Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction

by Charles H. McCarthy

By which he reigns.”

In my judgment, it is not safe to confide the vast authority of State governments to the doubtful loyalty of the rebel States until armed rebellion shall have been trampled into the dust, until every armed rebel shall have vanished from the State, until there shall be in the South no hope of independence and no fear of subjection, until the United States is bearded by no military power and the laws can be executed by courts and sheriffs without the ever-present menace of military authority. Until we have reached that point, this bill proposes that the President shall appoint a civil governor to administer the government under the laws of the United States in force in the States respectively at the outbreak of the rebellion, subject, of course, to the necessities of military occupation.

When military opposition shall have been suppressed, continued Mr. Davis, then call upon the people to reorganize their governments in their own way, “subject to the conditions that we think essential to our permanent peace, and to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion....”

To establish republican forms of government that the people of the United States would agree to, three modes were indicated: “One is to remove the cause of the war by an alteration of the Constitution of the United States prohibiting slavery everywhere within its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of the matter, and should consecrate the nation’s triumph. But there are thirty-four States—three fourths of them would be twenty-six. I believe there are twenty-five States represented in this Congress, so that we, on that basis, cannot change the Constitution. It is, therefore, a condition precedent in that view of the case, that more States shall have governments organized within them.”

He next noticed the calculation based on three fourths of the States then represented in Congress, a construction held by Thaddeus Stevens, but even that view was not without its difficulties. The States of New Jersey, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware were named as doubtful. If such an amendment were adopted it still left “the whole field of the civil administration of the States prior to the recognition of State governments, all laws necessary to the ascertainment of the will of the people, and all restrictions on the return to power of the leaders of the rebellion, wholly unprovided for.” The constitutional amendment met his hearty approval, but it was not a complete remedy.

Relative to the Administration policy, he observed:

The next plan is that inaugurated by the President of the United States in the proclamation of the 8th of December, called the amnesty proclamation. That proposes no guardianship of the United States over the reorganization of the governments, no law to prescribe who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see that the law is faithfully executed, no supervising authority to control and judge of the election. But if, in any manner, by the toleration of martial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental law, under the dictation of any military authority, or under the prescriptions of a provost marshal, something in the form of a government shall be presented, represented to rest on the votes of one tenth of the population, the President will recognize that, provided it does not contravene the proclamation of freedom and the laws of Congress; and, to secure that, an oath is exacted.

Now you will observe that there is no guarantee of law to watch over the organization of that government. It may combine all the population of a State; it may combine one tenth only; or ten governments may come competing for recognition at the door of the Executive mansion. The executive authority is pledged; Congress is not pledged. It may be recognized by the military power and may not be recognized by the civil power, so that it would have a doubtful existence, half civil and half military, neither a temporary government by law of Congress nor a State government, something as unknown to the Constitution as the rebel government that refuses to recognize it.

In examining the operation of the Executive proclamation on the existence of slavery, Mr. Davis asked, how does it accomplish the reorganization of the government on the basis of universal freedom? and added:

The only prescription is that the government shall not contravene the provisions of that proclamation. Sir, if that proclamation be valid, then we are relieved from all trouble on that score; but if that proclamation be not valid, then the oath to support it is without legal sanction, for the President can ask no man to bind himself by an oath to support an unfounded proclamation or an unconstitutional law even for a moment, still less till it shall have been declared void by the Supreme Court of the United States.... If, therefore, he shall have taken the oath, he can, in good conscience as well as in good law, disregard it the next moment; so that, in point of fact, the law leaves us where the proclamation does; it adds nothing to its legality, nothing to its force.