344 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



matter to the law-making power, or he might con- 

 tinue military supervision and control until Congress 

 should assemble on its regular appointed day. Se- 

 lecting the latter alternative, he proceeded, by virtue 

 of his power as commander-in-chief, to appoint pro- 

 visional governors over the revolted States. These 

 were regularly commissioned and their compensation 

 was paid, as the Secretary of War stated, " from the 

 appropriation for army contingencies, because the 

 duties performed by the parties were regarded as of 

 a temporary character, auxiliary to the withdrawal 

 of the military force, the disbandment of armies, and 

 the reduction of military expenditure by provisional 

 organizations for the protection of civil rights, the 

 preservation of peace, and to take the place of armed 

 force in the respective States." It cannot, we think, 

 be contended that those governors possessed, or 

 would exercise, any but military authority. They 

 had no power to organize civil governments nor to 

 exercise any authority except that which inhered in 

 their own persons under their commissions. Neither 

 had the President, as commander-in-chief, any other 

 than military authority. It was for him to decide 

 how far he would exercise it, how far he would relax 

 it, when and on what terms he would withdraw it. 

 He might properly permit the people to assemble and 

 to initiate local governments and to execute such laws 

 as they might choose to frame, not inconsistent with 

 nor in opposition to the laws of the United States. 

 And, if satisfied that they might safely be left to 

 themselves, he might withdraw the military forces 

 altogether and leave the people of any or all of these 

 States to govern themselves without his interference. 

 In the language of the Secretary of State, in his dis- 

 patch to the Provisional Governor of Georgia, dated 

 October 28, 1865, he might "recognize the people of 

 any State as having resumed the relations of loyalty 

 to the Union," and act in his military capacity on 

 this hypothesis. All this was within his own discre- 

 tion as military commander. But it was not for him 

 to decide upon the nature or effect of any system of 

 government the people of those States might choose 

 to adopt. This power is lodged by the Constitution 

 in the Congress of the United States that branch of 

 the Government in which is vested the authority to 

 fix the political relations of the States to the Union 

 whose duty it is to guarantee to each State a repub- 

 lican form of government, and to protect eacn and 

 all of them against foreign or domestic violence, or 

 against each other. We must, therefore, regard the 

 various acts of the President in relation to the for- 

 mation of local governments in the insurrectionary 

 States, and the conditions imposed by him upon 

 their action, in no other light than as intimations to 

 the people that, as commander-in-chief of the army, 

 he would consent to withdraw military rule just in 

 proportion as they should, by their acts, manifest a 

 disposition to preserve order among themselves, es- 

 tablish government, denoting loyalty to the Union, 

 and exhibit a settled determination to return to their 

 allegiance, leaving with the law-making power to fix 

 the terms of their final restoration to all their rights 

 and privileges as States of the Union. That this is 

 the view of his power taken by the President is evi- 

 dent from expressions to that effect in the commu- 

 nications of the Secretary of State to the various 

 provisional governors and the repeated declarations 

 of the President himself. Any other supposition, in- 

 consistent with this, would impute to the President 

 designs of encroachment upon a coordinate branch 

 of the Government which should not be lightly attrib- 

 uted to the Chief Magistrate of the nation. 



When Congress assembled, in December last, the 

 people of most of the States lately in rebellion had, 

 under the advice of the President, organized local 

 governments, and some of them had acceded to the 

 terms proposed by him. In his annual message he 

 stated, in general terms, what had been done, but he 

 did not see fit to communicate the details for the in- 

 formation of Congress. While in this and in a sub- 



sequent message the President urged the speedy rca 

 toration of these States, and expressed the opinion 

 that their condition was such as to justify their res- 

 toration, yet it is quite obvious that Congress must 

 either have acted blindly on that opinion of the Pres- 

 ident, or proceeded to obtain the information recpi. 

 site for intelligent action on the subject. The im- 

 propriety of proceeding wholly on the judgment of 

 any one man, however exalted his station, in a mat- 

 ter involving the welfare of the Republic in all future 

 time, or of adopting any plan, coming from any 

 source, without fully understanding all its bearings 

 and comprehending its full effect, was apparent. 

 The first step, therefore, was to obtain the required 

 information. A call was accordingly made on the 

 President for the information in his possession as to 

 what had been done, in order that Congress might 

 judge for itself as to the grounds of the belief ex- 

 pressed by him in the fitness of the States recently 

 in rebellion to participate fully in the conduct of 

 national affairs. This information was not immedi- 

 ately communicated. When the response was finally 

 made, some six weeks after your committee had been 

 in actual session, it was found that the evidence upon 

 which the President had based his suggestions wag 

 incomplete and unsatisfactory. Authenticated copies 

 of the new constitutions and ordinances adopted by 

 the conventions of three of the States had been sub- 

 mitted, e_xtracts from newspapers furnished scanty 

 information as to the action of one other State, and 

 nothing appears to have been communicated as to 

 the remainder. There was no evidence of the loy- 

 alty of those who had participated in those -conven- 

 tions, and in one State alone was any proposition 

 made to submit the. action of the convention to the 

 final judgment of the people. 



Failing to obtain the desired information, and left 

 to grope for light wherever it might be found, your 

 committee did not deem it advisable or safe to adopt, 

 without further examination, the suggestions, more 

 especially as he had not deemed it expedient to re- 

 move the military force, to suspend martial law, or to 

 restore the writ of habeas corpus, but still thought it 

 necessary to exercise over the people of the rebel- 

 lions States his military power and jurisdiction. 

 This conclusion derived still greater force from the 

 fact, undisputed, that in all these States, except 

 Tennessee, and perhaps Arkansas, the elections 

 which were held for State officers and members of 

 Congress had resulted, almost unanimously, in the 

 defeat of candidates who had been true to the Union, 

 and in the election of notorious and unpardoned 

 rebels men who could not take the prescribed oath 

 of office, and who made no secret of their hostility to 

 the Government and people of the United States. 

 Under these circumstances, any thing like hasty ac- 

 tion would have been as dangerous as it was ob- 

 viously unwise. It appeared to your committee that 

 but one course remained, viz., to investigate thor- 

 oughly and carefully the state of feeling existing 

 among the people of these States; to ascertain how 

 far their pretended loyalty could be relied upon, and 

 thence to infer whether it would be safe to admit 

 them at once to a full participation in the govern- 

 ment they had fought for four years to destroy. It 

 was an equally important inquiry whether their res- 

 toration to their former relations with the United 

 States should only be grarted upon certain conditions 

 and guaranties which would effectually secure the 

 nation against a recurrence of evils so disastrous as 

 those from which it had escaped at so enormous a 

 sacrifice. 



To obtain the necessary information recourse could 

 only be had to the examination of witnesses whose 

 position had given them the best means of forming 

 an accurate judgment, who could state facts from 

 their own observation, and whose character and 

 standing afforded the best evidence of their truthful- 

 ness and impartiality. A work like this, covering so 

 large an extent of territory, and embracing such con> 



