After some lesser business they discussed the reconstruction of the South.

At this time the question of the Ecclesiastical Reconstruction of the South was beginning to agitate the Church.

The reconstruction of the South involved the reconsideration of the fundamental principles of our Government and the natural rights of man.

Offended by the Protective policy of the United States, the British Press now denounced the measures proposed for the Reconstruction of the South.

These were satires of the old proslavery spirit which retarded the reconstruction of the South and harried the freedmen by mobs and lynchings.

As the war drew to an end, Lincoln initiated a program aimed at the rapid reconstruction of the South and the healing of sectional bitterness.