hed slate governmentally, like soil won by conquest. Both these
parties conceived the work before Congress to be out-and-out
"reconstruction," involving the right to change old state lines and
institutions at will. Not even this position was more ultra than the
course which reconstruction actually took.

Closely related to this main problem were several other questions nearly
or quite as vexing. Were any conditions to be imposed upon the peoples
seeking re-admission to the Union as States? If so, what, aside from the
loyalty of voters and officeholders, were these conditions? Was the
President to initiate and oversee the process of redintegration,
prescribing the conditions of re-admission, and determining when they
were fulfilled, or was all this the business of Congress? And, lastly,
did the right thus to oversee and impose conditions depend upon a
certain war power of Congress or of President, or upon the clause of the
Constitution which guarantees to every State a republican form of
government? Nearly the same question as this, in another form, would be,
Was this right explicitly constitutional or only impliedly so?

The answer practically returned to these difficult inquiries was that
Congress, as a quasi war right, must exact of the States lately in
secession all the conditions necessary, in its view, to their permanent
loyalty and the peace of the Union.

The history of reconstruction divides into three periods: Reconstruction
during the war, President Johnson's work, and Congressional
reconstruction.

Restoration was the universal thought at first. Congressional
resolutions in 1861 declared that the war was not waged "for the purpose
of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established
institutions" of the seceding States. Their action was looked upon as an
insurrection against the state government as well as against the United
States. Accordingly, when a handful of Virginia loyalists, in the summer
of 1861, formed a state government and elected national senators and
representatives, President and Congress recognized them as the true
State of Virginia.

Following out the same idea, President Lincoln proclaimed in 1863 that
as soon as one-tenth of the voters of any seceded State would swear to
abide by the Constitution and the emancipation laws they might form a
state government. In this way Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee were
reconstructed during 1863 and 1865.

The hand of the assassin remov