"... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." CHAPTER XXXV RECONSTRUCTION soldiers PEACE brought new problems. The North paid off its million men under arms, and sent them to their homes at the rate of one or two hundred thousand a month. Return At the close of 1865, only some fifty thousand re- of the mained, to garrison the South. The disbanded "old soldiers" found place in the industry of the country without disturbing the usual order. In part this remarkable fact was due to "free land." Many thousands who saw no opening in their old homes became "homesteaders" in the West. The government, too, sharply reduced internal taxes. At the same time, after 1869, it cut down the huge national debt resolutely so that by 1890 half of it had been paid, including the paper money. For the wrecked South, the problems were infinitely more difficult. Its "old soldiers" toiled homeward painfully, mostly on foot, from Northern prison camps and from surrendered armies. In some districts, remote from the march of the Union armies, there was still abundance of food, with the Negroes at work in the fields; but over wide areas the returned soldier found his home in ashes, his stock carried off, his family scattered, the labor system utterly gone. Many an aristocrat, who in April had ruled a veteran regiment, in July was hunting desperately for a mule,' that he might plow an acre or two, to raise food wherewith to keep his delicately nurtured family from starvation. The destruction of bridges and tearing up of railroads left the various districts isolated; and industrial life had to be built up again from primitive conditions. No praise is too great 1 At Lee's surrender, General Grant, with characteristic good sense and generosity, had told the men to keep their horses, which, said he, they would need for the spring work. This practice, followed by other Union commanders, lightened in some slight degree the suffering of the South. for the quiet heroism with which the men of the South set themselves to this crushing task. The Before the end of the war, the Negroes had begun to flock to the Federal camps; and, in March, 1865, Congress had found it necessary to establish a "Freedman's Bureau," to feed these helpless multitudes, to start schools for them, and to stand to them in the place of guardian. This organization rendered great service; but, in spite of all it could do, hundreds of thousands of ex-slaves drifted aimlessly about the country for months. To many of them, freedom meant chiefly idleness. Others had caught up a strange delusion that the government was going to give to each one "forty acres and a mule." When starvation finally drove them back to desultory work, the habits they had formed led to much violence and crime. The problems for the South were (1) to find food for its people; (2) to protect and control and uplift the Negro and The problems of the South bring him back into the industrial system; (3) to build new State governments; and (4) to restore these reconstructed States to their old relation to the Union. Unfortunately, in practice, the second and third of these problems had to depend upon the fourth; and this problem the victorious North, after the assassination of Lincoln and the return of its emaciated prisoners, was in no mood to solve in the best way. For twelve years (1865–1876), though war had ceased, a "state of war" continued. The South was garrisoned by Federal troops, and much of it was ruled by conquering generals as though it were a hostile country. Political organization was more completely wrecked even than the industrial system. The military government preserved order; but civil liberties were in doubt, and civil government was lacking. Lincoln's Lincoln had held that the "States" could not go out of the Union, and that their normal relations to the Union were merely interrupted temporarily by illegal "combinations of individuals." Even while the construction war was in progress, he had tried to "reconstruct' such States as had been occupied by the Union armies. plan for re . ANDREW JOHNSON AND CONGRESS 557 "Louisiana," said he, in 1862, when the Confederate armies had been driven from that State, "has nothing to do now but to take her place in the Union as it wasbarring the broken eggs." In 1863 he issued a proclamation of amnesty for all Southerners (with a few specified exceptions) who would take an oath of allegiance to the Union; and he promised to recognize any State government set up by such persons, if only they made 10 per cent of the number of voters in 1860. But more "radical" Republicans began to fear that the "rebels," getting back so easily into the Union, might win control of the Federal government and undo the results of the war. So in July, 1864, Congress passed the "DavisWade bill," to make the process of reconstruction more difficult and to place control of it in Congress. Lincoln killed this bill by a pocket veto; and during the summer recess of Congress, upon his own responsibility, he recognized" the "ten per cent governments" in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Later, like action was taken for Virginia. But Representatives and Senators from these States had not been admitted by Congress when Vice President Johnson became President. 66 Andrew Johnson was the son of "Poor White" parents, and had learned to write only after marriage, from his wife. His youth was passed as an apprentice to a tailor, and he afterward followed that trade (page 437). He Andrew had great native ability and a rugged integrity. Johnson Even in the aristocratic South, before the war, he had risen from his tailor's bench to the governorship of his State and to a seat in Congress. He had never been a Republican; but he had been a devoted "Union man" in Tennessee, and in 1863-1864 he had shown courage and force of character as military governor there under Lincoln. The Republican National Convention of 1864 nominated him for the Vice Presidency in recognition of the nation's debt to the "War Democrats." But, with all his ability and honesty, Johnson never made good the defects of his early training. He was unduly pugnacious, sadly lacking in tact and good taste, |