nerals enforced. Many
of the wisest men of the South would have been glad to continue the
same form of government, until the passions engendered by the war had
somewhat cooled and the new relations of the two races had become so
amicably adjusted as to remove all danger of conflict between them.
But the course of events did not suggest, and perhaps would not have
permitted, an arrangement of this character; and hence the States were
left, under the Constitution and laws of the Union, to shape their own
destiny.

The presumption was that these States would be obedient to the
Constitution and laws. But for this presumption, legislation would be
but idle play, and a government of laws would degenerate at once into
a government of force. In enacting the Reconstruction Laws Congress
proceeded upon the basis of faith in Republican government, as defined
so tersely by Mr. Lincoln--_of the people, by the people, for the
people_. It had the additional assurance of the acceptance of the
terms of Reconstruction by the lawful organizations of the Southern
States. And if the presumption of obedience with respect to statute
law be general, much stronger should it be with respect to organic law,
upon which the entire structure of free government is founded. It was
therefore logical for the National administration to assume, as
Reconstruction was completed, that the harmonious working of the
Federal government through all its members was formally re-established.
It was a cause of great rejoicing that, after four years of bloody war
and four years of laborious and careful Reconstruction, every State in
the Union had regained its autonomy in the first year of General
Grant's Presidency; and that the Government and the people of the Union
were entitled to look forward to peaceful administration, to friendly
intercourse, to the cultivation of kindly feeling, to the promotion of
agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The lenity with which the
triumphant Union had treated the crime of rebellion--sacrificing no
man's life, stripping no man of his property, depriving no man of his
personal liberty--gave the Government the right to expect order and the
reign of law in the South.

But it was soon disclosed that on the part of the large mass of those
who had participated in the rebellion, properly speaking, indeed, on
the part of the vast majority of the white men of the South, there was
really no intention to acquiesce in the legislat