Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

President Johnson succeeded to the policy of Lincoln, or, at least, to Lincoln’s belief that restoration was a matter for the executive attention, not for the legislative. He asserted that secession was null and void from the beginning; that a state could not commit treason; that by the attempted revolution the vitality of the state was impaired and its functions suspended but not destroyed; that it was the duty of the executive to breathe into the inanimate state the life-giving breath of the Constitution. He recognized no power in Congress to pass laws preliminary to or restricting the admission of duly qualified representatives of the states.[862]

RECONSTRUCTION LEADERS.

Andrew Johnson.
Charles Sumner.		Thaddeus Stevens.

The plan of Lincoln was, in theory and at first in practice, objectionable. It would recognize as the political people of a state the loyal minority, which would be an oligarchy, and the principle of the rule of majorities would thus be repudiated. Those who claimed to be loyal were not promising material for a new political people, and the “10 per cent” governments were treated with just contempt. But the plan was based, not on any narrow principle of legality, but on the broader grounds of justice and expediency, and was capable of expansion into a very different plan from what it was in the beginning. As applied to Louisiana and Arkansas, it was severely, and in theory justly, criticised on the ground that the President was assuming absolute authority in dealing with the seceded states, and that by this plan the entire political power would be given to a small class not capable of using it. As later modified, his plan would have admitted to participation in Reconstruction nearly or quite all the citizens of the southern states.

President Johnson, a war Democrat, gave promise of being more harsh than Lincoln in the work of restoration. Lincoln’s policy was based on expediency; Johnson’s, on the narrow legal principles of a State Rights Democrat. He had a strong regard for the “sacred rights of a state.” He proposed to reëstablish the state governments by means of a political people of the lower classes, and the old political leaders were to be disfranchised. Lincoln imposed certain conditions on individuals as a prerequisite to participation in reconstruction. Having created by the pardoning power a political people, he expected the initiative to come from them. The executive then retired into the background and waited the impulse of the people. He shrank from interfering with the states, not from any great respect for their rights, but from motives of policy. As Johnson applied his theory, there was little initiative left to the people. The executive authority as the source of power set the machinery of restoration in motion, and the people were obliged to do as he ordered, many of them being at first excluded from participation. The whole programme was prescribed by him, and he watched every step of the progress made. For a firm believer in the rights of states he took strange liberties with them while restoring their suspended animation. Lincoln advised a limited suffrage for the blacks; but negroes could have no part in the Johnson scheme. Like Lincoln, however, Johnson so modified his plan that practically all the white people were to take part in the reëstablishment of the government. The conservative theories contemplated restoration, not reconstruction.

Radical Theories

The Republican majority in Congress soon advanced from the position taken in the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions. Most of the Republican party had no fixed opinions in regard to Reconstruction, but formed a kind of a centre or swamp between the Democrats and the President on the one extreme, and the Radicals on the other. The plan of Lincoln, as first announced and applied, was offensive to all parties, and some leaders never seem to have recognized that the President had, to any appreciable degree, modified his policy. The extreme Radicals were not sorry to have the matter of reconstruction fall from the hands of the wise and kind Lincoln into those of the narrow and vindictive Johnson. But the seeming defection of the latter soon disappointed those who were in favor of harsh measures in dealing with the defeated southerners. The best-known of the Radical theories advanced in opposition to the presidential policy were (1) the State Suicide theory of Charles Sumner, (2) the Conquered Province theory of Thaddeus Stevens, and (3) the Forfeited Rights theory, practically the same as the Conquered Province theory, but expressed in less definite language for the benefit of the more timid members of the Republican party.

Charles Sumner, the Radical leader of the Senate, set forth the Suicide theory in a series of resolutions to the effect that the ordinances of secession were void, and, when sustained by force, amounted to abdication by the state of all constitutional rights; that the treason involved worked instant destruction of the body politic, and the state became territory under the exclusive control of Congress. Consequently, there were no state governments in the South, and all peculiar institutions had ceased to exist—among them slavery. Sumner constantly asserted that Congress now had exclusive jurisdiction over the southern territory.[863] He made strong objection to the despotic power of the President as applied in dealing with the seceded states, and declared that the executive was encroaching upon the sphere of Congress, which was the proper authority to organize the new governments. The seceded states, he affirmed, by breaking the constitutional compact had committed suicide, and no longer had corporate existence, and that the “loyalists,” who were few in number, should not have the power formerly possessed by all. The whole South was a “tabular rasa,” “a clean slate,” upon which Congress might write the laws.[864] The existence of slavery was declared to be incompatible with a republican form of government, which it was the duty of Congress to establish. For it is necessary to such a form of government that there be absolute equality before the law, suffrage for all, education for all, the choice of “loyal” citizens for office, and the exclusion of “rebels.” The negro must take part in Reconstruction, for his vote would be needed to support the cause of human rights and “the party of the Union”—meaning, of course, the Republican party.[865]

Sumner cared little for the Constitution except for the clause about guaranteeing a republican form of government to the states, and on this he based the power of Congress to act. The Declaration of Independence was to him the supreme law and above the Constitution, and to make the government conform to that document was his aim. He wearied his colleagues with his continual harping on the Declaration of Independence as the fundamental law, upon which footing the seceded states must return. That, he declared, would destroy slavery and all inequality of rights, political and civil.[866]

The Conquered Province theory was originated by Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical leader of the House of Representatives, who, however, refused to call it a theory. He made no attempt to harmonize his plan with the Constitution, and frankly expressed his opinion that there was nothing in the Constitution providing for such an emergency; that the laws of war alone should govern the action of Congress, allowing no constitutions to interfere.[867] It was impossible to execute the Constitution in the seceded states, he said, which the victors must treat “as conquered provinces and settle them with new men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles from this country.”[868] Every inch of the soil of the southern states should be held for the costs of the war, to pay damages to the “loyal” citizens and pensions to soldiers and their families, and slavery should be abolished.[869] Secession, according to Stevens, was so far successful that the southern states were out of the Union and the people had no constitutional rights.[870] All ties were broken by the war. The states in their corporate capacities made war, and were out of the Union so far as the conqueror might choose to consider them, and must come back into the Union as new states or remain as conquered provinces with no rights except such as the conqueror might choose to grant. Perpetual ascendency of the North must be secured by giving the ballot to the negro, by confiscation, and by banishment. The Constitution, in his opinion, had been torn to atoms; it was now a “bit of worthless parchment,” and there could be no reconstruction on the basis of that instrument. Congress had absolute jurisdiction over the whole question.[871] Stripped of its violence, Stevens’s theory was probably the correct one from the point of view of public law. It was more in accord with historical facts. It recognized the great changes wrought by war in the structure of the government. It was frank, explicit, and practical. Unfortunately, the statesmanship necessary to carry to success such a plan was entirely lacking in its supporters.