To those who in the study of the country's past seek a broader and higher conception of the duties of American citizenship, the facts pertaining to the controversy between the Executive and Congress as to the restoration and preservation of the Union, set out in the following pages, will be interesting and instructive. No one is better fitted than the author of this volume to discuss the period of reconstruction in which, as a member of the Federal senate, he played so potent and patriotic a part, and it is a pleasure to find that he has discharged his task with so much ability and care. But it is profoundly hoped that no coming generation will be called upon to utilize the experiences of the past in facing in their day, in field or forum, the dangers of disruption and anarchy, mortal strife and desolation, between those of one race, and blood, and nationality, that marked the history of America thirty years ago. DAVID B. HILL. CHAPTER 1. -- THE PROBLEM OF RECONSTRUCTION. MR. LINCOLN'S PLAN The close of the War of the Rebellion, in 1865, found the country confronted by a civil problem quite as grave as the contest of arms that had been composed. It was that of reconstruction, or the restoration of the States lately in revolt, to their constitutional relations to the Union. The country had just emerged from a gigantic struggle of physical force of four years duration between the two great Northern and Southern sections. That struggle had been from its inception to its close, a continuing exhibition, on both sides, of stubborn devotion to a cause, and its annals had been crowned with illustrations of the grandest race and personal courage the history of the world records. Out of a population of thirty million people, four million men were under arms, from first to last, and sums of money quite beyond the limit of ordinary comprehension, were expended in its prosecution. There was bloodshed without stint. Both sides to the conflict fought for an idea--on the one side for so-called State Rights and local self-government--on the other for national autonomy as the surest guaranty of all rights--personal, local, and general. The institution of negro slavery, the basis of the productive industries of the States of the South, which had from the organization of the Government been a source of friction between the slave-holding and nonslave-holding sections, and was in fact the underlying and potent cause of the war, went under in the strife and was by national edict forever prohibited.