term of office simply, and the State in permanently? The
proposition to let in what are called loyal men, and then afterwards to
debate the terms on which the States which sent them shall be admitted,
might be seriously discussed in a Fenian Congress, but it would prove
too much for the gravity of an American assembly. The President thinks
Congress is bound to admit "loyal men"; but in conceding this claim,
would not the great legislative bodies of the nation practically confess
that they had no right or power to exact guaranties, no business
whatever with "reconstruction"? It is the office of the President, it
seems, to reconstruct States; the duty of Congress is confined to
accepting, placidly, the results of his work. Such is the only logical
inference from Mr. Johnson's last position. And thus a man, who was
intended by the people who voted for him to have no other connection
with reconstruction than what a casting vote in the Senate might
possibly give him, has taken the whole vast subject into his exclusive
control. Was there ever acted on the stage of history such a travesty of
constitutional government?

The loyal States, indeed, come out of the war separated from the
disloyal, not by such thin partitions as the President so cavalierly
breaks through, but by a great sea of blood. It is across that we must
survey their rights and duties; it is with that in view we must settle
the terms of their readmission. It is idle to apply to 1866 the
word-twisting of 1860. The Rebel communities which began the war are not
the same communities which were recognized as States in the Union before
the war occurred. No sophistry that perplexes the brain of the people
can prevent this fact being felt in their hearts. The proposition that
States can plunge into rebellion, and, after waging against the
government a war which is put down only at the expense of enormous
sacrifices of treasure and blood, can, when defeated, return _of right_
to form a part of the government they have labored to subvert, is a
proposition so repugnant to common sense that its acceptance by the
people would send them down a step in the zooelogical scale. Have we been
fighting in order to compel the South to resume its reluctant _role_ of
governing us? Are we to be told that the States which have sent mourning
into every loyal family in the land, and which have loaded every loyal
laborer's back with a new and unexampled burden of taxation, have the
same ri