Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction

by Charles H. McCarthy

The sixth section, he continued, provided that every person who should thereafter hold certain offices in the Confederacy was “declared not to be a citizen of the United States.” That, Mr. Eliot contended, was applying the punishment before the offence had been committed. If Congress declared that a man should for a certain offence be deprived of citizenship, could he, then, be indicted for treason subsequently committed?

The question of electing delegates to constitutional conventions presented a practical difficulty. Colored soldiers and sailors in the service were made voters by the bill; but they were not enrolled, they were not registered or credited to any county or parish; they were aggregated. They had no legal local habitation. They may have belonged to men owning plantations in several districts. The bill did not designate. With the white soldier the case was different, for he was known to belong to a certain district. If colored men entitled, because of military or naval service, to participate in the choice of delegates should be out of the service before the election occurred, and others should have taken their places, which class could vote, those in the service of the Government when the election for delegates took place, or those serving when the bill passed Congress?

Whether the difficulties pointed out were inseparable from any bill on the subject, he would not undertake to say. But in his judgment it would be unsafe for Congress to permit a measure containing such provisions to become a law. “Why,” he asked, “is it not more wise to take the States as they shall present themselves for admission?” Arkansas had acted in one way, Louisiana in another, and Tennessee was proceeding in still a different manner.

Notwithstanding his objections to some features of the Louisiana constitution, he favored her recognition. From information derived from the highest sources, he had no doubt that her Legislature would supply such deficiencies. There were influences bearing on that body which he believed could not be resisted.

Thaddeus Stevens inquired, “If Louisiana and those other States are in the Union, by what authority do we legislate for their internal police?” This provoked laughter on the Democratic side of the House. “If they are in the Union,” answered Mr. Eliot, “just as Pennsylvania is, we ought not to; but the difficulty is that they are not in the Union in that sense, to that extent, thus fully. They are not out of the Union territorially, and yet rebellion has overthrown their governments for a time, and it is needful that the Congress of the United States should intervene and should legislate.” To this the Pennsylvania leader further observed, “I understand the gentleman to say that they are partly in the Union, and partly out. About how much are they in the Union and about how much out?” This keen thrust was greeted by more laughter from the Democratic members.[^[354]]

On his motion to postpone further consideration for two weeks Mr. Wilson demanded the previous question. Henry Winter Davis appealed to him to withdraw the motion. This Mr. Wilson declined to do, upon which the Maryland member observed, “a vote to postpone is equivalent to a vote to kill the bill.” By 103 yeas to 34 nays, however, further debate was postponed till the 1st of February succeeding.[^[355]]

Though Representative Washburne, of Illinois, moved on February 7 a further postponement of two weeks, the subject was before the House again on the following day, when it went over informally. Debate was not resumed till the 20th, when Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, took the floor.

The Thirty-eighth Congress, he said, was in the last days of its last session; a bill containing the main features of the measure under consideration, though it passed both Houses, failed at the preceding session to become a law; this circumstance led him to make a careful examination of the subject. The proposed enactment was not designed to invigorate the army, the navy or the Executive; it was intended rather to follow the army. It was intended to be applied to the condition in which the army left the State. “it is an attempt,” he said, “to gather up the ‘disjecta membra’ of those States, the broken and torn fragments of those communities, and out of the chaos, as well as the ruins and debris that are left in the march of those armies, to create a State capable of discharging the functions, exercising the authority, and invoking the recognition of this Government, and of the people under which it lives....

“... The bill proceeds upon the supposition not only that there are States still existing, but that their old constitutions and laws are still in full force and operation”; for it imposed upon the provisional governor the faithful execution of those laws in force when rebellion overthrew their State governments, with the single exception of the provision touching the enforcement of laws against slavery and the mode of trial and punishment of colored people. Two remarkable features of the bill, he asserted, were those empowering the Executive in Washington, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint governors in every one of those States; then, no matter what provisions for their election existed in the State law, the President was authorized to appoint just as many and just as few officers as he pleased. It might be a judge of the highest court of judicature in the State; or it might be the humblest road-master; it might be any one or all of the countless corps between them. There was no provision in the bill that they should be even residents of the State. “An army of officers,” he continued, “in one paragraph of four lines, is here created, subject to the sole authority and control of the President of the United States.” In a Confederate report Mr. Dawes noticed that there were 13,000 of them in a single State.

“What,” he asked, “is the effect to be on the people over whom, from every quarter of this Union, broken-down politicians, men without place, foot-loose, are to be placed? Sir, it is a reproach to our Government at this hour that there are, about this capital and in the Northern States, men who have been appointed to the judgeships of district and other courts of the rebel States and Territories, drawing quarterly the salaries of those offices, although they have never been able, from the hour they received their commissions to the present moment to set foot in the States over whose courts they have been appointed. They could not go one rod into the State, positions in whose highest courts they have held for more than a year, without being hung on the first tree.... But my friend [Mr. Ashley] has reported a bill here which authorizes an army of thousands of these officeholders to go into those States, with commissions from this capital in their pockets, to lord it over the poor, miserable inhabitants left behind the army there. These rebel States may be thus converted into asylums for broken-down politicians.”