Government by victory--if less
exacting and less critical than those imposed by actual war--were more
delicate in their nature, and required statesmanship of a different
character. The problem of reconstructing the Union, and adapting its
varied interests to its changed condition, demanded the highest
administrative ability. Many of the questions involved were new, and,
if only for that reason, perplexing. No experience of our own had
established precedents; none in other countries afforded even close
analogies. Rebellions and civil wars had, it is true, been frequent,
but they had been chiefly among peoples consolidated under one
government, ruled in all their affairs, domestic and external, by one
central power. The overthrow of armed resistance in such cases was the
end of trouble, and political society and public order were rapidly
re-formed under the restraint which the triumphant authority was so
easily able to impose.

A prompt adjustment after the manner of consolidated governments was
not practicable under our Federal system. In the division of functions
between the Nation and the State, those that reach and affect the
citizen in his every-day life belong principally to the State. The
tenure of land is guaranteed and regulated by State Law; the domestic
relations of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward,
together with the entire educational system, are left exclusively to
the same authority, as is also the preservation of the public peace by
proper police-systems--the National Government intervening only on the
call of the State when the State's power is found inadequate to the
suppression of disorder. These leading functions of the State were
left in full force under the Confederate Government; and the
Confederate Government being now destroyed, and the States that
composed it being under the complete domination of the armies of the
Union, the whole framework of society was in confusion, if not indeed
in chaos. To restore the States to their normal relations to the
Union, to enable them to organize governments in harmony with the
fundamental changes wrought by the war, was the embarrassing task which
the Administration of President Johnson was compelled to meet on the
very threshold of its existence.

The successful issue of these unprecedented and complicated
difficulties depended in great degree upon the character and temper of
the Executive. Many wise men regarded it as a fortuna