Cavalier Commonwealth: History and Government of
Virginia_, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), 339-340, this constitution
contained various new provisions, such as the abolition of slavery and
denial of suffrage to all men who held office under a Confederate
government.

[99] Eugene E. Prussing, _The Estate of George Washington, Deceased_,
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1927) pp. 39-40. "Martha Washington's
Will and the Story of its Loss and Recovery by Fairfax County,"
_Yearbook of the Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia_, II
(1952-53) 40-62.

[100] "Martha Washington's Will," p. 61.

CHAPTER V

THE YEARS OF REBUILDING: 1865-1903

With the end of the war the formidable tasks of rebuilding both state
and local governments were begun. President Abraham Lincoln's view of
reconstruction had been that the government which took Virginia out of
the Union should be the one to bring her back into the Union,[101] and
President Andrew Johnson generally sought to follow this principle.
Others, mainly the Radical Republican leaders, argued that Virginia
had forfeited her sovereignty by rebellion, and so could not return to
the Union except on new terms.[102] In this respect, President Johnson
found that the presence of Governor Pierpont in Richmond--purporting
to govern under the constitution which his government had drafted and
ratified in Alexandria in 1864--was a complicating factor. Not only
was the legitimacy of this constitution questioned, but all evidence
pointed to the conclusion that the state's leaders who had served the
Confederacy could not and would not accept it.

An unsuccessful attempt to improve the constitution was made in the
summer of 1865, and thereafter a series of confusing elections and
administrations followed as the Radical Republican leaders in Congress
overrode President Johnson's reconstruction program.[103] In March
1867, the territory of nine former Confederate states was divided into
five military districts, in which army commanders were authorized to
oversee the civil administrations of the states. In Virginia's
military district, the army commander, General John Schofield,
interfered very little with the administration of Francis Pierpont,
who served as Provisional Governor. Pierpont provided a measure of
needed stability compared to what had preceded it, and as a result
slow but steady progress was made toward reconstituting some of the
essential elements of local governm