Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace Society, wrote from Boston:—
“I had some difficulty for a time about your Territorial views; but I am coming fully to the conclusion that we must deal with all rebellion in some such way, before the South can be brought to any terms. We must have and keep them all in our grasp, until they prove themselves, by their good behavior, fit to come again into the Union.”
Charles Husband, an intelligent citizen, whose correspondence was always valuable, wrote from Taunton, Massachusetts:—
“I have to thank you for a copy of your Resolutions, and perhaps you will not deem me intrusive, if I wish you a hearty God-speed in the work you have undertaken,—a work the successful accomplishment of which is large enough to fill the measure of the highest ambition,—a work which will redeem the nation from its low estate, which asserts the nation’s sovereignty and self-existence, instead of ‘borrowing leave to be,’—which demands for the nation the paramount allegiance of every inhabitant of its territory, and sweeps away every institution which interposes itself between the nation and that allegiance,—which calls the Government from being the minister of oppression and the mere dispenser of patronage, to take upon itself the high purposes and duties for which ‘governments are instituted among men,’—which transmutes four millions of chattels into men.
“Allow me to suggest (although it has not, probably, escaped your notice), that the constitutional requirement, that every legislative, executive, and judicial officer in the States shall be sworn to the support of the Constitution of the United States, leaves the whole of the Rebel territory without a civil officer whom the Government can recognize, as every such pretended officer is just as much a usurper in the eye of the Constitution as Jefferson Davis himself.”
Henry Hoyt, publisher and bookseller, wrote from Boston:—
“I cannot sleep another night till I have thanked you from the bottom of my heart for your bill resolving Rebeldom into Territorial relations again. Of all measures ever introduced into Congress, nothing so completely meets the case of the present exigency of our country’s history, and nothing but this can make the confederacy of the whole land stand in safety a single year. We may continue to win battles, but, so long as the ruins of Slavery exist in the body politic, we shall stand on a volcano.”
But the most important commentary on the Resolutions is found in the measures of Reconstruction subsequently adopted, all of which stand on the power of Congress over the Rebel States, which they positively assert, including especially the power and duty to guaranty a republican form of government.
The Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, drawn up by its Chairman, Mr. Fessenden, asserted that the Rebel States “having voluntarily renounced the right to representation, and disqualified themselves by crime from participating in the Government, the burden now rests upon them, before claiming to be reinstated in their former condition, to show that they are qualified to resume Federal relations.” It then laid down the rule:—