THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
the security of the Southern Union men, or the rights of the public creditors into serious jeopardy.
That such dangers really existed there could hardly be any doubt. I do not say so merely because my own observations on my Southern tour had convinced me that they did exist. In fact the inquiry carried on by the committee of Reconstruction under Senator Fessenden's chairmanship piled proof upon proof of their existence. When the report of that committee came out, it presented a picture of those dangers even gloomier than mine had been. President Johnson himself had, by implication, to a considerable extent admitted them to exist, as is shown by the exceptions he made to his amnesty proclamation and by various other acts, so that in practice he largely vitiated the logic of his theory. And yet in the face of all this he insisted that the “States lately in rebellion” must be at once fully restored to self-government and to participation in the government of the Union. The government of the Union could not be absolved from its duty of honor as well as of policy by any constitutional theory. It found itself in an extra-constitutional situation—a situation of moral duress. It had to perform its manifest duty, even if it could be done only by extra-constitutional means.
It was pretended at the time, and it has since been asserted by historians and publicists of high standing, that Mr. Johnson's Reconstruction policy was only a continuation of that of Mr. Lincoln. This was true only in a superficial sense, but not in reality. Mr. Lincoln had indeed put forth reconstruction plans which contemplated an early restoration of some of the rebel States. But he had done this while the Civil War was still going on, and for the evident purpose of encouraging loyal movements in those States and of weakening the Confederate State Governments there by opposing to them governments
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