Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union might be used also to restore
disturbed parts of it to normal condition. Assuming that the "States" still
existed, "loyal" state governments were the first necessity. By his
proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln suggested a method of beginning the
reconstruction: he would pardon any Confederate, except specified classes of
leaders, who took an oath of loyalty for the future; if as many as ten percent
of the voting population of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state
government the executive would recognize it. The matter of slavery must,
indeed, be left to the laws and proclamations as interpreted by the courts,
but other institutions should continue as in 1861.

This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in part controlled by
the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war: Tennessee (1862),
Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia after the formation of West
Virginia (1863). For each state Lincoln appointed a military governor: for
Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, John S. Phelps; for Louisiana,
General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the "reorganized" government, which
had been transferred to Alexandria when the new State of West Virginia was
formed. The military governors undertook the slow and difficult work of
reorganization, however, with but slight success owing to the small numbers of
Unionists and of Confederates who would take the oath. But by 1864, "ten
percent" state governments were established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and
progress was being made in Tennessee.

Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in the
matter of reconstruction, and in 1864, both Houses passed the Wade-Davis Bill,
a plan which asserted the right of Congress to control reconstruction and
foreshadowed a radical settlement of the question. Lincoln disposed of the
bill by a pocket veto and, in a proclamation dated July 8, 1864, stated that
he was unprepared "to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of