y public
sentiment.

On the subject of confiscation there were differing opinions among the
Republicans themselves, in Congress, which called out earnest debate.
The Radicals, such as Thaddeus Stevens, who were in fact revolutionists
and intended that more should be accomplished by the Government than the
suppression of the rebellion and the preservation of the Union, were for
the immediate and unsparing confiscation of the property of the rebels
by act of Congress without awaiting judicial proceedings. In their view
and by their plan rebels, if not outlaws, were to be considered and
treated as foreigners, not as American citizens; the States in
insurrection were to be reduced to the condition of provinces; the
people were to be subjugated and their property taken to defray the
expenses of the war. Mr. Sumner, less crafty and calculating than
Stevens, but ardent and impulsive, was for proceeding to extreme
lengths; and, having the power, he urged that they should embrace "the
opportunity which God in his beneficence had offered" to extinguish by
arbitrary enactment slavery, and all claim to reserved sovereignty in
the States; but Judge Collamer, calm and considerate, and other milder
men were opposed to any illegal and unjustifiable enactment.

As is too often the case in high party and revolutionary times, the
violent and intriguing were likely to be successful, until it came to be
understood that the President would feel it obligatory to place upon the
extreme and unconstitutional measures his veto. A knowledge of this and
the attending fact, that his veto would be sustained, induced Congress
to pass a joint resolution, modifying the act, expounding and declaring
its meaning, instead of enacting a new and explicit law, which the
judiciary, whose province it is, would expound and construe.

The President, in order not to be misunderstood when informing the House
of Representatives that he had affixed his signature to the bill and
joint resolution, also transmitted a copy of the message he had prepared
to veto the act in its original shape, with his objections, in which he
said that by a fair construction of the act he considered persons "are
not punished without regular trials, in duly constituted courts, under
the forms and the substantial provisions of the law and the Constitution
applicable to their several cases." It was apprehended at that time, and
subsequent acts proved the apprehension well founded, that Cong