d
striving to reduce the free negro laborer as much as possible to the
condition of a slave. And this tendency was seriously aggravated by
the fact that the South, exhausted and impoverished, stood in the most
pressing need of productive agricultural labor, while the landowners
generally did not yet know how to manage the former slave as a free
laborer, and the emancipated negro was still unused to the rights and
duties of a freeman. In short, Southern society was still in that most
confused, perplexing, and perilous of conditions--the condition of a
defeated insurrection leaving irritated feelings behind it, and of a
great social revolution only half accomplished, leaving antagonistic
forces face to face. The necessity of the presence of a restraining
and guiding higher authority could hardly have been more obvious.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. SLOCUM

FROM A WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPH]

_Johnson's Haste for Reconstruction_

During the first six weeks of my travels in the South I did not
receive a single word from the President or any member of the
administration; but through the newspapers and the talk going on
around me I learned that the President had taken active measures to
put the "States lately in rebellion" into a self-governing
condition--that is to say, he had appointed "provisional governors";
he had directed those provisional governors to call conventions, to be
elected, according to the plan laid down in the North Carolina
proclamation, by the "loyal" white citizens, an overwhelming majority
of whom were persons who had adhered to the Rebellion and had then
taken the prescribed oath of allegiance. On the same basis, the
provisional governors were to set in motion again the whole machinery
of civil government as rapidly as possible. When, early in July, I had
taken leave of the President to set out on my tour of investigation,
he, as I have already mentioned, had assured me that the North
Carolina proclamation was not to be regarded as a plan definitely
resolved upon; that it was merely tentative and experimental; that
before proceeding further he would "wait and see"; and that to aid him
by furnishing him information and advice while he was "waiting and
seeing" was the object of my mission. Had not this been the
understanding, I should not have undertaken the wearisome and
ungrateful journey. But now he did not wait and see; on the contrary,
he rushed forward the political reconstruction of the Sout