The year 1867 comes. The election of 1866 has sent to the 40th Congress a Republican majority of 42 against 11 in the Senate and 143 against 49 in the House. The decisive battle of Reconstruction looms. Abolition-democracy demands for Negroes physical freedom, civil rights, economic opportunity and education and the right to vote, as a matter of sheer human justice and right. Industry demands profits and is willing to use for this end Negro freedom or Negro slavery, votes for Negroes or Black Codes.

The South, beaten in war, and socially and economically disorganized, was knocking at the doors of Congress with increased political power and with a determination to restore land monopoly, and to reorganize its agrarian industry, and to attempt to restore its capital by reducing public taxation to the lowest point. Moreover, it had not given up the idea that the capital which it had lost through the legal abolition of slavery, should and might be reimbursed from the Federal Treasury. Especially it was determined to use for its own ends the increased political power based on voteless Negroes. Finally, there was the West, beginning to fear the grip of land and transportation monopoly, rebelling against the power of Eastern industry, and staggering under the weight of public debt and public taxation.