conflicts. Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the Negro
population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
Freedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at the beginning
of the year 1866, the situation appeared to be clearing, and the social and
economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending than might have been
expected.



CHAPTER III. THE WORK OF THE PRESIDENTS

The war ended slavery, but it left the problem of the freed slave; it
preserved the Union in theory, but it left unsolved many delicate problems of
readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of the Union? If in the Union,
what rights had they? If they were not in the Union, what was their status?
What was the status of the Southern Unionist, of the ex-Confederate? What
punishments should be inflicted upon the Southern people? What authority,
executive or legislative, should carry out the work of reconstruction? The end
of the war brought with it, in spite of much discussion, no clear answer to
these perplexing questions.

Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies over colonial
government, its conflicting interpretations of written constitutions, and its
legally trained statesmen, had by the middle of the nineteenth century
produced a habit of political thought which demanded the settlement of most
governmental matters upon a theoretical basis. And now in 1865, each prominent
leader had his own plan of reconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with
all the others, because rigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of the
executive had been greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was to be
expected. The Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the