A fortnight later, on the 13th of June, a proclamation was issued for the reconstruction of the civil government of Mississippi, and William L. Sharkey was appointed provisional governor. Four days later, on the 17th of June, a similar proclamation was issued for Georgia with James Johnson for provisional governor, and for Texas with Andrew J. Hamilton for provisional governor. On the 21st of the same month Lewis E. Parsons was appointed provisional governor of Alabama, and on the 30th Benjamin F. Perry was appointed provisional governor of South Carolina. On the 13th of July the list was completed by the appointment of William Marvin as provisional governor of Florida. The precise text of the North-Carolina proclamation, mutatis mutandis, was repeated in each one of those relating to these six States. The process was designed to be exhaustive by fully restoring every connection existing under the Constitution between the States and the National Government. Viewed merely as a theory it was perfect. The danger was that in the test of actual practice it might end like so many similar experiments in other countries. An opponent wittily characterized it as Government by diagram, accurately drawn on an Executive blackboard.
For the reconstruction of the other four States of the Confederacy different provisions were made. In Virginia Francis H. Pierpont had been made governor after the State had seceded and the State of West Virginia had been established. He was the head of the Loyal Government of Virginia, which gave its assent to the division of the State. His Government, the shell of which had been preserved after West Virginia's separate existence had been recognized by the National Government, with its temporary capital at Alexandria, was accepted by President Johnson's Administration as the legitimate Government of Virginia. All its archives, property, and effects, as was afterwards said by Thaddeus Stevens, were taken to Richmond in an ambulance. As early as the 9th of May President Johnson had issued a proclamation recognizing Mr. Pierpont as governor of the State, and assuring him that he would be "aided by the Federal Government, so far as may be necessary, in the lawful measures he may take for the extension and administration of the State Government throughout the geographical limits of said State." The same proclamation declared that "All acts and proceedings of the political, military, and civil organizations which have been in a state of insurrection and rebellion within the State of Virginia against the laws and authority of the United States are declared null and void." The proclamation further declared that any person assuming to exercise any authority in Virginia by virtue of a military of civil commission issued by Jefferson Davis, President of the so-called Confederate States, or by John Letcher, or William Smith, Governors of Virginia, "shall be deemed and taken as in rebellion against the United States, and dealt with accordingly."
A course not dissimilar to that adopted in Virginia was followed in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In all of them the so-called "ten per cent" governments established under Mr. Lincoln's authority were now recognized. Governor Hahn was held to be the true executive of Louisiana,—a concession all the more readily made, because, under the revised constitution of the State, the people would be called upon in the approaching autumn to choose his successor. In Arkansas also, the Government, with Isaac Murphy at its head, was now recognized; and in Tennessee the authority of William G. Brownlow as governor was promptly accepted as constitutional and regular. This Government, as already narrated, had been brought into existence by the earnest effort of Mr. Johnson in the period which had elapsed between his election and inauguration as Vice-President. The direct committal of the President to the legality of his own work was the controlling cause which led to the recognition of the Governments of the four States under consideration. But for the impossibility of disowning or in any way discrediting the existing Government of Tennessee, it is probably that the plan by which provisional governments were established in seven of the rebellious States would have been uniformly applied to the entire eleven which formed the Confederacy. The same executives would doubtless have been selected for provisional service, but there would have been evident advantage in treating all the States in precisely the same manner.
The scope and design of the President's reconstruction policy were thus made fully apparent. The work was committed to the white men of the several States, who, outside of the excepted classes, were ready to take the oath of allegiance to the Government. They were empowered to form the Convention which should shape the organic law of the State, and in that law they were authorized to establish the basis of suffrage,—a right which the President held to belong to the State, to be, indeed, inalienable from the State. It was, therefore, evident that the white men who were allowed to regain all the rights of citizenship by a mere oath of fidelity would not, in framing an organic law for the State, exclude the classes whom the President had excepted from pardon. The excluded classes had been the leaders, the commanders, the men of position, the friends and the patrons of those who, only less guilty because less influential and powerful, were now intrusted with the initial work in the re-establishment of civil Government in their respective States.
It was not a possible supposition that these men, when they assembled in convention, would exclude the entire leading class of the South, or even one member of it, from the full constitutional privileges and benefits of the civil Government they were about to re-organize. The suffrage conferred on others would, in like manner, be conferred on them: the offices of rank and emolument in the new Government would likewise be open to them, and it would thus be made evident that the President's exclusion of these classes was merely an inhibition from doing a preliminary work which others would do equally well for them. Unless, therefore, some other form of denial or exclusion should be announced,—and none other apparently was intended,—the President's policy would end in promptly handing over to the authors and designers of the Rebellion the complete control of the States whose civil power they had willfully perverted and turned against the National authority. Mr. Seward's magnanimity, his boundless confidence in human nature, had led him to believe that this was wise policy. He believed it so firmly that he had persuaded the President—against his own will and purpose —to adopt it, and to attempt its enforcement.
It soon became evident that President Johnson realized how completely he had excluded men of the colored race from any share of political power in the Southern States by his process of reconstruction. It is true that he stood loyally by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had been submitted to Congress before his accession to the Presidency but had not yet been ratified by the States. He used his influence, which was commanding, to induce the Southern States to accept it in good faith. But he saw, as others had seen before him, that this was not going far enough to satisfy the reasonable desire of many in the North whom he felt it necessary to conciliate. To emancipate the negro and conceded to him no possible power wherewith to protect his freedom would, in the judgment of many Northern philanthropists, prove the merest mockery of justice. This sentiment wrought on Mr. Johnson so powerfully that against his own wish he was compelled to address a circular to his provisional governors, suggesting that the elective franchise should be extended to all persons of color "who can read the Constitution of the United States, and write their names, and also to those who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollar, and pay taxes thereon."
In writing to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi in relation to this subject the President argued that his recommendations touching colored suffrage could be adopted "with perfect safety," and that thereby "the Southern States would be placed, with reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free States." That Mr. Johnson made this recommendation simply from policy and not from any proper conception of its inherent justice is indicated by the closing paragraph in his letter to Governor Sharkey. Indeed, by imprudent language the President made an unnecessary exposure of the character of his motives, and deprived himself of much of the credit which might otherwise have belonged to him. "I hope and trust," he wrote to his Mississippi governor, "that your convention will do this, and as a consequence the Radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempt to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and representatives."
At this period the President did not contemplate a break with the Republican party, much less a coalition with its opponents. He had the vanity to believe, or was at least under the delusion of believing that —with the exception of those whom he denominated Radicals—he could induce the party to follow him. Mr. Seward had undoubtedly influenced him to this conclusion, as the Secretary of State indulged the same hopeful anticipation himself. The President seemed to have no comprehension of the fact that with inconsiderable exceptions the entire party was composed of Radicals, men who in aim and sympathy were hostile to the purposes indicated by his policy. His own radicalism, from which Mr. Seward had succeeded in turning him, was the radicalism of revenge upon the authors of the Rebellion. The radicalism to which he now contemptuously indicated his opposition was that which looked to the broadening of human rights, to philanthropy, to charity, and to good deeds. Every intelligent Republican saw that the attempt which the President was now making with his provisional governors to secure a partial franchise to the colored man, was really only a petition to the States to act in a certain manner upon a subject over which, by his own proclamation, their power of control was declared to be absolute. With the prejudices which inspired the South,—prejudices made still more intense by the victory of the Union,—it was altogether certain that the Southern Conventions would not extend the elective franchise or civil right of any kind to the colored men of any class. The Southern States would undoubtedly agree pro forma to the Thirteenth Amendment as a means of regaining their representation in Congress. Beyond that, so long as the National Government conceded their right of control, it was probable that every step which did not conflict with the Constitution and Laws of the United States would be taken by the Southern States to deprive the negro of all power or opportunity for advancement. Mr. Seward, by the generous instinct of his own philanthropy, believed all things for the Union, which had been regenerated by the emancipation of the slave, and hoped all things for the Southern people, who had been chastened by defeat. His philanthropy taught him a faith in others as strong as his own consciousness of right; and, by assuming the full responsibility of the President's position, he brought to its support thousands of advocates who, but for his personal influence and persuasive power, would have opposed and spurned it.
The whole scheme of reconstruction, as originated by Mr. Seward and adopted by the President, was in operation by the middle of July, three months after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. Every step taken was watched with the deepest solicitude by the loyal people. The rapid and thorough change in the President's position was clearly discerned and fully appreciated. His course of procedure was dividing the Republican party, and already encouraging the hopes of those in the North who had been the steady opponents of Mr. Lincoln's war policy, and of those in the South who had sought for four years to destroy the Great Republic. It soon became evident that the Northern Democrats who had been opposed to the war, and the Southern Democrats who had been defeated in the war, would unite in political action, and that the course of the National Administration would exercise a potential influence upon their success or failure. In turn, the course of the National Administration would certainly be influenced, and its fate in large degree determined, by the conduct of the Southern men, in whom the President was placing unbounded trust. Public interest was therefore transferred for the time from the acts of the President at the National Capital to the acts of the Reconstruction conventions about to assemble in the Southern States.