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1 Is the South Ready for Restoration 1866

handle is hein.trials/adee0001 and id is 1 raw text is: IS THE SOUTH R EADY FOP RESTOaLATION? After four years of costly and triumphant war, the question is now before the people whether we shall throw away or secure the results for which that war was waged unto its bitter end. A majority of Congress, as the legislative branch of the government, has pronounced in favor of requiring such guarantees for the future as may be necessary to insure to our chil- dren the blessings for which we have made such painful and weary sacri- fices. In this, Congress has believed that it was responding to the wishes of its constituency, and it is for that constituency to declare through the ballot-box whether or not Congress has been mistaken. A weightier deci- sion never was in the hands of a free people, and it behooves them to pon- der well the facts of the case before they give their verdict. The Question at Issue. Stripped of irrelevant externals, the question to be decided is simply whether or not the States lately in rebellion shall be at once and without further probation admitted to the enjoyment of full political rights as equal members in the common government. As, in such case, they would hold the balance of power between the Union and Democratic parties, they would exercise not only a share of power proportioned to their numbers, but an absolute controlling influence which would determine the character of of our legislation and our institutions for the future, until some misgov- ernment should lead to another catastrophe as awful as that from which we are just emerging. It is therefore of the last importance that we should ascertain, as correctly as possible, the spirit which now animates them, that we may estimate the manner in which would be exercised the control over the destinies of the Republic, which we should be thus en- trusting to those who have scarcely as yet desisted from their desperate efforts to destroy it.

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