kly admitted by some of the most
distinguished leaders of the party.

The policy of treating these States as Territories seemed now to
be rapidly gaining ground, and commended itself as the only logical
way out of the political dilemma in which the Government was placed.
But here again the old strife between radicalism and conservatism
cropped out. The former opposed all haste in the work of
reconstruction. It insisted that what the rebellious districts
needed was not an easy and speedy return to the places they had
lost by their treasonable conspiracy, but a probationary training,
looking to their restoration when they should prove their fitness
for civil government as independent States. It was insisted that
they were not prepared for this, and that with their large population
of ignorant negroes and equally ignorant whites, dominated by a
formidable oligarchy of educated land-owners who despised the power
that had conquered them, while they still had the sympathy of their
old allies in the North, the withdrawal of Federal intervention
and the unhindered operation of local supremacy would as fatally
hedge up the way of justice and equality as the rebel despotisms
then existing. The political and social forces of Southern society,
if unchecked from without, were sure to assert themselves, and the
more decided anti-slavery men in both houses of Congress so warned
the country, and foretold that no theories of Democracy could avail
unless adequately supported by a healthy and intelligent public
opinion. They saw that States must grow, and could not be suddenly
constructed where the materials were wanting, and that forms are
worthless in the hands of an ignorant mob. It was objected to the
territorial theory that it was arbitrary, and would lead to corruption
and tyranny like the pro-consular system of Rome; but it was simply
the territorial system to which we had been accustomed from the
beginning of the Government, and could not prove worse than the
hasty re-admission of ten conquered districts to the dignity of
States of the Union, involving, as it has done, the horrors of
carpet-bag government, Ku Klux outrages, and a system of pro-consular
tyranny as inconsistent with the rights of these States as it has
been disgraceful to the very idea of free government and fatal to
the best interests of the colored race.

But the strange chaos of opinion which now prevailed was unfavorable
to sound thinking or wise acting