RECONSTRUCTION.
The question of reconstructing the States that seceded will be practically settled before these pages can see the light, and will therefore be considered here only so far as necessary to complete the view of the constitution of the United States.The manner in which the government proposed to settle, has settled, or will settle the question, proves that both it and the American people have only confused views of the rights and powers of the General government, but imperfectly comprehend the distinction between the legislative and executive departments of that Government, and are far more familiar with party tactics than with constitutional law.
It would be difficult to imagine any thing more unconstitutional, more crude, or more glaringly impolitic than the mode of reconstruction indicated by the various executive proclamations that have been issued, bearing on the subject, or even by the bill for guaranteeing the States republican governments, that passed Congress, but which failed to obtain the President's signature.It is, in some measure, characteristic of the American government to understand how things ought to be done only when they are done and it is too late to do them in the right way.Its wisdom comes after action, as if engaged in a series of experiments.But, happily for the nation, few blunders are committed that with our young life and elasticity are irreparable, and that, after all, are greater than are ordinarily committed by older and more experienced nations.They are not of the most fatal character, and are, for the most part, such as are incident to the conceit, the heedlessness, the ardor, and the impatience of youth, and need excite no serious alarm for the future.
There has been no little confusion in the public mind, and in that of the government itself, as to what reconstruction is, who has the power to reconstruct, and how that power is to be exercised.Are the States that seceded States in the Union, with no other disability than that of having no legal governments? or are they Territories subject to the Union? Is their reconstruction their erection into new States, or their restoration as States previously in the Union? Is the power to reconstruct in the States themselves? or is it in the General government?
If partly in the people and partly in the General government, is the part in the General government in Congress, or in the Executive? If in Congress, can the Executive, without the authority of Congress, proceed to reconstruct, simply leaving it for Congress to accept or reject the reconstructed State? If the power is partly in the people of the disorganized States who or what defines that people, decides who may or may not vote in the reorganization? On all these questions there has been much crude, if not erroneous, thinking, and much inconsistent and contradictory action.
The government started with the theory that no State had seceded or could secede, and held that, throughout, the States in rebellion continued to be States in the Union.That is, it held secession to be a purely personal and not a territorial insurrection.Yet it proclaimed eleven States to be in insurrection against the United States, blockaded their ports, and interdicted all trade and intercourse of any kind with them.
The Supreme Court, in order to sustain the blockade and interdict as legal, decided the war to be not a war against simply individual or personal insurgents but "a territorial civil war."This negatived the assumption that the States that took up arms against the United States remained all the while peaceable and loyal States, with all their political rights and powers in the Union.The States in the Union are integral elements of the political sovereignty, for the sovereignty of the American nation vests in the States finite; and it is absurd to pretend that the eleven States that made the rebellion and were carrying on a formidable war against the United States, were in the Union, an integral element of that sovereign authority which was carrying on a yet more formidable war against them.Nevertheless, the government still held to its first assumption, that the States in rebellion continued to be States in the Union--loyal States, with all their rights and franchises unimpaired!
That the government should at first have favored or acquiesced in the doctrine that no State had ceased to be a State in the Union, is not to be wondered at.The extent and determination of the secession movement were imperfectly understood, and the belief among the supporters of the government, and, perhaps, of the government itself, was, that it was a spasmodic movement for a temporary purpose, rather than a fixed determination to found an independent separate nationality; that it was and would be sustained by the real majority of the people of none of the States, with perhaps the exception of South Carolina; that the true policy of the government would be to treat the seceders with great forbearance, to avoid all measures likely to exasperate them or to embarrass their loyal fellow-citizens, to act simply on the defensive, and to leave the Union men in the several seceding States to gain a political victory at the polls over the secessionists, and to return their States to their normal position in the Union.
