Reorganization of the Union
AFTER the terrible convulsions produced by the Civil War, by which State governments had been paralyzed, a hoary and deep-rooted social system had been overthrown, and throughout a number of the commonwealths of the Republic there had been a disruption of every kind of business, the powers of the National government were invoked to bring about a general reorganization of the disorganized elements, political, social, and industrial. There was nothing to be reconstructed, for nothing worth preserving had been destroyed. No State, as a component part of the Republic, had been severed from the others, for secession was an impossibility. When the war ended, the States, geographically and politically, remained as they were before it began. The insurrection against the authority of the National Government only placed the constitutions of some of the States in a condition of suspended animation. They needed only the stimulant of competent official authority exercised by the National Government to reanimate them. All the States were politically equal--living members of the great Commonwealth, before, during, and at the close of the Civil War. Some of them, incapacitated for healthful functional action, were awaiting resuscitation at the hands of the only healer, the National Government. To that resuscitation--that reorganization and fitting them for active life--the General Government soon directed its efforts.
President Johnson took a preliminary step toward reorganization, on the 29th of April, 1865, when he proclaimed the removal of restrictions upon commercial intercourse between all the States. A month later (May 29) he issued a proclamation stating the terms by which the people of the paralyzed States, with specified exceptions, might receive full amnesty and pardon, and be reinvested with the right to exercise the functions of citizenship, supposed to have been destroyed by participation in the insurrection. This was soon followed by the appointment by the President of provisional governors for seven of those States which had formed the original fabric known as the "Confederate States of America," clothed with authority to assemble citizens in convention who had taken the amnesty oath, with power to reorganize State governments, and secure the election of representatives in the National Congress. The plan was to restore to the States named their former position in Union without any provision for securing to the freedmen the right to the exercise of citizenship which the amendment to the National Constitution, then before the State legislatures, would justly entitle them to. This amendment, known as the XIIIth, was adopted by Congress early in 1865, and was as follows:
"SECTION I. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
"SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
This amendment was adopted by a large majority. When the result of the vote was known, the Republican members of the House of Representatives instantly sprang to their feet and applauded with cheers and clapping of hands. The spectators in the crowded galleries waved their hats and made the chamber ring with enthusiastic plaudits. Hundreds of ladies rose in their seats in the galleries and gave emphasis to their plaudits by waving their handkerchiefs and participating in the general demonstration of enthusiasm, and added to the intense excitement of a scene that will long be remembered by those who were fortunate enough to witness it. The amendment was sent to the several State legislatures for ratification; and on the 18th of December following, the Secretary of State (Mr. Seward) declared that it had, by such ratification, become a part of the fundamental law of the land.