freedmen, and "an aversion shown towards them in an insulting and cruel manner.”

The attempt was made to substitute through legislation the serfdom once regulated by the lash. Hostility to the Federal Union as it was comprehended by the North; detestation of Federal officers, military and civil; social ostracism for Northern settlers in the South, displayed in an open contempt for "Yankees" by women and children, whose sullenness and scorn were inborn and incurable, were among the provocations which instigated a committee of Congress to report on the affairs of the nation: "In return for our kind desire for a resumption of fraternal relations, we receive only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we have punished is paraded as a virtue; and the principles of republican government, we have vindicated at so terrible cost, are denounced as unjust and oppressive." This condition of the South so influenced the North in the year 1866, that the people, with the force of great numbers, determined on the most radical method of Reconstruction. The adoption of the Amendments was secured by the election of that year. The nature of the Constitution, when amended, was totally changed. The change was fundamental: it struck deep,

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and lifted citizenship out of the limitations of the State, and placed the life, liberty, protection, and privileges of the citizen under the jurisdiction of the nation. The changed Constitution made declaration to the effect, that the flag covered every American, whether found on his native or on

foreign soil. It guaranteed to every qualified American a free vote, to be counted once, and but once in each instance, when thrown; the unintimidated vote and the impartial count to be assured with the whole strength of the people. So citizenship, like territorial unity and the public honor, was to be the task of the sovereign nation, and not the affair of the separate State.

The American people, with great deliberation and full realization of the bearing and consequence of their action, changed their Constitution to endow with equal citizenship the black race whom their victorious arms had liberated. Remembering the fidelity of that race to the cause of the Union, its readiness to share all it possessed for the comfort and safety of the loyal soldier; recalling its welcome to our banners in a hostile land, its service as guides to our armies, and its contribution to our exhausted ranks; knowing that no sacrifice was too great for it to make, no task too hard to perform, no watchfulness or labor too exacting to render for loyalty, the people put it into their changed Constitution, with all the solemnity of the amending power, that, by the organic law, no rebel should come back into the

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