The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History

by Hilary A. Herbert

Gideon Welles says that on the 10th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln, "while I was with him at the White House, was informed that his fellow-citizens would call to congratulate him on the fall of Richmond and surrender of Lee; but he requested their visit should be delayed that he might have time to put his thoughts on paper, for he desired that his utterances on such an occasion should be deliberate and not liable to misapprehension, misinterpretation, or misconstruction. He therefore addressed the people on the following evening, Tuesday the 11th, in a carefully prepared speech intended to promote harmony and union.

"In this remarkable speech, delivered three days before his assassination, he stated he had prepared a plan for the reinauguration of the sectional authority and reconstruction in 1863, which would be acceptable to the executive government, and that every member of the cabinet fully approved the plan," etc.[88]

In view of his death three days later, this, his last and deliberate public utterance, may be regarded as Abraham Lincoln's will, devising as a legacy to his countrymen his plan of reconstruction. That plan in the hands of his successor was defeated by a partisan and radical Congress. That it was a wise plan the world now knows.

Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, was one of the most influential of those who succeeded in defeating it, and yet he lived to say, in his book published in 1895,[89] Andrew Johnson "adopted substantially the plan proposed and acted on by Mr. Lincoln. After this long lapse of time I am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reorganization was wise and judicious. It was unfortunate that it had not the sanction of Congress and that events soon brought the President and Congress into hostility."

And the present senator, Shelby Cullom, of Illinois, who as a member of the House of Representatives voted to overthrow the Lincoln-Johnson plan of Reconstruction, has furnished us further testimony. He says in his book, published in 1911:[90]

"To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of Reconstruction was a firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party and, by restoring the Democracy to power, bring back Southern supremacy and Northern vassalage."

The Republican party, then dominant in Congress, felt when confronting Reconstruction that it was facing a crisis in its existence. The Democratic party, unitedly opposed to negro suffrage, was still in Northern States a power to be reckoned with. Allied with the Southern whites, that old party might again control the government unless, by giving the negro the ballot, the Republicans could gain, as Senator Sumner said, the "allies it needed." But the masses at the North were opposed to negro suffrage, and only two or three State constitutions sanctioned it. Indeed, it may be safely said that when Congress convened in December, 1865, a majority of the people of the North were ready to follow Johnson and approve the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction. But the extremists in both branches of the Congress had already determined to defeat the plan and to give the ballot to the ex-slave. To prepare the mind of the Northern people for their programme, they had resolved to rekindle the passions of the war, which were now smouldering, and utilize all the machinery, military and civilian, that Congress could make effective.

Andrew Johnson,[91] who as vice-president now succeeded to the presidency, though a man of ability, had little personal influence and none of Lincoln's tact. Johnson retained Lincoln's cabinet, and McCullough, who was Secretary of the Treasury under both presidents, says in his "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 378:

"The very same instrument for restoring the national authority over North Carolina and placing her where she stood before her secession, which had been approved by Mr. Lincoln, was, by Mr. Stanton, presented at the first cabinet which was held at the executive mansion after Mr. Lincoln's death, and, having been carefully considered at two or three meetings, was adopted as the Reconstruction policy of the administration."

Johnson carried out this plan. All the eleven seceding States repealed their ordinances of secession. Their voters, from which class many leaders had been excluded by the presidential proclamation, all took the oath of allegiance, and reconstructed their State governments. From most of the reconstructed States, senators and representatives were in Washington asking to be seated when Congress convened, December 4, 1865.