ollow close, the North, as it were, drew a deep breath of relief. It
felt that the fundamental issues were settled. The war had preserved the
Union and destroyed slavery. The consummation had been fitly rounded out
by the changes in the Constitution. The Southern States were restored to
their places. Vast tides of material advance were setting in. New
questions were rising, new ideas were fermenting. Good-bye to the
past,--so felt the North,--to its injustice and its strife. As the
nation's chieftain had said, in accepting the call to the nation's
Presidency, "Let us have peace."

CHAPTER XXXIII

RECONSTRUCTION: THE WORKING OUT

So the North turned cheerfully to its own affairs--and very engrossing
affairs they were--and the South faced its new conditions. It was still
struggling with the economic wreckage left by four years of battle,
invasion and defeat. It had borne the loss of its separate nationality
and the flag endeared by countless sacrifices. It had accepted the
sudden emancipation of its servile class by the conqueror's hand. It had
been encouraged by President Johnson to resume with little change its
old ways of government. For two years it had gone along precariously
with State organizations of the earlier pattern, subject to occasional
interruption by military authority or officials of the Freedmen's
Bureau. Then, in 1867, all State governments were set aside, and
military rule pure and simple held the field,--in most States for about
fifteen months; in Mississippi, Texas and Virginia, by their own choice,
for as much longer. Though as it was generally administered the military
government was just, as well as economical, yet its maintenance was a
bitter ordeal for a people with the American political habit; a people,
too, who had fought gallantly for four years; who had, upon accepting
their defeat, been assured that the object of their conqueror was
attained in restoring them to their old position, except for
emancipation of the slaves; and who now for a year or two longer were
held under martial law.

At last--for most of them in mid-summer of 1868--they were again
restored to self-government of the American pattern. Self-government
for all, thought the North complacently; whites and blacks were equal,
not only as subjects of the law but as makers of the law; and so freedom
and democracy were established. But the Southern whites asked in dismay,
What kind of fellow-lawmakers have we got? The q