THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
porting that of a President universally beloved and trusted. Thus, I believe,—and there is plenty of moral evidence in Lincoln's character and career justifying that belief,—Abraham Lincoln would have sought to solve the problem of reconstruction; and I see good reason for believing also that he would have succeeded in accomplishing the essential objects aimed at by the wiser heads among the Republicans—not indeed, without difficulty, but without the spasmodic convulsions which Andrew Johnson's ill-advised and headstrong course called forth, and without leaving behind so many bitter and mischievous criminations and recriminations to be played upon by the demagogue North and South.
There could have been no more glaring contrast than that between Johnson's and Lincoln's ways of meeting such a crisis. The wish to avoid a breach between the President and Congress was still sincere and strong among the members of the Republican majority. The Judiciary committee of the Senate, on January 12, 1866, reported a bill to continue the existence, to increase the personnel, and to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau. It was discussed in both Houses with great thoroughness and in a temperate spirit, and the necessity of the measure for the protection of the freedmen and the introduction of free labor in the South was so generally acknowledged that the recognized Republican friends of the President in the Senate as well as in the House supported it. It passed by overwhelming majority in both Houses, and everybody, even those most intimate with the President, confidently expected that he would willingly accept and sign it. But on the 19th of February he returned it with his veto, mainly on the assumed ground that it was unnecessary and unconstitutional, and also because it was passed by a Congress from which eleven States, those lately in rebellion, were excluded—thus
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