t temper marred and thwarted Seward's
efforts. One of the secretary's special powers was a genial and
persuasive skill in conversation; his historic place as the Republican
premier gave him influence with the President; he had been in full
sympathy with Lincoln's late course; and his constitutional theories and
his optimism appear in the reconstruction scheme which the President
soon proposed. Responsibility had steadied and sobered Johnson; his
vindictiveness toward the South had disappeared,--one guesses with
Seward's aid; and his plan looked to a prompt and early return of the
seceded States.

His proclamation of amnesty, indeed, issued May 29, was more numerous in
its exceptions than Lincoln's; including almost the entire official
class throughout the South, and adding all such as held property in
excess of $20,000,--which in theory was little other than an attempt to
behead the political community of all its intelligent or wealthy
members. But the added clause providing for a pardon of such by the
President on special application proved in practice more significant
than the formal exemptions. Scarcely an application for amnesty was
refused, and it is recorded that in less than a twelvemonth 14,000 such
applications were made and granted.

On the same day, May 29, President Johnson by proclamation appointed a
provisional governor of North Carolina, and ordered an election of
delegates to a constitutional convention. By July 13, he had issued
similar proclamations for Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina
and Florida. Texas's turn came a little later, the last embers of the
war lingering there for a while. In Virginia, the President had
recognized a shadowy loyal State government which had kept up a nominal
existence. The three other seceded States,--Louisiana, Arkansas and
Tennessee,--had already the State governments established under Lincoln,
though unrepresented in Congress.

These overtures for formal reconstruction came to communities
impoverished, forlorn, and chaotic, almost beyond imagination. Property,
industry, social order, had been torn up by the plowshare of war. The
prolongation of resistance until defeat was complete and overwhelming
had ended all power and all wish to contend with the inevitable. The
people, groping back toward even a bare livelihood,--toward some settled
order, some way of public and private life,--met eagerly the advances
of the President. Constitutional conventions were