It was Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, who did more than anybody else to give the proper logical interpretation to these feelings and invent the
Mr. Shellabarger's
theory of
Reconstruction.
This was sound political science and correct constitutional law. It could not fail to command the assent of the great majority of the
Mr. Sumner's theory
of Reconstruction.
The Republicans in
Congress almost
unanimously in favor
of the Shellabarger-
Sumner plan.
There is no doubt that the Sumner-Shellabarger theory of Reconstruction was correct. The only question was how exacting Congress would be in realizing it. Under such a situation it behooved the President to act with great caution and moderation, and to do nothing to provoke a conflict in which he was certain to be worsted. And it also behooved the people of the South to make no opposition to the bestowal of a large measure of civil liberty upon the freedmen, nor to such an adjustment of the basis of political representation as would not necessitate negro suffrage, and not to insist upon sending to Congress, at the outset, the men who had made themselves particularly obnoxious to loyal feeling. How both the President and the persons in authority at the South disregarded these considerations of prudence, and how the position assumed by them upon these subjects drove Congress into more and more radical lines, is the further subject of the next three chapters.