in the breeze. The nation seemed present to greet the brave men who had saved the Union. It was not alone the President and his cabinet, nor Congress, nor Grant, nor Sherman, nor Sheridan, nor Thomas, nor Meade, nor Hancock, whom the nation honored, but the common soldier as well. But what of the great company, three hundred and fifty thousand strong, who had gone to the front and never returned? Here was the grand review of the living, there was the "bivouac of the dead." And in the silent company there were as many more of those who had worn the gray.

Europe, the continent of wars, looked on amazed. The soldiers of the Republic, North and South, broke ranks, and in a day vanished into the usual occupations of life.

CHAPTER XXXIV

RECONSTRUCTION

1865-1877

The ten years immediately following the war, usually spoken of as "the era of reconstruction," were years of confusion, of counter-revolution, of political agitation, and of reorganization. The people of the United States had very serious problems on hand. Chief of these were the pacification and government of the late Confederate states, the status and treatment of the negroes, and the payment of the national debt. What relation did these states bear to the United States? Were they in or out of the Union? What was to be done with the negroes? Were they citizens? What were their rights? Who should protect them? How should the national debt be managed and paid?

Lincoln said in his first inaugural that the Union was perpetual and unbroken. On the 8th of December, 1863, he had issued a "proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction" to all who would lay down their arms and swear allegiance to the government, excepting members of the Confederate government and others who, as United States or state officers, had sworn to support the national Constitution. The proclamation reached the mass of southern men. If one-tenth of those in the several Confederate states who had voted in 1860 would re-establish state governments, republican in form, the United States would recognize them as true governments. Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, and Tennessee acted on the President's plan, but Congress refused to recognize them. These states had made new constitutions, and chosen Congressmen and Senators who came to Washington. Congress refused to admit them, and the electoral vote of these states was not counted in 1864. Lincoln's last public speech was on April 11, 1865, and it was mainly a discussion of reconstruc

tion. Passing over the question whether the southern states were in or out of the Union, he said that the sole object of the government was "to again get them into proper practical relation with the Union." The radical Republicans did not like his speech; but sudden death put an end to whatever plan Lincoln had worked out in his mind.

Congress insisted that reconstruction was not a matter for the executive to regulate; that Congress alone has the right to determine what is a "republican form of government" in a state. Therefore, Congress and not the President should take the lead.

But the new President had an entirely different idea. The collapse of the Confederacy and the complicity of the southern state governments, he claimed, had put an end to civil government in the South. The President was the person, under the Constitution, to restore order and civil government there. He therefore proceeded to execute the United States laws in the South. The blockade was raised; the mail service was resumed, and the customs and internal taxes were ordered to be collected. Over each of the late Confederate states the President placed a provisional governor, instructing him to execute all state laws applicable to the new state of affairs, and to call a convention which should make a new constitution for the state.

All this was done. The conventions met in 1865, made new state constitutions, passed ordinances repealing all secession acts of whatever kind, abolished slavery, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, held elections, chose state officials in every department, elected United States Senators and Congressmen, and sent these and their new constitutions to Congress. But Congress refused to recognize any of these reconstruction acts, rejected the constitutions, and refused to admit the Senators and Representatives. This action of Congress brought the question of reconstruction into politics and disclosed a serious antagonism between Congress and the President.

The radical objection to these first constitutions was their treatment of the negro. They permitted only white men to hold office; they permitted only white men to vote,

1866-1868]

AMENDMENT XIV

469

and they excluded negroes from the basis of representation. Only the white inhabitants were included in this basis, but the property of all, white and black, was to be taxed.

Though the southern states had repudiated all the secession acts, had abolished slavery, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, they had left the negro without citizenship. They passed laws for the government of "freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes" which practically put the negroes in a condition of slavery. There was a great variety of these laws in force in the South when Congress met in December, 1865.

The President's reconstruction measures and the new southern constitutions were ignored by Congress, and that body took up the problem of securing civil and political rights to negroes. A civil rights bill was passed April 9, 1866, which made the negro a citizen of the United States. But this did not make him a citizen of a state, with the right to vote. On the 16th of June, 1867, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, and sent it to the states for ratification. No state lately in the rebellion could be admitted into the Union until it had ratified this amendment.

Congress then proceeded to apply its own method of reconstruction. The Confederate states were subdivided into five military districts, each in charge of an officer of the United States army. In March and July, 1867, acts were passed specifying in what manner elections should be held in the South, and who should be permitted to vote. An oath, called by some "the iron-clad oath," was exacted of all voters. It kept out all those who, having once sworn allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, had violated their oath by taking up arms. Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia ratified the Fourteenth Amendment by the 21st of July, 1868. This made the requisite number of states, with the twenty-three which had already ratified, and it was proclaimed a part of the Constitution July 28, 1868. This amendment was intended to correct the faults of the reconstruction constitutions of 1865. The southern states made new constitutions, in conformity with its principles, in 1868, and chose Representatives and United States Senators.

These were admitted to seats in Congress, and by 1870 all the states were again represented in that body.*

On the 30th of March, 1867, the country and the world in general were surprised to hear that Russia had sold the United States, for seven million two hundred thousand dollars, the province of Alaska. Never before had the Russian government consented to dispose of any of its territory. All through the war that government had given evidence of strong friendship for our own. The fur-bearing seal was supposed to be the chief source of wealth in the region. Our government granted exclusive seal privileges to a company. This eventually produced disputes and led up to the Alaska seal-fishery complications of later years. The purchase of Alaska added 577,390 square miles to our national domain, at a cost of two cents an acre.

On the 16th of July, 1868, the Senate ratified a treaty with China. Anson Burlingame, our minister to that country, was commissioned by its emperor a special envoy to all the western nations. He was the first representative ever sent by China to Europe or America. Some of the European powers did not favor the idea that an American should be selected for so extraordinary a mission. The Chinese embassy, with Burlingame at its head, arrived in San Francisco on the last day of March, 1868. Mr. Burlingame then discovered that the Empire of China had no flag. He was ingenious enough to make one out of the "dragon," the Chinese mark of empire, and some yellow cloth, the imperial color. The treaty with China opened its ports favorably to American trade.

This important event did not mark the first appearance of the American flag in the Far East. In 1853-54, Commodore O. C. Perry, acting under orders of President Fillmore, had conducted an American squadron to Japan, and succeeded in opening the ports of that country, until that time closed to the western world. A treaty of amity and commerce with the United States followed, March 31, 1854. This opened up Japan; awoke it from its oriental slumber of ages, and was the primary cause of those extraor

*For a detailed account of the reconstruction period, see my Constitutional History of the United States, 1765-1895, Vol. III.