Mr.Seward, in his persuasive mode of presenting his views, had urged as a matter of justice that legislation affecting the Southern States should be open to the participation of representatives from those States; but Mr.Thaddeus Stevens, who had as keen an intellect as Mr.Seward and a more trenchant style, declared that view to involve an absurdity.

He avowed his belief that there was no greater propriety in admitting Southern senators and representatives to take part in considering the financial adjustments and legislative safeguards rendered necessary by their crime, than it would have been to admit the Confederate generals to the camp of the Union Army, when measures were under consideration for the overthrow of the Rebellion.
The great mass of Republicans in Congress maintained that it was not only common justice but common sense to define, without interposition or advice from the South, the conditions upon which the insurrectionary States should be re-clothed with the panoply of National power.

"In no body of English laws," said Mr.Stevens, in an animated conversation in the House, "have I ever found a provision which authorizes the criminal to sit in judgment when the extent of his crime and its proper punishment were under consideration." The argument, therefore, which Mr.Seward had made with such strength for the President was, in the judgment of the great majority of Norther people, altogether ill-founded.
By the caustic sentence of Mr.Stevens it had been totally overthrown.
The average judgement approved the sharply defined and stringent policy of Congress as set forth by Mr.Stevens, rather than the policy so comprehensively embodied and so skilfully advocated by Mr.Seward on behalf of the Administration.

Whatever may have been the temptations presented by the apparent magnanimity and broad charity of Mr.Seward's line of procedure, they were more than answered by the instincts of justice and by the sense of safety embodied in the plan of Reconstruction announced and about to be pursued by Congress.
The Joint Special Committee on Reconstruction, appointed at the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress in December, did not meet for organization until the 6th of January, 1866.

As an indication of the respectful manner in which they desired to treat the President, and the care with which they would proceed in their important duties, they appointed a sub-committee to wait on Mr.Johnson and advise him that the committee desired to avoid all possible collision or misconstruction between the Executive and Congress in regard to their relative positions.