It must be frankly admitted that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its aspects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of Republican members of Congress, and violent opposition from the more radical members of both Houses. If Congress had been in session at the time, a very rancorous hostility would have been developed against the President. Fortunately the senators and representatives had returned to their States and districts before the proclamation was issued, and they found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support. No contest was raised, therefore, by the great majority of those who had sustained the bill which the President had refused to approve. The pending struggle for the Presidency demanded harmony, and by common consent agitation on the question was abandoned. Two of the ablest, most fearless, most resolute men then in public life--Senator Wade of Ohio, and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland--were exceptions to the general rule of acquiescence. They were respectively the chairmen in Senate and House of the "Committees on the Rebellious States," and were primarily and especially responsible for the bill which the President criticized in his proclamation. They united over their own signatures in a public "Protest" against the action of Mr. Lincoln. The paper was prepared by Mr. Davis, which of itself was guaranty that it would be able, caustic, and unqualified. Mr. Wade was known to be a man of extraordinary courage, both physical and moral. To these qualities Mr. Davis added a highly cultivated mind and a style of writing which in political controversy has rarely been surpassed--a style at once severe, effective, and popular.
The "Protest" embodied a sharp contrast between the President's plan of Reconstruction in his proclamation of December 8 (1863), and that contained in the bill presented by Congress for his approval. "The bill," said Messrs. Wade and Davis, "requires a majority of the voters to establish a State government, the proclamation is satisfied with one-tenth; the bill requires one oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains voters by registering, the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the bill governs the rebel States _by law_ equalizing all before it, the proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military governors and provost marshals; the bill forbids electors for President (in the rebel States), the proclamation with the defeat of the bill threatens us with civil war for the exclusion of such votes."