FELLOW-CITIZENS:— 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 gives 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 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 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 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 and no more than the public knows.
In the Annual Message of December, 1863, and the accompanying proclamation, I
presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if
adopted by any State, would 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 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 of 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 is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the
admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applied 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 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 that he was confident
that the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct
substantially on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try it. They
tried it, and the result is known. Such has been my only 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 upon
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 answer 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 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 their proper practical
relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do
this without deciding or even considering whether those States have ever been
out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be
utterly immaterial whether they had been abroad. Let us all join in doing the
acts necessary to restore 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 Louisiana Government rests,
would be more satisfactory to all if it contained fifty thousand, or thirty
thousand, or even twenty thousand, instead of 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. This 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 perpetuate freedom in the State—committed to the very
things, and nearly all things, the nation wants — and they ask the nation’s
recognition and its assistance to make good this committal. Now, if we reject
and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in fact,
any 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, held 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 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 towards 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.
[Laughter.] 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 to other States. And yet so great
peculiarities pertain to each ate, 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 set, when
satisfied that action will be proper.
SOURCE: Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of
Abraham Lincoln, p. 684-7
