CHAPTER IV
THE CONGRESSIONAL PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION
[The Stevens Resolution]—[Legislation of the Reconstructed "States" Concerning the Status of the Freedmen, and the Freedmen's Bureau]—[Vagrancy, Apprenticeship, and Civil Rights in the Reconstructed "States"]—[The View Taken of this Legislation by the Republicans]—[The Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution]—[The Demand of the Senators- and Representatives-elect from the Reconstructed "States" to be Admitted to Seats in Congress]—[The Joint Committee of the Two Houses of Congress on Reconstruction]—[Thaddeus Stevens's Ideas on Reconstruction]—[Mr. Shellabarger's Theory of Reconstruction]—[Mr. Sumner's Theory of Reconstruction].
So soon as the House of Representatives had elected its Speaker, Mr. Colfax, and other officers, and before the reception of the President's
The Stevens
resolution.
The view of the House was thus manifest from the start. It was that Reconstruction could not be effected by the Executive Department of the
The view of the House
that Reconstruction
could not be effected
by the Executive.
There is no question that in sound political science the House was entirely correct in its theory, and that the objection of the Senate to that part of the Stevens resolution which provided that no member should be received into either House from any of the so-called Confederate States until the report of the Committee on Reconstruction should have been finally acted on by Congress, as trenching upon the exclusive power of the Senate to judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its members, rested upon a confounding of the function of Congress to admit "States" into the Union with the power of
Passage of the Stevens
resolution as a
concurrent resolution.