changed. And their acts, so far as they did not impair or tend to
impair the supremacy of the general government, or the rights of
citizens of the loyal States, were valid and binding. All the ordinary
authority of government for the protection of rights of persons and
property, the enforcement of contracts, the punishment of crime, and
the due order of society, continued to be exercised by them as though
no civil war had existed.

There was, therefore, a general expectation throughout the country,
upon the cessation of actual hostilities, that these States would
be restored to their former relations in the Union as soon as
satisfactory evidence was furnished to the general government that
resistance to its authority was overthrown and abandoned, and its laws
were enforced and obeyed. Some little time might elapse before this
result would clearly appear. It was not expected that they would be
immediately restored upon the defeat of the armies of the Confederacy,
nor that their public men, with the animosities of the struggle still
alive, would at once be admitted into the councils of the nation, and
allowed to participate in its government. But whenever it was
satisfactorily established that there would be no renewal of the
struggle and that the laws of the United States would be obeyed, it
was generally believed that the restoration of the States would be
an accomplished fact.

President Johnson saw in the institution of slavery the principal
source of the irritation and ill-feeling between the North and the
South, which had led to the war. He believed, therefore, that its
abolition should be exacted, and that this would constitute a complete
guaranty for the future. At that time the amendment for its abolition,
which had passed the two Houses of Congress, was pending before the