Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction

by Charles H. McCarthy

On March 22 the bill came before the House on the question of ordering it to be engrossed and read a third time. In its support Mr. Davis made an able address in which he analyzed the plan proposed by the Executive and emphasized its deficiencies. He said:

The bill which I am directed by the Committee on the Rebellious States to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government in States whose governments have been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions as will secure not merely civil government to the people of the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion.

The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder; of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation.

... It is entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion; and the relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion toward the United States, not less of those who think that the rebellion has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the protection of the Constitution, and that Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them as conquered enemies, than of that other class who think that they have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though incapable of exercising political privileges under the Constitution, but that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Constitution to guarantee republican governments in the States, and that this is the proper time and the proper mode of exercising it. It is also entitled to the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of the House, who honestly and deliberately express their judgment that slavery is dead. To them it puts the question whether it is not advisable to bury it out of our sight, that its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our propriety.

It does not address itself to that class of gentlemen upon the other side of the House, if there be any, nor to that class of the people of the country who look for political alliance to the men who head the rebellion in the South....

It purports, sir, not to exercise a revolutionary authority, but to be an execution of the Constitution of the United States, of the fourth section of the fourth article of that Constitution, which not merely confers the power upon Congress, but imposes upon Congress the duty of guaranteeing to every State in this Union a republican form of government. That clause vests in the Congress of the United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited political jurisdiction, paramount over courts, subject only to the judgment of the people of the United States, embracing within its scope every legislative measure necessary and proper to make it effectual; and what is necessary and proper the Constitution refers, in the first place, to our judgment, subject to no revision but that of the people. It recognizes no other tribunal. It recognizes the judgment of no court. It refers to no authority except the judgment and will of the majority of Congress, and of the people on that judgment, if any appeal from it.

[Secession he described as] the act of the people of the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act. And therefore it must be either a legal revolution which makes them independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection of governments which do not recognize the Constitution of the United States, which the Constitution does not recognize, and, therefore, not republican governments of the States in rebellion. The latter is the view which all parties take of it. I do not understand that any gentleman on the other side of the House says that any rebel government which does not recognize the Constitution of the United States, and which is not recognized by Congress, is a State government within the meaning of the Constitution. Still less can it be said that there is a State government, republican or un-republican, in the State of Tennessee, where there is no government of any kind, no civil authority, no organized form of administration except that represented by the flag of the United States, obeying the will, and under the orders of the military officer in command. It is the language of the President of the United States in every proclamation, of Congress in every law on the statute-book, of both Houses in their forms of proceeding, and of the Courts of the United States in their administration of the law. It is the result of every principle of law, of every suggestion of political philosophy, that there can be no republican government within the limits of the United States that does not recognize, but does repudiate, the Constitution, and which the President and the Congress of the United States do not, on their part, recognize. Those that are here represented are the only governments existing within the limits of the United States. Those that are not here represented are not governments of the States, republican under the Constitution. And if they be not, then they are military usurpations, inaugurated as the permanent governments of the States, contrary to the supreme law of the land, arrayed in arms against the Government of the United States; and it is the duty, the first and highest duty, of the Government to suppress and expel them. Congress must either expel, or recognize and support them. If it do not guarantee them, it is bound to expel them; and they who are not ready to suppress them are bound to recognize them.

“In the famous Rhode Island cases,” he continued, the Supreme Court of the United States by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, declared “that a military government, established as the permanent government of a State, is not a republican government in the meaning of the Constitution, and that it is the duty of Congress to suppress it. That duty Congress is now executing by its armies. He [Justice Taney] further said in that case that it is the exclusive prerogative of Congress—of Congress, and not of the President—to determine what is and what is not the established government of the State; and, to come to that conclusion, it must judge of what is and what is not a republican government, and its judgment is conclusive on the Supreme Court, which cannot judge of the fact for itself, but accepts the fact declared by the political department of the Government.”

Mr. Davis resumed:

We are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of the authority of the State government. When that shall have been accomplished, there will be no form of State authority in existence which Congress can recognize. Our success will be the overthrow of all semblance of government in the rebel States. The Government of the United States is then, in fact, the only Government existing in those States, and it is there charged to guarantee them republican governments.