Construction and Reconstruction
confiscation of property, there were no punitive measures. All that was required was that they should in good faith abandon their pretensions of secession and declare their loyal allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. On their doing this full amnesty was freely granted with the complete restoration of all civil and political rights. In consequence of this unprecedented generosity of treatment, in the course of a few years many seats in both Houses of Congress; in the President's Cabinet, and on the bench of the Federal courts were filled by men who had been commanders of the Confederate army and high officers of the Confederate government. In such a spirit of confident generosity did the Republican party through its Congress effect the reconstruction of the nation after the storm and stress of the Civil War.
There was something more to be done. After safeguarding the Union, there must be a safeguarding of the freedom which had been given to the slaves. The slaves had been set free, as an incident of the war, and their re-enslavement would be forbidden by constitutional amendment. An amendment to that effect was proposed to the states by the Republican Congress on February 1, 1865 and was ratified by the votes of the Republican states—some Democratic states refusing to ratify it—December 18, 1865. But Republican statesmanship did not contemplate merely setting the negroes free and setting them adrift to shift for themselves. They were ignorant, propertyless, helpless. Under President Johnson's ill-devised scheme of “reconstruction” they would have been subject to vagrancy laws which would have made their condition even more deplorable than it had been under slavery. Republicans
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