The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state government existed in the ten unreconstructed states and that there was no adequate protection for life and property.The Johnson and Lincoln governments in those States were declared to have no legal status and to be subject wholly to the authority of the United States to modify or abolish.The ten states were divided into five military districts, over each of which a general officer was to be placed in command.Military tribunals were to supersede the civil courts where necessary.Stevens was willing to rest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking military rule but desiring to force Negro suffrage, inserted a provision in the law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the following conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, the members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard to color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by Congress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if the Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the Federal Constitution, the State should be readmitted to representation.
In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of in December as was customary.According to the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March, it was left to the state government or to the people of a state to make the first move towards reconstruction.If they preferred, they might remain under military rule.Either by design or by carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the execution of the act.When it became evident that the Southerners preferred military rule, the new Congress passed a Supplementary Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act into operation.The five commanding generals were directed to register the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised, to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the constitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to Congress.
In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on the way to accomplishment.Its spread had been rapid.In December 1865, the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification the work of Lincoln and Johnson.Three months later the Civil Rights Act measured the advance.Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism.The campaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern states swept all radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless course of reconstruction.Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support.Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential disregard, was eager for extremes.Johnson, who regarded himself as defending the Constitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, and undignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategy for his radical opponents.
The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been brought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion impending in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that the Democratic party might regain power.With the freeing of the slaves, the representation of the South in Congress would be increased.At first it seemed that the South might divide in politics as before the war, but the longer the delay the more the Southern whites tended to unite into one party acting with the Democrats.With their eighty-five representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might gain control of the lower House of Congress.The Union-Republican party had a majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessened slightly in the Fortieth Congress.The President was for all practical purposes a Democrat again.The prospect was too much for the very human politicians to view without distress.Stevens, speaking in support of the Military Reconstruction Bill, said:
"There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill.In the first place, it is just.I am now confining my argument to Negro suffrage in the rebel states.Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the second place, it is necessary in order to protect the loyal white men in the seceded states.With them the blacks would act in a body, and it is believed that in each of these states, except one, the two united would form a majority, control the states, and protect themselves.Now they are the victims of daily murder.They must suffer constant persecution or be exiled.Another good reason is that it would insure the ascendancy of the union party....I believe...that on the continued ascendancy of that party depends the safety of this great nation.If impartial suffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them is sure to send a solid rebel electoral vote.They, with their kindred Copperheads of the North, would always elect the President and control Congress."The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and presupposed a continuance of war conditions.The Lincoln-Johnson state governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of his constitutional power, could exercise but little control over the military government.Nothing that a state might do would secure restoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.The war had been fought upon the theory that the old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction was that a new Union was to be created.
