Sumner, when the credentials of the Senators-elect were presented, foreshadowing the position to be taken by the Republican leaders, offered a resolution declaring that "a State pretending to secede from the Union, and battling against the General Government to maintain that position, must be regarded as a rebel State subject to military occupation and without representation on this floor until it has been readmitted by a vote of both Houses of Congress; and the Senate will decline to receive any such application from any such rebel State until after such a vote by both Houses."A few weeks later, on the 27th of June, 1864, this resolution was in effect reported back to the Senate by the Judiciary Committee, to which it had been referred, and adopted by a vote of 27 to 6.
The same action was had in the House of Representatives on the application of the Representatives-elect from Arkansas for admission to that body.
This was practically the declaration of a rupture between the President and Congress on the question of Reconstruction. It was a rebuke to Mr. Lincoln for having presumed to treat the seceded States as still in any sense States of the Union. It was in effect a declaration that those States had successfully seceded--that their elimination from the Union was an accomplished fact--that the Union of the States had been broken--and that the only method left for their return that would be considered by Congress was as conquered and outlying provinces, not even as Territories with the right of such to membership in the Union; and should be governed accordingly until such time as Congress should see fit (IF EVER, to use the language of Mr. Stevens in the House) to devise and establish some form whereby they could be annexed to or re-incorporated into the Union.
It was at this point--on the great question of Reconstruction, or more properly of Restoration--that the disagreements originated between the Executive and Congress which finally culminated in the impeachment of Mr. Lincoln's successor; and that condition of strained relations was measurably intensified when, on the following July 4th, a bill was passed by Congress making provision for the reorganization and admission of the revolted States on the extreme lines indicated by the above action of Congress and containing the very extraordinary provision that the President, AFTER OBTAINING THE CONSENT OF CONGRESS, shall recognize the State Government so established. That measure was still another and more marked rebuke by Congress to the President for having presumed to initiate a system of restoration without its consultation and advice. Naturally Mr. Lincoln was not in a mood to meekly accept the rebuke so marked and manifestly intended; and so the bill not having passed Congress till within the ten days preceding its adjournment allowed by the Constitution for its consideration by the President, and as it proposed to undo the work he had done, he failed to return it to Congress--"pocketed" it--and it therefore fell. He was not in a mood to accept a Congressional rebuke. He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective Departments of, the Government, and was not willing that his judgment should be revised, or his course censured, however indirectly, by any of its co-ordinate branches.
Four days after the session had closed, he issued a Proclamation in which he treated the bill merely as the expression of an opinion by Congress as to the best plan of Reconstruction--"which plan," he remarked, "it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration."He further stated in this Proclamation that he had already presented one plan of restoration, and that he was "unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration, and was unprepared to declare that the free State Constitutions and Governments already adopted and installed in Louisiana and Arkansas, shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, and unprepared to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States, though sincerely hoping that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in all the States might be adopted."While, with these objections, Mr. Lincoln could not approve the bill, he concluded his Proclamation with these words:
"Nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in the bill as one very proper for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall be prepared to give Executive aid and assistance to any such people as soon as military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States--in which Military Governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill.""It must be frankly admitted," says Mr. Blaine in reciting this record in his 'Thirty Years of Congress,' that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its respects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of the Republican members, and violent criticism from the more radical members of both Houses. * * * Fortunately, the Senators and Representatives had returned to their States and Districts before the Reconstruction Proclamation was issued, and found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support."In the last speech Mr. Lincoln ever made, (April 11th, 1865)referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the Louisiana Government, (on the one-tenth basis) he said:
