The new government in Louisiana had been in actual operation for nearly a year.Though Congress had denounced it;though the Manifesto had held it up to scorn as a monarchial outrage;Lincoln had quietly,steadily,protected and supported it.It was discharging the function of a regular State government.Agovernor had been elected and inaugurated-that Governor Hahn whom Lincoln had congratulated as Louisiana's first Free State Governor.He could say this because the new electorate which his mandate had created had assembled a constitutional convention and had abolished slavery.And it had also carried out the President's views with regard to the political status of freedmen.Lincoln was not a believer in general negro suffrage.He was as far as ever from the theorizing of the Abolitionists.The most he would approve was the bestowal of suffrage on a few Superior negroes,leaving the rest to be gradually educated into citizenship.The Louisiana Convention had authorized the State Legislature to make,when it felt prepared to do so,such a limited extension of suffrage.[6]
In setting up this new government,Lincoln had created a political vessel in which practically all the old electorate of Louisiana could find their places the moment they gave up the war and accepted the two requisites,union and emancipation.
That electorate could proceed at once to rebuild the social-political order of the State without any interval of "expiation."All the power of the Administration would be with them in their labors.That this was the wise as well as the generous way to proceed,the best minds of the North had come to see.Witness the conversion of Trumbull.But there were four groups of fanatics who were dangerous:extreme Abolitionists who clamored for negro equality;men like Wade and Chandler,still mad with the lust of conquest,raging at the President who had stood so resolutely between them and their desire;the machine politicians who could never understand the President's methods,who regarded him as an officious amateur;and the Little Men who would have tried to make political capital of the blowing of the last trump.All these,each for a separate motive,attacked the President because of Louisiana.
The new government had chosen Senators.Here was a specific issue over which the Administration and its multiform opposition might engage in a trial of strength.The Senate had it in its power to refuse to seat the Louisiana Senators.
Could the Vindictive leaders induce it to go to that length?
The question took its natural course of reference to the Judiciary Committee.On the eighteenth of February,Trumbull opened what was destined to be a terrible chapter in American history,the struggle between light and darkness over reconstruction.Trumbull had ranged behind Lincoln the majority of his committee.With its authority he moved a joint resolution recognizing the new government of Louisiana.
And then began a battle royal.Trumbull's old associates were promptly joined by Sumner.These three rallied against the resolution all the malignancy,all the time-serving,all the stupidity,which the Senate possessed.Bitter language was exchanged by men who had formerly been as thick as thieves.
"You and I,"thundered Wade,"did not differ formerly on this subject We considered it a mockery,a miserable mockery,to recognize this Louisiana organization as a State in the Union."He sneered fiercely,"Whence comes this new-born zeal of the Senator from Illinois?...Sir,it is the most miraculous conversion that has taken place since Saint Paul's time."[7]
