freedman to enter a religious or other assembly of whites, or go with them into any rail car or public conveyance. White persons "usually associating themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes" were also declared to be vagrants in the eye of the law. The colored people were prohibited from practicing any art, trade or business except husbandry, without special license from the courts. And most infamous of all were the statutes for the compulsory apprenticeship of colored children with or without the consent of parents, which practically re-established over the next generation of the freed people slavery with the whipping-post and overseer's lash. One State by joint resolution tendered thanks to Jefferson Davis "for the noble and patriotic manner in which he conducted the affairs of _our_ government while President of the Confederacy," and other resolutions were adopted declaring that "nothing more is required for the restoration of law and order but the withdrawal of federal bayonets." [The fell spirit and tendency of the reaction which was thus revealed found still more significant expression in the revolting butchery in and around the Mechanic's Institute of New Orleans on the 30th of July, 1866.] Some of these infamous measures were adopted in all the insurrectionary States, others in only some of them, but without exception the new Southern governments which Andrew Johnson's "policy" created were founded upon the traditions of the slave system and the memories of "the lost cause." The objection that the President had, in thus taking the work of reconstruction into his own hands, usurped authority devolved upon Congress by the constitution, was a strong one, but it received but little popular attention. Anger at the results of that "policy" obscured the mere disapproval of its methods. When it was seen that the rebellion had merely changed its theater of action, and that what it lost on the battle-field it proposed to secure by legislation, there was but one opinion among the masses of the people who had heartily supported the war and were sincerely anxious to preserve its fruits. Their emphatic demand was that the illegal and reactionary governments set up by the President should be overturned, and the South reconstructed in the interests of loyalty and liberty. Congress, as part of its stubborn contest with Andrew Johnson, undertook this work. It refused to recognize the pretended State governments or to admit their Congressmen. It divided the territory of the conquered States into five military districts, and placed it under the control of the army until a juster system of reconstruction could be applied. It then provided that in the calling of conventions to frame new constitutions colored men should be permitted to vote; that those revised instruments must confer the elective franchise upon all loyal colored people and all whites not disfranchised for rebellion; that the work of