Excerpt from "On Reconstruction" Testimony before Congress April 11, 1866; published in the Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction of the First Session Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1866

The former Confederate vice president speaks out on Reconstruction

"It would be best for the peace, harmony, and prosperity of the whole country that there should be an immediate restoration, an immediate bringing back of the States into their original practical relations.…"

The end of the American Civil War (1861–65) raised a thorny question: How would the former Confederate states be brought back into the Union? Many Southerners believed they simply needed to pledge their loyalty to the Union and send their congressmen back to Washington, D.C.—almost as if the war never happened. Some Northerners supported that idea at first, eager for a quick reconciliation that...