A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction Read Online Free PDF Page B

proposes to execute the bill which is not a law, it is a grave Executive usurpation.
    It is fitting that the facts necessary to enable the friends of the Administration to appreciate the apology and the usurpation be spread before them.
    The proclamation says:
    â€œAnd whereas the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the
sine die
adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him—”
    If that be accurate, still this bill was presented with other bills which were signed.
    Within that hour the time for the
sine die
adjournment was three times postponed by the votes of both Houses; and the least intimation of a desire for more time by the President to consider this bill would have secured a further postponement.
    Yet the committee sent to ascertain if the President had any further communication for the House of Representatives reported that he had none; and the friends of the bill, who had anxiously waited on him to ascertain its fate, had already been informed that the President had resolved not to sign it.
    The time of presentation, therefore, had nothing to do with his failure to approve it.
    The bill has been discussed and considered for more than a month in the House of Representatives, which it passed on the 4th of May. It was reported to the Senate on the 27th of May, without material amendment, and passed the Senate absolutely as it came from the House on the 2d of July.
    Ignorance of its contents is out of the question.
    Indeed, at his request, a draft of a bill substantially the same in material points, and identical in the points objected to by the proclamation, had been laid before him for his consideration in the winter of 1862–1863.
    There is, therefore, no reason to suppose the provisions of the bill took the President by surprise.
    On the contrary, we have reason to believe them to have been so well known that this method of preventing the bill from becoming a law without the constitutional responsibility of a veto, had been resolved on long before the bill passed the Senate. . . .
    Had the proclamation stopped there, it would have been only one other defeat of the will of the people by the Executive perversion of the Constitution.
    But it goes further. The President says:
    â€œAnd whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration—”
    By what authority of the Constitution? In what forms? The result to be declared by whom? With what effect when ascertained?
    Is it to be a law by the approval of the people, without the approval of Congress, at the will of the President?
    Will the President, on his opinion of the popular approval, execute it as a law?
    Or is this merely a device to avoid the serious responsibility of defeating a law on which so many loyal hearts reposed for security?
    But the reasons now assigned for not approving the bill are full of ominous significance.
    The President proceeds:
    â€œNow, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration.”
    That is to say, the President is resolved that people shall not
by
law
take
any
securities from the rebel States against a renewal of the rebellion, before restoring their power to govern us.
    His wisdom and prudence are to be our sufficient guarantees! He further says:
    â€œAnd while I am also unprepared to declare that the free-State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for