Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

A joint committee of the two houses on reconstruction was appointed in the second week of the session, with Fessenden chairman on the part of the Senate, and Stevens on the part of the House. Stevens opened the debate, December 18, with a speech on the duties and powers of Congress in relation to the States lately in rebellion, taking positions in direct opposition to the President, and going as far as Sumner's most radical propositions. He was answered by Henry J. Raymond, a Republican, but now the President's supporter. The House gave a sign of its temper just after the holiday recess by referring to a committee, instead of passing, a resolution approving the President's policy. In the Senate there was equal alertness on the part of those who were opposed to his proceedings. Wilson pressed, in the second week of the session, his bill to annul statutes of the late rebel States which established inequality of civil rights on account of color, race, or former condition of servitude—calling attention to recent legislation of this character. Johnson of Maryland replied to him.

The President, in answer to a call of the Senate made on Sumner's motion, sent to the Senate, December 19, the reports of Generals Grant and Schurz on the condition of the States lately in rebellion. The latter's report, containing a full description, and made after a careful inspection lasting for three months, did not meet the changed views of the President; and he sought to counteract it by the report of General Grant, who had passed only four days in a similar inspection as incidental to a military tour. The two reports were in conflict. General Schurz discovered in the South, with exceptions, ‘an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism,’ and for a remedy he contended for negro suffrage as a condition in the readmission of those States to political power. General Grant's brief report, on the other hand, found that ‘the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith.’ The general's political relations were at that time undefined, and he appeared then as likely to associate himself with one party as with the other. It is also probable that, being as yet unused to civil affairs, he had in mind rather submission to military authority than that active loyalty which is essential to good citizenship. The President in communicating the reports called attention to General Grant's, but avoided a like mention of General Schurz's, and avowed his