Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction

by Charles H. McCarthy

The determination of President Johnson to retain the members of Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet would indicate his original intention of applying to the subjugated States the system adopted by his predecessor. The influence which led to the modification of the method of enforcing without abandoning the principles underlying that plan it is not easy to discover. His change of attitude toward the South has been variously explained. By Mr. Blaine it has been ascribed to the flattery of Southern leaders, as well as to the personal influence of Secretary Seward, whose wide culture, and consequent humanity, would favor a policy of conciliation. Without intending to underestimate the insinuating address of the New York statesman it may be observed that his powers of persuasion appear to have exerted themselves with most success in the direction of the President’s inclination. The attention of Southern leaders, a class of men by whom the President had hitherto been ignored, deserves, however, to be noticed in any enumeration of even the probable cause of the change. Another theory has it that Mr. Johnson both feared and hated several of the leading Republicans, because of their connection with a movement to procure his resignation from the Vice-Presidency, a station which, they believed, he had disgraced by appearing in an intoxicated state to take the oath of office. His desire to punish those who had constituted themselves custodians of the national dignity, it is asserted, was a principal motive in his surrender to the South. A more reasonable explanation of the change which occurred in the President’s attitude toward his own section is that offered by Dr. Chadsey, who regards Mr. Johnson as an inconsistent advocate of State Sovereignty.[^[494]] In this principle he believed as firmly as Jefferson Davis himself, though unlike the Confederate chieftain he refused, by stopping short of secession, to accept its logical results. Nearly all his administrative acts are those which might have been expected from a Democrat of the strict construction school, and Andrew Johnson never professed allegiance to any other political party.

The governments of which the reorganization has been described in the preceding pages continued in operation until suspended by the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867. Except Texas all these establishments, as previously observed, had sent members to the Thirty-ninth Congress. Their claims to seats, it is well known, were completely ignored, and a select body, consisting of nine members from the lower and six from the upper House, was appointed to investigate the condition of the late Confederate States, and to report whether any of them were entitled to representation in either branch of Congress. With the conclusions of the celebrated Joint Committee this essay is not concerned further than to observe that on the recommendation of the majority the Tennessee delegation was admitted on the 24th of July, 1866. Long before that event, however, the task of restoring the Union had been taken altogether out of Executive hands.

If we reflect how much swifter in a political organism is the progress of ruin than that of repair, and consider that four years had been abandoned to the destruction and disorders of civil war, we cannot but be surprised at the attempt of the President, single-handed, to adapt and execute in less than three months a series of measures designed to restore tranquillity and revive prosperity among the impoverished inhabitants of a wasted country. In this view his failure in the work of reconstruction can excite little astonishment. One reason for this precipitate action was a desire to reunite the sections before the meeting of Congress, and it was so far a praiseworthy if not a prudent course to adopt. But had he proceeded ever so leisurely there would still have existed undoubted obstacles to success. To say that he was lacking in the tact of his predecessor, that he was naturally of an obstinate and even of a combative disposition, and that he possessed defects, both of temper and judgment, would be merely to repeat a few trite observations.[^[495]] Conditions were rapidly changing, but with Mr. Johnson, conditions passed for almost nothing, though in reality circumstances make legislative acts beneficial or otherwise. Like the measures of the Thirty-eighth Congress for restoring the Union, those of Mr. Johnson may be carefully examined without discovering any considerable traces of originality. Indeed, if we except President Lincoln, this entire period seems to have been somewhat lacking in constructive statesmanship, though no branch of the public service was without officials of integrity, judgment and ability.

In the course of the preceding pages the inaugurals, the messages, the letters and other communications of Mr. Lincoln have been freely quoted to show his opinions on all of the principal and most of the subordinate phases of reconstruction. To complete the design of this inquiry, there remains to be considered but a single topic related to the main theme, namely, the limitations of the Presidential plan for restoring the Union. Many of these defects having been incidentally noticed, a general recapitulation does not appear to be required, and the subject, it is believed, may be appropriately concluded by an examination of those features of the Executive system which the narrative has not hitherto sufficiently emphasized.

This summary disclaims, however, any intention of attempting the absurdity of testing the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln by contrasting a method of reconstruction proposed in 1863 with that deemed adequate by Congress to meet the changed conditions of 1867. We may, indeed, fairly and even profitably compare the sentiments of the two political departments in the summer of 1864, when, for the first time during the war, they were arrayed in opposition on a fundamental policy of civil administration. Because of its variance with received notions of representative government, the so-called “ten per cent. principle” will be first considered.

The proportion of the political people that Mr. Lincoln offered to recognize as constituting a State encountered, probably, more opposition than any single feature of his plan. While its merits and its defects were equally evident, the latter, as might be expected, were given by its adversaries the place of prominence in all their criticisms. Exception was taken as well to the legality as to the expediency of the principle. The former has been fully discussed, and on that subject all that need be observed is that President Lincoln believed it constitutional to preserve the Union, and every measure conducive to that end he regarded as lawful.

On the question of expediency, however, several considerations suggest themselves. Apart from its repugnance to the American idea of majority rule, its palpable weakness was that governments founded on the consent of a minimum proportion of the electors would require the support of Federal power. Here occurs the question, did the forces thus engaged so greatly impair the efficiency of the main armies as sensibly to retard the work of destroying the enemy? It cannot be denied that there were occasions when a few additional regiments could have been employed to advantage; but neither the reverses nor the disasters of the Union armies were caused by lack of numbers so much as by the need early in the war of commanders of military genius. On the other hand, the troops who sustained the new governments, besides weakening the Confederacy, were affording protection to organizations that otherwise could not have been recruited. There is record of not less than sixty-five regiments furnished by the States restored during the Presidency of Mr. Lincoln.[^[496]] But even more important than this gratifying result was the influence which the reinstatement of four seceding commonwealths exerted on the attitude of those European powers which had proved early in the conflict their hostility to the United States. The “Johnson governments,” so-called, were never required to furnish any such unquestioned evidence of reviving loyalty, and that fact should not be overlooked in any comparison of the results accomplished by the two Executives.

Notwithstanding the general existence of a strong opposition to minority rule, the revolutionary proceedings in western Virginia were sanctioned by every department of Government. Members from the loyal eastern counties were at first admitted to seats in both branches of Congress; their successors, however, were in turn refused this indulgence until there was presented the novel spectacle of a single Senator representing the diminished glory of the Old Dominion. Louisiana, too, which for a few days was heard in the lower House, was subsequently excluded altogether by the changing views of Congress. The revived bill of Wade and Davis provided in one of its many forms for recognizing that State as well as Arkansas, and even when the extremists obtained control of Congress the loyal government organized in Tennessee was approved by avowed opponents of the Executive plan. Mr. Lincoln, indeed, clearly perceived the inherent weakness of his system, and no one could have been more anxious than he to secure a wider constituency. These facts seem to indicate that between him and Congress there was not then so wide a gulf as, for partisan purposes, is sometimes represented. It is true that there was a difference of principle between the two departments; that there was a powerful party in Congress who believed that reconstruction was essentially a work of peace and, therefore, pertained exclusively to the national Legislature. The holders of this view were, doubtless, confirmed in their opinion by a conviction that the Executive was encroaching on a coördinate branch of government.

The Presidential system as well as the contemporary theory of Congress restricted the suffrage of whites, by whom it was almost universally engrossed at the foundation of the Republic. On the ground of justice and to encourage the cultivation of civic virtues among the negroes, Mr. Lincoln would admit those qualified to exercise this important privilege. His successor acknowledged in a private communication that for party purposes he favored some extension of the elective franchise to freedmen. Though Congress advanced rapidly toward negro suffrage, the first essay of that body in the work of reconstruction included no provision for conferring on the colored race a right to participate in government. By Wade and Davis it was not then deemed necessary even as a defensive power. Only a few bold innovators, considered almost fanatic on the question, were in favor of bestowing the right to vote on the multitudes maintained by the Freedmen’s Bureau; it was not then deemed within the commission of the general Government, the teachings of political science were still respected by the majority in Congress, and the fruits of victory, it was hoped, could be secured without a resort to radical measures.

The form of an oath to support the proclamations and laws respecting slavery appeared in the Presidential plan as a condition indispensable to reinstatement. On this subject the difference between the Executive and Congress was merely one of degree; for the Wade-Davis bill, doubtless in imitation of the Presidential system, imposed terms precedent, and the new constitutions were to repudiate the rebel debt, abolish slavery and prohibit the higher insurgent officials, civil as well as military, from holding the office of governor, from serving in the State legislatures and even from voting.