te
governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters
for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of
his constitutional power, could exercise but little control over
the military government. Nothing that a state might do would secure
restoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Federal Constitution. The war had been fought upon the theory that the
old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction
was that a new Union was to be created.

CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF THE MAJOR GENERALS

From the passage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's
Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was
in supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and
to that body, not to the President, the commanding general and his
subordinates looked for direction.

The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress
ceased when that policy was enacted into law. He believed this
legislation to be unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty to
execute the laws. He at once set about the appointment of generals to
command the military districts created in the South,* a task calling for
no little discretion, since much depended upon the character of these
military governors, or "satraps," as they were frequently called by the
opposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with many
duties, military, political, and administrative. It was his duty
to carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too
irritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the
reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and Negroes
in. Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not
looked for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was
generally recognized in government circles that conditions in the
seceded states had gradually been growing better since the close of
the war. There was in many regions, to be sure, a general laxity in
enforcing laws, but that had always been characteristic of the newer
parts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was generally in force,
the "Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's Bureau was
everywhere caring for the Negroes. What disorder existed was of recent
origin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debates
in Congress and to the organization of the Negroes for polit