" 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 function of
issuing a proclamation, which he would have no right to hold back; but
in other respects its requirements were entirely fair and
unobjectionable, from any point of view, and it finally passed the House
by a vote of 74 to 59.
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