[Footnote 1:  The Constitution gives the President power to pardon all offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.]

Following out this plan, the people of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana made reconstructed state governments which Lincoln recognized.  But here Congress stepped in, refused to seat the senators from these states, and made a plan of its own, which Lincoln vetoed.

%481.  Johnson’s “My Policy” Plan of Reconstruction.%—­So the matter stood when Lee and Johnston surrendered, when Davis was captured, and the Confederacy fell to pieces.  All the laws enacted by the Confederate Congress at once became null and void.  Taxes were no longer collected; letters were no longer delivered; Confederate money had no longer any value.  Even the state governments ceased to have any authority.  Bands of Union cavalry scoured the country, capturing such governors, political leaders, and prominent men as could be found, and striking terror into others who fled to places of safety.  In the midst of this confusion all civil government ended.  To reestablish it under the Constitution and laws of the United States was, therefore, the first duty of the President, and he began to do so at once.  First he raised the blockade, and opened the ports of the South to trade; then he ordered the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the Interior, the Postmaster-general, the Attorney-general, to see that the taxes were collected, that letters were delivered, that the courts of the United States were opened, and the laws enforced in all the Southern States; finally, he placed over each of the unreconstructed states a temporary or provisional governor.  These governors called conventions of delegates elected by such white men as were allowed to vote, and these conventions did four things:  1.  They declared the ordinances of secession null and void. 2.  They repudiated every debt incurred in supporting the Confederacy, and promised never to pay one of them. 3.  They abolished slavery within their own bounds. 4.  They ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery forever in the United States.

%482.  The Thirteenth Amendment%.—­This amendment was sent out to the states by Congress in February, 1865, and was necessary to complete the work begun by the Emancipation Proclamation.  That proclamation merely set free the slaves in certain parts of the country, and left the right to buy more untouched.  Again, certain slave states (Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri) had not seceded, and in them slavery still existed.  In order, therefore, to abolish the institution of slavery in every state in the Union, an amendment to the Constitution was necessary, as many of the states could not be relied on to abolish it within their bounds by their own act.  The amendment was formally proclaimed a part of the Constitution on December 18, 1865.[1]