So closely blended with the essential principles of our federal system of government were the causes of the Civil War that a clear understanding of its results appears to require some account of the origin, the independence and the permanent union of these States. Upon the eventful years between the Treaty of Paris and the Declaration of Independence, crowded as they are with work of note, one could linger with pleasure; this epoch, however, has already engaged the pens of so many writers, eminent as well as obscure, that a re-study of the blunders of England’s ministers and the revolt of her distant colonies might justly be regarded as a piece of presumption.

Nor does it seem necessary to recite the familiar achievements of the succeeding period; for, perhaps, the portion of American history most attractive to the general reader is included between the 4th of July, 1776, and the 4th of March, 1789. To these years belong the most conspicuous services of that giant race of leaders whose swords relieved a gallant people from oppression and whose wisdom established a form of government not, indeed, in universal harmony with popular prejudice, but admirably designed for the popular welfare.

It was at the outset of what may properly be styled the national era that there appeared the remarkable group of statesmen who guided the infant Republic on its dim and perilous way. On their broad experience gleamed a vision of the future touching all their work with elements of immortality. By them was skillfully established a system of revenue and of finance adequate to all the exigencies of the time, and a foreign policy inaugurated which for generations together preserved unbroken harmony with the world outside. They doubled by wise and peaceful acquisition the area of that Union whose independence had been wrested from George the Third, and with no less wisdom prescribed the procedure and defined the jurisdiction of Federal courts.

The forty years following March 4, 1789, form an epoch with characteristics of its own. This was the period of Virginian ascendency, the Adamses alone breaking the line of illustrious Presidents furnished by the Old Dominion. Introduced by an experiment in government which aroused the slumbering energies of the nation, its conclusion was marked by the disappearance from political life of the splendid ideals and rich traditions of the Fathers.

The election of General Jackson coincides with the beginning of a new phase in American political and industrial development. It was not that the fame of a splendid military record had raised its possessor to an office for which long experience in governmental affairs had hitherto been thought indispensable, or that the selection of Presidents had passed from an intellectual few to the control of a much more numerous class who were willing to bestow on politics the attention and energy requisite for success in trade; but it was about this time that the imperious power of slavery entered upon its career of aggression. Philosophic statesmen of a previous epoch had ardently hoped that the institution would be permitted quietly to disappear; indeed, the greatest among them, though divided upon a multitude of political and economic questions, agreed in encouraging every movement designed for its extinction. These humane efforts, however, were not destined to win immediate success, and even with the coÖperation of the General Government served only to demonstrate the difficulty of such an undertaking.

After 1820 all the dangers which menaced the integrity of the Union were, with one notable exception, traceable to this cause. When Mr. Lincoln in his discussions with Senator Douglas declared that it was the sole cause of all the troubles which had disturbed the nation, he meant, probably, to assert no more than that in his own time it had been the most conspicuous one.

Long before slavery became a subject of embittered controversy the doctrine of State Rights had agitated the country. As early as the summer of 1793 it had found in Justice Iredell an able advocate on the bench of the United States Supreme Court. For party purposes it was adopted five years later by Madison and Jefferson in the celebrated Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and during the second war with Great Britain these statesmen were startled to find New England Federalism vindicating its unpatriotic, if not treacherous, conduct in the exact language which they had invented to embarrass a former administration. With this instrument, too, Calhoun in 1832 shook the foundations of the Union. Both Northern and Southern statesmen of that generation, however, pushed the principle of State sovereignty as far only as their immediate object seemed to require.

It is a popular mistake to suppose that beyond the limits of the South this erroneous doctrine found little favor in the minds of men; for on the eve of the War of 1812 a Governor of conservative Pennsylvania had armed her citizen-soldiers against Federal power.

The illustrious Marshall could relate how, before the highest tribunal in the land, its champions with unwearied zeal renewed the battle for a hopeless cause. The eloquent voice of Webster hushed for a time the fretful agitation of South Carolina statesmen, and his genius fixed in imperishable literary form that interpretation of the Constitution which called forth the abundant resources of both the Nation and the States. In his conquering words lived those elevated thoughts that in future years sustained the defenders of the Republic.

President Jackson, for the energy and promptness by which he defeated the projects of the Nullifiers, has been justly eulogized; but, when the excitement of the hour had passed away, the calmer judgment of even his admirers perceived that victory inclined rather to the side of Calhoun.

Discussion of the abstract question of State sovereignty might, probably, have long continued without endangering the Union had the principle not been invoked to defend the institution of human servitude; yoked to that powerful interest it was inevitable that both should go down together in undistinguishable ruin.

From the Protean fount of slavery flowed an hundred various streams coloring almost every important question in the tide of events. In the generation between the election of General Jackson and the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln its defeats were few, its triumphs numerous and important. Prosperity revealed its weaknesses and encouraged its experiments. The fruits of its greatest victory, the dismemberment of Mexico, revived those stormy scenes which thirty years before had for the first time been witnessed in an American legislative hall. Dissolution of the Union was once more threatened, and again averted by the genius and patriotism of the venerable triumvirate, who scarce outlived their noble work; but the compromise from which Clay, Calhoun and Webster expected a restoration of former tranquillity contained within itself the very seed-plot of even graver troubles.

After 1850 the attachment of Southern men to their industrial system was played upon by ambitious politicians more and more, until the final overthrow of themselves and the government which they sought to establish for its preservation. It could be shown how before that time one war was prolonged for the protection, and another undertaken chiefly for the extension, of that aggressive institution; how its existence was supposed to require Federal interference with the mails and an abridgment of even the ancient right of petition. Every power of the national Government and all the resources of the cotton States had been employed for its advantage.

The United States Supreme Court was the last agent within the Union by which its advocates sought to dignify and perpetuate human servitude, and so successful were their efforts that an enlightened and humane Chief Justice was but little misrepresented in language or in sentiment when political opponents ascribed to him the doctrine that “the negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”

The moral progress of the United States during the last forty years finds, probably, in no single event a better illustration than the change in public opinion upon the interesting question of human rights. When the majority opinion was delivered in the Dred Scott case it excited among members of the dominant political party but little surprise. The shock which a judicial utterance of such sentiments would give in our time to the ethical notions of the American people affords at once both a measure of the advance that has been made in the interval and an undoubted proof that progress has not been, as is commonly supposed, exclusively or even mainly along material lines. It is singular, too, that the first serious attempt of the Federal Supreme Court to set at rest a dangerous political question should have been followed by effects of so alarming a tendency.

It is not intended to relate in these pages the origin or the fate of those compromises designed to avoid the inevitable conflict already in the closing months of President Buchanan’s administration casting ominous shadows in the pathway of the nation, nor to describe the uncertain policy of the General Government or attempt to determine the measure of its responsibility for the fearful rebellion which that hesitation encouraged.

The skill and industry of a multitude of laborers have gathered from the field of conflict a harvest as bountiful as the result was satisfactory. We have general histories and bird’s-eye views, military accounts and naval accounts of the Civil War; memoirs and diaries, by actors more or less prominent in the events which they describe, and narratives of battles and of sieges. In this varied and ample field even a belated worker might hope to glean something of value; but this study, whatever it may discuss incidentally, will be chiefly concerned with the subject of Reconstruction, a phase of our political and constitutional development which, though beginning during the progress, lies mainly beyond the close of the Rebellion.

The organization into a separate government of the late Confederate States, with their resolute struggle for independence, is the chief event in the extraordinary career of this favored nation. The story of their submission to Federal power and the return to their former places in the Union is not inferior either in interest or instruction to any political event recorded in history. This return is what is commonly known as Reconstruction. Though the term on its introduction into political discussion was frequently objected to as inaccurate, it has been generally adopted in the writings of publicists as well as in popular speech. The word “restoration,” which was at first preferred, was soon found to be inexact; for while former relations were resumed by the erring States, they came back, one with diminished territorial extent and all with domestic rights greatly abridged. They had, in fact, been reconstructed. It is true that even the loyal States did not emerge unscathed from this political revolution. In the South, however, the established industrial system had been swept completely away.

The theme falls naturally under two heads, Presidential Reconstruction and Congressional Reconstruction. An account of the former, which extended from the summer of 1861 to the autumn of 1865, occupies the whole of this volume. Any adequate treatment of the latter, including as it does the eventful period from the meeting of Congress in December, 1865, to the withdrawal of Federal forces from the South in 1877, will require a narrative somewhat more ample.

The conspicuous landmarks of Reconstruction require no extraordinary talent to recognize and locate. It is the unfamiliar region between that is difficult accurately to map out. The failure hitherto to present in a single view the striking features of these neglected parts is chiefly responsible for the fact that Reconstruction remains one of the most obscure parts of our history. A candid and comprehensive account of the political events of the time appears to divest the subject of much of the difficulty commonly supposed to attend its investigation. From a sufficient body of essential facts the step to an understanding and exposition of every principle of moment is comparatively easy.

Though the general design of this volume will be suggested to the student of American history by an inspection of its principal subdivisions, it may not be unnecessary for the benefit of the general reader to add a brief outline of the plan that has been adopted.

Chapter I. relates the most important political events in the history of Tennessee from its attempted secession to the restoration, in March, 1865, of a civil government loyal to the United States. Military movements in that Commonwealth have been noticed only so far as to render intelligible the successive steps by which that reorganization was accomplished.

Chapters II. and III. bring the affairs of Louisiana and Arkansas, respectively, down to about the same time. Events in those States have been treated, so far as conditions permitted, in the same manner as in the case of Tennessee.

Chapter IV. is concerned with the secession, restoration and dismemberment of Virginia. The formation out of a portion of that Commonwealth of the new State of West Virginia, both because of the grave constitutional question which arose on a division of the parent State and the intrinsic interest of the subject, has been considered with some degree of minuteness.

In Chapter V., which discusses anti-slavery legislation, it will appear how Mr. Lincoln, though never an Abolitionist or even a radical Republican, became by pressure of military necessity an instrument in the hands of God to destroy an institution opposed by a long line of American statesmen and condemned by the light of the nineteenth century.

The succeeding chapter considers the various theories and plans of restoration presented during the progress of the war. The rise of the Congressional plan, which ultimately prevailed, is treated separately in Chapter VII. Only the first stage of its development, however, falls within the limits of this inquiry, which ends with the meeting of the Thirty-ninth Congress in December, 1865.

Chapters VIII., IX. and X. trace the progress of the controversy between the Legislative and the Executive branches of Government. The culmination of this difference, however, in the impeachment and trial of President Johnson is a phase of Congressional Reconstruction.

The topics treated in the eleventh chapter, having frequently employed the pens of able and popular writers on the Rebellion, are considered in this study merely for the purpose of making it complete in itself; hence that section is little more than an epitome of what has already been said on those subjects.

The twelfth and last chapter brings every part of the narrative up to December 4, 1865. To clearly comprehend the arduous task that confronted President Johnson this section includes a rapid survey of the wreck of the Confederate States. The principal part, however, is reserved for an account of the conventions assembled under his authority, the method of instituting loyal governments and the spirit and tendency of Southern legislation relative to freedmen. An examination of the Presidential plan of Reconstruction completes the volume.