"HE SAT STARING INTO THE BLANKNESS OF THE LITTLE ROOM"
After a few minutes he ceased reading and sat, picking at the edge of the paper, staring into the blankness of the little room. He stayed thus immovable for a long, long time, and then slowly the tears slipped across his cheeks, down on the forgotten "notice," his throat ached with a tender sobbing, and he bowed his head into the newspaper.
He was thinking of the children; he had made them laugh and cry. And this was the thrill, once more, of the singer's heart.
THE REPUDIATION
OF
JOHNSON'S POLICY
BY
CARL SCHURZ
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
In consequence of the threatening situation which the President's reactionary policy had precipitated, the belief grew stronger and stronger in the Northern country that the predominance of the Republican party was—and would be for a few years, at least—necessary for the safety and the honor of the Republic; and steps taken to insure that predominance, even such as would have in less critical times evoked strong criticism, were now looked upon with seductive leniency of judgment. Mr. Stockton of New Jersey was unseated in the Senate upon grounds which would hardly pass muster in ordinary times, to make room for a Republican successor, and even Mr. Fessenden approved the transaction. Advantage was taken in the same body of the sickness or casual absence of some Democratic senator to rush through a vote when a two-thirds majority was required to kill a veto; and other proceedings were resorted to at a pinch which were hardly compatible with the famous "courtesy of the Senate." But there was more thorough and lasting work to be done to prepare for the full restoration of the States lately in rebellion. The Republican majority was by no means of one mind as to the constitutional status of the communities that had been in insurrection against the National Government. I have already spoken of the theory of State-suicide advanced by Mr. Stevens and a comparatively small school of extremists. The theory most popular with most of the Republicans, which was finally formulated by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, was that the rebel States had not been out of the Union, but had lost their working status inside of the Union, and had to be restored to their regular constitutional relations to the Union by action of Congress, upon such conditions as Congress might deem proper.
To meet the dangers which so far had become visible on the horizon, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction devised the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was long and laboriously debated in both Houses. In the form in which it was finally adopted it declared (1) that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the States in which they reside, and that no State shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens, nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws; (2) that if in any State the right to vote at any election for the choice of national or State officers is denied or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation in Congress or the electoral college shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State; (3) that no person who had taken part in the rebellion, having previously, as a national or State officer, military or civil, sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or any State, unless relieved of that disability by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress; (4) that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned, nor shall any debt or obligation contracted in aid of rebellion, or any claim for emancipated slaves be paid.