their judgment of Andrew Johnson than were the writers of a generation ago.1 The study of the Johnson papers in the Library of Congress has shown him to have been wise and moderate in his political theories; and the generous tribute of his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, in his "Diary" (1911), reminds us that Johnson retained throughout his term the support of men of judgment and talent. It is almost certain today that the great majority of Americans who have any opinion on the relative merits of Johnson's plan for the reconstruction of the Southern states, and the plan thrust upon him by the radicals of Congress, prefer the former. Yet the man's tactlessness and egotism, his essential coarseness of fiber, his fatal faculty for doing even the right thing in the wrong way, chill the approval which we would fain give to his policies.

The war ended, as it had begun, in the month of April, soon after the expiration of Congress.2 Lincoln had called Congress in extra session on July 4, 1861, to ratify his acts of belligerency and to supply money for the contest. But Johnson, believing that the political restoration of the South was a subject for executive action alone, proceeded during the summer of 1865 without summoning Congress to his aid. In this he was supported by the cabinet officers, all of whom had been invited to retain their portfolios on Lincoln's death, and three of whom (Seward, McCulloch, and Welles) continued to serve to the end of Johnson's term. On May 29 the President issued a proclamation granting amnesty to those persons formerly engaged in rebellion against the authority of the United States, on condition of their taking an oath to "faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the states thereunder," and to abide by all the laws and proclamations made during the war in reference to the emancipation of the slaves. Certain classes-including military and naval offi

1 With the notable exception of James Ford Rhodes, in chapter xxx of his great work, "The History of the United States since the Compromise of 1850."

2 Technically the war was not over until President Johnson issued his peace proclamation in August, 1866, but the surrender of Lee at Appomattox in April, 1865, virtually ended hostilities.

cers of high rank, diplomatic officials of the Confederacy, men who had left their seats in Congress or on the bench or their posts in the United States army or navy to serve "the pretended government" of the Confederacy, the governors of the seceded states, and secessionists owning property taxed above $20,000 -were excluded from the benefits of the proclamation. But persons in these classes were permitted to petition the president for pardon, and were assured that clemency would be "liberally extended" to them. On the same day Johnson began his work of executive reconstruction by appointing W. W. Holden as provisional governor of North Carolina, and directing him to summon "at the earliest practicable period" a convention to revise the constitution of the state to accord with the new era of triumphant unionism and emancipation. Before the end of July similar provisions had been made for the remaining states of the secession in which Lincoln had not inaugurated loyal governments; namely, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida.

The men chosen by Johnson to conduct the reorganization of the Southern states were former Unionists of Whiggish proclivities who had reluctantly followed their section into secession. Under their direction conventions were called in all the states (except Texas), constitutions were framed, legislatures were elected, the ordinances of secession were repealed or annulled (except in Mississippi), the Confederate debt was repudiated (except in South Carolina), and senators and representatives were chosen for the ensuing session of Congress. It was one of the most critical moments in our history when the Thirty-ninth Congress convened at noon on December 4, 1865. Would the legislators recognize the "Johnson governments" by seating the members whom they had sent up to Washington? The packed galleries of the House followed with intense interest the roll call of the states, but they heard not the name of a single state of the late Confederacy-not even the President's own state of Tennessee. As soon as the few protesting voices from the floor of the House were stilled, and Speaker Colfax had finished his brief speech of acceptance, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania,

the man who was responsible for the instructions to the clerk of the House in regard to the roll call, moved that a joint committee of nine members of the House and six members of the Senate be appointed "to inquire into the condition of the states which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether they or any of them are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress." The motion was carried by a vote of 129 to 35. The next day the upper House laid upon the table the credentials of the senators elect from Mississippi. Congress had decided to ignore the work of Johnson and Lincoln alike, and to begin the reconstruction of the South de novo.

The causes for this momentous decision were many and various. During the war Congress had deferred to President Lincoln as commander in chief of the army and navy. Government by proclamation had encroached upon government by legislation. With the return of peace, however, Congress was determined to redress the balance and assert its constitutional prerogative. The adjustment of the relations of the states to the Union, it maintained, was its business and not the business of the President-especially of this "President by accident,' this Tennessee Democrat, whom the Union party, as Thaddeus Stevens growled, had gone down into "the damned rebel provinces" to pick up. Obliged to wait through the long summer and autumn in impotent impatience while Johnson's "pretended" governments were being formed in the South,1 the more radical members of Congress came to Washington in December, prepared to wreck the President's program. The harsh, cynical, vindictive septuagenarian Stevens ruled the House with a rod of iron, silencing opponents by sallies of withering sarcasm. In his eyes no punishment was too severe for the crime of rebellion. The South should be treated as a "conquered province" at the mercy of its conquerors. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the most influential radical in the Senate, was

1 Thaddeus Stevens wrote to Sumner on June 14, "If something is not done, the President will be crowned king before Congress meets." Benjamin Wade of Ohio made a futile journey to Washington to beg Johnson to convene Congress in extra session.

moved less by vengeance than by "principle." He was an uncompromising theorist, obsessed with the humanitarian doctrine of the equal virtues and capacities of black men and white, and therefore insistent upon full political and civil rights for the negro in the South. Stevens abhorred the program of the President chiefly because it let the South off too easily; Sumner, because it did not include negro suffrage.

Furthermore, the majority of Congress believed that to accept the hastily reconstructed Johnson governments as accomplished facts, and to seat their representatives and senators elect, would be to endanger the results of the war. The abolition of slavery had annulled the three-fifths rule of the Constitution, and henceforth the representation of a state in the House would be based on its total population, black and white. Might not the greatly enlarged Southern delegation to Congress combine with the "Copperhead" representatives of the North to repudiate the United States notes or assume the Confederate debt or worst of all-oust the Republicans from power? The party that saved the Union must rule it! was the Republican slogan.

But it was not alone political theory, personal animosity, or partisan anxiety that determined the course of Congress in December, 1865. The behavior of the Johnson governments themselves contributed much to their repudiation. In the first place, they had sent up to Washington as senators and representatives elect a number of men prominent in the civil or military life of the Confederacy. The legislature of Georgia even chose Alexander H. Stephens as United States senator. It would have been hard for them to find many able men who had not eventually supported secession; yet even the more moderate senators of the North deemed it intolerable that the vice president of the late Confederacy should sit with equal vote beside Charles Sumner, John Sherman, Lyman Trumbull, and William Pitt Fessenden. In the second place, the new legislatures (especially in the states where the negroes outnumbered or very nearly equaled the whites, like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana) had passed a number of laws, designated as