They laid off the ten states—­the whole Confederacy with the exception of Tennessee—­still outside the pale, into five military districts, each commanded by a military officer appointed by the President.  They ordered the commanding general to prepare a register of voters for the election of delegates to conventions chosen for the purpose of drafting new constitutions.  Such voters, however, were not to be, as Lincoln had suggested, loyal persons duly qualified under the law existing before secession but “the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law.”  This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share in the establishment of the new order.  Power was thus arbitrarily thrust into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes and the handful of whites who could show a record of loyalty.  That was not all.  Each state was, under the reconstruction acts, compelled to ratify the fourteenth amendment to the federal Constitution as a price of restoration to the union.

The composition of the conventions thus authorized may be imagined.  Bondmen without the asking and without preparation found themselves the governing power.  An army of adventurers from the North, “carpet baggers” as they were called, poured in upon the scene to aid in “reconstruction.”  Undoubtedly many men of honor and fine intentions gave unstinted service, but the results of their deliberations only aggravated the open wound left by the war.  Any number of political doctors offered their prescriptions; but no effective remedy could be found.  Under measures admittedly open to grave objections, the Southern states were one after another restored to the union by the grace of Congress, the last one in 1870.  Even this grudging concession of the formalities of statehood did not mean a full restoration of honors and privileges.  The last soldier was not withdrawn from the last Southern capital until 1877, and federal control over elections long remained as a sign of congressional supremacy.

=The Status of the Freedmen.=—­Even more intricate than the issues involved in restoring the seceded states to the union was the question of what to do with the newly emancipated slaves.  That problem, often put to abolitionists before the war, had become at last a real concern.  The thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery had not touched it at all.  It declared bondmen free, but did nothing to provide them with work or homes and did not mention the subject of political rights.  All these matters were left to the states, and the legislatures of some of them, by their famous “black codes,” restored a form of servitude under the guise of vagrancy and apprentice laws.  Such methods were in fact partly responsible for the reaction that led Congress to abandon Lincoln’s policies and undertake its own program of reconstruction.