The principle urged consistently from the beginning of the war by Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, was that serious resistance to the Constitution implied the suspension of the Constitution in the area of resistance.  No one, he insisted, could truthfully assert that the Constitution of the United States was then in force in South Carolina; why should Congress be bound by the Constitution in matters connected with South Carolina?  If the resistance should be successful, the suspension of the Constitution would evidently be perpetual; Congress alone could decide when the resistance had so far ceased that the operations of the Constitution could be resumed.  The terms of readmission were thus to be laid down by Congress.  To much the same effect was the different theory of Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts.  While he held that the seceding States could not remove themselves from the national jurisdiction, except by successful war, he maintained that no Territory was obliged to become a State, and that no State was obliged to remain a State; that the seceding States had repudiated their State-hood, had committed suicide as States, and had become Territories; and that the powers of Congress to impose conditions on their readmission were as absolute as in the case of other Territories.  Neither of these theories was finally followed out in reconstruction, but both had a strong influence on the final process.

President Lincoln followed the plan subsequently completed by Johnson.  The original (Pierpont) government of Virginia was recognized and supported.  Similar governments were established in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to do so in Florida.  The amnesty proclamation of December, 1863, offered to recognize any State government in the seceding States formed by one tenth of the former voters who should take the oath of loyalty and support of the emancipation measures.  At the following session of Congress, the first bill providing for congressional supervision of the readmission of the seceding States was passed, but the President retained it without signing it until Congress had adjourned.  At the time of President Lincoln’s assassination Congress was not in session, and President Johnson had six months in which to complete the work.  Provisional governors were appointed, conventions were called, the State constitutions were amended by the abolition of slavery and the repudiation of the war debt, and the ordinances of secession were either voided or repealed.  When Congress met in December, 1865, the work had been completed, the new State governments were in operation, and the XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been ratified by aid of their votes.  Congress, however, still refused to admit their Senators or Representatives.  The first action of many of the new governments had been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws which looked much like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority in Congress felt that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen were necessary before the war could be truly said to be over.