governor to certify the same to the President. It then provided that the President, after obtaining the consent of Congress thereto, should proclaim the new "State" government as established, and as the constitutional government of the "State," after which Representatives and Senators in Congress, and electors of the President, might be chosen in said "State." Finally, the bill abolished slavery at once in all the rebellious "States" and imposed penalties upon all persons attempting thereafter to hold anyone in involuntary servitude; and declared all persons who should thereafter hold office civil or military, "State" or Confederate, in the rebel service, except an office purely ministerial or under the grade of colonel, not to be citizens of the United States. [Sidenote: Analysis of this measure.] A brief analysis of this bill will show that Congress was nearer to some doctrine on the subject of Reconstruction than was the President. In the first place, Congress claimed Reconstruction as a legislative problem. This was undoubtedly the true theory upon that point. In the second place, Congress required the loyalty to the United States of at least a majority of the white adult males as the basis of "State" government, local self-government. That also was undoubtedly true political theory as has been already explained. In the third place, Congress asserted the power to abolish slavery within the limits of those "States" whose legislatures or conventions had passed the ordinances of secession. That is, Congress dealt with these districts not as "States" of the Union, but as territories or districts subject to the exclusive authority of the central Government. Congress was here beginning, at least, to act upon the idea that the districts in rebellion did not perdure, as "States," {18} throughout the rebellion, but had lost thereby the forms, powers and functions of "State" governments, and were neither out of the Union nor in the Union as "States," but were under the central Government of the Union as territory inhabited by a population disorganized as to local government. This was also sound political science, and the President ought to have heeded its teachings. [Sidenote: The President's attitude toward the bill.] [Sidenote: The President's proclamation of July 8, 1864.]