The contest between the advanced Republicans and Con- servatives in
Congress concerning the treatment of the South has begun, and shows the former to be in an immense majority, though with some followers inclined to waver,—Conservative-Republicans like Mr. Raymond of New York, who would bring back the Slave States at once, with no sort of guarantee for real freedom for the freedmen. The struggle took place on a resolution of Mr. Stevens to appoint a joint committee for the Senate and House of Representatives, to which to refer all the claims of the Southern States to be readmitted to Congress, and until their report to have no debate on the subject in Congress ;—so that their not reporting at all would be equivalent to exclusion. This resolution was carried, but so modified in the Senate as to admit debate in Congress in the meantime before any report of the committee,— the House of Representatives, however, again passing a resolu- tion, for itself only, against any intervening debate on the subject. The division in the House of Representatives showed in one case 135 advanced Republicans to 35 Democrats and Conservative-Republicans,—in the next case, 107 of the former to 56 of the latter, a variation which alarmed the radicals.
