Had Lincoln but been here, how different might have been the story! His wisdom, his sound sense, his catholic spirit, his pride in the restored Union which he had preserved, his patriotism, would have governed. For two years the influence of his views remained too potent to be overcome. Johnson, who had not much love for the South, had caught enough of his liberal and patriotic spirit to attempt the continuance of his pacific, constitutional, and sagacious policy. But he lacked his wisdom, and by the end of two years the dominant will of Thad. Stevens and his lieutenants had sufficiently warped public opinion to bend it to their pleasure and subvert it to their purpose. Thad. Stevens gave the keynote. On the 14th of December, 1865, he said: “According to my judgment they (the insurrectionary States) ought never to be recognized as capable of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its makers intended, and so as to _secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union_.” Charles Sumner was not behind him. He declared in January, 1867, that unless universal suffrage were conferred on all Negroes in the disorganized States, “you will not secure the new allies who are essential to the national cause.” In pursuance of the scheme of Stevens, in March, 1867, acts were passed by Congress, virtually wiping out the States of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, and dividing the territory into military districts, under military rulers, who were to have absolute power over life, property, and liberty, subject only to the proviso that death sentences should be approved by the President. When they were again created States, and brought back into the Union, the Whites had been disfranchised, and the Negro had been created a voter, drafted into the Union League, drilled under his carpet-bag officers, and accepted as the new ally through whom was to be secured “the perpetual ascendancy of the party of the Union.” Lincoln in his wisdom and patriotism had never dreamed of such a thing. His only “suggestion” had been to let in “some of the colored people, ... as, for instance, the very intelligent.”[80] The history of that period, of the reconstruction period of the South, has never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written.[81] When that history shall be told it will constitute the darkest stain on the record of the American people. The sole excuse which can be pleaded at the bar of posterity, is that the system was inaugurated in a time of excitement which was not short of frenzy.