ABSTRACT
Within the federal government, the struggle for power between president and congress assumed overriding importance because it coincided with profound differences over policy. The solid majority of Republicans in Congress were concerned that the peace as well as the war must be safely won. Before, during, and after the Civil War its better nature struggled with uneven success to master its baser elements – the Negrophobes and racists, the opportunists and the cynics. The North finally abandoned the struggle to win the peace as decisively as it had won the war, and gave its full attention to pursuit of the rewards of an expanding industrial society. There was great honour in the struggle to master prejudice, and deeply-entrenched assumptions, but there was a great price, too, in the opportunism, pragmatism, indirection and equivocation involved in attempts to win support or appease opponents.
