Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction

by Charles H. McCarthy

I propose to levy that tax, and collect it as a war measure. I would levy a tax wherever I can upon these conquered provinces, just as all nations levy them upon provinces and nations they conquer. If my views and principles are right, I would not only collect that tax, but I would, as a necessary war measure, take every particle of property, real and personal, life estate and reversion, of every disloyal man, and sell it for the benefit of the nation in carrying on this war. We have such power and we are to treat them simply as provinces to be conquered, and as a nation fighting in hostility to us until we do conquer them. To me it is a great absurdity to say that men, by millions, in arms, shall claim the protection of the provisions of the Constitution and laws made for loyal men, while they do not obey one of those laws, but repudiate their binding effect. There never was a principle more clear than that every obligation, whether in a national or civil point of view, in order to be binding, must be reciprocal; and that the moment the duty ceases upon the one part, the obligation ceases upon the other; and that, in my judgment, is precisely the condition of the rebel States now.

The secession ordinance of South Carolina he characterized in response to an inquiry as an act of treason and rebellion, and when asked whether the backing up of these ordinances by armed force imparted to them any validity, he replied: “I hold that so long as they remain in force against us as a belligerent power, and until they are conquered, it is in fact an existing operation. I will not say anything about its legality. [Laughter.] I hold that it is an existing fact, and that so far from enforcing any laws, you have not the power.”

To Mr. Yeaman, who asked whether those people were then citizens of the United States, or whether they formed an independent nation, and if the latter whence was derived the right or the authority to wage war against them, and to tax them for the support of that war, Stevens answered: “I hold that the Constitution, in the first place, so far operated that when they went into secession and armed rebellion they committed treason; and that when they so combined themselves as to make themselves admitted as belligerents—not merely as men in insurrection, but as belligerents—they did acquire the right to be treated as prisoners of war, and all the other rights which pertain to belligerents under the laws of nations.”

Some members held in utter abhorrence the principles of the Pennsylvania leader; others were astonished at their boldness. It was in the course of this discussion, participated in by many Representatives, that Stevens defined his existing as well as his past relations to his party, and referred, not without a touch of pride, to the fact that hitherto he had pointed out the way for the Republican majority—in short, that he had been the political prophet of his party. He declared:

I know perfectly well, as I said before, I do not speak the sentiments of this side of the House as a party. I know more than that: that for the last fifteen years I have always been a step ahead of the party I have acted with in these matters; but I have never been so far ahead with the exception of the principles I now enunciate, but that the members of the party have overtaken me and gone ahead; and they, together with the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Olin] will again overtake me and go with me, before this infamous and bloody rebellion is ended. They will find that they cannot execute the Constitution in the seceding States; that it is a total nullity there; and that this war must be carried on upon principles wholly independent of it. They will come to the conclusion that the adoption of the measures I advocated at the outset of the war, the arming of the negroes, the slaves of the rebels, is the only way left on earth in which these rebels can be exterminated. They will find that they must treat those States now outside of the Union as conquered provinces and settle them with new men, and drive the present rebels as exiles from this country; for I tell you they have the pluck and endurance for which I gave them credit a year and a half ago in a speech which I made, but which was not relished on this side of the House, nor by the people in the free States. They have such determination, energy, and endurance, that nothing but actual extermination or exile or starvation will ever induce them to surrender to this Government. I do not ask gentlemen to indorse my views, nor do I speak for anybody but myself; but in order that I may have some credit for sagacity, I ask that gentlemen will write this down in their memories. It will not be two years before they will call it up, or before they will adopt my views, or adopt the other alternative of a disgraceful submission by this side of the country.[^[300]]

For himself, for the Administration and for the Republican party even so radical an anti-slavery man as Owen Lovejoy made haste to repudiate these extreme opinions.

In debate, January 22, 1864, Stevens enunciated still more clearly the fundamental principles of his system. “I mean to say,” he declared on that occasion, “that if a State, as a State, makes war upon the Government and becomes a belligerent power, we treat it as a foreign nation, and when we conquer it we treat it just as we do any other foreign nation.” “There can be no neutrals,” he added, “in a hostile State.” If loyal people domiciled in the South desired to avoid punishment or the hardships of public enemies, they should change their place of residence.

Relative to discerning the State in the Union minority he observed: “If ten men fit to save Sodom can elect a Governor and other State officers for and against the eleven hundred thousand Sodomites in Virginia, then the democratic doctrine that the majority shall rule is discarded and dangerously ignored. When the doctrine that the quality and not the number of voters is to decide the right to govern, then we are no longer a republic, but the worst form of despotism.” It was a mere mockery, he affirmed, to say that a tithe of the residents, because they were holier or more loyal than others, could change the form and administer the government of an organized State. The people who took a State out of the Union were subject to the laws of the commonwealth, and, so far as the General Government is concerned, subject to the laws of war and of nations, both while the war continued and when it ended.[^[301]]

Northern Democrats, from the beginning to the end of reconstruction, were consistent advocates of a doctrine which involved no contradictions like the system of Sumner and no element of vindictiveness like the “conquered province” theory of Stevens. Ordinances of secession they held to be null and void; these measures in no way impaired the vitality or contracted the scope of the Constitution because the power by which they were temporarily maintained, however near to attaining its object, had not been crowned with success. The result of the conflict could alone determine whether the bond of union between the seceding and the loyal States had been severed. Armed resistance to the supreme law was treason in those so engaged, even though such resistance was decreed by States. Ante bellum relations would continue unimpaired if the General Government succeeded in suppressing the rebellion. This doctrine, once a State in the Union always a State, was, so far, in harmony with the policy adopted by the Administration at the commencement of hostilities.

With all the following propositions, however, the policy of the Government was not in entire accord, nor, indeed, was it in exact conformity with the principles above ascribed to the President. The people of a State, the Democratic leaders asserted, are the State, in the widest sense of that term, and they make its fundamental law; to be their constitution it must be their unrestrained and voluntary act, not a result of coercion or intimidation. When they have freely acted, then the only essential conditions of a State constitution, in its Federal relations, are that it should be republican in form and not conflict with the Constitution of the United States. South Carolina, for example, was made a member of the Union by the Constitution and the consent of her people; except successful revolution no other power could unmake her. That revolution being unsuccessful she was still in the Union. The idea that a State was partly out of and partly in the Union, Democratic doctrine regarded as an absurdity. State officers, indeed, could commit suicide; a majority of its people could commit suicide; but the State did not, therefore, cease to exist, for the idea of a State involved the fourfold notion of a defined territory, people occupying it, functions constituting a system of government and officers to administer it.