Abraham Lincoln:  a History

Lincoln reNominated

In other chapters we have mentioned the unavailing efforts made by a few politicians to defeat the will of the people which everywhere demanded the renomination of Mr. Lincoln.  These efforts were worth studying as manifestations of eccentric human nature, but they never had the least effect upon the great currents of public opinion.  Death alone could have prevented the choice of Mr. Lincoln by the Union Convention.  So absolute and universal was this tendency that most of the politicians made no effort to direct or guide it;  they simply exerted themselves to keep in the van and not be overwhelmed.  The Convention was to meet on the 7th of June, but the irregular nominations of the President began at the feast of the Epiphany.  The first convention of the year was held in New Hampshire on the 6th of January ---for the nomination of State officers.  It had properly no concern with the National nominations.  The Convention consisted in great part of the friends of Mr. Chase, and those employees of the Treasury Department whose homes were in New Hampshire had come together determined to smother any mistimed demonstration for the President;  but the first mention of his name set the assembly on fire, and before the chairman knew what he was doing, the Convention had declared in favor of the renomination of Lincoln.

The same day a far more important demonstration came to the surface in Pennsylvania.  The State Legislature met on the 5th of January, and the following day a paper, prepared in advance, addressed to the President, requesting him to accept a second term of the Presidency, began to be circulated among the Union members.  Not one to whom it was presented declined to sign it.  Within a day or two it received the signature of every Union member of the Senate and the Assembly of Pennsylvania, and Simon Cameron, transmitting it to the President on the 14th of January, could say:

"You are now fairly launched on your second voyage, and of its success I am as confident as ever I was of anything in my life.  Providence has decreed your reëlection, and no combination of the wicked can prevent it." ---Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, to Lincoln, January 14, 1864, manuscript.

This remarkable address began by congratulating the President upon the successes of the recent election, which were generously ascribed to the policy of his Administration.  Referring to the Republican victory in their own State, the members of the Legislature said:

"If the voice of Pennsylvania became thus potential in indorsing the policy of your Administration, we consider that, as the representatives of those who have so completely indorsed your official course, we are only responding to their demands when we thus publicly announce our unshaken preference for your reëlection to the Presidency in 1864."

This preference was justified by them purely on public grounds.

"To make a change in the Administration until its authority has been fully reestablished in the revolted States would be to give the enemies of the Government abroad a pretext for asserting that the Government had failed at home.  To change the policy in operation to crush rebellion and restore the land to peace would be to afford the traitors in arms time to gather new strength ---if not for immediate victory, at least for ultimate success in their efforts permanently to dissolve the Union.  We do not make this communication at this time to elicit from you any expression of opinion on this subject.  Having confidence in your patriotism, we believe that you will abide the decision of the friends of the Union, and yield consent to any honorable use which they may deem proper to make of your name in order to secure the greatest good to the country and the speediest success to our arms.  Expressing what we feel to be the language not only of our own constituents, but also of the people of all the loyal States, we claim to indulge the expectation that you will yield to the preference which has already made you the people's candidate for the Presidency in 1864."

In every gathering of the supporters of the Union the same irrepressible sentiment broke forth.  The New-York Times on the 15th of January clearly expressed the general feeling:

"The same wise policy which would forbid a man of business in troublous times to change his agent of proved efficiency, impels the loyal people of our country to continue President Lincoln in his responsible position;  and against the confirmed will of the people politicians are powerless."

The sentiment was so potent in its pressure upon the politicians that they everywhere gave way and broke into premature indorsement of the nomination.  The Union Central Committee of New York held a special meeting, and unanimously recommended the renomination of the President.  Senator Morgan, sending this news to Mr. Lincoln, added:  "It is going to be difficult to restrain the boys, and there is not much use in trying to do so.  At a local election some of the ward tickets were headed, with an irrelevancy which showed the spirit of the hour, "For President of the United States in 1864, Abraham Lincoln."

From one end to the other of the country these spontaneous nominations joyously echoed one another.  Towards the close of January the Radical Legislature of Kansas, with but one dissenting voice, passed through both its houses a resolution renominating Lincoln.  All through the next month these demonstrations continued.  The Union members of the New Jersey Legislature united in an address to the President, saying:  "Without any disparagement of the true men who surround you, and whose counsel you have shared, believing that you are the choice of the people, whose servants we are, and firmly satisfied that they desire and intend to give you four years for a policy of peace, we present your name as the man for President of the American people, in 1864."

It is altogether probable that the ticket of 1864 would have been nominated without a contest had it not been for the general impression, in and out of the Convention, that it would be advisable to select as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency a war Democrat.  Mr. Dickinson, while not putting himself forward as a candidate, had sanctioned the use of his name by his friends on the especial ground that his candidacy might attract to the support of the Union party many Democrats who would have been unwilling to support a ticket avowedly Republican;  but these considerations weighed with still greater force in favor of Mr. Johnson, who was not only a Democrat, but also a citizen of a border slave-holding State, and had rendered distinguished services to the Union cause.  At the first show of hands it was at once evident that the Tennessean was stronger than the New Yorker, receiving four more votes than Mr. Dickinson even in the New York delegation.  When the votes on the first ballot were counted it was found that Mr. Johnson had received 200, Mr. Hamlin 150, Mr. Dickinson 108;  but before the result was announced almost the whole Convention turned their votes to Johnson, and on motion of Lyman Tremain of New York his nomination was declared unanimous.  The work was quickly done.  Mr. Lincoln, walking over to the War Department in the afternoon, as usual, for military news, received the dispatch announcing the nomination of Andrew Johnson before he was informed of his own.  The telegram containing the news of his own nomination had gone to the White House a few minutes before.

In the evening the National Grand Council of the Union League came together.  A large proportion of its members had participated in the National Convention, and their action was therefore a foregone conclusion.  They adopted a platform similar to that of the Convention, with the exception that they declared, as the Cleveland people had done, in favor of the confiscation of the property of rebels.  They heartily approved and indorsed the nominations already made, wad passed a resolution to the effect that as Lincoln and Johnson were the only candidates who could hope to be elected as loyal men, they regarded it as the imperative duty of the Union League to do all that lay in its power to secure their election.  They also earnestly approved and indorsed the platform and principles adopted by the Convention, and pledged themselves, as individuals and as members of the League, to do all in their power to elect the candidates.  The seal of secrecy was removed from this action and a copy of the resolution transmitted to the President by W.R. Erwin, the Grand Recording Secretary.

A committee, headed by Governor Dennison, came on the next day to notify the President of his nomination.  "I need not say to you, sir," said Mr. Dennison, "that the Convention, in thus unanimously nominating you for reëlection, but gave utterance to the almost universal voice of the loyal people of the country.  To doubt of your triumphant election would be little short of abandoning the hope of the final suppression of the Rebellion and the restoration of the authority of the Government over the insurgent States."

The impression of the undesirability of the change rather deepened during the day.  Mr. Hooper of Massachusetts, an intimate friend of both the President and Mr. Chase, and the man upon whom both principally relied for the conduct of financial legislation in the House, spoke of the crisis in deep depression.  He said he had been for some time of the opinion that Mr. Chase did not see his way entirely clear to raising the funds which were necessary;  that his supplementary demand for money sent in at the close of the session after everything had been granted which he asked, looked like an intention to throw an anchor to windward in case he was refused.  Mr. Hooper said he had waked that morning feeling a little vexed that Chase had done this, that he thought it was an attempt to throw an unfair responsibility upon Congress;  but now this resignation came to relieve him of all responsibility;  his successor would have an enormous work to do;  the future was troubled;  there remained the great practical problem, regularly recurring, to raise one hundred millions a month.  "I do not clearly see," he said, "how it is to be done;  the talent of finance in its national aspect is something entirely different from banking.  Most bankers criticize Mr. Chase, but he has a faculty of using the knowledge and experience of others to the best advantage;  that has sufficed him hitherto;  a point has been reached where he does not clearly see what comes next, and at this point the President allows him to step from under his load."

This view of the case has a color of confirmation in a passage of the diary of Mr. Chase of the 30th of June, which goes to show at least a mixed motive in his resignation.  After his resignation had been accepted, Mr. Hooper had called upon him, and, evidently hoping that some reconciliation was still possible, told him that, several days before, the President had spoken to him in terms of high esteem, indicating his purpose of making him Chief Justice in the event of a vacancy, a post which Mr. Chase had long before told the President was the one he most desired.  Mr. Chase answered that had such expression of good-will reached him in time it might have prevented the present misunderstanding, but that now he could not change his position.  "Besides," he adds, "I did not see how I could carry on the department without more means than Congress was likely to supply, and amid the embarrassments created by factious hostility within and both factious and party hostility without the department."

At night the President received a dispatch from Mr. Tod declining the appointment on the ground of ill-health.  The President's secretary went immediately to the Capitol to communicate this information to the Senators, so that no vote might be taken on the nomination.  Early the next morning the President sent to the Senate the nomination of William Pitt Fessenden, Senator from Maine.  When he gave the nomination to his secretary, the latter informed him that Mr. Fessenden was then in the ante-room waiting to see him.  He answered, "Start at once for the Senate, and then let Fessenden come in."  The Senator, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, began immediately to discuss the question of the vacant place in the Treasury, suggesting the name of Hugh McCulloch.  The President listened to him for a moment with a smile of amusement, and then told him that he had already sent his nomination to the Senate.  Fessenden leaped to his feet, exclaiming, "You must withdraw it.  I cannot accept."  "If you decline," said the President, "you must do it in open day, for I shall not recall the nomination."  "We talked about it for some time," said the President, "and he went away less decided in his refusal."

The Wade-Davis Manifesto

In his message to Congress of the 8th of December, 1863, Mr. Lincoln gave expression to his ideas on the subject of reconstruction more fully and clearly than ever before.  He appended to that message a proclamation of the same date guaranteeing a full pardon to all who had been implicated in the Rebellion, with certain specified exceptions, on the condition of taking and maintaining an oath to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder;  to abide by and support all acts of Congress and Proclamations of the President made during the Rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress or by decision of the Supreme Court.  The exceptions to this general amnesty were of those who, having held places of honor and trust under the Government of the United States, had betrayed this trust and entered the service of the Confederacy, and of those who had been guilty of treatment of colored troops not justified by the laws of war.  The proclamation further promised that when in any of the States in rebellion a number of citizens equal to one-tenth of the voters in the year 1860 should reëstablish a State government republican in form, and not contravening the oath above mentioned, such should be recognized as the true government of the State, and should receive the benefits of the constitutional provision that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion;  and, on application of the Legislature, or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence."

The President also engaged by this proclamation not to object to any provision which might be adopted by such State governments in relation to the freed people of the States which should recognize and declare their permanent freedom and provide for their education,

"and which may yet be consistent, as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class."

He suggested that in reconstructing the loyal State governments, the names, the boundaries, the subdivisions, the constitutions, and the general codes of laws of the States should be preserved.  He stated distinctly that his proclamation had no reference to States where the loyal State governments had all the while been maintained;  he took care to make it clear that the respective houses, and not the executive, had the constitutional power to decide whether Members sent to Congress from any State should be admitted to seats;  and he concluded by saying:

"This proclamation is intended to present the people of the States wherein the national authority has been suspended, and loyal State governments have been subverted, a mode in and by which the national authority and loyal State governments may be re-established within said States, or in any of them.  And while the mode presented is the best the Executive can suggest, with his present impressions, it must not be understood that no other possible mode would be acceptable."

The message contained an unusually forcible and luminous expression of the principles embraced in the proclamation.  The President referred to the dark and doubtful days which followed the announcement of the policy of emancipation and of the employment of black soldiers;  the gradual justification of those acts by the successes which the National arms had since achieved;  of the change of the public spirit of the border States in favor of emancipation;  the enlistment of black soldiers, and their efficient and creditable behavior in arms;  the absence of any tendency to servile insurrection or to violence and cruelty among the negroes;  the sensible improvement in the public opinion of Europe and of America.  He then explained the purpose and spirit of his proclamation.

Nothing had been attempted beyond what was amply justified by the Constitution;  the form of an oath had been given, but no man was coerced to take it;  the Constitution authorized the Executive to grant or withhold a pardon at his own absolute discretion, and this included the power to grant on terms, as was fully established by judicial authority.  He therefore referred to the provision of the Constitution guaranteeing to the States a republican form of government as providing precisely for the case then under treatment;  where the element within a State favorable to republican government in the Union might "be too feeble for an opposite and hostile element external to or even within the State."

"An attempt," said the President, "to guaranty and protect a revived State government constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply absurd.  There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound;  and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness."  In justification of his requiring in the oath of amnesty a submission to and support of the anti-slavery laws and proclamations, he said:

"Those laws and proclamations were enacted and put forth for the purpose of aiding in the suppression of the Rebellion.  To give them their fullest effect, there had to be a pledge for their maintenance.  In my judgment they have aided and will further aid the cause for which they were intended.  To now abandon them would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.  I may add, at this point, that while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation or by any of the acts of Congress."

The President called attention to the fact that that part of the oath was subject to the modifying and abrogating power of legislation and supreme judicial decision;  that the whole purpose and spirit of the proclamation was permissive and not mandatory. "The proposed acquiescence," he said, "of the National Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must at best attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States.  It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people in those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their affliction if, to this extent, this vital matter be left to themselves, while no power of the National Executive to prevent an abuse is abridged by the proposition."  He had taken the utmost pains to avoid the danger of committal on points which could be more safely left to further developments. "Saying that on certain terms certain classes will be pardoned with rights restored, it is not said that other classes or other terms will never be included;  saying that reconstruction will be accepted if presented in a specified way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other way."  The President expressed his profound congratulation at the movement towards emancipation by the several States, and urged once more upon Congress the importance of aiding these steps to the great consummation.

It is rare that so important a state paper has been received with such unanimous tokens of enthusiastic adhesion.  However the leading Republicans in Congress may have been led later in the session to differ with the President, there was apparently no voice of discord raised on the day the message was read to both Houses.  For a moment all factions in Congress seemed to be of one mind.  One who spent the morning on the floor of Congress wrote on the same day:  "Men acted as though the millennium had come.  Chandler was delighted, Sumner was joyous, apparently forgetting for the moment his doctrine of State suicide;  while at the other political pole Dixon and Reverdy Johnson said the message was highly satisfactory."  Henry Wilson said to the President's secretary:  "He has struck another great blow.  Tell him for me, God bless him."  The effect was similar in the House of Representatives.  George Boutwell, who represented the extreme antislavery element of New England, said:  "It is a very able and shrewd paper.  It has great points of popularity, and it is right."  Owen Lovejoy, the leading abolitionist of the West, seemed to see on the mountain the feet of one bringing good tidings.  "I shall live," he said, "to see slavery ended in America."  James Garfield gave his unreserved approval;  Francis Kellogg of Michigan went shouting about the lobby:  "The President is the only man.  There is none like him in the world.  He sees more widely and more clearly than any of us."  Henry T. Blow, the radical member from St. Louis (who six months later was denouncing Mr. Lincoln as a traitor to freedom), said:  "God bless old Abe !  I am one of the Radicals who have always believed in him."  Horace Greeley, who was on the floor of the House, went so far as to say the message was "devilish good."

The Executive Mansion was filled all day by a rush of Congressmen, congratulating the President and assuring him of their support in his wise and humane policy.  The conservatives and radicals vied with each other in claiming that the message represented their own views of the crisis.  N.B. Judd of Illinois said to the President:  "The opinion of people who read your message to-day is, that on that platform two of your ministers must walk the plank --- Blair and Bates."  To which the President answered:  "Both of these men acquiesced in it without objection;  the only member of the cabinet who objected was Mr. Chase."  For a moment the most prejudiced Democrats found little to say against the message;  they called it "very ingenious and cunning, admirably calculated to deceive."

This reception of the message was extremely pleasing to the President.  A solution of the most important problem of the time, which conservatives like Dixon and Reverdy Johnson thoroughly approved, and to which Mr. Sumner made no objection, was of course a source of profound gratification.  He took it as a proof of what he had often said, that there was no essential contest between loyal men on this subject if they would consider it reasonably.  He said in conversation on the 10th of December:  "The only question is, Who constitute the State ?  When that is decided, the solution of subsequent questions is easy.  He wrote in his original draft of the message that he considered "the discussion as to whether a State had been at any time out of the Union as vain and profitless.  We know they were, we trust they shall be, in the Union.  It does not greatly matter whether in the mean time they shall be considered to have been in or out."  But afterwards, considering that the Constitution empowered him to grant protection to States "in the Union," he saw that it would not answer to admit that the States had at any time been out of it;  he erased that sentence, as possibly suggestive of evil.  He preferred, he said, "to stand firmly based on the Constitution rather than to work in the air."  He was specially gratified by reports which came to him of the adhesion of the Missourians in Congress to his view.  "I know," he said, "these radical men have in them the stuff which must save the State, and on which we must mainly rely.  They are absolutely incorrosive by the virus of secession.  It cannot touch or taint them;  while the conservatives, in casting about for votes to carry through their plans, are attempting to affiliate with those whose record is not clear.  If one side must be crushed out and the other cherished, there cannot be any doubt which side we must choose as fuller of hope for the future;  but just there," he continued, "is where their wrong begins.  They insist that I shall hold and treat Governor Gamble and his supporters, men appointed by the loyal people of Missouri, as representatives of Missouri loyalty, and who have done their whole duty in the war faithfully and promptly, who when they have disagreed with me have been silent and kept about the good work ---that I shall treat these men as copperheads and enemies of the Government.  This is simply monstrous."

For the first few days there was no hint of any hostile feeling in Congress.  There was, in fact, no just reason why the legislative body should regard its prerogative as invaded.  The President had not only kept clearly within his Constitutional powers, but his action had been expressly authorized by Congress.  The act of July 17, 1862, had provided that the President might thereafter at any time, by proclamation, extend pardon and amnesty to persons participating in the Rebellion, "with such exceptions and at such time and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the public welfare."  Of course a general amnesty required general conditions;  and the most important of these was one which should provide for the protection of the freedmen who had been liberated by the war.

It soon enough appeared, however, that the millennium had not arrived;  that in a Congress composed of men of such positive convictions and vehement character there were many who would not submit permanently to the leadership of any man, least of all to that of one so gentle, so reasonable, so devoid of malice as the President.

Henry Winter Davis at once moved that that part of the message relating to reconstruction should be referred to a special committee, of which he was made chairman;  and on the 15th of February he reported "a bill to guarantee to certain States whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government."  Mr. Davis was a man of too much integrity and elevation of character to allow the imputation that his action on public matters was dictated entirely by personal feeling or prejudice;  but at the same time it cannot be denied that he maintained towards the President, from beginning to end of his administration, an attitude of consistent hostility.  This was a source of chagrin and disappointment to Mr. Lincoln.  He came to Washington with a high opinion of the ability and the character of Mr. Davis, and expected to maintain with him relations of intimate friendship.  He was cousin to one of the President's closest friends in Illinois, Judge David Davis, and his attitude in the Congress which preceded the Rebellion was such as to arouse in the mind of Mr. Lincoln the highest admiration and regard.  But the selection of Mr. Blair of Maryland as a member of the Cabinet, estranged the sympathies of Mr. Davis and his friends;  and the breach thus made between him and the Administration was never healed, though the President did all in his power to heal it.

In spite of all the efforts which the President made to be on friendly terms with Mr. Davis, the difference between them constantly widened.  Mr. Davis grew continually more confirmed in his attitude of hostility to every proposition of the President.  He became one of the most severe and least generous critics of the Administration in Congress.  He came at last to consider the President as unworthy of even respectful treatment;  and Mr. Seward, in the midst of his energetic and aggressive campaign against European unfriendliness, was continually attacked by him as a truckler to foreign powers and little less than a traitor to his country.  The President, however, was a man so persistently and incorrigibly just, that, even in the face of this provocation, he never lost his high opinion of Mr. Davis's ability nor his confidence in his inherent good intentions.  He refused, in spite of the solicitations of most of his personal friends in Maryland, to discriminate against the faction headed by Mr. Davis in making appointments to office in that State;  and when, during an important campaign, a deputation of prominent supporters of the Administration in Maryland came to Washington to denounce Mr. Davis for his outspoken hostility to the President, saying that such a course, if it continued unchecked, would lose Mr. Lincoln the electoral vote of the State, he replied:  "I understand that Mr. Davis is doing all in his power to secure the success of the emancipation ticket in Maryland.  If he does this, I care nothing about the electoral vote."

In the preamble to his bill Mr. Davis expressed, with his habitual boldness and lucidity, his fundamental thesis that the rebellious States were out of the Union. He said [May 4, 1864, page 2107]:

Whereas, the so-called Confederate States are a public enemy, waging an unjust war, whose injustice is so glaring that they have no right to claim the mitigation of the extreme rights of war which are accorded by modem usage to an enemy who has a right to consider the war a just one;  and,

Whereas, none of the States which, by a regularly recorded majority of its citizens, have joined the so-called Southern Confederacy can be considered and treated as entitled to be represented in Congress or to take any part in the political government of the Union.

This seemed to Congress too trenchant a solution of a Constitutional knot which was puzzling the best minds of the commonwealth, and the preamble was rejected;  but the spirit of it breathed in every section of the bill.  Mr. Davis's design was to put a stop to the work which the President had already begun in Tennessee and Louisiana, and to prevent the extension of that policy to other Southern States.  The bill authorized the appointment of a provisional governor in each of the States in rebellion, and provided that, after the military resistance to the United States should have been suppressed and the people sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws, the white male citizens of the State should be enrolled;  and when a majority of them should have taken the oath of allegiance, the loyal people of the State should be entitled to elect delegates to a convention to reestablish a State government.

The convention was required to insert in the constitution three provisions:  First, to prevent prominent civil or military officers of the Confederates to vote for or to be members of the legislature or governor;  second, that involuntary servitude is forever prohibited, and the freedom of all persons guaranteed in said States;  third, no debt, State or Confederate, created by or under the sanction of the usurping power, shall be recognized or paid by the State.  Upon the adoption of the constitution by the convention, and its ratification by the electors of the State, the provisional government shall so certify to the President, who, after obtaining the assent of Congress, shall by proclamation recognize the government so established, and none other, as the constitutional government of the State;  and from the date of such recognition, and not before, Congressmen and Presidential electors may be elected in such State.  Pending the reorganization, the provisional governor shall enforce the laws of the Union, and of the State before rebellion.  Another section of the bill emancipated all slaves in those States, with their posterity, and made it the duty of the United States courts to discharge them on habeas corpus if restrained of their liberty on pretense of any claim to service or labor as slaves, and to inflict a penalty of fine or imprisonment upon the persons claiming them.  Another section declared any person hereafter holding any important office, civil or military, in the rebel service not to be a citizen of the United States.

This bill was supported by Mr. Davis in a speech of extraordinary energy.  Without hesitation he declared it a test and standard of anti-slavery orthodoxy;  he asserted boldly that Congress, and Congress alone, had the power to revive the reign of law in all that territory which, through rebellion, had put itself outside of the law, "Until therefore," he said, "Congress recognize a State government organized under its auspices, there is no government in the rebel States except the authority of Congress. The duty is imposed on Congress to administer civil government until the people shall, under its guidance, submit to the Constitution of the United States, and under the laws which it shall impose, and on the conditions Congress may require, reorganize a republican government for themselves, and Congress shall recognize that government."  He declared there was no indication which came from the South, "from the darkness of that bottomless pit," that there was a willingness to accept any terms that even the Democrats were willing to offer;  he believed that no beginning of legal and orderly government could be made till military opposition was absolutely annihilated;  that there were only three ways of bringing about a reorganization of civil governments.

One was to remove the cause of the war by an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting slavery everywhere within its limits:  that, he said, "goes to the root of the matter, and should consecrate the nation's triumph";  but this measure he thought involved infinite difficulty and delay.  Though it met his hearty approval, it was not a remedy for the evils to be dealt with.

The next plan he considered was that of the President's amnesty proclamation.  This he denounced as utterly lacking in all the guarantees required:  "If, in any manner," he said, "by the toleration of martial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental law, under the dictation of any military authority, or under the prescriptions of a provost marshal, something in the form of a government shall be presented, represented to rest on the votes of one-tenth of the population, the President will recognize that, provided it does not contravene the proclamation of freedom and the laws of Congress."

Having dismissed both of these plans with brief censure, he then made a powerful plea for the bill he had reported.  He called upon Congress to take the responsibility of saying, "In the face of those who clamor for speedy recognition of governments tolerating slavery, that the safety of the people of the United States is the supreme law;  that their will is the supreme rule of law, and that we are authorized to pronounce their will on this subject;  take the responsibility to say that we will revise the judgments of our ancestors;  that we have experience written in blood which they had not;  that we find now, what they darkly doubted, that slavery is really, radically inconsistent with the permanence of republican governments, and that being charged by the supreme law of the land on our conscience and judgment to guaranty, that is, to continue, maintain, and enforce, if it exist, to institute and restore when overthrown, republican governments throughout the broad limits of the republic, we will weed out every element of their policy which we think incompatible with its permanence and endurance." [March 22, 1864, Appendix 83.]

The bill was extensively debated.  It was not opposed to any extent by the Republicans of the House;  the Democrats were left to make a purely partisan opposition to it.  The President declined to exercise any influence on the debate, and the bill was passed by a vote of 74 to 59.

It was called up in the Senate [July 1, 1864.] by Benjamin Wade of Ohio, who, in supporting it, followed very much the same line of argument as that adopted by Mr. Davis in the House.  Gratz Brown of Missouri, believing that as the session was drawing near its close there was no time to discuss a measure of such transcendent importance, offered an amendment simply forbidding any State in insurrection to cast votes for electors of President or Vice-President of the United States, or to elect Members of Congress until the insurrection in such State was suppressed or abandoned, and its inhabitants had returned to their obedience to the Government of the United States, such returning to obedience being declared by proclamation of the President, issued by virtue of an act of Congress thereafter to be passed authorizing the same.  The amendment of Mr. Brown was adopted by a bare majority, seventeen voting in favor of it and sixteen against it.  Mr. Sumner tried to have the Proclamation of Emancipation adopted and enacted as a statute of the United States, but this proposition was lost by a considerable majority.

The House declined to concur in the amendment of the Senate and asked for a committee of conference, in which the Senate receded from its amendment and the bill went to the President for his approval in the closing moments of the session.

Congress was to adjourn at noon on the Fourth of July;  the President was in his room at the Capitol signing bills, which were laid before him as they were brought from the two Houses.  When this important bill was placed before him he laid it aside and went on with the other work of the moment.  Several prominent members entered in a state of intense anxiety over the fate of the bill.  Mr. Sumner and Mr. Boutwell, while their nervousness was evident, refrained from any comment.  Zachariah Chandler [on a senator's salary, he became a very rich man during that war], who was unabashed in any mortal presence, roundly asked the President if he intended to sign the bill.  The President replied:  "This bill has been placed before me a few moments before Congress adjourns.  It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way."  "If it is vetoed," cried Mr. Chandler, "it will damage us fearfully in the Northwest.  The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed States."  Mr. Lincoln said:  "That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act."  "It is no more than you have done yourself," said the Senator.  The President answered:  "I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress."  Mr. Chandler, expressing his deep chagrin, went out, and the President, addressing the members of the Cabinet who were seated with him, said:  "I do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict what we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the States."

Mr. Fessenden expressed his entire agreement with this view.  "I have even had my doubts," he said, "as to the constitutional efficacy of your own decree of emancipation, in those cases where it has not been carried into effect by the actual advance of the army."

The President said:  "This bill and the position of these gentlemen seem to me, in asserting that the insurrectionary States are no longer in the Union, to make the fatal admission that States, whenever they please, may of their own motion dissolve their connection with the Union.  Now we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced.  If that be true, I am not President;  these gentlemen are not Congress.  I have laboriously endeavored to avoid that question ever since it first began to be mooted, and thus to avoid confusion and disturbance in our own councils.  It was to obviate this question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the Senate and failed in the House.  I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends as to whether certain States have been in or out of the Union during the war ---a merely metaphysical question, and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion."

Although every member of the Cabinet agreed with the President, when, a few minutes later, he entered his carriage to go home, he foresaw the importance of the step he had resolved to take and its possibly disastrous consequences to himself.  When some one said to him that the threats made by the extreme Radicals had no foundation, and that people would not bolt their ticket on a question of metaphysics, he answered:  "If they choose to make a point upon this, I do not doubt that they can do harm.  They have never been friendly to me.  At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right.  I must keep some standard or principle fixed within myself."

After the fullest deliberation the President remained by his first impression that the bill was too rigid and too restrictive in its provisions to accomplish the work desired.  He had all his life hated formulas in government, and he believed that the will of an intelligent people, acting freely under democratic institutions, could best give shape to the special machinery under which it was to be governed;  and, in the wide variety of circumstances and conditions prevailing throughout the South, he held it unwise for either Congress or himself to prescribe any fixed and formal method by which the several States should resume their practical legal relations with the Union.  Thinking in this way, and feeling himself unable to accept the bill of Congress as the last word of reconstruction, and yet unwilling to reject whatever of practical good might be accomplished by it, he resolved, a few days after Congress had adjourned, to remit the matter to the people themselves, and to allow them their choice of all the methods proposed of returning to their allegiance.  He issued, on the 8th of July, a proclamation giving a copy of the bill of Congress, reciting the circumstances under which it was passed, and going on to say:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that while I am ---as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan of restoration--- unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration, and while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and governments, already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana, shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, or to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States, but am at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation may be adopted, nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it;  and that I am, and at all times shall be, prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State, and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in which cases military governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the bill.

The refusal of the President to sign the reconstruction bill caused a great effervescence at the adjournment of Congress.  Mr. Chase, who had resigned from the Cabinet, made this entry in his diary:  "The President pocketed the great bill providing for the reorganization of the rebel States as loyal States.  He did not venture to veto, and put it in his pocket.  It was a condemnation of his amnesty proclamation and of his general policy of reconstruction, rejecting the idea of possible reconstruction with slavery, which neither the President nor his chief advisers have, in my opinion, abandoned."

This entry, made by Mr. Chase in the bitterness of his anger, places the basest construction upon the President's action;  but this sentiment was shared by not a few of those who claimed the title of extreme Radicals in Congress.  Two days later the ex-Secretary gleefully reported, on the authority of Senator Pomeroy, that there was great dissatisfaction with Mr. Lincoln, which had been much exasperated by the pocketing of the reconstruction bill.

When Mr. Lincoln, disregarding precedents, and acting on his lifelong rule of taking the people into his confidence, issued his proclamation of the 8th of July, it was received by each division of the loyal people of the country as might have been expected.  The great mass of Republican voters, who cared little for the metaphysics of the case, accepted his proclamation, as they had accepted that issued six months before, as the wisest and most practicable method of handling the question;  but among those already hostile to the President, and those whose devotion to the cause of freedom was so ardent as to make them look upon him as lukewarm, the exasperation which was already excited, increased.  The indignation of Mr. Davis and Mr. Wade at seeing their work of the last session thus brought to nothing could not be restrained.  Mr. Davis prepared, and both of them signed and published, in the New York Tribune, on the 5th of August, a manifesto, the most vigorous in attack that was ever directed against the President from his own party during his term.

The grim beginning of this document, which is addressed "To the Supporters of the Government," is in these terms:  "We have read without surprise, but not without indignation, the proclamation of the President of the 8th of July, 1864.  The supporters of the Administration are responsible to the country for its conduct;  and it is their right and duty to check the encroachments of the Executive on the authority of Congress, and to require it to confine itself to its proper sphere."  The paper went on to narrate the history of the reconstruction bill, and to claim that its treatment indicated a persistent though unavowed purpose of the President to defeat the will of the people by the Executive perversion of the Constitution.  They insinuated that only the lowest personal motives could have dictated this action:  "The President," they said, "by preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of the rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition.  If electors for President be allowed to be chosen in either of those States, a sinister light will be cast on the motives which induced the President to hold for naught the will of Congress rather than his government in Louisiana and Arkansas."

They ridiculed the President's earnestly expressed hope that the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery might be adopted:  "We curiously inquire on what his expectation rests, after the vote of the House of Representatives at the recent session and in the face of the political complexion of more than enough of the States to prevent the possibility of its adoption within any reasonable time;  and why he did not indulge his sincere hopes with so large an installment of the blessing as his approval of the bill would have secured ?"

When we consider that only a few months elapsed before this beneficent amendment was adopted, we can form some idea of the comparative political sagacity of Mr, Lincoln and his critics.  The fact that the President gave the bill of Congress his approval as a very proper plan for the loyal people of any States choosing to adopt it seemed to infuriate the authors of the bill:  they said, "A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people has never been perpetrated."  At the close of a long review of the President's proclamation, in which every sentence came in for its share of censure or of ridicule, this manifesto concluded:

"Such are the fruits of this rash and fatal act of the President ---a blow at the friends of his Administration, at the rights of humanity, and at the principles of republican government.  The President has greatly presumed on the forbearance which the supporters of his Administration have so long practiced, in view of the arduous conflict in which we are engaged, and the reckless ferocity of our political opponents.  But he must understand that our support is of a cause and not of a man;  that the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected;  that the whole body of the Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him of rash and unconstitutional legislation;  and if he wishes our support he must confine himself to his executive duties ---to obey and to execute, not make the laws--- to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization to Congress.  If the supporters of the Government fail to insist on this they become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke, and are justly liable to the indignation of the people whose rights and security, committed to their keeping, they sacrifice.  Let them consider the remedy of these usurpations, and, having found it, fearlessly execute it."

Cabinet Changes

The principal concession in the Baltimore platform made by the friends of the Administration to its opponents was the resolution which called for harmony in the Cabinet;  and, although no method was specified by which such harmony could be attained, it was no secret that the Convention requested, and, so far as its authority went, required, that the Cabinet should be rendered homogeneous by the dismissal of those members who were stigmatized as conservatives.  The President at first took no notice, either publicly or privately, of this resolution, and it was with something akin to consternation that the radical body of his supporters heard of the first change which occurred after the Convention adjourned.  The resignation of Mr. Chase, whom the extreme radicals regarded as, in some sort, their special representative in the Government, took them entirely by surprise.  The demonstration made by Mr. Wade and Mr. Davis some weeks later increased the feeling of restlessness among them, and brought upon the President a powerful pressure from every quarter to induce him to give satisfaction to the radical demand by the dismissal from the Cabinet of Montgomery Blair, the Post-master-General, who had gradually attracted to himself the hostility of all the radical Republicans in the country.

The unpopularity into which Mr. Blair had fallen among the Radicals was one of those incidents that recall the oft-repeated simile that compares political revolutions to Saturn devouring his offspring.  Mr. Blair was one of the founders of the Republican party.  After graduating at West Point and serving for a year in the Seminole war, he resigned his commission in the army and began to practice law in St. Louis.  He soon gained high distinction in his profession, and became, while yet a young man, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas.  He returned to Maryland, and in 1855 was appointed solicitor of the United States in the Court of Claims.  The repeal of the Missouri Compromise made a Republican of him.  President Buchanan removed him from office in 1858 on account of his zealous anti-slavery attitude.  He was counsel for the plaintiff in the famous Dred Scott case, and presided over the Republican Convention of Maryland in 1860.  With the exception of his brother Frank in Missouri, and Cassius Clay in Kentucky, he was the most prominent opponent of the extension of slavery in all the Southern States.

The immediate cause which occasioned his loss of caste among the radical anti-slavery men was the quarrel which sprang up between his family and General Fremont in Missouri.

In this also he had the mortification of feeling that he had nursed the pinion that impelled the steel.  The reputation of General Fremont was the creation of the Blairs.  It was at their solicitation that the President appointed the Pathfinder a major-general in the regular army, and gave him command of the important department of Missouri.  So late as the 24th of August, 1861, General Fremont relied upon Montgomery Blair for all the support and assistance he required in Washington.  The Postmaster-general, writing to him on that date, spoke of the President and his colleagues with the indiscreet frankness of confidential friendship.  "Chase," he said, "has more horror of seeing treasury notes below par than of seeing soldiers killed, and therefore has held back too much, I think.  I don't believe at all in that style of managing the Treasury."  He goes on lamenting his lack of influence in the Government in a style which reminds us of Mr. Chase himself.

"This, I can see," he says, "is partly my own fault.  I have been too obstreperous, perhaps, in my opposition, and men do not like those who have exposed their mistakes beforehand and taunt them with them afterwards.  The main difficulty is, however, with Lincoln himself.  He is of the Whig school, and that brings him naturally not only to incline to the feeble policy of Whigs, but to give his confidence to such advisers.  It costs me a great deal of labor to get anything done, because of the inclination of mind on the part of the President, or leading members of the Cabinet, including Chase, who never voted a Democratic ticket in his life.  But you have the people at your back, and I am doing all I can to cut red tape and get things done.  I will be more civil and patient than heretofore, and see if that won't work."  No man can be sufficiently sure of friends to write them such letters as this.  A few months later Frémont was Blair's deadliest enemy, and these letters, being printed, came up like impertinent ghosts between the Postmaster-General and his colleagues at the Cabinet table.

In the beginning of this quarrel the Blairs were unquestionably right;  but being unjustly assailed by the Radicals, the natural pugnacity of their dispositions would not permit them to rest firmly planted on their own ground.  They entered upon a course of hostility that was at first confined to their factious enemies, but which gradually broadened and extended till it landed them both in the Democratic party.  Montgomery Blair was doubtless unconscious of his progress in that direction.  He thought himself the most zealous of Republicans until the moment that he declared himself the most zealous of Democrats.  Every admonition he received but increased the heat and energy with which he defended himself.  The Union League of Philadelphia, towards the close of 1863, left out his name in the resolutions by which they elected all the rest of the Cabinet honorary members of the League.  He chose to consider Henry Winter Davis responsible for some attacks made upon him, and desired to defeat him in Maryland.  The President, who had certainly no cause to show personal favor to Mr. Davis, said that as he was the choice of the Union men of Maryland he merited and should receive what friendly support the Administration could give.

Mr. Blair made a speech in Rockville touching upon the subject of reconstruction, and indulged in vigorous and somewhat acrid allusions to some of his leading Republican assailants.  This brought upon him, and upon Mr, Lincoln, over his shoulders, much vehement criticism.  It was in relation to this speech that the President said:

"The controversy between the two sets of men represented by Blair and by Sumner is one of mere form and little else.  I do not think Mr. Blair would agree that the States in rebellion are to be permitted to come at once into the political family and renew their performances, which have already so bedeviled us, and I do not think Mr. Sumner would insist that when the loyal people of a State obtain supremacy in their councils and are ready to assume the direction of their own affairs they should be excluded.  I do not understand Mr. Blair to admit that Jefferson Davis may take his seat in Congress again as a representative of his people.  I do not understand Mr. Sumner to assert that John Minor Botts may not.  So far as I understand Mr. Sumner, he seems in favor of Congress taking from the Executive the power it at present exercises over insurrectionary districts and assuming it to itself;  but when the vital question arises as to the right and privilege of the people of these States to govern themselves, I apprehend there will be little difference among loyal men.  The question at once is presented, In whom is this power vested ?  and the practical matter for discussion is how to keep the rebellious population from overwhelming and outvoting the loyal minority."

It was a year before this that the President wrote the letter of kindly and sensible advice to General Frank Blair, Jr., which we have given in another place;  a letter which, when published many months afterwards, gave great and lasting offense to the enemies of Blair in Congress and in the country.  Although General Blair at this time retired from the contest for the speakership, the Postmaster-General continued, with equally bad taste and judgment, to oppose the nomination of Schuyler Colfax for that place.  Upon Colfax going to him in person and demanding the motive of his hostility, Mr. Blair was so indiscreet as to give as a reason for his opposition that Colfax was running as a Chase candidate.

The opposition to Blair was not confined to the radical demonstrations in the Baltimore Convention and out of it.  Some of the most judicious Republicans in the country, who were not personally unfriendly to Blair, urged upon the President the necessity of freeing himself from such a source of weakness and discord.  Even in the bosom of the Government itself a strong hostility to Mr. Blair made itself felt.  While Mr. Chase remained in the Cabinet there was always a condition of smoldering hostility between the two men.  Mr. Blair's enmity to Mr. Seward also became more and more violent in its expression, and his relations with Mr. Stanton were subject to a strain which was hardly endurable.  There was still, however, so much in his character and antecedents that was estimable, the President had so deep a regard for both the Blairs, and especially for their father, that he had great reluctance to take any action against the Postmaster-General.

In the middle of July, after the termination of Early's raid upon Washington, General Halleck, exasperated by the report of stringent and sarcastic remarks which Mr. Blair, under the provocation of the destruction by rebels of his property in the suburbs of Washington, had made, in reference to the laxity or poltroonery of the defenders of the capital, addressed an angry note to the Secretary of War, saying that he wished to know "whether such wholesale denouncement and accusation by a member of the Cabinet receives the sanction and approbation of the President of the United States.  If so," general Halleck continued, "the names of the officers accused should be stricken from the rolls of the army;  if not, it is due to the honor of the accused that the slanderer should be dismissed from the Cabinet."  Mr. Stanton sent this letter of Halleck's to the President without comment.  The President, on the same day, replied in his most masterful manner.  After summarizing Halleck's letter, he said:

"Whether the remarks were really made I do not know, nor do I suppose such knowledge is necessary to a correct response.  If they were made, I do not approve them;  and yet, under the circumstances, I would not dismiss a member of the Cabinet therefor.  I do not consider what may have been hastily said in a moment of vexation at so severe a loss is sufficient ground for so grave a step.  Besides this, truth is generally the best vindication against slander.  I propose continuing to be myself the judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall be dismissed."

Not satisfied with this, the President, when the Cabinet came together, read them this impressive and oracular little lecture:

I must myself be the judge how long to retain in and when to remove any of you from his position.  It would greatly pain me to discover any of you endeavoring to procure another's removal, or in any way to prejudice him before the public.  Such endeavor would be a wrong to me, and, much worse, a wrong to the country.  My wish is that on this subject no remark be made nor question asked by any of you, here or elsewhere, now or hereafter.

This, we are inclined to think, is one of the most remarkable speeches ever made by a President.  The tone of authority is unmistakable.  Washington was never more dignified;  Jackson was never more peremptory.

The feeling against Mr. Blair and the pressure upon the President to remove him increased throughout the summer.  Henry Wilson ---[rabid reconstructionist] wrote on the 5th of September, "Blair every one hates.  Tens of thousands of men will be lost to you or will give a reluctant vote on account of the Blairs."  The President's mail was filled with such appeals as this;  but through the gloom and discouragement of midsummer he declined to act.  There was a moment, as we have seen, when he lost heart in the campaign, and believed that the verdict of the country would be against him.  Yet even then he refused to make the concession to the radical spirit which he was assured from every quarter would result so greatly to his advantage;  but with the victories which came later in the season, and with the response of the country to the pusillanimous surrender of the Chicago Convention, there came a great and inspiring change of public opinion, and before the month of September ended, the assured triumph of the Union cause became evident to one so capable as was Mr. Lincoln to discern and appreciate the signs of the times.  He felt that it was his duty no longer to retain in his Cabinet a member who, whatever his personal merits, had lost the confidence of the great body of Republicans.  He had learned also during the long controversy more than he had ever known before of the violent and unruly candor of the Postmaster-General.  Exasperated by the attacks made upon him, there were no limits to Mr. Blair's jealousy and suspicion.  He wearied the President by insisting upon it that all the leading Republicans were Lincoln's enemies.

After Chase left the Cabinet, he insisted that Seward and Stanton were in league against Lincoln;  that Stanton went into the Cabinet to break down the Administration by thwarting McClellan, and that Seward was coquetting with the Copperheads.  Mr. Lincoln listened to these denunciations with growing fatigue and impatience.  He protested against them.  He said once to Mr. Blair, in the presence of another, "It is much better not to be led from the region of reason into that of hot blood by imputing to public men motives which they do not avow."  Towards the end of September the President, reasonably sure of his reelection, and feeling that he ought not any longer to delay complying with the demand of a party which was giving him so earnest and loyal a support, wrote this letter to the Postmaster-General:

You have generously said to me more than once that whenever your resignation could be a relief to me, it was at my disposal.  The time has come.  You very well know that this proceeds from no dissatisfaction of mine with you personally or officially.  Your uniform kindness has been unsurpassed by that of any friend;  and while it is true that the war does not so greatly add to the difficulties of your department as to those of some others, it is yet much to say, as I most truly can, that in the three years and a half during which you have administered the General Post-office, I remember no single complaint against you in connection therewith.

Mr. Blair accepted his dismissal in a manner which was to have been expected from his manly and generous character.  He called upon the President at once, not pretending to be pleased at what had happened, but assuming that the President had good reasons for his action, and refraining from any demand for explanation.  He went immediately to Maryland and busied himself in speaking and working for the Union cause, and for the reelection of Mr. Lincoln.  He made a speech a few days later in New York, at a great war meeting, in which he said that the action of the President in asking his resignation was suggested by his own father.  All the family received this serious reverse in the temper of fighting men ready for all the chances of battle, and of bold players whose traditional rule of conduct when the cards go against them is, "Pay and look pleasant."  General Blair wrote to his father that he was sure in advance that his brother had acted for the good of the country, and in the interest of the reelection of Mr. Lincoln, in which he says "the safety of the country is involved."

"I believe," he continued, "that the failure to elect Mr. Lincoln would be the greatest disaster that could befall the country, and the sacrifice made by the Judge to avert this is so incomparably small that I felt it would not cost him a pang to make.  The Judge leaves the Cabinet with an untarnished name and the reputation of having administered the department with the greatest ability and success;  and that as far as worldly considerations go, it is far better for him to go out than to remain in the Cabinet.  As to the future I have no fear, if Lincoln's election is secured.  No matter what his personal disposition may be towards us, or what his political necessities may compel him to do, if the country is saved and restored, those who have served the country in its trials will some day be rewarded for the patriotism they have shown by the verdict of a higher power than that of the President."

After the death of Judge Taney, Mr. Blair, for a while, indulged the hope that he might be appointed Chief-Justice, a position for which his natural abilities, his legal learning, his former judicial service, and his large acquaintance with the more important matters which would come before the court eminently fitted him;  but the competition of Mr. Chase was too strong for any rival, however worthy, and he was chosen, to the bitter disappointment of the Blairs.  Even this did not shake their steadfast loyalty to the Union cause, nor their personal fidelity and friendship to the President.  Immediately after his second inauguration Mr. Lincoln offered Montgomery Blair his choice of the Spanish or the Austrian mission, an offer which was peremptorily though respectfully declined.

Mr. Blair's successor in the Cabinet, ex-Governor William Dennison of Ohio, had been selected beforehand.  The President informed him of his appointment in a brief telegram, and directed him to proceed to Washington as soon as possible.  Mr. Dennison had rendered admirable service to the Government, as Governor of Ohio, at the outbreak of the war.  He was a gentleman of the highest character, of great ability and perfect integrity, and of peculiarly winning and gracious manners.  We find among the President's papers a letter written by his intimate friend, David Davis, on the 2d of June, suggesting Governor Dennison as a proper person to preside over the Baltimore Convention.  Judge Davis wrote:  "He is a pure, upright man, one of your most devoted friends.  If, during this or your subsequent Administration, you think it your duty to modify your Cabinet, in my judgment you could not get a wiser counselor than Governor Dennison."  This, so far as we know, was the first, perhaps the only, suggestion made to the President in favor of Mr. Dennison for a place in the Cabinet.  The claim of localities always had a disproportionate weight in his mind.  When Mr. Chase resigned, Mr. Lincoln appointed Governor Tod in his place, and after Tod had declined he was glad to find an opportunity to call another Ohio statesman into his Cabinet.

The reconstruction of the Cabinet went on by gradual disintegration rather than by any brusque or even voluntary action of the President.  Mr. Bates, the Attorney-General, before the end of the year 1864 grew weary, not only of the labors of his official position, but also of the rapid progress of the revolution of which he had been one of the earliest advocates.  Before the war he was the most eminent of all those Whig lawyers in the South who, while standing by all the guarantees of the Constitution, still opposed the aggressions of the slave power.  After the rebellion began he did not shift his ground in any essential respect.  When asked by the Secretary of the Treasury whether colored men could be citizens of the United States and therefore competent to discharge functions reserved exclusively for citizens, he not only answered in the affirmative, but accompanied his answer with an elaborate opinion, full of learning and legal acumen, in which he relied exclusively upon the law in the case, without regard to any question of morals or of sentiment involved.

Although heartily devoted to the cause of freedom and emancipation, he was wedded, by constitutional temperament and lifelong habit, to the strictest rules of law and precedent.  Every deviation from tradition pained him inexpressibly.  The natural and unavoidable triumph of the radical party in St. Louis politics, and to a certain extent in those of the nation, seemed to him the herald of the trump of doom.  He grew weary of it all, and expressed to the President his desire for retirement.  If he had not himself wished to resign the President would probably not have suggested it.  Mr. Lincoln was greatly displeased at an announcement made by Simon Cameron, as if upon his authority, that in the event of reelection he would call around him fresh and earnest antislavery men.  On hearing of this indiscreet and injurious statement, he said, "They need not be so savage about a change in the Government.  There are now only three left of the original Cabinet."  He put a vacant judgeship at the disposition of the Attorney-General;  but Mr. Bates declined it, not without some petulant remarks about the "uselessness of a legal system in a State dominated by the revolutionary spirit which then ruled in Missouri."  He said he could not work in harmony with the radicals, whom he regarded as enemies of law and order;  there was no such thing as a patriotic and honest American radical;  some of the transcendental Republican Germans were honest enough in their moon-struck theorizing, but the Americans impudently and dishonestly arrogated to themselves the title of unconditional loyalty, when the whole spirit of their faction was contempt of and opposition to the law.

"While the present state of things continues in Missouri, there is no need of a court;  so says Judge Treat, and I agree with him."

Considering the subject of a successor to Mr. Bates, the President, his mind still hampered by the consideration of locality, weighed for several days the names of all the leading men of Missouri who were in any way fitted for the place, but found good reasons for rejecting them all.  One of his secretaries said to him, "Why confine yourself to Missouri ?  Why not go to the adjoining State and take Judge Holt ?"  The President looked up with some surprise, and said:  "Why, that would be an excellent appointment.  I question if I could do better.  I had always intended, though I had never mentioned it to any one, that if a vacancy should occur on the Supreme bench in any Southern district I would appoint him;  but giving him a place in the Cabinet would not hinder that."

Mr. Bates tendered his resignation at last on the 24th of November.

Soon after the opening of the new year [1865], Mr. Fessenden was again elected to the Senate from Maine, and resigned his office as Secretary of the Treasury.  In his letter of resignation he said:  "I carry with me great and increased respect for your personal character and for the ability which has marked your administration of the Government at a period requiring the most devoted patriotism and the highest intellectual and moral qualities for a place so exalted as yours.  Allow me also to congratulate you upon the greatly improved aspect of our national affairs, to which, and to the auspicious result of our prolonged struggle for national life, now, as I sincerely believe, so near at hand, no one can claim to have so largely contributed as the chosen Chief Magistrate of this great people."

The place thus vacated instantly excited a wide and spirited competition of recommendations.  The principal bankers of Chicago joined in recommending Hugh McCulloch of Indiana, who had made a favorable official record as Comptroller of the Currency in the supervision of the national banks;  Governor Morgan was strongly presented by nearly the entire State of New York, though a few of the so-called Radicals of that State joined with the great mass of the people of New England in recommending Governor Andrew, whose splendid executive qualities no less than his fiery zeal and patriotism had endeared him to the earnest anti-slavery people throughout the country.  Both branches of the Maine Legislature recommended Vice-President Hamlin to take the place vacated by his distinguished colleague.  Jay Cooke, who was carrying on with such remarkable success at that time the great funding operations of the Treasury Department, reenforced with his recommendation the demand of the Western politicians and bankers for Mr. McCulloch.  Montgomery Blair, who still retained his friendly and confidential relations with the President, wrote to him on the 22d of February, saying that Mr. Hamlin did not wish his claim to be appointed Secretary of the Treasury urged upon the President;  that Mr. Morgan positively refused the appointment.  He supplemented these two important bits of information with the characteristic and irrelevant suggestion that Mr. Seward should leave the Cabinet, that Sumner should take his place, and that Governor Andrew might then succeed Sumner in the Senate.  He also added that it would be a good thing to encourage Garibaldi to drive the French from Mexico.  The President concluded to nominate Governor Morgan, who declined the honor.  Mr. McCulloch was then appointed;  upon which Mr. Usher, on the 8th of March, desiring, as he said, to relieve the President from any possible embarrassment which might arise from the fact that two members of the Cabinet were from the same State, resigned his place as Secretary of the Interior.  The President indorsed the resignation, "Accepted, to take effect May 15, 1865."  Before that date should arrive tremendous changes were to take place in the Government of the United States.

Lincoln Reëlected

One of the earliest speeches of the autumn [September 3, 1864.] was made by [Secretary of State] Mr. Seward at his home in Auburn, New York.  He spoke avowedly without authority from the President;  yet, as well from his intimacy with Mr. Lincoln as from his commanding place in the Administration, his speech demanded and received great attention.  He said:

"While the rebels continue to wage war against the Government of the United States, the military measures affecting slavery, which have been adopted from necessity to bring the war to a speedy and successful end, will be continued, except so far as practical experience shall show that they can be modified advantageously, with a view to the same end.  When the insurgents shall have disbanded their armies and laid down their arms the war will instantly cease;  and all the war measures then existing, including those which affect slavery, will cease also;  and all the moral, economical, and political questions, as well questions affecting slavery as others which shall then be existing between individuals and States and the Federal Government, whether they arose before the civil war began, or whether they grew out of it, will, by force of the Constitution, pass over to the arbitrament of courts of law and to the councils of legislation."

The opposition to Mr. Lincoln within the ranks of his own party did not entirely die away, even after the Chicago nomination and the changed political prospect which immediately followed it.  So late as the 20th of September Thurlow Weed wrote to Mr. Seward that "the conspiracy against Mr. Lincoln collapsed on Monday last.  It was equally formidable and vicious, embracing a larger number of leading men than I supposed possible.  Knowing that I was not satisfied with the President, they came to me for cooperation;  but my objection to Mr. Lincoln is that he has done too much for those who now seek to drive him out of the field.  Their last meeting was early last week at the house of Dudley Field.  It was attended by Greeley, Godwin, Wilkes, Tilton, Opdyke, Curtis Noyes, and twenty-five others of the same stripe."

He also stated that a circular had been sent to leading Republicans in other States inquiring as to the feasibility of making another nomination for President at that time;  that the malcontents, finding themselves in solitude, had concluded to break up operations and try to control the regular State Convention.

This letter referred to a movement which at one time assumed a certain importance.  About the middle of August a number of leading Republicans, belonging to the faction in New York opposed to Mr. Seward, who had been displeased at the unanimous nomination of Lincoln at Baltimore, and who by constant conversation among themselves had become convinced of his unpopularity, endeavored to organize a demonstration against him which should force him to withdraw from the ticket.  They had the earnest support and eager instigation of Henry Winter Davis in Maryland, of the editors of the Cincinnati Gazette in Ohio, and what would have surprised Mr. Lincoln if he had known it, of Charles Sumner in Massachusetts.  General Butler was the favorite candidate of most of this singular cabal, and he sent a representative to their conferences.  Mr. Chase gave in a guarded adhesion and Daniel Dickinson ---not having been nominated for the Vice-Presidency at Baltimore--- was naturally "full of anxiety and alarm over the manifest downward tendency of things."

They met with severe rebuffs from several quarters where they expected assistance;  Roscoe Conkling refused bluntly to sign their call;  Jacob Collamer thought it inexpedient.  When the country woke up to the true significance of the Chicago platform, the successes of Sherman excited the enthusiasm of the people, and the Unionists, arousing from their mid-summer languor, began to show their confidence and regard towards the Republican candidate, the hopelessness of all efforts to undermine him became apparent, and, one by one, all the men engaged in this secret movement against him fell into line and did their best to elect him.

After every semblance of open hostility had disappeared everywhere else in the country, the fire of faction still kept it alive in Missouri.  A singular state of things existed there.  The Radical party had almost entirely absorbed the Union sentiment of the State;  the Conservative party, the President's friends, had almost ceased to exist.  The incumbents of the Government offices, a few of the intimate personal friends of Blair, still stood out against the Radicals;  and so long as this attitude was maintained the Radicals, while working vigorously for their State and local tickets, refused to avow themselves in favor of Lincoln.  So far as can be ascertained the only reason for this absurd position was that the "Claybanks," as the Conservatives were called, wished the Radicals to declare for Lincoln as a pretext by which they could join the vast majority of their party, and the Radicals spitefully refused to allow them this accommodation.  Thomas Fletcher, the Radical candidate for governor, refused during the greater part of the campaign to make any public statement that he would vote for Lincoln.  His reason for this, privately given, was that he feared such an announcement would alienate from his support a large number of the more furious anti-Lincoln Germans.  At last, however, he concluded to declare for the regular Republican Presidential ticket, and a meeting was appointed for the purpose;  but, to the astonishment of the moderate Union men, he went no further at this meeting than to say he would not vote for McClellan, and in explanation of this singular performance he told the President's private secretary that he had found at the hotel where his speech was made a letter of the "Claybank" committee offering their support on condition of his declaring for Lincoln, and that he would not be coerced into it.

Reconstruction

Congress met on December 5, [1864] in its annual session, and the question of reconstruction was occupying in various forms the thoughts of Members and Senators, though not with the same earnestness as during the summer session, when personal and factional politics bore so large an influence.  Henry Winter Davis, whose reconstruction bill Lincoln had declined to sign, was, since that action had been sustained by the President's triumphant reelection, nursing his vindictive wrath in quiet, and allowed another member of the Special Committee on Rebellious States, Representative James Ashley [voted for greenback, for currency banks, for reduction of currency, for strengthening credit], to introduce a new bill in the House on the 15th of December.  The bill was open to the principal objection for which the President had vetoed Mr. Davis's bill, in declaring a wholesale emancipation of slavery in rebellious States by act of Congress.  But it contained a few mollifications designed to conciliate opposition to it, one of them being a direct recognition of the reconstructed government in Louisiana;  though, with singular inconsistency, it failed to embrace that of Arkansas, which could make at least as good a showing.

It soon became evident to the committee that it could not be passed in this form, nor if passed approved by the President;  and on the 16th of January, 1865, Mr. Ashley offered a substitute for it, in which the committee tendered a further compromise by including Arkansas and Louisiana under certain conditions.  The measure again meeting opposition from Republicans in this form, its consideration was postponed to February 1, and again delayed until February 18, before which day Mr. Ashley gave notice of further modification, induced as he explained by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.  But the rapidly changing political conditions were with equal rapidity changing political opinions.  On February 20, Representative Henry Dawes, whose position as Chairman of the House Committee on Elections had enabled him to study the reconstruction question with particular care, attacked Mr. Ashley's bill in a vigorous speech, declaring that "no form can be prescribed, no law laid down here, no unbending iron rule fixed by the central Government for the governing of that people, or prescribing the method in which they shall make their organic law.  Each of them shall work out that problem for itself and in its own way.  That form and system which is best adapted to Louisiana and Arkansas is quite different from that which is ultimately to be adopted in South Carolina and Georgia."  Commenting on the difficulties which the committee had encountered in coming to a conclusion satisfactory to themselves, he stated that this was not only the fourth regular draft submitted by them, but that a fifth draft had been prepared and already printed by the House.  After a strong plea in favor of the voluntary action of the people in their own localities, he urged that reconstruction should be recognized "whenever any one of these States comes up here, presenting a constitution republican in form, the workmanship of the loyal men of the State, and which is generally acquiesced in by them, and they have power enough within themselves to maintain it against all domestic violence."

After further discussion Mr. Ashley offered still another substitute, apparently the committee's "fifth draft," which contained the most sweeping concession the special committee had yet made to the varying currents of political thought.  Its last section provided:  "That if the persons exercising the functions of governor and legislature under the rebel usurpation in any State heretofore declared to be in rebellion shall, before armed resistance to the National Government is suppressed in such State, submit to the authority of the United States, and take the oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and adopt by law the third provision prescribed in the eighth section of this act, and ratify the amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed by Congress to the Legislatures of the several States on the 31st day of January, a.d. 1865, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to recognize the said governor and legislature as the lawful State government of such State, and to certify the fact to Congress for its recognition:  Provided, That nothing herein contained shall operate to disturb the boundary lines of any State heretofore recognized by and now represented in the Congress of the United States."  This section, which under the supposed miraculous conversion would have required the President, in Tennessee for instance, to recognize the Government of Governor Harris and his rebel Legislature, instead of Governor Andrew Johnson and his loyal Convention, as the legal Government of Tennessee, was certainly a strange proposal from a faction which had denounced the President's plan, among other reasons, on the score of its dangerous leniency.  It was the exact result which Mr. Lincoln in his letter to Governor Johnson, of September 11, 1863, had declared "must not be."

The little speech which Mr. Ashley made in support of his changeling was spiritless and perfunctory.  He said, with evident frankness:  "It is very clear to my mind that no bill providing for the reorganization of loyal State governments in Rebel States can pass this Congress.  I am pretty sure that this bill, and all the amendments and substitutes offered, will fail to command a majority of this House."  Henry Winter Davis rallied but feebly to title support of his discomfited colleague.  His short speech was noticeable only for its continued accusation of the President as a selfish usurper, and for his ill-natured flings at his Republican colleagues of the House, who had changed their minds and refused to vote with him, as being influenced by the will of the President, and "prone to act upon the winking authority."  With all his recognized logic and eloquence Mr. Davis was one of those men who possessed the comforting faculty of seeing that everybody but himself was arbitrary, selfish, and subservient.

The undecided, vacillating, and shifting propositions of the committee demonstrated even more than discussion the impolicy, if not the impossibility, of effecting reconstruction upon any rigid pre-conceived theory.  The House was unwilling to follow a leadership either of the committee as a whole, or of Henry Winter Davis as its inspiring genius, since neither could apparently frame a plan to suit itself for a single week ---scarcely a single day at a time.  But even had there been unity of opinion, the session was too near its end for legislation of this character and gravity, and at the close of the debate the bill and amendments were laid on the table by a vote of 91 to 64, with 27 not voting.  The subject was momentarily revived on the following day [February 22, 1865, page 997.], by a substitute for a House bill, reported from the judiciary committee, providing that no insurrectionary State should elect Representatives to Congress until among other conditions "by a law of Congress such State shall have been declared to be entitled to representation in the Congress of the United States."  A spirited debate followed, and Mr. Ashley again endeavored to substitute for it his defeated bill of the day before, slightly altered.  But the House had had enough of the topic, and once more, by a vote of yeas 80, nays 65, not voting 37, laid the bill and its amendment on the table.

In the Senate the question came up in a somewhat different form.  The Legislature of Louisiana had, in October, 1864, elected United States Senators who presented their credentials at the beginning of the session, and their claim was referred to the judiciary committee of the Senate.  The chairman of the committee, Lyman Trumbull, appears to have conferred with the President, and, as was natural, to have asked his opinion.  Mr. Lincoln wrote him the following reply, on January 9, 1865,  which, considering the accusations of dictatorial intentions leveled at him by radical Senators and Representatives of the Wade-Davis type, is most remarkable in its entire omission of any intimation that might even savor of attempted Executive influence on the Legislative Department of the Government:

The paper relating to Louisiana, submitted to the judiciary committee of the Senate by General Banks, is herewith returned.  The whole of it is in accordance with my general impression, and I believe it is true;  but much the larger part is beyond my absolute knowledge, as in its nature it must be.  All the statements which lie within the range of my knowledge are strictly true;  and I think of nothing material which has been omitted.

Even before General Banks went to Louisiana I was anxious for the loyal people there to move for reorganization, and restoration of proper practical relations with the Union;  and when he at last expressed his decided conviction that the thing was practicable, I directed him to give his official coöperation to effect it.  On the subject I have sent and received many letters to and from General Banks, and many other persons.  These letters, as you remember, were shown to you yesterday, as they will be again, if you desire.

If I shall neither take sides nor argue, will it be out of place for me to make what I think is the true statement of your question as to the proposed Louisiana Senators ?

"Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relations with the Union, sooner, by admitting or by rejecting the proposed Senators ?"

On the 18th of February, Senator Trumbull made a report from his committee submitting a joint resolution "that the United States do hereby recognize the Government of the State of Louisiana, inaugurated under and by the Convention which assembled on the 6th day of April, a.d. 1864, at the city of New Orleans, as the legitimate government of said State, entitled to the guarantee and all other rights of a State government, under the Constitution of the United States."  He stated that though the facts in the cases of Louisiana and Arkansas were very similar, the committee had thought it more advisable to act upon the case of Louisiana separately, and, if the joint resolution were agreed to, the same course could be applied to any other State.

Though the session was nearing its end, there was an evident desire by nearly all the Republican Senators to pass the resolution;  but a violent opposition to the measure on the part of a small minority of them developed itself at the very outset.  As the parliamentary custom of the Senate does not embrace the use of the previous question, it was comparatively easy for this minority to postpone debate and action.  This opposition was led by Senator Sumner, whom Trumbull openly charged in the Senate with being "in a combination here of a fraction of the Senate to delay the important business of the country.  We find him now, near the closing days of the session, uniting with a very few persons acting with him, associating himself with those whom he so often denounces [Powell, Riddle, Wright] for the purpose of calling the yeas and nays, making dilatory motions to postpone the action of this body upon what he says is a very great public measure."  Sumner practically admitted the charge, answering, "The question between the Senator from Illinois and myself is simply this, he wishes to pass the measure and I do not wish to pass it.  He thinks the measure innocent;  I think it dangerous;  and, thinking it dangerous, I am justified in opposing it, and justified, too, in employing all the instruments I can find in the arsenal of parliamentary warfare."  Senator James Doolittle further defined the situation by stating, "There are but five, who usually act with the Administration, who are making and voting for these dilatory motions, and there are eighteen of the friends of the Administration opposed to them."  It is scarcely necessary to add that in the pressure of public business then existing, this minority of five, at least three of whom ---Sumner, Wade, and Chandler--- were second to no one in obstinacy of purpose, were able to defeat the measure.  The journal of the Senate shows that on February 27 the subject, by a vote of 34 to 12, was postponed "to to-morrow";  and its "to-morrow" did not come during the remainder of the session, which closed at noon on the 4th of March, 1865, with Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration.

Though Representatives could be querulous and Senators obstinate, the President could be persistent, as he had shown by his treatment of the reconstruction act, and his correspondence with his generals;  and continued persistence on his part was plainly justified by the rapidly waning opposition to his views in both Houses of Congress.  But new and important events were also daily strengthening his attitude.  Since the adjournment of Congress he had visited the army under Grant, witnessed its start on its final campaign, and taken part in the first step of its triumph by his personal visit to the conquered rebel capital.  He had barely returned from that visit to his duties at Washington when, on Sunday, the 9th of April, there came to him the culminating news of Lee's surrender.  The end of the rebellion was obviously so near that it would soon be necessary to take up the question of reconstruction in a form more practical and more urgent than had yet confronted him.  The popular excitement over the victory was such that on Monday, the 10th, crowds gathered before the Executive Mansion several times during the day, and called out the President for speeches.  Twice he responded by coming to the window and saying a few words, which, however, indicated that his mind was more occupied with work than exuberant rejoicing.  As briefly as he could he excused himself, but promised that on the following evening, for which a more formal demonstration was being arranged, he would be prepared to say something.

Accordingly, on Tuesday evening, April 11, Mr. Lincoln made his last public address, reading to his listeners a carefully written paper, which was almost entirely devoted to a discussion of the question of reconstruction as recommended in his various official documents, and as practically tried in the Louisiana experiment.  We quote almost the whole of it, as furnishing the shortest and clearest explanation of both his past and future intentions.  But these intentions were not destined to be realized.  Before the lapse of a week the nation was in sorrow over his death, and the subject and experiment of reconstruction were resumed and carried on under widely different conditions and influences, which it is not the province of this work to bring into comment or comparison.

After a few words of joyous congratulation the President said:

"By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority--reconstruction--which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention.  It is fraught with great difficulty.  Unlike a case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with.  No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man.  We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements.  Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.  As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer.  In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State government of Louisiana.

"In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows.  In the Annual Message of December 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation.  I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States.  This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it.  One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana.

"The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted.  It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress.  So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan.  The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it.  From about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana.  When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, Gen. Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan.  I wrote him, and some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known.  Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government.

"As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated.  But, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest.  But I have not yet been so convinced.  I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it.  It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it.  As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends.  As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction.

"We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation.  I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.  Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad.  Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union;  and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.  The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all, if it contained fifty, thirty, or even twenty thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand, as it does.  It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man.  I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

Still the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable.  The question is, "Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?"  "Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining, or by discarding her new State government ?"  Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man.  Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation.  These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants--and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal.

"Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them.  We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse--we will neither help you, nor be helped by you."  To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how."  If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it.  If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true.  We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success.  The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end.  Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them ?  Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it ?

"Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution.  To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment.  I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.  I repeat the question, "Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government ?  What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States.  And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each state, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same state; and withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive, and inflexible plan can be safely prescribed as to details and collaterals.  Such exclusive, and inflexible plan, would surely become a new entanglement.  Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.  In the present "situation" as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South.  I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action will be proper."

The Mourning Pageant.

There was one exception to the general grief, too remarkable to be passed over in silence.  Among the extreme radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln's determined clemency and liberallity towards the Southern people had made an impression so unfavorable that, though they were naturally shocked at his murder, they did not among themselves conceal their gratification that he was no longer in their way.  In a political caucus, held a few hours after the President's death, they resolved on an entire change of the Cabinet, and a "line of policy less conciliatory than that of Mr. Lincoln;  the feeling was nearly universal" ---we are using the language of one of their most prominent representatives--- "that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsent to the country."  The next day the Committee on the Conduct of the War called on the new President, and Senator Wade bluntly expressed to him the feeling of his associates:  "Johnson, we have faith in you.  By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the Government."