se as magnanimous, which Andrew and Beecher had voiced. As one New
England observer put the matter, it would help matters greatly if no man
favored a government for others that he would not like to live under
himself; now how would it work in Massachusetts to exclude from the
government the whole Republican party? Yet the Democrats in the State
have ten times the knowledge, character and ability, that are possessed
in the South by the elements free from stain of rebellion.

The disqualification, to be sure, was removable in each case by a
two-thirds vote of Congress. But it could not be foreseen how Congress
would be disposed; and in fact, the President's pardon, so freely given,
had been by Congress expressly deprived of any political value; being
held to exempt only from legal pains and penalties. The new exclusion,
if adopted, could hardly work other than disastrously. And, being
offered, as the entire amendment necessarily was, for acceptance or
rejection by all the States, this provision was as well suited to repel
the South as if it had been designed for that purpose. It offended that
loyalty to their tried leaders in stress and storm which is one of the
best traits in a people's character. Compare it with Beecher's saying of
a few months earlier, "I think it to be the great need of this nation to
save the self-respect of the South." The difference measures the degree
of the mistake under which the mass of the North were still laboring.
They looked upon the rebellion as a moral and personal crime. They had
no comprehension of the Southern standpoint; and, sure that their own
cause was just, they believed that their opponents were not only
mistaken but morally guilty. As it was hardly possible to suppose the
8,000,000 to have all gone wrong out of individual perversity, the
current view at the North was that Secession sprang from a conspiracy;
that its leaders had secretly plotted, like Aaron Burr, and thus misled
their followers. The impulse to inflict death or imprisonment or
confiscation on anybody was infrequent or short-lived; the desire for
such punishment lingered only in an irrational wish for vengeance on
Jefferson Davis. But, if the leading class in the society and public
life of the South were morally responsible for a great treason and
rebellion, it might seem not only just but wise to exclude them from the
new political order.

The critics of the reconstruction policy are often challenged by its
defen