the Nation should not be able to define
with absolute precision the metes and bounds of its aggregate
obligation. Hence the imperious necessity of excluding all possibility
of the payment of from two to three thousand millions of dollars to
the slave-holders of the South. If that were not accomplished, the
burden would be so great that the Nation which had survived the shock
of arms might be engulfed in the manifold calamities of bankruptcy.

The magnitude of the reforms for which the popular desire was
unmistakable, may in some degree be measured by the fact that they
involved the necessity of radical changes in, and important additions
to, the Federal Constitution. It was frankly acknowledged that if
the President's plan of Reconstruction should be followed, involving
the instant admission of senators and representatives from the
revolted States, these Constitutional changes could not be effected,
because the party desiring them would no longer control two-thirds of
both Senate and House. Mr. Seward, in his persuasive mode of
presenting his views, had urged as a matter of justice that legislation
affecting the Southern States should be open to the participation of
representatives from those States; but Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who had
as keen an intellect as Mr. Seward and a more trenchant style, declared
that view to involve an absurdity. He avowed his belief that there
was no greater propriety in admitting Southern senators and
representatives to take part in considering the financial adjustments
and legislative safeguards rendered necessary by their crime, than it
would have been to admit the Confederate generals to the camp of the
Union Army, when measures were under consideration for the overthrow
of the Rebellion.

The great mass of Republicans in Congress maintained that it was not
only common justice but common sense to define, without interposition
or advice from the South, the conditions upon which the insurrectionary
States should be re-clothed with the panoply of National power. "In
no body of English laws," said Mr. Stevens, in an animated conversation
in the House, "have I ever found a provision which authorizes the
criminal to sit in judgment when the extent of his crime and its proper
punishment were under consideration." The argument, therefore, which
Mr. Seward had made with such strength for the President was, in the
judgment of the great majority of Norther people, altogether ill-founded.
By