"Nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration
contained in the bill as one very proper for the loyal people of
any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall
be prepared to give Executive aid and assistance to any such
people as 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 laws of the United States--in which Military
Governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according
to the bill."

"It must be frankly admitted," says Mr. Blaine in reciting this
record in his 'Thirty Years of Congress,' that Mr. Lincoln's
course was in some of its respects extraordinary. It met with
almost unanimous dissent on the part of the Republican members,
and violent criticism from the more radical members of both
Houses. * * * Fortunately, the Senators and Representatives had
returned to their States and Districts before the Reconstruction
Proclamation was issued, and found the people united and
enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support."

In the last speech Mr. Lincoln ever made, (April 11th, 1865)
referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the
Louisiana Government, (on the one-tenth basis) he said:

"If we now reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize
and disperse them. We say to the white man, you are worthless, or
worse. We will neither help you or be helped by you. To the black
man we say, 'this cup of liberty which these, your old masters