American Eloquence, Volume 4: Studies In American Political History (1897) — John Shaqi
American Eloquence, Volume 4: Studies In American Political History (1897)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 4: Studies In American Political History (1897)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
President Lincoln followed the plan subsequently completed by Johnson.
The original (Pierpont) government of Virginia was recognized and
supported. Similar governments were established in Tennessee, Louisiana,
and Arkansas, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to do so in Florida.
The amnesty proclamation of December, 1863, offered to recognize any
State government in the seceding States formed by one tenth of the
former voters who should take the oath of loyalty and support of the
emancipation measures. At the following session of Congress, the first
bill providing for congressional supervision of the readmission of
the seceding States was passed, but the President retained it without
signing it until Congress had adjourned. At the time of President
Lincoln's assassination Congress was not in session, and President
Johnson had six months in which to complete the work. Provisional
governors were appointed, conventions were called, the State
constitutions were amended by the abolition of slavery and the
repudiation of the war debt, and the ordinances of secession were either
voided or repealed. When Congress met in December, 1865, the work had
been completed, the new State governments were in operation, and the
XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been ratified by aid of their
votes. Congress, however, still refused to admit their Senators or
Representatives. The first action of many of the new governments had
been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws which looked much
like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority in Congress felt
that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen were necessary
before the war could be truly said to be over.
Early in 1866 President Johnson imprudently carried matters into an open
quarrel with Congress, which united the two thirds Republican majority
in both Houses against him. The elections of the autumn of 1866 showed
that the two thirds majorities were to be continued through the next
Congress; and in March, 1867, the first Reconstruction Act was passed
over the veto. It declared the existing governments in the seceding
States to be provisional only; put the States under military governors
until State conventions, elected with negro suffrage and excluding
the classes named in the proposed XIVth Amendment, should form a State
government satisfactory to Congress, and the State government should
ratify the XIVth Amendment; and made this rule of suffrage imperative
in all elections under the provisional governments until they should be
readmitted. This was a semi-voluntary reconstruction. In the same
month the new Congress, which met immediately on the adjournment of
its predecessor, passed a supplementary act. It directed the military
governors to call the conventions before September 1st following, and
thus enforced an involuntary reconstruction.
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