So the dominant party addressed itself without fear to the great work before it.
They had to determine on what conditions the States that had been in rebellion should come back to their place under the Constitution.
They were to determine on what terms the men who had taken part in the rebellion should be fully restored to citizenship.
They were to determine the civil and political condition of more than five million people just set free from slavery.
They were to secure fair elections in fifteen States, where for many years neither free elections nor free speech had been tolerated.
If they could, they were to reconcile the North and the South, estranged by a strife so bitter that even before the War the life of no Northern man who dared to utter Northern opinions was safe in half the States of the country, and which had been intensified by four years of bloody war--bellum plus quam civile--which had left nearly every household in the country mourning for its dead.
They were to confront the greatest temptation that ever besets men of Anglo-Saxon race, a race ever restless and ever hungry for empire.

Hungry eyes were already bent on San Domingo and Cuba.

Good men were rendered uneasy by the tales of Spanish oppression in Cuba.

Men who were looking for the union of the two oceans by a canal across the Isthmus, or who hoped that we should extend our dominion in this continent southward, looked upon the island belonging to the Negro Republics of Hayti and San Domingo as a desirable addition to our military and naval strength.
They were to provide for the payment of an enormous debt.
They were to accomplish the resumption of specie payment.
They were to consider and determine anew the question of currency.

What should be the standard of value and a legal tender for the payment of debts?
They were to get rid of the vast burden of war taxes which pressed heavily upon all branches of business.
They were to decide whether the duties on imports which had been laid to meet the heavy cost of war should be kept in peace and whether to follow the counsel of Hamilton and his associates in the first Administration of Washington, or the counsel of the free traders and the English school of political economics, in determining whether American industry should be protected.
The people felt that they had suffered a grievous wrong from England, and that unless there were reparation, which England had so far steadily refused either to make or consider, the honor of the country required that we should exact it by war.
The emigrants from foreign lands who had come to our shores in vast numbers, and were coming in rapidly increasing numbers, were made uneasy by the doctrine of perpetual allegiance on which all Europe insisted.