ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE RADICAL REPUBLICAN THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 18, 1865.


A candid examination of the power and proper principles of
reconstruction can be offensive to no one, and may possibly be
profitable by exciting inquiry. One of the suggestions of the message
which we are now considering has special reference to this. Perhaps
it is the principle most interesting to the people at this time. The
President assumes, what no one doubts, that the late rebel States have
lost their constitutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of
representation in Congress, except by permission of the Government. It
matters but little, with this admission, whether you call them States
out of the Union, and now conquered territories, or assert that because
the Constitution forbids them to do what they did do, that they are
therefore only dead as to all national and political action, and will
remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of
life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. In other
words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead carcasses
lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it
requires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State
government and send representatives to Congress. Nobody, I believe,
pretends that with their old constitutions and frames of government they
can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Constitution. They
have torn their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their
foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men cannot
raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their own existence "as it
was." Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Constitution