. Great and far-reaching interests
were at stake, but they were made the sport of politicians, and
disposed of in the light of their supposed effect upon the ascendancy
of the Republican party. Statesmanship was sacrificed to party
management, and the final result was that the various territorial
bills which had been introduced in both Houses, and the somewhat
incongruous bills of Stevens and Ashley, were all superseded by
the passage of the "Military bill," which was vetoed by the President,
but re-enacted in the face of his objections. This bill was utterly
indefensible on principle. It was completely at war with the genius
and spirit of democratic government. Instead of furnishing the
Rebel districts with civil governments, and providing for a military
force adequate to sustain them, it abolished civil government
entirely, and installed the army in its place. It was a confession
of Congressional incompetence to deal with a problem which Congress
alone had the right to solve. Its provisions perfectly exposed it
to all the objections which could be urged to the plan of territorial
reconstruction, while they inaugurated a centralized military
despotism in the place of that system of well-understood local self-
government which the territorial policy offered as a preparation
for restoration. The measure was analyzed and exposed with great
ability by Henry J. Raymond, whose arguments were unanswered and
unanswerable; but nothing could stay the prevailing impatience of
Congress for speedy legislation looking to the early return of the
rebel districts to their places in the Union. The bill was a
legislative solecism. It did not abrogate the existing Rebel State
governments. It left the ballot in the hands of white Rebels, and
did not confer it upon the black loyalists. It sought to conciliate
the power it was endeavoring to coerce. It provided for negro
suffrage as one of the fundamental conditions on which the rebellious
States should be restored to their places in the Union, but left
the negro to the mercy of their black codes, pending the decision
of the question of their acceptance of the proposed conditions of
restoration. The freedmen were completely in the power of their
old masters, so long as the latter might refuse the terms of
reconstruction that were offered; and they had the option to refuse
them entirely, if they saw fit to prefer their own mad ascendancy
and its train of disorders to compulsory