ance betwixt the holders of extreme opinions an infinite variety of
schemes and theories was in time broached and held. Very soon the
gravity of the problem was greatly enhanced by its becoming complicated
with proposals for giving the suffrage to negroes. Upon this Mr. Lincoln
expressed his opinion that the privilege might be wisely conferred upon
"the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in
our ranks," though apparently he intended thus to describe no very large
percentage. Apparently his confidence in the civic capacity of the negro
never became very much greater than it had been in the days of the joint
debates with Douglas.

Congress took up the matter very promptly, and with much display of
feeling. Early in May, 1864, Henry Winter Davis, a vehement opponent of
the President, introduced a bill, of which the anti-rebel preamble was
truculent to the point of being amusing. His first fierce _Whereas_
declared that the Confederate States were waging a war so glaringly
unjust "that they have no right to claim the mitigation of the extreme
rights of war, which are accorded by modern usage to an enemy who has a
right to consider the war a just one." But Congress, though hotly
irritated, was not quite willing to say, in terms, that it would eschew
civilization and adopt barbarism, as its system for the conduct of the
war; and accordingly it rejected Mr. Davis's fierce exordium. The words
had very probably only been used by him as a sort of safety valve to
give vent to the fury of his wrath, so that he could afterward approach
the serious work of the bill in a milder spirit; for in fact the actual
effective legislation which he proposed was by no means unreasonable.
After military resistance should be suppressed in any rebellious State,
the white male citizens were to elect a convention for the purpose of
reestablishing a state government. The new organization must
disfranchise prominent civil and military officers of the Confederacy,
establish the permanent abolition of slavery, and prohibit the payment
by the new State of any indebtedness incurred for Confederate purposes.
After Congress should have expressed its assent to the work of the
convention, the President was to recognize by proclamation the
reorganized State. This bill, of course, gave to the legislative
department the whole valuable control in the matter of recognition,
leaving to the President nothing more than the mere empty functi