The comprehensiveness of this brief and sudden document
of surrender was appalling! Mr. Lincoln had never before shown any
inclination to depute to others so much of his own discretionary
authority; his habit was quite the other way.
It is not worth while to discuss much the merits or demerits of
President Lincoln's schemes for reconstruction. They had been only
roughly and imperfectly blocked out at the time of his death; and in
presenting them he repeatedly stated that he did not desire to rule out
other schemes which might be suggested; on the contrary, he distinctly
stated his approval of the scheme developed in the bill introduced by
Senator Davis and passed by Congress. Reconstruction, as it was actually
conducted later on, was wretchedly bungled, and was marked chiefly by
bitterness in disputation and by clumsiness in practical arrangements,
which culminated in that miserable disgrace known as the regime of the
"carpet-baggers." How far Lincoln would have succeeded in saving the
country from these humiliating processes, no one can say; but that he
would have strenuously disapproved much that was done is not open to
reasonable doubt. On the other hand, it is by no means certain that his
theories, at least so far as they had been developed up to the time of
his death, either could have been, or ought to have been carried out.
This seems to be generally agreed.
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