During the early period of the war the President checked all
efforts on the part of zealous subordinates, civil and military,
to make the war for the Union even incidentally a war upon
slavery. In his efforts to unionize the border states Mr Lincoln
in March 1862 urged that Congress should co-operate with any
state in providing for a voluntary, gradual and compensated
emancipation. Congress acceded, but not one of the border
states would undertake emancipation. Many of the Republican
leaders rejected the border state policy of the President and
urged a more radical course towards slavery. In replying to
Horace Greeley, who voiced the discontent in a public letter, to
which he gave the title, The Prayer of Twenty Millions of People,
Mr Lincoln in August 1862 wrote: “ My paramount object is
to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery.”
But as evidence accumulated that slavery was a strong
military support of the Confederacy the policy of destroying
slavery as a means of saving the Union grew in favour. To
this policy Mr Lincoln on the 22nd of September 1862 committed
himself, the Republican party and the cause of the
Union. The first response was distinctly unfavourable. The
immediate effect was “to unite the South and divide -the
North.” A considerable element of the Democratic party
became disloyal, while the party as a whole opposed all measures
looking to the destruction of slavery. The autumn elections
greatly reduced the Republican majority in Congress. But the
new policy steadily gained ground until the Republican party
in its third national convention, which met on the 7th of June
1864, resolved: “that as slavery was the cause and now
constitutes the strength of this rebellion, justice and national
safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil
of the republic.” In the following year slavery was finally
abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.
On the Republican party, since it had an effective majority in each house of Congress, rests the responsibility for the legislation of the war period. The theory of loose construction of the Constitution was accepted. Throughout the Civil War, Congress, proceeding upon this theory, made prompt provision for the prosecution of the war. It passed Legal Tender Acts; it established a system of national banks; greatly raised the tariff rates; and in order to hasten the settlement of the Far West and to make that section an integral part of the Union, it passed a Homestead Act and an act providing for a railway to the Pacific. For a time, while disloyalty was most rife in the North, there was a sharp curtailment of the rights of the individual citizen through the suspension, initiated by the President and approved by Congress, of the writ of Habeas Corpus. Most of the acts, which their opponents held to be violations of the Constitution, were in general acts of questionable utility. The results of the war, which came to a close early in 1865, vindicated in a signal way the principles, policies and leadership of the Republican party. It had saved the Union; it had established the national character of the Union so firmly as to bring to an end the doctrine of the right of secession; and it had destroyed slavery.
The party had been singularly fortunate in its founders and leaders. Of these three were pre-eminent: Horace Greeley, William H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln-Greeley in the field of journalism, Seward in the two realms of idealistic and practical politics, and, greatest of all, Abraham Lincoln who won and held the people.
Reconstruction.-The larger tasks of the period from the close of the Civil War in 1865 to the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 were three: first, to accomplish with the least possible disturbance the transition from war to peace; second, to settle certain matters of dispute with France and England that had arisen during the progress of the war; and third, to reconstruct the South. Full responsibility for the way in which these tasks were discharged rests upon the Republican party, for it was in control of the presidency and the Senate throughout the period and of the House until December 187 5. In the first and second it was notably successful. The soldiers of North and South returned at once to the fields of productive labour. The colossal war establishment was quickly reduced to the requirements of peace. The French withdrew from Mexico. The Alabama Claims were submitted to arbitration. But the reconstruction of the South proved difficult in the extreme. The strain of a prolonged and exhausting war, the upheaval of emancipation, and the utter collapse of the Confederate government, had thrown the elements of social, economic and civil life in the South into almost hopeless disorder. To restore these to normal relations and working was but part of the task; the other and more important part was to apply those methods of reconstruction which would tend to make one nation out of- hitherto discordant sections. In his third annual message, Dec. 8th, 1863, Lincoln brought forward the so-called presidential plan of reconstruction. This was rejected on the ground that reconstruction was a Congressional rather than an executive function; and on the 4th of July 1864 Congress passed a bill making Congress instead of the president the chief agent in the work of reconstruction. President Johnson adopted Lincoln's plan, and put it into operation with such vigour that when Congress met in December 1865 all the states that had seceded were quite or nearly ready to demand the readmission of their representatives to the House and Senate.
From the standpoint of party the situation was highly critical. The men whom the newly reconstructed states had sent to Washington represented the old South and would naturally join the opposition. Although the ratihcation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, was assured, and a fortnight later was officially proclaimed, nevertheless the reconstructed legislatures were busy enacting police regulations which, in the opinion of most Republicans, threatened to re enslave the freedmen. With an earnestness like that which the party in earlier days had shown in opposing the extension of slavery, it now resolved to secure full civil rights to the freedmen. Another consideration of great weight in shaping party policy was the need of maintaining the rights of Congress against executive encroachment. Owing to the war and Lincoln's masterful personality, the presidency had gained in prestige at the expense of Congress. The tendency thus established would be strengthened to a dangerous degree, it was thought, if the President were to take the leading part in reconstructing as well as in saving the Union. There now took place within the party a change of great importance. Hitherto the conservatives, represented by such leaders as Lincoln and Seward, had always won in struggles with the radical elements; but now the tide changed, and the radicals who were more narrowly national and more strongly partisan gained control, and ruled the party to the end of the period. This revolution within the Republican party between the years 1865 and 1867 was fostered by a marked recrudescence of sectional feeling in the North, and by the character of the successor of President Lincoln and of the party leaders in Congress. President Johnson while eminently patriotic and courageous, was tactless and imprudent to the last degree. Mr Sumner, the leader of the Senate, was not conciliatory in manner, and While incapable of revengeful feeling seemed more considerate of the freedman than of the Southern white. Thaddeus Stevens, whose influence over the House of Representatives was stronger than that of Sumner over the Senate, regarded the South as “ a conquered province, ” and his personal feelings towards the ruling class of the South were harshly vindictive. The policy adopted by the Republican majority in each house of Congress was to refuse admission to the men chosen by the states that had been reconstructed under the presidential plan, until a joint committee of both houses should investigate conditions in the South. In this rebuff there was distinct intimation of a purpose to set aside altogether .the reconstructive work of the President. Congress proceeded at once to enact measures to continue and extend the earlier temporary provision for helpless freedmen whom emancipation had set adrift, and to give them full civil rights. By passing the Fourteenth Amendment in Tune 1866 Congress committed itself to the policy of securing the civil rights of the negro by constitutional guarantee. Each of these acts was vetoed by the President, between whom and
