Civil War and its results.

The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the Crittenden-Johnson
resolutions of July 1861, which declared that the war was being waged to
maintain the Union under the Constitution and that it should cease when these
objects were obtained. This would have been subscribed to in 1861 by the Union
Democrats and by most of the Republicans, and in 1865 the conquered
Southerners would have been glad to reenter the Union upon this basis; but
though in 1865 the resolution still expressed the views of many Democrats, the
majority of Northern people had moved away from this position.

The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of the
Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no State can
upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States survived though
there might be some doubt about state governments, and that "loyal" state
organizations might be established by a population consisting largely of
ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the President and made "loyal" for
the future by an oath of allegiance. Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a
matter for the executive to handle. But that he was not inflexibly committed
to any one plan is indicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the
Wade-Davis Bill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question
of whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely a
pernicious abstraction." In addition, Lincoln said:

"We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper
practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government,
civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that
proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact
easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States
have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at