This plan
accorded with the wishes of all unrepentant rebels, and as a matter
of course received the support of their allies of the Peace
Democracy.

The Union party, at the sacrifice of all of the power and patronage
of the administration they had elected, firmly opposed and finally
defeated this project. They required, before the complete
restoration of the rebel States, that the fourteenth amendment of
the constitution should be adopted, which was framed to secure
civil rights to the colored people, equal representation between
the free States and the former slave States, the disqualification
for office of leading rebels, the payment of the loyal obligations
to creditors, to maimed soldiers, and to widows and orphans, and
the repudiation of the rebel debt, and of claims to payment for
slaves. On the adoption of this amendment turned the elections of
1866. After the amplest debates before the people the Union party
carried the country in favor of the amendment, electing more than
three-fourths of the members of the House of Representatives. They
also secured the adoption of the amendment in twenty-one out of the
twenty-four States now represented, which have acted upon it by an
average vote in the State legislature of more than four to one.

In striking contrast with this was the action of the rebel States.
Tennessee alone ratified the amendment. The other ten promptly and
defiantly rejected it by an average majority in their State
legislatures of more than fifty to one. When, therefore, the
Thirty-ninth Congress met in the session of 1866-67 they found the
work of reconstruction in those ten States still unaccomplished.

Now, in what condition were those ten rebel States? In the first
place all political power in those States was in the hands of
rebels, and for the most part of leading and unrepentant rebels.
Their governors, their members of legislature, their judges, their
county and city officers, and their members of Congress, with rare
exceptions, were rebels. Such was their political condition.

What was their condition with respect to the preservation of order,
the suppression of crime, and the redress of private grievances?
After the suppression of the rebellion the next plain duty of the
National government was to see that the l