On the meeting of Congress in December the signs of political progress since the adjournment were quite noticeable. The subject of impeachment began to be talked about, and both houses seemed ready for all necessary measures. Since mingling freely with their constituents, very few Republican members insisted that the XIV Constitutional Amendment should be accepted as a finality, or as an adequate solution of the problem of reconstruction. The second section of that amendment, proposing to abandon the colored race in the South on condition that they should not be counted in the basis of representation, was now generally condemned, and if the question had been a new one it could not have been adopted. This enlightenment of Northern representatives was largely due to the prompt and contemptuous rejection by the rebellious States of the XIV Amendment as a scheme of reconstruction, and their enactment of black codes which made the condition of the freedmen more deplorable than slavery itself. In this instance, as in that of Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation, it was rebel desperation which saved the negro; for if the XIV Amendment had been at first accepted, the work of reconstruction would have ended without conferring upon him the ballot. This will scarcely be denied by any one, and has been frankly admitted by some of the most distinguished leaders of the party. The policy of treating these States as Territories seemed now to be rapidly gaining ground, and commended itself as the only logical way out of the political dilemma in which the Government was placed. But here again the old strife between radicalism and conservatism cropped out. The former opposed all haste in the work of reconstruction. It insisted that what the rebellious districts needed was not an easy and speedy return to the places they had lost by their treasonable conspiracy, but a probationary training, looking to their restoration when they should prove their fitness for civil government as independent States. It was insisted that they were not prepared for this, and that with their large population of ignorant negroes and equally ignorant whites, dominated by a formidable oligarchy of educated land-owners who despised the power that had conquered them, while they still had the sympathy of their old allies in the North, the withdrawal of Federal intervention and the unhindered operation of local supremacy would as fatally hedge up the way of justice and equality as the rebel despotisms then existing. The political and social forces of Southern society, if unchecked from without, were sure to assert themselves, and the more decided anti-slavery men in both houses of Congress so warned the country, and foretold that no theories of Democracy could avail unless adequately supported by a healthy and intelligent public opinion. They saw that States must grow, and could not be suddenly constructed where the materials were wanting, and that forms are