But this peace was afterwards rudely and unnecessarily broken through the wicked ambition of men who had no honorable agency in the great war, and great capitulation, which had resulted in peace in 1865.
In 1867 Congress broke the treaty made by the armies at the surrender, without just cause or reasonable excuse.
The peace of 1865 was not made by treaty between belligerent nations. The Confederate States Government was destroyed. It was not made between the States because, under the Constitution they could not be recognized individually, and as to each other, as belligerents, or in any respect as powers foreign to the Government of the United States.
The treaty, if it may be called such, was made by terms of capitulation between the two armies in the field, and was ratified in the parole of every Confederate soldier. Thus the most sacred of all the engagements of public faith was made a matter of personal agreement between the Government of the United States and the soldiers of the Confederacy. When General Lee and General Johnston surrendered their armies they did not consent to impose upon them conditions of civil inferiority when they should return to their homes. They would never have surrendered upon such terms.
Never was the honor of a country more bound up in any treaty, and never was public faith more unjustly disregarded, than it was when the government that received these paroles afterwards disregarded them.
The Congress of the United States, under its power to make war, and with the army under its control—made subject to its command by a flagrant invasion of the prerogatives of the President—resumed hostilities against the people of the States that had been engaged in the war of 1861.
The President refused to give the sanction of his authority to this unjust war, and his powers as Commander-in-Chief were virtually usurped by a joint committee of the two Houses that commanded Generals who undertook to command the President.
While the President was extending the pardoning power to the relief of almost every person in the South from all the consequences of the alleged rebellion of 1861, Congress was engaged in a new declaration of war based upon these pardoned offences.
The war of 1861 had been a war of restoration of the Union and of the supremacy of the Federal laws. The war of 1867 was waged for conquest, subjugation, and spoils.
Congress was enraged that the President, by his free use of the pardoning power and his recognition of the rights of the States, should impede the work of the reconstruction of the States by military coercion.
