he House and Senate; and that until
that committee had reported no senator or representative from the lately
seceded States should be admitted. This action was taken at once, by a
large majority in both houses, and the committee was promptly appointed,
with Senator Fessenden at its head. Then the President's message was
read,--a very able paper, broad and statesmanlike in tone, recounting
the President's action and the choice of conventions and Legislatures in
the seceded States; their repudiation of secession and slavery; the
inauguration of loyal State governments;--this, with an invitation to
Congress to accept and co-operate in this policy, and a hopeful view of
the general situation. The message was favorably received, and for a
moment it looked as if the President and Congress might work in harmony.

But the claim of Congress to a paramount voice in the settlement was
well based, not only in constitutional theory, but in the immediate
facts. Congress came fresh from the people; its members knew how the
currents of popular thought and feeling ran. The President was
comparatively out of touch with the nation; he had, so to speak, no
personal constituency; he was a Southern loyalist, apart from the mass
of both South and North. Further, this Congress was personally a strong
body of men. They represented in an unusual degree not merely the
average sentiment but the better sentiment of the North. To glance at a
few of their leaders: Thaddeus Stevens was a Pennsylvanian, a leader at
the bar, active in anti-slavery politics, conspicuous by his successful
defense of the State's public school system; a man of strong convictions
and strong passions, a natural fighter; skillful in parliamentary
management; vigorous and often bitter in debate; not scrupulous in
political methods; loyal to his cause and his friends, and vindictive to
his enemies; an efficient party leader, but in no high sense a
statesman. Up to his death in 1868 he exercised such a mastery over the
Republican majority in the House as no man since has approached. He is
sometimes spoken of as if he had been the ruling spirit in
reconstruction, but this seems a mistake. He was a leader in it, so far
as his convictions coincided with the strong popular current; but his
favorite ideas were often set aside. He was an early advocate of a wide
confiscation, but that policy found no support; and at the crucial
points of the reconstruction proceedings he was often thwar