We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The
evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the
principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace,
whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this,
however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call
for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly
promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part give us the cause of
rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with
others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of
transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor for
plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and
brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in
reach to take active part.
By these recent successes the reinauguration 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 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 mold 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
measure 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 cannot 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 in the accompanying
proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, 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 began to move in accordance with it. From about July,
1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be
interested [in] seeking a reconstruction of a State government for
Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned,
reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me he was confident that the
people, with his military cooperation, 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 seceded 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 practical 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 that 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
50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about 12,000, as it
really 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
nation's recognition and its 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 man: 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 safely be 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.