Had all Americans continued to agree, after 1831, as they did before that time, that the Constitution of the United States was the supreme law of the land, there would have been no fatal sectional quarrel, no secession, and no war between the North and South.
The immediate surrender everywhere of the Confederates in obedience to the orders of their generals was an imposing spectacle. There was no guerilla warfare. The Confederates accepted their defeat in good faith and have ever since been absolutely loyal to the United States Government, but they have never changed their minds as to the justice of the cause they fought for. They fought for liberty regulated by law, and against the idea that there can be, under our system, any higher law than the Constitution of our country. That the Constitution should always be the supreme law of the land, they still believe, and the philosophic student of past and current history should be gratified to see the tenacity with which Southern people still cling to that idea. It suggests that not only will the Southerners be always ready to stand for our country against a foreign foe, but that whenever our institutions shall be assailed, as they will often be hereafter by visionaries who are impatient of restraints, the cause of liberty, regulated by law, will find staunch defenders in the Southern section of our country.
CHAPTER X
RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN-JOHNSON PLAN AND CONGRESSIONAL.
President Lincoln's theory was that acts of secession were void, and that when the seceded States came back into the Union those who were entitled to vote, by the laws existing at the date of the attempted secession, and had been pardoned, should have, and should control, the right of suffrage. Mr. Lincoln had acted on this theory in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, and he further advised Congress, in his message of December, 1863, that this was his plan. Congress, after a long debate, responded in July, 1864, by an act claiming for itself power over Reconstruction. The President answered by a pocket veto, and after that veto Mr. Lincoln was, in November, 1864, re-elected on a platform extolling his "practical wisdom," etc. Congress, during the session that began in December, 1864, did not attempt to reassert its authority but adjourned, March 4, 1865, in sight of the collapse of the Confederacy, leaving the President an open field for his declared policy.
But unhappily, on the 14th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and his death just at this time was the most appalling calamity that ever befell the American people. The blow fell chiefly upon the South, and it was the South the assassin had thought to benefit.
Had the great statesman lived he might, and it is fully believed he would, like Washington, have achieved a double success. Washington, successful in war, was successful in guiding his country through the first eight stormy years of its existence under a new constitution. Lincoln had guided the country through four years of war, and the Union was now safe. With Lee's surrender the war was practically at an end.