he last-named act was supplemented by the act dated
July 19, 1867. All of these acts were passed over the President's
veto. They provided for the assignment of military commanders in
the several districts, with nearly absolute powers to govern those
States and direct the steps in the process of reconstruction. It
fell to my lot to command the First Military District, into which
Virginia was converted by the act of Congress.

The terrible oppression of the Southern people embodied in those
acts of Congress has hardly been appreciated by even the most
enlightened and conservative people of the North. Only those who
actually suffered the baneful effects of the unrestrained working
of those laws can ever realize their full enormity. The radical
Congress was not content to impose upon the Southern States impartial
suffrage to whites and blacks alike. They were not content even
to disfranchise the leading rebels, according to the terms of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Even those would not be
sufficient to put the Southern whites under the domination of their
former slaves and of adventurers from the North, and thus to secure
the radical supremacy in the reconstructed States. Hence another
and an enormous stride was taken, with the purpose of putting those
States under what became known as "carpet-bag" governments, so
offensive as to be nearly intolerable even to their authors. That
stride consisted in imposing the so-called "iron-clad oath" upon
all officers, of whatever grade or character, in all the former
Confederate States. That oath excluded from office not only all
who had in any way taken active part in the rebellion, but even
the most constant Union men of the South who had remained at home
during the war; for not one of them had escaped "giving aid or
comfort" in some way to those engaged in the rebellion. Even so
conspicuous a loyalist as Judge Rives, afterward United States
district judge, declared, after mature deliberation, that he could
not take that oath, although his constant fidelity to the Union
was known to all of Virginia.

I asked this noted Union man to accept the office of chief justice
of the State, but he could not take the prescribed oath. He had
permitted his boy, about to join the Confederate army, to take
one of his horses rather than see him go afoot. Perhaps the judge
was too conscientious. But it was the evil effect of the law to
exclude the highly honorable and