Garrison saw further than Sumner, but nobody at the North then imagined the tremendous consequences that were to follow the upsetting of Lincoln's plan. If Trumbull's resolution had passed, it would have served as a precedent for all the seceding states, in which case most of the misery of the next fifteen years in the South, including the carpet-bag governments and the Ku-Klux-Klan, would have been avoided.
President Johnson at first had been rather more radical than the majority of his party as to the measure of punishment to be visited upon the leaders of the rebellion. He had several times talked about "making treason odious," and had said that traitors should take back seats in the work of Reconstruction, and had used language which implied that some of the more prominent Confederates ought to be tried and executed for treason. He had a sharp difference with General Grant as to the inclusion of General Lee in that category, Grant insisting that no officer or soldier who had observed the terms of capitulation at Appomattox could be rightfully molested.[77]
But this feeling of animosity on Johnson's part gradually passed away. In an authorized interview with George L. Stearns, October 3, 1865, on the subject of Reconstruction, and again in an interview with Frederick Douglass and others, February 7, 1866, on the suffrage question, he said nothing about making treason odious, but declared himself opposed to unrestricted negro suffrage because he believed it would lead to a war of races—a war between the non-slaveholding class (the poor whites) and the negroes. The former hated and despised the latter, and this feeling he thought would be intensified if the suffrage were granted to the negroes.
"The query comes up," said Johnson in his colloquy with Douglass, "whether these two races, situated as they were before, without preparation, without time for the slightest improvement, whether the one should be turned loose upon the other, and be thrown together at the ballot-box with this enmity and hate existing between them. The question comes up right there, whether we don't commence a war of races. I think I understand this thing, and especially is this the case when you force it upon a people without their consent."
Johnson had adopted not only Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction, but his Cabinet also. At its first meeting, April 16, the unfinished project for the establishment of civil government in Virginia, drafted by Secretary Stanton at Lincoln's instance, was presented but not acted on. At a subsequent meeting, May 8, it was considered and adopted, and was promulgated as an Executive Order on the following day. It recognized Francis M. Peirpoint, who had been nominal governor in Lincoln's time, as actual governor, and declared that in order to guarantee to the state of Virginia a republican form of government and to afford the advantage and security of domestic laws, and the full and complete restoration of peace, he would be aided by the Government of the United States in the measures he might take to accomplish those ends.
A loyal State Government of considerable scope and solidity, formed by Johnson himself as military governor, already existed in Tennessee. This was now recognized by the President as an accomplished fact. W. G. Brownlow had been elected governor, and a legislature had been constituted, which had passed a franchise act that limited the voting privilege to whites and excluded rebels of a certain grade. The Lincoln State Government of Louisiana and a similar one in Arkansas were allowed to stand.
On the 29th of May, the President issued an Executive Order appointing W. W. Holden provisional governor of North Carolina, and prescribing certain duties to be performed by him; among others that of calling a convention to be chosen by the loyal people of the state for the purpose of altering or amending the state constitution, and forming a government fit to be recognized and defended by the Government of the United States. Following the precedent made by Lincoln in the Louisiana case, the qualifications of voters at the election of delegates to the convention were fixed and declared to be those "prescribed by the constitution and laws of North Carolina in force immediately before the 20th day of May, 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of secession," excepting, however, certain classes of whites. Similar orders followed in rapid succession for reorganizing Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida, the last one bearing date July 13, 1865. Before the form of the order was adopted, a vote had been taken in the Cabinet on the question whether negroes should be allowed to vote in the election of Delegates. Of the six members present, three had voted in the affirmative and three in the negative. Seward was not present, being still confined to his bed by the wounds inflicted on him the night when Lincoln was assassinated. The President then took the matter in his own hands, and at the next meeting of the Cabinet read the North Carolina order and none of the members offered any objection to it.
Thus Reconstruction had been mapped out, so far as the executive branch of the Government was concerned, before the Thirty-ninth Congress assembled.
Together with the order for Reconstruction in North Carolina, the President issued a proclamation of amnesty for all persons who had participated in the rebellion, excepting, however, certain specified classes of offenders. This proclamation bore the same date, and was published simultaneously with the North Carolina order; but the newspapers of the day, while commenting upon and generally approving, made little account of the fact that negroes were excluded from voting at the election for delegates. The New York Tribune of May 30 merely said: "Of course no blacks can vote." The New York Times made mention of the same fact.
The New York Evening Post of the same date, however, after pointing out that only white men and taxpayers could vote in the coming election in North Carolina, said: