The New Plan of Reconstruction.
Congress has adopted a plan of reconstruction. It provides for military control over the ten rebel States, until loyal governments are legally established therein. It authorizes their representation in Congress when the following conditions have been complied with: The people must form state constitutions, based on the equal suffrage of blacks and whites. The constitutions must be framed by conventions chosen by such voters. No person can be a delegate to the conventions, nor vote for delegates, who would be excluded from office by the pending amendment to the Federal Constitution. The constitutions must be ratified by a popular vote of the same class of electors. They must be submitted to and approved by Congress. Legislatures chosen under them must adopt the pending Federal amendment. That amendment must become a part of the United States Constitution. Then, and not till then, any one of these ten States may be represented in Congress by members who can take the oaths of office. The plan further provides that until these States are thus represented in Congress, all civil governments therein are to be deemed provisional only, and be subject to the paramount authority of the United States to alter or abolish them. No person shall hold office under these provisional governments, who would be excluded from office by the pending Federal amendment, and all persons, and none others, shall vote therein who are entitled to vote for delegates to the conventions above mentioned. Such is the plan of Congress. It is framed on a much higher plane than the Constitutional Amendment, which it virtually supersedes. It provides a practical mode whereby the rebel states can, at an early day, return to the Union. The advance in the terms now exacted of them, as compared with those tendered in that amendment, is wholly due to their obstinacy, their contempt for Federal authority, and their wanton outrage upon the rights, and the lives even, of black and white Unionists within their borders. Placing these states, ad interim, under military rule is the inexorable demand of the situation. Anarchy reigns throughout the South. Only the mailed hand of martial law can bring order out of the chaos. The facts proved before the committee who investigated the New Orleans massacre, and the committee that inquired into the murder of three Union soldiers in South Carolina, demonstrates this. The latter committee examined Gens. Thomas, Sheridan, Schofield, Sickles, Baird, and Wood, commanders in the rebel States, and their testimony brings the committee to the conclusion “that, for the punishment of crime in their departments, the courts cannot be relied upon in cases where soldiers, Union men, or freedmen are concerned. Justice is practically denied, and offenses of grave character go unpunished; neither magistrates nor jurors being disposed to discharge their duties in this respect.” Viewed in its broad aspects, it provides for the permanent enfranchisement of a whole people, accompanied only by the temporary disfranchisement of a few hundred conspicuous leaders of millions of traitors, all of whom, by the laws of their country, had forfeited their lives. Tested by international law, it is without precedent, in that it refrains from confiscating the property of insurgents. Tried by the lex talionis, to which the South appealed, it is a marvel, in that it abstains from shedding human blood. Examined in the light of history, its conditions are more lenient and liberal than those tendered by any government, under like provocation, to a people who had so causelessly rebelled against its authority. It is not the offspring of hatred, nor vengeance; but a sublime illustration of charity and mercy offered by a generous victor to a fallen foe. When prejudice and passion shall have subsided, the South itself will confess that the magnanimity of its conquerors has no parallel in the annals of the most liberal and refined nation. If this measure becomes a law, will the rebel communities accept its alternative conditions, and reconstruct themselves accordingly? If aye, well. If not, they must live under it till bitter experience teaches them to accept its elemental provision. As we write, rumor indicates that the President will veto the bill in time for Congress to pass it over his head. If he does not, the Fortieth Congress will doubtless soon tender it for his approval, perhaps in a more symmetrical form, possibly with more stringent clauses, and will enact it into a law. Once the law of the land, if the President fails to execute it, or if he embarrasses its legitimate workings, the Great Obstacle to the harmonious action of the Government will be promptly removed out of the way.—Independent.