reconstruction. I do not enter into that dispute. It already belongs to the past. Nevertheless, I am now inclined to think that it was unreasonable to expect the passions and ambitions of thirtythree free states, and thirty millions of free people so recently and terribly convulsed by civil war, to subside in so short a period as four years. It is the highest attribute of the Almighty, which the divine poet has conceived, that He "stilleth the noise of the seas, and the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people." The storms must be withheld before the seas can come to rest.

Probably such an intense and pervading political agitation as ours could not have been suddenly repressed without overthrowing public liberty itself, as the Napoleons did at the close of two popular French revolutions.

The choice of our two principal magistrates in 1864 was certainly wisely made. We found out at the beginning of the civil war that neither party, and no party alone without coöperation from the other, could save the country. The people who made the choice in 1864 were neither a republican party nor a democratic party, but avowedly and heroically a Union people, and union always means an effective combination of kindred forces. The Union people in 1864 followed the rule which has so generally prevailed of dividing the names to be placed on the Presidential ticket between competing sections, parties, or interests, giving the greater weight to the larger section or party. With nice judgment, therefore, they chose Abraham Lincoln, a northern Union patriot of republican antecedents to be President, and Andrew Johnson, a southern Union patriot of democratic antecedents, to be Vice President.

Active hostilities, however, had hardly ended before there appeared a portentous conflict of popular ideas and opinions concerning the proper conditions of peace and reconciliation, and these ideas and opinions had relation to the so-called reconstruction of the state governments in the rebel states. Personal ambitions, of course, entered into the controversy. Social ideas and popular ambitions are inherent in all republics, and revolutions stimulate their rapid development. No one form of political idea, no one form of personal ambition that has presented itself in our recent distractions was new. They all sprang up and in turn attained complete, though many of them only temporary, ascendency during the French revolution of 1789, a revolution which, as we all see, gave

way after a short while to a military despotism that still survives. We now see that in the insurrection the rebel states became revolutionary states, not merely revolutionary against the United States, but revolutionary within themselves. As such, they have experienced the fortune of all revolutionary states. Each new political idea, and every distinct personal ambition in revolutionary states, demands either a severe constitutional reform, or a change of the existing constitution altogether. The right of the people and their power in such states to make such changes is not only unchallenged, but is also unchecked. It follows, as a consequence, that no constitution which is forged in the white-heat of revolution ever endures.

We have forgotten that this nation went through the Revolutionary crisis practically without any constitution at all. There was indeed a Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and from all other nations, and a precious assertion of human rights; but no constitutional government was established or framed until seven years after the last belligerent had disappeared from the field.

We can all recollect that brilliant constitutions successively came out like fire-beacons in the murky gloom of the French Revolution. All those constitutions were based upon some sound political ideas, and all ought to have been compatible with any patriotic ambition. Yet they succeeded each other so rapidly, that when a politician entered the store of a bookseller in Paris, and asked for the constitution of France, he was answered, "We do not deal here in periodical publications."

Mexico seems at last to have acquired a constitution, but only after forty years of civil wars, culminating in the great calamity which we have so happily escaped - foreign intervention. Although all the South American republics have been independent through a period of forty or fifty years, yet it cannot be certainly said of any one of them that it has yet definitely accepted and adopted a final constitution. Revolutions have continued to overthrow constitutions there as fast as they have been made. It was unwise, then, to expect that the insurgent states, coming out of their flagrant rebellion, and yet allowed by the Federal Constitution to reconstitute their forms of government for themselves and by their own proper act, in conformity with the Federal Constitution, could all at once adopt constitutions which should be permanently satisfactory to

themselves and to us, in the presence of an entire new condition of society produced by the emancipation of four millions of slaves. What they wanted was "time.” What we have wanted was patience. These two wants seasonably indicated the course of popular wisdom in regard to restoration, reorganization, or reconstruction, by whatever name it may be called.

Reliance, however, was justly placed upon the advantages which Abraham Lincoln had for overcoming these embarrassments. Leaving out of view his peculiar moral and intellectual qualities, Mr. Lincoln possessed a decided advantage, in the fact that he had conducted the government with approved fidelity and wisdom through the entire course of the civil war. As the people gave their first confidence to Washington, in organizing the government, upon the ground that he had safely led them through the Revolutionary war; as the people in 1848 gave their confidence to General Taylor, upon the ground that he had safely led them through the greatest peril of the Mexican war; so the people were expected to give their full confidence to Abraham Lincoln in restoring the Union, because he had led them successfully through the late terrific revolutionary convulsion of the country.

No wise and candid man thought, at that time, either that the war could be ended, or that peace and reconciliation could be effected, under an administration that did not fully enjoy the public confidence upon two cardinal points, namely, first, the justice of the Union cause in the war; second, the necessity, wisdom, and justice of the abolition of African slavery which the war had effected.

Abraham Lincoln had a still greater advantage. He had been twice chosen by the people themselves to be their President, their civil chief. They were accustomed to his leadership, and they loved him as an accepted impersonation of their own convictions, no matter how varied those convictions might be. They all knew, or believed they knew, him thoroughly. They had committed themselves to his support in advance. His success would be their own success. His failure would be felt and deplored as their own failThus was enlisted in his favor the national pride, the national affection, and the national gratitude. What combinations could have resisted a magistrate thus armed, and aiming only to complete the great and glorious work of saving the Union, which he himself began?

ure.

In an unhappy hour Abraham Lincoln fell by the hand of the assassin. That fearful calamity, which was equally beyond human foresight and human control, suddenly and profoundly interfered with our high purposes and patriotic desires. Human nature, around the whole circle of the globe, and especially in its centre here, recoiled and stood aghast before that great crime. The country sank for a moment into sadness and despair of its future, from which it was aroused to seek and search everywhere, in the government and out of it, in the North and in the South, at home and abroad, for secret authors, agents, and motives for the horrible assassination. While suspicion attached itself by turns to everybody, it justly fastened itself at last upon the rebellion, and demanded new and severer punishment of the rebels, instead of the magnanimous reconciliation which the beloved President of whom it had been bereaved had recommended. Who will say that this sentiment was unnatural? Who shall say that it was even unjust? Revolution has always the same complex machinery. Besides the public machinery which its managers directly employ, there is always a secret assassination-wheel carefully contrived, and ready to come into activity when a crisis is reached. Revolutionists cannot relieve themselves of all responsibility for it by pleading that it was unknown to themselves. Who can say how far this great crime of assassination has been effective in delaying and preventing the desired reconciliation?

It was in the midst of this distraction that Andrew Johnson came to the presidency, not by virtue of two popular elections to that office, like his predecessor, or even of one such election, but by virtue of his constitutional election to be only Vice President. The unfinished work of the lamented Lincoln devolved upon him. The conditions and considerations which were the advantages in his election as Vice President suddenly became disadvantages to him as President. The Southern States and the democratic party were remembered but too unfavorably by the Northern anti-slavery victors, in connection with the rebellion, the civil war, and African slavery.

In addressing himself to the holy work of national reconciliation, the new President proceeded with due deliberation and firmness, decision and vigor. He retained all his lamented predecessor's counsellors. He adopted his lamented predecessor's plan of recon

ciliation, which seemed to him, as it seemed then to the whole country, to be practicable and easy, because it was simple and natural. It consisted simply in opening the easiest and shortest safe way for a return into the national family of the people of the Southern States, who now repented their attempted separation. Those states were invited to resume the vacant chairs in the legislative councils, by sending Senators and Representatives, who should be chosen by the people of those states, and who should prove themselves, by every practical test, unquestionably loyal to the Union. Some constitution and frame of government in the rebel states, however, would be a necessary instrumentality of making such choice of senators and representatives. There was at the same time a manifest necessity for such renewed institutions of municipal government for the restoration of peace and order in the disorganized states, the administration of justice, and the exercise of other necessary functions of government there. The people of the rebel states were therefore invited to establish such necessary state governments, upon the basis of loyalty and fidelity, of which practical tests were provided. These tests were: first, the acceptance of the new amendment to the Constitution which abolished African slavery; second, repudiation of the rebel debt; third, abrogation of all rebel laws; fourth, the acceptance of the so-called iron-clad oath.1

All other questions were passed over for further and future action. Loyal state governments were promptly formed, and loyal Senators and Representatives appeared with equal promptness at the doors of Congress, knocking for admission to the seats vacated in 1861. Then, and not till then, peace was proclaimed throughout the land, and authoritatively announced to all nations.

It is not correct that the President of the United States made those state governments, or caused them to be made, by force or intimidation. The Union armies, of which he was commander-inchief, lingered, indeed, in the rebel states, to keep the peace in the event of surprise during the transition from civil war. The popu lar action there was, nevertheless, spontaneous, and the Executive confined itself to the form of suggestion and advice of which President Lincoln had already wisely set an accepted example. The new state constitutions were the best attainable at the time, without direct application of force. They were adequate to the emergency,

1 Disavowing and repudiating all connection with disunion or rebellion.