There was a number of acts passed by the Southern legislatures which appeared to North ern people to he attempts to avoid the 13th Amendment and reduce the negroes practically to slavery once more. A joint committee on Recoil struction now took charge of affairs, and the legislative branch of the government, passing important measures over the President's veto and denying the Southern States representation in Congress until certain demands were met, controlled the situation completely. The purpose of the Republican leaders was to give pre dominance to the °party of the Union) in the South. The Freedmen's Bureau had already been established to care for the freedmen. The Civil Rights Act was enacted; and soon after, the 14th Amendment was submitted to the States for adoption (June 1866).
With the exception of Tennessee, the South ern States refused to ratify the amendment, but their refusal was of no avail; the South was put under military government, and no State was admitted to representation until it had ac cepted the amendment. In 1868 the measure was adopted; it was of immense importance. Under the original Constitution, the liberty of the individual was in nearly every respect in the hands of the State; by the 14th Amend ment it was declared that no State should °deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction, the equal pro tection of the laws.) It also provided that there should be a reduction of representation of any State that abridged the right of male citizens 21 years of age to vote. The chief purpose of the amendment in this particular was to cut down the representation of those Southern States that did not give the ballot to the negro. Two years later the 15th Amendment was enacted, declaring that the right to vote should not be abridged °on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' The last three amendments were the most evident constitutional products of the war. The last State to be admitted to the privileges of the Union was Georgia (July 1870). In the mean time conditions had been bad in the South. eCarpet-bagB governments had entered upon their work of wasting the substance of the already impoverished country. The Southern people began by all sorts of methods to throw off the burden of domination by ignorant negroes and dishonest whites. Some of the latter were indeed honest, but the results of rule were deplorable. Not until 1877 were the Federal troops withdrawn from all parts of the South and the Southern people suffered to manage their political affairs as they had done before 1861.
In 1868 General Grant became President. During his time the difficulties in the South continued and long gave no sign of real better ment. Only gradually was the trouble cleared away and a better feeling between the sections established. The most important fact of Grant's first administration was that Great Britain and the United States agreed, by the Treaty of Washington, to arbitrate the matters in dispute between them. During the war, the latter power had strongly objected to England's con duct in allowing vessels that were to be used to prey on Northern commerce to be fitted out in her harbors. The most noted of these was the famous Alabama, which, after doing immense damage, was sunk by the Kearsarge in a fight off the coast of France. The Court of Arbitra tion, which was provided for by the treaty, meeting at Geneva, awarded to the United States $15,500,000 as damages for the injuries inflicted. In the election of 1872 the Liberal Republicans appeared in opposition to the regu lar Republicans. They demanded reform in the administration of government and that the gov ernment cease its interference in the affairs of the Southern States. The movement marks the beginning of the gradual rearrangement of parties.
The Republican party had absorbed the Union element of the North and had attracted the support of even earnest war-Democrats; but confronted with new problems, now that slavery was gone and the Union intact, the party naturally could not hold all the persons whom the pressure of war had brought within its lines. The Democrats supported the Liberal Republican candidate, Horace Greeley, but Grant was successful. His second administra tion was marred by a number of serious official scandals— the Whisky Frauds, the Credit Mobilier, the Salary. Grab—and there was a widespread feeling that all was not done to fer ret out rascality. The panic of 1873 occurred; perhaps it was a natural result of the war; cer tainly it was not to be wondered at in the light of extravagant speculation in a country still burdened with a load of paper money. And yet, in spite of all the country had endured, its pop ulation and wealth had greatly increased since the outbreak of the war, and, notwithstanding evidences of a loose and even dangerous spirit in public affairs, the people had, on the whole, withstood remarkably the deleterious influences of long civil strife.