hidden from the public--public opinion was divided, and its
results, for good or ill, problematical. The wisest political
sagacity and the broadest statesmanship possible were needed, and
in their application no time was to be lost.

In his annual message to Congress, December 8th, 1863, Mr.
Lincoln had to a considerable extent outlined his plan of
Reconstruction; principally by a recital of what he had already
done in that direction. That part of his message pertinent to
this connection is reproduced here to illustrate the broad,
humane, national and patriotic purpose that actuated him, quite
as well as his lack of sympathy with the extreme partisan aims
and methods that characterized the measures afterward adopted by
Congress in opposition to his well-known wishes and views, and,
also, as an important incident to the history of that controversy
and of the time, and its bearing upon the frictions that followed
between Congress and Mr. Lincoln's successor on that subject. Mr.
Lincoln said:

When Congress assembled a year ago the war had already lasted
twenty months, and there had been many conflicts on both land and
sea, with varying results. The rebellion had been pressed back
into reduced limits; yet the tone of public feeling and opinion,
at home and abroad, was not satisfactory. With other signs, the
popular elections, then just past, indicated uneasiness among
ourselves, while, amid much that was cold and menacing, the
kindest words coming from Europe were uttered in accents of pity
that we were too blind to surrender a hopeless cause. Our
commerce was suffering greatly by a few armed vessels built upon
and furnished from foreign shores; and we were threatened with