RECONSTRUCTION. 



325 



duty to those who had received freedom through the 

 consequences of war to make provision for their future 

 welfare as far as could be consistently done in the dis- 

 positions relative to reconstruction. The responsi- 

 bility of having removed from the interested protec- 

 tion of private owners some four millions of people, 

 separated widely from the residue of the population 

 by race and condition, could produce no other effect 

 upon Congress. The future of these people, in view 

 of their great numbers and the absence of the condi- 

 tions for unitizing them with the surrounding popula- 

 tions in a homogeneous society, presented a problem 

 of the greatest gravity. It was apparent that little 

 consideration had been given in the States that had 

 undertaken their own reconstruction under the presi- 

 dential auspices to this important subject, for the 

 constitutions that they had framed confined the elec- 

 toral rights to free white persons and ignored the ex- 

 istence of a vast population without political recogni- 

 tion. The American people had not faced the prob- 

 lem of such exclusion from political right on a scale of 

 magnitude that challenged attention to the principles 

 involved, and were for the most part habituated to the 

 practice of giving to all of domestic birth who mingled 

 in their populations electoral privileges as essential to 

 the protection of individual liberty, and had most liber- 

 ally extended that right to foreign-born persons seeking 

 their communities. 



Notwithstanding the conferring of political as well 

 as civil privileges upon the emancipated slaves was the 

 natural outcome of American doctrine and practice, 

 yet Congress felt the gravity of the question of con- 

 ferring political rights upon the vast body of emanci- 

 pated slaves before they were prepared to intelligently 

 exercise such privileges, and felt disposed to leave the 

 solution of that problem by gradual steps to the States 

 most immediately interested in the results of such 

 policy, but under conditions that would be likely to 

 induce a liberal exercise of the power of extending the 

 elective franchise to these people. The 'Southern 

 States had always placed a nigh estimate upon the 

 value of a full representation in the national House of 

 Representatives, and had in the framing of the Con- 

 stitution of the United States secured a provision by 

 which five slaves were to be enumerated as the equiva- 

 lent of three free white persons in the basis of com- 

 puting the extent of their rights to representation. It 

 appeared to the majority in Congress that if the repre- 

 sentation in Congress of the States undergoing recon- 

 struction was limited in proportion to the exclusion 

 from electoral rights of portions of their populations 

 on the ground of race and former condition of slavery, 

 that a sufficient motive would arise out of the desire 

 for increased representation in Congress to induce a 

 liberal treatment of the question of conferring political 

 rights upon the emancipated slaves. The policy just 

 indicated was finally embodied in Amendment XIV. to 

 the Constitution. 



This amendment, proposed by Congress on June 16, 

 1866, declared as citizens all persons born or naturalized 

 in the United States, and prohibited the States from 

 depriving any person of life, liberty, or property 

 without due process of law, or denying to any person 

 within their Jurisdiction the equal protection of the 

 laws. It declared that representatives should be ap- 

 portioned, counting the whole number of persons in 

 each State, excluding Indians not taxed. It provided 

 that where the right to vote for any oifice of the United 

 States or a State was denied to any male inhabitant, 

 except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the 

 basis of representation should be reduced in propor- 

 tion to the number of such excluded citizens to the 

 whole number of male citizens of 21 years of age in 

 such State. It declared that no person shall be a 

 Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of 

 President or vice- President, or hold any office, civil or 

 military, under the United States, or under any State. 

 who having previously taken an oath, as a member of 



Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a 

 member of any State Legislature, or as an executive 

 or judicial officer of any State, to support the Consti- 

 tution of the United States, shall have engaged in in- 

 surrection or rebellion against the same or given aid 

 and comfort to the enemies thereof. It also validated 

 the public debt of the United States and excluded the 

 payment of claims on account of the rebellion or for 

 the emancipation of slaves. 



This amendment was intended and proposed as a 

 final act of pacification and restoration, which, if rati- 

 fied by the requisite number of States so as to become 

 part of the Constitution of the United States, would 

 leave to the States that had participated in the rebel- 

 lion entire freedom in constructing their domestic gov- 

 ernments. As it regarded the civil rights of the 

 emancipated slaves it went no further than the con- 

 stitutions adopted by those States under the call of 

 their provisional governors had gone. As it regarded 

 the political rights of the emancipated slaves, all was 

 left to the discretion of the States under the influence 

 of the motive to liberality arising from the oppor- 

 tunity of enlarging their representation in Congress by 

 conferring electoral rights upon the former slaves. 

 The exclusion of those who had participated in the 

 rebellion was limited to those who had held official 

 positions in the United States and in the States, and 

 who were presumably of leading influence in the 

 States, and had had the advantages of official position 

 to enhance that influence, and thus were to some ex- 

 tent responsible for the public policy of the States that 

 led them into rebellion. But these exclusions could 

 be removed by Congress, and, as the sequel will show, 

 were intended to be removed by Congress as soon as 

 the main objects of reconstruction should be accom- 

 plished. The remaining provisions of the amendment 

 were such as were to be anticipated under the circum- 

 stances. 



The amendment was promptly rejected by Georgia 

 and North and South Carolina and ratification with- 

 held in all the other States participating in the rebel- 

 lion, except Tennessee, which promptly ratified it. It 

 was thus evident that the States directly affected by 

 the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment would 

 not accept the tender made by Congress and that some 

 other course of action was a necessity of the case. 



It is necessary here to refer to legislative action that 

 both preceded and followed the discovery that nearly 

 all the States that constituted the Confederacy were 

 unwilling to assent to the terms of pacification and re- 

 construction propounded by Congress. By an act 

 passed April 9, 1800, Congress ascertained the civil 

 status of the emancipated slaves, declaring that all 

 persons born in the United States, not subject to any 

 foreign power, other than Indians not taxed, were 

 citizens of the United States entitled to the equal pro- 

 tection of the laws. Authority was conferred upon the 

 judiciary of_the United States to enforce the rights 

 thus recognized. This act was the first instance in 

 which the national legislature gave effect to the decla- 

 ration that permeates all the utterances of fundamental 

 truths that nave been accepted as the basis of our na- 

 tional system, that "All men are born free and equal," 

 a form of expression that would have been more exact 

 if the statement had been that all men are born to be 

 free and equal. But this declaration was only the par- 

 tial embodiment of this fundamental truth, for it ex- 

 tended only to the civil status of American-born per- 

 sons and left the political status still lacking in ho- 

 mogeneity, and was subject to the doubt whether its 

 provisions could extend beyond the States actually re- 

 duced by the arms of the United States. 



Amendment XIII. to the Constitution, that abol- 

 ishes slavery within the United States, had previously 

 been proposed to the States and was proclaimed as 

 ratified Dec. 18, 1805, but did not have the effect to 

 ascertain the civil status of the emancipated slaves, 

 although it dissolved all subsisting relations of master 



