Manuscript essay on Reconstruction, the Amnesty Proclamation, and the Military Reconstruction Acts (page 1)

[The sheet is folded into four panels. The lower three columns are right-side-up; the upper three are inverted (rotated 180°) relative to the lower. All six columns are partly legible.]

Lower-left column (right-side-up)

Had Anthony’s Amnesty Proclamation never been issued — [and] had nothing been done since that time to reinstate the Southern people as citizens of the U.S. & to restore the civil & political rights of the people of So. Ca. in the Union — the unrepudiated action of the Authorized Representatives of the Conquering power before that proclamation would have been enough to establish the right of the Southern people to the protection of the Constitution & laws of the U.S. & to all the guarantees of liberty & property claimed by the Petitioner in this case.

The Reclam

2. The Amnesty Proclamation was an authoritative and unrepudiated Declaration of Peace and Act of Settlement on the part of the Conquering powe[r]…

Lower-centre column (right-side-up)

That Proclamation was made in the name of the Nation, in exercise of pardoning power given President under Constitution, and was equivalent to a formal declaration of Peace, and also to a Treaty with the Southern Conquered people [interlined: regarding them as Conquered].

The authority of the Pres’t’s pardoning power has been recognized in the decision of Supreme Court, in “Ex parte Garland.”

The terms of Amnesty were accepted & have been faithfully carried out by Southern people ever since.

The assertion of Military rule under the Act of Congress — the invasion of civil rights — is a new declaration of war, unprovoked, and without a shadow of justification, according to rules of public law —

Lower-right column (right-side-up)

It involves an utter breach of the faith of the Nation pledged, on two most solemn & conspicuous occasions and repeatedly assured since 1865 by the whole course of the Government.

The inconsistencies in the action of the U.S. Gov’t is due [partly?] to the confusion [natural?] incident to a great political crisis — partly to the mistakes of the Executive and mainly to the violations of law & of rule by a party drunk with victory & power.

In spite of some palpable irregularities & inconsistencies the general course of the Government has been such as to commit even the Congressional faction to a tacit as well as express ratification both of the Convention of Grant & Sherman and of the course of settlement adopted by the President.

Upper-left column (inverted; reading after rotation)

Ex parte. S. L. Howard, motion for discharge of prisoner from arrest.

Arrest claimed as of right by virtue of military authority, supreme above law & above the Constitution. This extraordinary claim acts upon Military occupants which grew out of Conquest. When? By whom? On whom? 1865. U.S. Gov’t. U.S. citizens.

Now for first time asserted.

Act 2 March 1867 quoted as authority for assertion of Military supremacy over State Gov’t & State laws and State Courts.

Pope’s letter (Charleston Mercury, 26 April 1867) [asserts] an unrepudiated truth, viz. that it would have been a day for Congress to have obliterated State Gov’ts in the South and to depose them & declare them to be provisional…

Upper-centre column (inverted; reading after rotation)

We deny that Military power in 1865 was alone able to furnish security to property —

We deny that Military occupancy by right of conquest persisted, ever by law, or ever was established as a mode of government —

We deny “Conquest” — we have no Conqueror, the U.S. Gov’t itself is, in [law?] & in every one of its Departments —

But before proceeding to establish this proposition we will meet the argument of Military despotism on the admission for sake of argument, of the theory of Conquest in 1865.

1. At time of surrender of Armies of Confederacy a solemn Convention was entered into by the Cmd’g Generals of U.S. forces, by which the Armies — [were] now seized of them [allowed] to return to the rights of [life?] & property…

Upper-right column (inverted; reading after rotation)

…this Convention adopted & ratified by Gov’t ever since.

When [later] Radicals proposed that Robert E. Lee be arrested & tried for treason, Grant held up his sword & said, “This man is protected by the faith of the U.S. Army.” He was also protected by the faith of the Nation, and so is every conquered Secessionist who laid down his arms in April 1865.

Vattel §207, 208. Bk II. Ch. XIV. p 200 — §214 —

The continuous public declarations of all the representatives of the U.S. Gov’t, civil as well as Military, [recognize] the cessation of hostilities and confirmed the Conventions of Grant & Sherman, requiring [an] Oath of Allegiance from men who had taken [the] pledges, the correlative of [protection], to prior [special?] hopes [original/etc.] proclamation —