to recognize it in other matters.
Every one felt that disagreement between the two departments would be
most unfortunate and even dangerous; yet it was entirely possible; and
what an absurd and alarming condition might be created, if the
President, by a general amnesty, should reinstate the ex-rebels of a
State as citizens with all their rights of citizenship, and Congress
should refuse to seat the senators and representatives elected by these
constituents on the alleged ground of peril to the country by reason of
their supposed continuing disloyalty. Even worse still might be the
case; for the Senate and the House might disagree. There was nothing in
law or logic to make this consummation impossible.

People differed much in feeling as well as opinion upon this difficult
subject, this problem which was solved by no law. Treason is a crime and
must be made odious, said Andrew Johnson, sternly uttering the
sentiments of many earnest and strenuous men in Congress and in the
country. Others were able to eliminate revengefulness, but felt that it
was not safe in the present, nor wise for the future, to restore to
rebels all the rights of citizenship upon the moment when they should
consent to abandon rebellion, more especially when all knew and admitted
that the abandonment was made not in penitence but merely in despair of
success. It was open to extremists to argue that the whole seceded area
might logically, as conquered lands, be reduced to a territorial
condition, to be recarved into States at such times and upon such
conditions as should seem proper. But others, in agreement with the
President, insisted that if no State could lawfully secede, it followed
that no State could lawfully be deprived of statehood. These persons
reinforced their legal argument with the sentimental one that lenity was
the best policy. As General Grant afterward put it: "The people who had
been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the Union, and be
incorporated as an integral part of the nation. Naturally the nearer
they were placed to an equality with the people who had not rebelled,
the more reconciled they would feel with their old antagonists, and the
better citizens they would be from the beginning. They surely would not
make good citizens if they felt that they had a yoke around their
necks." The question, in what proportions mercy and justice should be,
or safely could be, mingled, was clearly one of discretion. In the wide
dist