ied--Appointed Secretary of War.

In August, 1866, after my return from Europe, I was assigned to
command the Department of the Potomac, which included the State of
Virginia, then governed in part by the Freedmen's Bureau and in
part by the provisional government which had been organized at
Alexandria while the war was still in progress. The State had yet
to obtain from Congress a recognition of its government, which
recognition was understood to depend upon the ratification by the
State legislature of the then pending Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. This subject was very fully
discussed between me and the leading members of the legislature.
I advised them to accept the proposed amendment as the only means
of saving the State from the more "radical" reconstruction under
act of Congress, which was then threatened. It was urged that
Virginia would not suffer much from the operation of the Fourteenth
Amendment, because of the general intelligence of her white population
and their superiority in numbers over the negroes--advantages which
some of the other Southern States did not enjoy; that if the Virginia
legislature would ratify the pending amendment, Congress could not
refuse to recognize the existing State government and make it
permanent; and that Virginia would thus be restored at once to her
full privileges as a State in the Union. I visited Washington,
and obtained from leading Republicans in Congress the assurance,
so far as it was in their power to give it, that such would be the
result. On my return to Richmond, it at first seemed that the
amendment would be speedily ratified. But other influences,
understood to come from some source in Washington (probably President
Johnson), finally prevailed; the amendment was rejected; and Virginia
was thus doomed to undergo "congressional reconstruction" in company
with her sister States.

RECONSTRUCTION IN VIRGINIA

The "policy" of President Johnson having resulted in an "irrepressible
conflict" between him and Congress, finally culminating in his
impeachment, the reconstruction of the States lately in insurrection
was undertaken by Congress. First an act dated March 2, 1867, was
passed for the military government of the "rebel States," and then
another act, dated March 23, 1867, prescribing the conditions of
organization of State governments preparatory to restoration to
the Union; t