with characteristic generosity, in the midst of the war had issued a general proclamation of amnesty to nearly all who had been in arms against the Union, on condition that they take an oath of loyalty; but Johnson, vindictive toward Southern leaders and determined to make “treason infamous,” had extended the list of exceptions.  Congress, even more relentless in its pursuit of Confederates, pushed through the fourteenth amendment which worked the sweeping disabilities we have just described.

To appeals for comprehensive clemency, Congress was at first adamant.  In vain did men like Carl Schurz exhort their colleagues to crown their victory in battle with a noble act of universal pardon and oblivion.  Congress would not yield.  It would grant amnesty in individual cases; for the principle of proscription it stood fast.  When finally in 1872, seven years after the surrender at Appomattox, it did pass the general amnesty bill, it insisted on certain exceptions.  Confederates who had been members of Congress just before the war, or had served in other high posts, civil or military, under the federal government, were still excluded from important offices.  Not until the summer of 1898, when the war with Spain produced once more a union of hearts, did Congress relent and abolish the last of the disabilities imposed on the Confederates.

=The Force Bills Attacked and Nullified.=—­The granting of amnesty encouraged the Democrats to redouble their efforts all along the line.  In 1874 they captured the House of Representatives and declared war on the “force bills.”  As a Republican Senate blocked immediate repeal, they resorted to an ingenious parliamentary trick.  To the appropriation bill for the support of the army they attached a “rider,” or condition, to the effect that no troops should be used to sustain the Republican government in Louisiana.  The Senate rejected the proposal.  A deadlock ensued and Congress adjourned without making provision for the army.  Satisfied with the technical victory, the Democrats let the army bill pass the next session, but kept up their fight on the force laws until they wrung from President Hayes a measure forbidding the use of United States troops in supervising elections.  The following year they again had recourse to a rider on the army bill and carried it through, putting an end to the use of money for military control of elections.  The reconstruction program was clearly going to pieces, and the Supreme Court helped along the process of dissolution by declaring parts of the laws invalid.  In 1878 the Democrats even won a majority in the Senate and returned to power a large number of men once prominent in the Confederate cause.