Chapters VIII., IX. and X. trace the progress of the controversy between the Legislative and the Executive branches of Government. The culmination of this difference, however, in the impeachment and trial of President Johnson is a phase of Congressional Reconstruction.
The topics treated in the eleventh chapter, having frequently employed the pens of able and popular writers on the Rebellion, are considered in this study merely for the purpose of making it complete in itself; hence that section is little more than an epitome of what has already been said on those subjects.
The twelfth and last chapter brings every part of the narrative up to December 4, 1865. To clearly comprehend the arduous task that confronted President Johnson this section includes a rapid survey of the wreck of the Confederate States. The principal part, however, is reserved for an account of the conventions assembled under his authority, the method of instituting loyal governments and the spirit and tendency of Southern legislation relative to freedmen. An examination of the Presidential plan of Reconstruction completes the volume.
Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction
I
TENNESSEE
While the celebrated joint debates with Senator Douglas in 1858, the Cooper Union and other addresses, marked Mr. Lincoln, in the new political party just rising to power, as the intellectual peer of able and trusted leaders like Sumner, Chase and Seward, his conservative opinions on the subject of slavery made his nomination by the Chicago Convention more acceptable to delegates from the border States. Though his competitors received, in the memorable contest which followed, almost a million votes in excess of the number cast for Mr. Lincoln and his associate, the fierce conflict among fragments of the Democratic party resulted, as is well known, in the choice of a decided majority of Republican electors.[[1]] This rather unexpected defeat of a political organization that had lost but two Presidential contests since its first success under Jefferson afforded Southern leaders a pretext for urging a dismemberment of the Union. Indeed, there is evidence that the more impetuous among them had, four years earlier, seriously determined, in case of Fremont’s election, upon a similar course.[[2]] Thus the present event, so far from being an universal disappointment to members of the defeated party, had been ardently hoped for by many.
The choice of a minority party, and not at first possessing the entire confidence of even that minority, Mr. Lincoln, unable to divine the future, was compelled in dealing with the insurrection to proceed with the utmost caution. Washington himself, in organizing the Federal Government, had a task of less magnitude, and the renown of his military achievements silenced for a time even the boldest in opposition. President Lincoln’s victories, gained on a different field, gave no such unquestioned authority to his name. This peculiar situation forced him to adopt for the guidance of his administration a policy not altogether free from embarrassment to both himself and his successor. His purpose at that time appears to have been to meet the demands of the moment by the contrivances of the moment. Whether a different course would have been rewarded by earlier or by more complete success is a hazardous subject for speculation. If his theory of our national existence be liable to the multitude of objections which have grown up in these fruitful times of peace, no other has been suggested that is free from criticism. His political doctrine, too, had the advantage of always recommending measures scarcely less distinguished for enlarged views than those enlightened convictions which characterize his first inaugural address. Whatever may be concluded of its merits, the theory embraced at the outset exerted on many administrative acts of President Lincoln an influence that continued to be felt during his entire executive career; and without remembering this fact we shall not easily comprehend either the extent of his “Border Policy,” as the plan of compensated emancipation is often called, or his undoubted concern for persecuted Union men in the seceded States.
The sufferings of loyal citizens in East Tennessee had early enlisted the President’s sympathies, and almost from the commencement of hostilities measures for their relief formed in his mind part of the plan of operations by the army under General Buell. Writing, January 6, 1862, to that commander he gives reasons for suggesting the occupation of some point there rather than Nashville, and adds: “But my distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even now, I fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection. In this we lose the most valuable stake we have in the South.”[[3]] The cause of these outrages may be briefly explained in a digression.
In no part of the late Confederate States was the slave interest more feeble than in the thirty counties comprising East Tennessee.[[4]] That portion of the State contained in 1860 slightly over 300,000 inhabitants,[[5]] of whom only about one tenth were slaves, while in many counties they formed no more than one in seventeen of the population. Here and there, indeed, were persons of wealth some of whom owned a few negroes. But though a majority of the people looked upon domestic slavery as something foreign to their social life, they had no strong philanthropic impulse to oppose it. While quite willing to allow their countrymen elsewhere to keep bondmen at pleasure, they did not regard it any concern of theirs to assist either in extending or perpetuating human servitude. If the existence of the Union or of slavery was the issue, they would have hesitated little in deciding which should perish. Though, as we shall presently see, they were as intolerant of the Republican party as any community in the South, they were devotedly attached to the Union. The fact is partly explained by the industrial basis of society in this favored region.
Cut off from Middle Tennessee by lofty ranges of the Cumberland, and from North Carolina by the Great Smoky, the Black and the Stone mountains, this extensive district is traversed in its entire length by the Tennessee and its chief tributaries, the Clinch and the Holston; as the great river flows down to Alabama it receives, before turning west and north to join the Ohio, the waters of many important and beautiful streams, some of which, as the French Broad and Nolachucky, are associated with deeds of note in the War for Independence; indeed, one of its crowning victories was chiefly won by settlers from the banks of the Watauga. Other names, like Hiwassee, are familiar to readers of later events in Tennessee history, and Chickamauga Creek was destined shortly to become more famous than any.