The attitude of the convention toward the military authorities was most cordial. On December 20, a reception was given to Pope. The general made a speech and received an ovation.[269] Resolutions of friendship and gratitude were voted him on his departure.[270] Meade, on his arrival, received resolutions of welcome,[271] and resolutions of friendly import on various other occasions.[272] Meade did not entirely reciprocate this cordiality.

Toward Congress the convention was not only cordial; it was almost filial. Not only was the United States government eloquently thanked for its magnanimity,[273] but it was appealed to by the convention as a kind parent by a child confident of favor. It was petitioned to appropriate thirty million dollars to be loaned on mortgage to southern planters;[274] to loan a hundred thousand dollars to the South Georgia and Florida railroad,[275] and “to make a liberal appropriation” for building the proposed Air Line railroad.[276]

The constitutional convention of 1865 had met on October 25, and adjourned on November 8, thus completing its work in fourteen days. This dispatch, as well as the style of its resolutions and of the speeches of its members,[277] had marked it as a body where good taste, decorum and public spirit prevailed.

The reconstruction convention met on December 9, 1867, and continued in session (excepting a recess from December 24 to January 7), until March 11, 1868. The first article of the new constitution on which the convention took action was reported on January 9.[278] Before that time many resolutions and ordinances were introduced. Most of them related to “relief” (such as suspension of tax collections, homestead exemption, stay of execution for debt, etc.), or to the pay and mileage of delegates, and only rarely was anything said about the constitution. On December 16 the more conscientious members secured the appointment of a committee to inquire whether the convention had power to do any business besides frame a constitution.[279] This committee did not discuss the law of the question, but recommended on moral grounds a resolution to this effect:

That all ordinances or other matter ... already introduced and pending are hereby indefinitely postponed; and in future no ordinance or other matter ... not necessarily connected with the fundamental law shall be entertained by this convention [except relief legislation].

This report met with vigorous opposition. It was saved from the table by two votes. But it was adopted.[280] The contemporary Conservative press describes the convention as very infamous and very disgusting.[281] It contained thirty-three negroes, and the transactions recorded in the official journal show that it was composed largely of men of low character.

Hence, to many of the delegates, framing the constitution was only a minor incident of the convention, and the main part of that work was left to a small number of men. Their work shows intelligence and ability. Moreover, in the records of the convention there are not wanting traces of that undoubted public spirit which animated many of the supporters of reconstruction—the honest desire to repair and develop the material welfare of the state. This spirit is evident in the speeches we have cited, and in some of the resolutions.

We have stated how the campaign of 1868 resulted in giving the governorship to the Republicans and a majority of twenty-nine in the legislature to the Conservatives; how Governor Bullock tried to reduce that majority through Meade, and how Meade refused his aid; and how the majority was more than doubled by the expulsion of the negroes and the seating of the minority candidates. From that time to the reorganization of the legislature in 1870, the most remarkable fact in the state politics was the hostility between the governor and the legislature.

After the expulsion of the negroes, the lower house asked the governor to send it the names of the candidates who at the election had received the next highest vote to the persons expelled. The governor sent the names and with them a long protest against the expulsion of the negroes.[282] The house, on hearing the message, adopted a tart resolution, reminding the governor that the members of each house were “the keepers of their own consciences, and not his Excellency.”[283] A similar message to the upper house in response to a similar request provoked a similar resolution, which was defeated by two votes.[284]

It will be remembered that in December, 1868, and January, 1869, the governor urged upon Congress, through his letter presented in the Senate and through his testimony before the Reconstruction Committee, the theory that Georgia had not yet been restored. On January 15, 1869, he urged the same view upon the legislature. He advised it to reorganize itself by summoning all men elected members in 1868, requiring each to take the Test Oath, excluding only those who should not take it, and thus constituted to repass the resolutions required by the Omnibus Act. If the legislature did not do this, it must submit to Congressional interference.[285] This message apparently caused the legislature some apprehension. It adopted a joint resolution to the effect that it desired the question of the eligibility of negroes to office to be determined by the supreme court of the state. The governor sent this resolution back with one of his admirably keen and powerful messages. He said that Congress had two grievances against the present legislature; that it had admitted members disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment, contrary to the Omnibus Act, and that it had expelled twenty-eight negroes. The present resolution, intended to appease Congress, ignored the first grievance and proposed no remedy for the second; therefore it was meaningless and absurd.[286]