RECONSTRUCTION (front Lat. back again, anew + together + strucre, to heap). in American history, the process by which, after the Civil War, the seceded States were restored to their normal relations with the Union. The only provision of the Constitution that seemed to have any bearing on the matter was that which makes it the duty of the United States to ,guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government. Even this was not explicit, for it was not stated which branch of the Government—whether the Executive or Congress—was charged with the execution of the constitutional mandate. Among the views as to the status of the States at the close of the war several deserve a brief explanation: First. there was the Southern view, based on the as sumption that the acts of secession were invalid and of no effect. Its cardinal doctrine was the indestructibility of a State. either by its own act or by act of the United States Gov ernment. All that was necessary, there fore, to the reestablishment of normal re lations with the Union was for the State governments to cease their resistance to the Gov ernment of the United States, and repeal all measures passed in furtherance of secession and rebellion. Second, there was the view of Presi dent Lincoln. based on the assumption that the act of rebellion in each State was the act not of the State itself, 'out of combinations of disloyal persons who bad unlawfully subverted the loyal State governments. The States, therefore. con tinued to exist as members of the Union, though they were out of their 'proper practical rela tions' with it. According to this view the prob lem of reconstruction consisted simply in placing the loyal element in the seceded States in con trol of the State governments which had been subverted by the disloyal element. Furthermore, President Lincoln regarded the problem as one devolving upon the Executive rather than upon Congress—for the work of creating a loyal element necessarily involved the exercise of the pardoning power, which alone was vested in the President— and the support by the military arm of the loyal governments so established. Thirdly, there was the Congressional view. which held that recon struction was a legislative problem; that as a result of rebellion the Southern States were 'de prived of all civil government,' and that all de facto governments set up during the war were illegal. This view has been called the 'for feited rights' theory. The States continued to
exist, but as disorganized communities subject to the paramount authority of the United States. In pursuance of this view Congress passed an act in July. 1864, which was fathered by Henry Win ter Davis in the House and Benjamin F. Wade in the Senate, and which provided a remedy for the defects of the Presidential scheme as understood by the supporters of the Congres sional view. The view embodied in this measure differed from that of President Lin coln, first, in regarding the problem of re construction as a legislative problem; second, in requiring the loyalty of a majority of the adult white males of the State for the basis of the reconstructed government instead of the loyal ty of one-tenth, as required by President Lincoln's plan; thirdly, in requiring the abolition of slav ery as the starting point in the process of recon struction. President Lincoln refused to sign the bill before the expiration of the session, thus in directly defeating it. A fourth view was the so-called State suicide theory of Charles Sunnier, enunciated by him in a series of resolutions of fered in the Senate in 1862. The gist of these resolutions was that the attempt of a State to secede from the Union, involving as it did an at tempt to exclude the Constitution of the United States from the territory of the State. was, if successfully sustained by force, equivalent to a practical forfeiture by the State of all rights under the Constitution. It involved. further more, the immediate extinction of the State sovereignty and its reduction to the position of a Territory under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Government of the United States. Finally. there was the view ably expounded by Thaddeus Stevens, and popularly called the conquered prov ince theory, according to which rebellion against the national authority by a State of the Union not only put an end to its existence as a State, but even forfeited its rights as a Territory un der the Constitution. The inhabitants of such a community were remanded to the status of an unorganized province owned by the National Gov ernment and subject to its dominion without the restraint of constitutional limitations. The ad vocates of this theory appealed to the actual facts of the case to show that at the close of hostilities the Southern States were in the condition of de pendent provinces subject to the absolute do minion of the conqueror.