and telegraphic despatches, to some extent at least, what the form of their constitutions should be, and what they should contain. While from those thus deputed to frame constitutions the colored people were systematically excluded, all that was required of the ex-Rebels was an oath of allegiance to support the Constitution they had in vain endeavored to destroy. Nor did it seem sufficient to exclude the ex-slaves from all such participation. Union white men were deemed intruders, and though in form invested with the right of suffrage, they were so far as possible, by a system of terrorism, prevented from exercising that right. "They undertook," said one who spoke from knowledge of what he affirmed, "with systematic violence to drive from the South law-abiding citizens of the North,many of them patriot soldiers, scarred with honorable wounds. received in the service of the country, who went there in the exercise of their inalienable right to live where they please. With the ferocity of wild beasts they hunted down Union men who had resisted the pressure of treason, and had hailed the old flag waving at the head of our advancing armies."

But the animus, not to say diabolism, of this policy is better seen in the legislation concerning the colored race. With no room for even a digest of the black codes that disgraced the statute-books of those States, samples only can be given, and these shall be in the words of another, who, as a lawyer, had examined the subject, and who thus reports, or rather from whose report these extracts are made:

"The Johnson governments constructed an elaborate system for preventing the colored people from being masters of their time, and for keeping them constantly under the will and jurisdiction of the planters. They made it a criminal offence, an act of vagrancy, punishable with fine and imprisonment, for a freedman to leave his employer before the expiration of a term of service prescribed in a written contract. Such was the legislation of Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. It was made a criminal offence in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas for any person to entice away such laborer, or after he had left his employer to employ, harbor, feed, or clothe him. What should we think of a law here, which should send a

farm-laborer, failing to carry out his contract to serve his employer, a year to the house of correction, and which should send there also the farmer who employed him after such breach of contract? Furthermore, under the same act, every civil officer was required and every person authorized by main force and without legal process to take back such a deserting laborer to his employer, and was to receive for the service five dollars, and ten cents a mile for travel.

"In Mississippi a freedman was declared a vagrant for 'exercising the function of a minister of the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church.' This was intended to shut the mouths of negro preachers who were disposed to instruct their brethren in the rights and duties of freemen. Another act of the same State declared freedmen 'found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time,' to be vagrants, thus aiming particularly at Republican meetings and loyal leagues. The same act declared white persons usually associating themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes, to be vagrants, thus aiming at the teachers of freedmen who taught their children by day and could not obtain board with white families. An act of Louisiana made it a criminal offence 'to enter upon a plantation without the permission of the owner or agent,'-thus aiming at Republican canvassers, teachers of freedmen, and designing to keep plantation negroes in utter ignorance of their rights. In Florida it was made a criminal offence for a negro to intrude himself into any religious or other public assembly of white persons, or into any railroad car or other public vehicle set apart for the exclusive accommodation of white people,' upon conviction of which he should be sentenced to stand in the pillory for one hour, or be whipped not exceeding thirty-nine stripes, or both at the discretion of the jury.' What think you of that provision, you who for curiosity or information are accustomed to frequent public meetings?

And these are but samples of a long and horrid catalogue of inhuman and infamous provisions, all designed to both oppress and repress every rising aspiration of the freedman's new

found manhood, for self-assertion, protection, and improve ment. Thus in Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina it was made an offence "punishable with pillory and stripes". to own or keep any bowie-knife, dirk, sword, fire-arms, or ammunition of any kind without a license. To prevent his becoming a landowner, and thus gaining confidence and selfrespect, beside forming combinations not to sell him land, Mississippi enacted a law denying him "the right to acquire and dispose of public property." And this was the "liberty" the President took especial pains, and with frequent reiterations, to say, in default of the right of suffrage, he would assure and guarantee to the freedmen; this the "Land of Promise," to which he was willing and anxious, as their Moses, to lead them.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION.

Important epoch. - Mr. Colfax. Momentous problem. - Intrinsic and extrinsic difficulties. - Southern attitude. — Implacable hostility. Mr. Johnson's position. Defines his policy. - Forsakes his party. — Executive assumption. -Meeting of Congress. - General bewilderment.

Fessenden.

RepresentAnthony's amend

ative opinions. Stevens's resolution. — In the Senate. ment and remarks. "Lincoln-Johnson policy." Doolittle's speech. Fessenden's defence of Congress. Howe's resolution and speech. - Vigorous debate in the House. - Improved tone. - Indefiniteness of views. - Debate on referring message. Stevens, Spaulding, Shellabarger, Bingham. - Freed

men.

THE opening session of the XXXIXth Congress, on the 4th of December, 1865, marked an era in American history without precedent or parallel; and it had been looked forward to with deep and anxious interest. "It is not unsafe to say," said Mr. Colfax, on taking his seat as presiding officer of the House, "that millions more than ever before, North, South, East, and West, are looking to Congress which opens its session to-day with an earnestness and solicitude unequalled on similar occasions in the past. . . . . The Rebellion having overthrown constitutional State governments in many States, it is yours to mature and enact legislation which, with the concurrence of the executive, shall establish them anew on such a basis of enduring justice as will guarantee all necessary safeguards to the people, and afford what our Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, proclaims is the chief object of government, protection to men in their inalienable rights." But this great work, so briefly stated and clearly outlined by the Speaker, though so needful and imperative even, was beset with difficulties both intrinsic and extrinsic, pertaining

essentially to the work itself, and also growing out of the peculiar and untoward circumstances amid which it must be undertaken and carried forward. These might well appall, even from a general outlook and superficial examination. Had they been better understood and more fully comprehended, men might well have shrunk therefrom. Had the conditions been favorable, the difficulties were intrinsic. Had there been perfect harmony of thought and feeling, unity of purpose and plan, between victor and vanquished, the ex-masters and the ex-slaves; had all past wrongs and former inequalities of condition been forgotten; could there have been buried in the graves that covered the victims of the fight all the animosities and conflicts of opinion and interest which led to and accompanied it; could a conversion as radical and complete as that of Saul of Tarsus have regenerated every survivor, imbuing him with a love as all-embracing, an enthusiasm as fervid, and a heroism as grand, - still the work of reconstruction would have been beset with difficulties that no change of heart or unity of purpose could at once remove or overcome. For many of the sins of slavery were unpar donable sins, for which there could be no atonement. No regrets or repentance for past neglects and wrong-doing would restore its wasted fields, or neutralize the poison of its enforced and unrequited toil. Nor could they undo and eradicate the mischief inflicted upon the character and habits of life that were formed or grew up under the influence and necessary conditions of slaveholding. If there were no Nemesis to visit vengeance for these years and generations of flagrant wrong inflicted by the strong upon the weak, if there were no Divine justice to be satisfied, and it were not true that "every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword," still it is impossible to conceive of constructing society on a basis of democratic equality, at least without many drawbacks and hindrances, from materials formed under conditions exactly the reverse of what would be desirable,where one half of the population owned the other half and deemed it the pariah race, where labor was despised as fit only to be performed by slaves, and where one half of the