and a legislative reaction was to be expected. The
Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the Civil
War and its results.

The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the
Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of July 1861, which declared that the war
was being waged to maintain the Union under the Constitution and that
it should cease when these objects were obtained. This would have
been subscribed to in 1861 by the Union Democrats and by most of the
Republicans, and in 1865 the conquered Southerners would have been glad
to reenter the Union upon this basis; but though in 1865 the resolution
still expressed the views of many Democrats, the majority of Northern
people had moved away from this position.

The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of
the Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no
State can upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States
survived though there might be some doubt about state governments, and
that "loyal" state organizations might be established by a population
consisting largely of ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the
President and made "loyal" for the future by an oath of allegiance.
Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a matter for the executive to
handle. But that he was not inflexibly committed to any one plan is
indicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the Wade-Davis
Bill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question of
whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely a
pernicious abstraction." In addition, Lincoln said:

"We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their
proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of
the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to
again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it
is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or
even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union,
than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing
the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between
these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge
his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from
without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they ne