eld were ordered by the conventions.
In one instance, at least, the writs of election were signed
by the provisional governor. Glaring irregularities and
unwarranted assumptions of power are manifest in several
cases, particularly in South Carolina, where the convention,
although disbanded by the provisional governor on the ground
that it was a revolutionary body, assumed to district the
State."

The report thus sets forth the conduct naturally expected of the
Southern people, as contrasted with their actual doings:

"They should exhibit in their acts something more than
unwilling submission to an unavoidable necessity--a feeling,
if not cheerful, certainly not offensive and defiant, and
should evince an entire repudiation of all hostility to the
General Government by an acceptance of such just and
favorable conditions as that Government should think the
public safety demands. Has this been done? Let us look at
the facts shown by the evidence taken by the committee.
Hardly had the war closed before the people of these
insurrectionary States come forward and hastily claim as a
right the privilege of participating at once in that
Government which they had for four years been fighting to
overthrow.

"Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State
governments, they at once place in power leading rebels,
unrepentant and unpardoned, excluding with contempt those
who had manifested an attachment to the Union, and
preferring, in many instances, those who had rendered
themselves the most obnoxious. In the face of the law
requiring an oath which would necessarily exclude all such
men from Federal office, they elect, with very few
exceptions, as Senators and Representatives in Congress, men
who had actively participated in the rebellion, insultingly
denouncing the law as unconstitutional.

"It is only necessary to instance the election to the Senate
of the late Vice President of the Confederacy--a man who,
against his own declared convictions, had lent all the
weight of his acknowledged ability and of his influence as a
most prominent public man to the cause of the rebellion, and
who, unpardoned rebel as he is, with that oath staring him
in the face, had the assurance to lay his credentials on the
table of the Senate. Ot