A  prompt  adjustment  after  the  manner  of  consolidated  govern
ments  was  not  practicable  under  our  Federal  system.  In  the  divis
ion  of  functions  between  the  Nation  and  the  State,  those  that  reach
and  affect  the  citizen  in  his  every-day  life  belong  principally  to  the


CHARACTER  AND   CAREER  OF  ANDREW  JOHNSON.  3

State.  The  tenure  of  land  is  guarantied  and  regulated  by  State
Law ;  the  domestic  relations  of  husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child,
guardian  and  ward,  together  with  the  entire  educational  system,  are
left  exclusively  to  the  same  authority,  as  is  also  the  preservation  of
the  public  peace  by  proper  police-systems  —  the  National  Govern
ment  intervening  only  on  the  call  of  the  State  when  the  State's
power  is  found  inadequate  to  the  suppression  of  disorder.  These
leading  functions  of  the  State  were  left  in  full  force  under  the  Con
federate  Government ;  and  the  Confederate  Government  being  now
destroyed,  and  the  States  that  composed  it  being  under  the  complete
domination  of  the  armies  of  the  Union,  the  whole  framework  of
society  was  in  confusion,  if  not  indeed  in  chaos.  To  restore  the
States  to  their  normal  relations  to  the  Union,  to  enable  them  to
organize  governments  in  harmony  with  the  fundamental  changes
jwTought  by  the  war,  was  the  embarrassing  task  which  the  Admin
istration,  of  President  Johnson  was  compelled  to  meet  on  the  very
I  threshold  of  its  existence.
