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account of the chairman's absence.
All efforts to avoid a vote were found to be hopeless against such pertinacity, and the bill finally passed by eight majority.
Mr. Arnold, the biographer of the
President, attributes to
Sumner the favorable result.
1 Mrs. Lincoln wrote to him grateful letters from
Frankfort and
London.
In the first she expressed her satisfaction that those who most urgently pressed the pension were the men whom her husband most highly regarded and loved as if they were brothers; and she closed the second with this sentence: ‘Words are inadequate to express my thanks for all your goodness to me.’
The condition of affairs in the
Southern States still required the attention of Congress.
Three of the States—
Virginia,
Mississippi, and
Texas—had not hitherto complied with the Acts of reconstruction so as to be admitted to representation in Congress, but applications for such admission were now pending.
A spirit hostile to
Unionists,
white and
black, was still, however, dominant in large sections of the
South, and the rebel spirit was organized in Ku-Klux clans.
The Legislature of Georgia—one of the States which had been recognized as having complied with those Acts and entitled to representation—had afterwards expelled all its colored members, while admitting to seats persons who were ineligible on account of former disloyalty under the fourteenth amendment.
The first Act of this session of Congress was a thorough measure for reforming the Legislature of Georgia; and the
State having complied with its terms, one of which was the ratification of the fifteenth amendment, was admitted to representation on the last day of the session.
The other three States were also admitted,—with, however, ‘fundamental conditions’ imposed, the same in each case, which prohibited changes in the
State constitutions allowing exclusions from suffrage or office or school rights based on race, color, or former condition of servitude.
2 The conditions as to suffrage and office were deemed important, as the fate of the fifteenth amendment, was still uncertain.
That amendment, however, soon received the approval of a sufficient number of States, and was