The committee likewise called attention to a violent speech made by Mr. Johnson at St. Louis in September, 1866, charging the origin of the riot to Congress, and went on to say of the speech that “it was an unwarranted and unjust expression of hostile feeling, without pretext or foundation in fact.”  A list of the killed and wounded was embraced in the committee’s report, and among other conclusions reached were the following:  “That the meeting of July 30 was a meeting of quiet citizens, who came together without arms and with intent peaceably to discuss questions of public concern....  There has been no occasion during our National history when a riot has occurred so destitute of justifiable cause, resulting in a massacre so inhuman and fiend-like, as that which took place at New Orleans on the 30th of July last.  This riotous attack upon the convention, with its terrible results of massacre and murder, was not an accident.  It was the determined purpose of the mayor of the city of New Orleans to break up this convention by armed force.”

The statement is also made, that, “He [the President] knew that ‘rebels’ and ‘thugs’ and disloyal men had controlled the election of Mayor Monroe, and that such men composed chiefly his police force.”

The committee held that no legal government existed in Louisiana, and recommended the temporary establishment of a provisional government therein; the report concluding that “in the meantime the safety of all Union men within the State demands that such government be formed for their protection, for the well being of the nation and the permanent peace of the Republic.”

The New Orleans riot agitated the whole country, and the official and other reports served to intensify and concentrate the opposition to President Johnson’s policy of reconstruction, a policy resting exclusively on and inspired solely by the executive authority—­for it was made plain, by his language and his acts, that he was seeking to rehabilitate the seceded States under conditions differing not a whit from those existing before the rebellion; that is to say, without the slightest constitutional provision regarding the status of the emancipated slaves, and with no assurances of protection for men who had remained loyal in the war.

In December, 1866, Congress took hold of the subject with such vigor as to promise relief from all these perplexing disorders, and, after much investigation and a great deal of debate, there resulted the so-called “Reconstruction Laws,” which, for a clear understanding of the powers conferred on the military commanders, I deem best to append in full: 

An act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States.

Whereas, no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exist in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas; and whereas, it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established; therefore,