RECONSTRUCTION: THE FIRST PLAN
The new President gave at once the best possible reassurance as to his
general course by retaining all the members of Lincoln's Cabinet. They
remained, not as a temporary formality, but for a considerable time in
full harmony with the President. Chase having left the Cabinet for the
chief-justiceship, by far the two strongest secretaries remaining were
Seward and Stanton. Seward had been struck down at the same time with
Lincoln, and dangerously wounded, but after a few weeks was able to
resume his duties. Thus the two foremost men, after Lincoln, of the
Republican party, Sumner and Seward, had been murderously assaulted, yet
neither of them was embittered or altered in his course. Seward probably
had great influence on President Johnson's early measures. The degree of
that influence is a disputed point among historians, but the internal
evidence points strongly to his having had a large share in the
President's original plans, and materially aided their execution, though
Johnson's strong will and hot temper marred and thwarted Seward's
efforts. One of the secretary's special powers was a genial and
persuasive skill in conversation; his historic place as the Republican
premier gave him influence with the President; he had been in full
sympathy with Lincoln's late course; and his constitutional theories and
his optimism appear in the reconstruction scheme which the President
soon proposed. Responsibility had steadied and sobered Johnson; his
vindictiveness toward the South had disappeared,--one guesses with
Seward's aid; and his plan looked to a prompt and early return of the
seceded States.
His proclamation of amnesty, indeed, issued May 29, was more numerous in
its exceptions than Lincoln's; including almost the entire official
class throughout the South, and adding all such as held property in
excess of $20,000,--which in theory was little other than an attempt to
behead the political community of all its intelligent or wealthy
members. But the added clause providing for a pardon of such by the
President on special application proved in practice more significant
than the formal exemptions. Scarcely an application for amnesty was
refused, and it is recorded that in less than a twelvemonth 14,000 such
applications were made and granted.
On the same day, May 29, President Johnson by proclamation appointed a
provisional governor of North Carolina, and ordered an election of
delegates to a constitutional convention. By July 13, he had issued
similar proclamations for Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina
and Florida. Texas's turn came a little later, the last embers of the
war lingering there for a while. In Virginia, the President had
recognized a shadowy loyal State government which had kept up a nominal
existence. The three other seceded States,--Louisiana, Arkansas and
Tennessee,--had already the State governments established under Lincoln,
though unrepresented in Congress.
These overtures for formal reconstruction came to communities
impoverished, forlorn, and chaotic, almost beyond imagination. Property,
industry, social order, had been torn up by the plowshare of war. The
prolongation of resistance until defeat was complete and overwhelming
had ended all power and all wish to contend with the inevitable. The
people, groping back toward even a bare livelihood,--toward some settled
order, some way of public and private life,--met eagerly the advances
of the President. Constitutional conventions were elected and met,
within the remaining months of 1865; they were chosen on the old basis
of suffrage, conditioned by the exceptions to amnesty and by the oaths
of allegiance; these conventions based the new constitutions largely on
the old; they affirmed the ordinances of secession to be null and void;
they repudiated the Confederate debt, and they declared that slavery no
longer existed. Legislatures were duly elected, and proceeded to enact
laws. They all ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, though Mississippi and
Alabama affixed some qualifications to their assent, while Texas was
still unreconstructed and could not act; and Kentucky and Delaware gave
a negative. The President and Secretary of State, December 18, declared
the adoption of the amendment by the vote of 31 States out of 36.
Slavery was finally and forever abolished.
President Johnson used his influence to have the new constitutions open
the door to a qualified negro suffrage. He telegraphed to the
Mississippi convention, urging that the suffrage be extended to all
negroes who could read and write, or who possessed $250 worth of real
estate. Well would it have been if that appeal had been heeded.
Thus far, reconstruction had moved with singular swiftness and ease. Too
swift and easy was the recovery to be trusted--so thought some--where
the disease had been so desperate. But the Cabinet, including the grim
and jealous Stanton, held with the President. More, the autumn
Republican conventions throughout the North passed resolutions cordially
approving the President's course and its results--all, with the ominous
exceptions of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, controlled respectively by
Thaddeus Stevens and Sumner, the leader of the House and the foremost
man in the Senate.
Thus was initiated and begun the first of the three successive plans of
reconstruction. Before seeing its fate, it is opportune to consider the
general ideal of the situation, as presented by two of the greatest men
of the North, the two, we may say, who best comprehended the whole case;
the one standing in the Church and the other in the State, but alike in
breadth of mind and loftiness of spirit--Henry Ward Beecher and John A.
Andrew.
During the war, the Northern churches had been centers of inspiration to
the national cause, and Plymouth church among the foremost. Beecher had
made a series of speeches in England in 1862, which did much to turn the
tide of English opinion. The disclaimers by the Federal Government of a
crusade against slavery had perplexed and divided the anti-slavery
sentiment of Great Britain; the issues at stake were little understood;
the stoppage of the cotton supply aroused a commercial opposition to the
war; there was some degree of aristocratic sympathy with the Southern
oligarchy; and a wider sympathy with the weaker of the two combatants
that was fighting pluckily against odds. The North had few strong
friends, except a group of radical leaders--Mill, Bright, Cobden and
their allies,--and a host of working people, including even the
suffering cotton operatives, who instinctively recognized and supported
the cause of the common people. Beecher's eloquent and lucid orations
went far to convince that the Union cause was the cause of liberty; and
no less effect was produced by the splendid courage and self-possession
with which he faced and mastered one audience after another where the
mob tried to howl him down. After the close of the war, when a company
went down to raise the Stars and Stripes once more over Fort Sumter,
Beecher was the chosen orator, and his speech was inspired by the spirit
of fraternity and reconciliation. In a sermon in his church, October 29,
1865, he outlined with a master's hand the principles of
reconstruction. The South should be restored at the earliest possible
moment to a share in the general government. Idle to ask them to repent
of secession; enough if they recognize that it is forever disallowed.
The best guarantee for the future is the utter destruction of slavery.
Let there be no further humbling: "I think it to be the great need of
this nation to save the self-respect of the South." What then are the
necessary conditions of reconstruction? The Southern States should
accede to the abolition of slavery by the Constitution. They should
establish the freedman's "right to labor as he pleases, where he
pleases, and for whom he pleases," with full control of his own
earnings; he should be the equal of all men before the courts. What
about suffrage? It is the natural right of all men, says Beecher; but,
tempering as usual his intellectual radicalism with practical
conservatism, he goes on: It will be useless to enforce negro suffrage
on the South against the opposition of the whites. As to the general
treatment of the freedmen, "the best intentions of the government will
be defeated, if the laws that are made touching this matter are such as
are calculated to excite the animosity and hatred of the white people in
the South toward the black people there. I except the single decree of
emancipation. That must stand, though men dislike it." But beyond that,
all measures instituted under the act of emancipation for the blacks in
order to be permanently useful must have the cordial consent of the wise
and good citizens of the South. "These men (the negroes) are scattered
in fifteen States; they are living contiguous to their old masters; the
kindness of the white man in the South is more important to them than
all the policies of the nation put together." As to suffrage, whatever
the colored man's theoretical right, "you will never be able to secure
it and maintain it for him, except by making him so intelligent that men
cannot deny it to him. You cannot long, in this country, deny to a man
any civil right for which he is manifestly qualified." It will be a
sufficient beginning if the vote is given to such as can read and write
and have acquired a certain amount of property. As a beginning, a
stepping-stone to larger things, it might suffice even to give the
suffrage to black men who have borne arms for the Union. And,
emphatically, the negroes should be given such education as will make
them worthy of citizenship. "You may pass laws declaring that black men
are men, and that they are our equals in social position; but unless you
can make them thoughtful, industrious, self-respecting, and intelligent;
unless, in short, you can make them what you say they have a right to
be, those laws will be in vain." The work of education should be done
for black and white alike; the South is not to be treated as a pagan
land to which missionaries are to be sent, but as part of our common
country, to which the richer and more prosperous section ought to give
aid. "I do not think it would be wise for the North to pour ministers,
colporteurs and schoolmasters into the South, making a too marked
distinction between the black people and the white. We ought to carry
the gospel and education to the whites and blacks alike. Our heart
should be set toward our country and all its people, without distinction
of caste, class, or color."
Governor Andrew had been the fit leader of Massachusetts through the war
period. He was strong as an administrator; he inspired and voiced the
patriotism of the people; he supported the forward policy without
harassing the President; and he was the first governor to organize negro
troops. Now, on his retirement to private life, he gave a valedictory
address, January 4, 1866, which was a worthy sequel to his inaugural of
five years before. He specially emphasized the need of a generous and
inclusive policy toward the Southern people and their recent leaders.
"I am confident we cannot reorganize political society with any
security: 1. Unless we let in the people to a co-operation, and not
merely an arbitrarily selected portion of them. 2. Unless we give those
who are by intelligence and character the natural leaders of the people,
and who surely will lead them by-and-by, an opportunity to lead them
now.... The truth is, the public opinion of the white race in the South
was in favor of the rebellion." The loyalists were not in general the
strongest minds and characters, and when the revolution came they were
swept off their feet. For present purposes, there should be no
discrimination. "The capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device.
They whose courage, talents, and will, entitle them to lead, will
lead.... Why not try them? They are the most hopeful subjects to deal
with in the very nature of the case. They have the brain and experience
and the education to enable them to understand the exigences of the
present situation."
The ideals thus presented by Beecher and Andrew,--as practical, we see
now after forty years, as they were lofty,--were at the time somewhat
like what Catholic theologians call "counsels of perfection"--precepts
of conduct too high to be practiced except by the saintly. They fell on
the ears of a people whose two sections had long been struggling in
deadly opposition, and who still surveyed each other through eyes
inflamed by the bitter struggle. Could it be hoped that the North would
invite co-operation as of fellow-patriots from those whom they had been
denouncing as arch-traitors? And was it to be expected that the South,
which had seceded and battled on the ground that the negro was fit only
for slavery, should at once begin heartily and practically to establish
and elevate him as a freeman?