History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

ng and nonslave-holding sections, and was in fact the underlying and potent cause of the war, went under in the strife and was by national edict forever prohibited.

The struggle being ended by the exhaustion of the insurgents, two conspicuous problems demanding immediate solution were developed: The status of the now ex-slaves, or freedmen--and the methods to be adopted for the rehabilitation of the revolted States, including the status of the revolted States themselves. The sword had declared that they had no constitutional power to withdraw from the Union, and the result demonstrated that they had not the physical power--and therefore that they were in the anomalous condition of States of though not States technically in the Union--and hence properly subject to the jurisdiction of the General Government, and bound by its judgment in any measures to be instituted by it for their future restoration to their former condition of co-equal States.

The now ex-slaves had been liberated, not with the c