after; in fact, it would be urged that it did not meet the evil. But this amendment is a king's cure-all for all evils. It winds the whole thing up. He would repeat that it was the fitting if not the indispensable adjunct to the consummation of the great game we are playing. He could not but congratulate all present-himself, the country, and the whole world-upon this great moral victory.

The third matter which engrossed Lincoln after his election was reconstruction. From the very beginning of the war he had watched for opportunities, however small, to bring back into the Union disaffected districts and individuals. He was not particular about the way in which the wanderer returned. It was enough in Mr. Lincoln's opinion if he acknowledged the Union. Portions of Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana were put under military rule in the first six months of 1862 in order to encourage the Union sympathizers to keep up a semblance of republican government and whenever the President had a chance he encouraged the avowed Unionists in these States to get together so as to form a nucleus for action when the opportunity offered.

By the end of 1863 Mr. Lincoln believed that the time had come for him publicly to offer protection and pardon to those persons and districts which had been in rebellion, but which had had enough of the experience and were ready to come back. He believed from what he could learn that there was a considerable number of these. Accordingly in December in sending in his annual message to Congress he issued a "proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction." This proclamation offered pardon to all save the persons who had led the rebellion upon their taking an oath to support the Constitution and accept the emancipation proclamation. It also promised to protect any State government formed in accordance with a few simple and just regulations

which he set forth very clearly. A few weeks after the proclamation was issued, the President, anxious to know how it was working, sent General D. E. Sickles on an inspection tour.

"Please ascertain at each place," he wrote him, "what is being done, if anything, for reconstruction; how the amnesty proclamation works-if at all; what practical hitches, if any, there are about it; whether deserters come in from the enemy, what number has come in at each point since the amnesty, and whether the ratio of their arrival is any greater since than before the amnesty; what deserters report generally, and particularly whether, and to what extent, the amnesty is known within the rebel lines."

As the months went on Lincoln found that in spite of the fact that efforts at forming governments were making and that the pardon was being accepted by many persons there was strong and bitter opposition even in the Republican party to his plans of reconstruction. No little of this opposition was resentment that the President had worked out the plan alone and had announced it without consulting anybody. Congress said that he was usurping their rights. Many felt that the pardon Lincoln offered was too generous. Rebels should be punished, not pardoned, they argued. Many declared the States which had seceded could not be allowed to reorganize without congressional action. At the same time the President was constantly harassed by contests between the military and civil authorities in the States which were trying to organize. These contests seemed so unreasonable and so selfish to Mr. Lincoln that he wrote some very plain letters to the persons concerned.

"Few things since I have been here," he wrote General Hurlbut in November, "have impressed me more painfully that what for four or five months past has appeared a bitter

military opposition to the new State government of Louisiana. . . . A very fair proportion of the people of Louisiana have inaugurated a new State government, making an excellent new Constitution-better for the poor black man than we have in Illinois. This was done under military protection, directed by me, in the belief, still sincerely entertained, that with such a nucleus around which to build we could get the State into position again sooner than otherwise. In this belief a general promise of protection and support, applicable alike to Louisiana and other States, was given in the last annual message. During the formation of the new government and Constitution they were supported by nearly every loyal person, and opposed by every secessionist. And this support and this opposition, from the respective standpoints of the parties, was perfectly consistent and logical. Every Unionist ought to wish the new government to succeed; and every disunionist must desire it to fail. Its failure would gladden the heart of Slidell in Europe, and of every enemy of the old flag in the world. Every advocate of slavery naturally desires to see blasted and crushed the liberty promised the black man by the new Constitution. But why General Canby and General Hurlbut should join on the same side is to me incomprehensible.

After his re-election, in spite of all opposition, Lincoln steadily supported the new State governments. His practical common sense in dealing with a difficult problem never showed to better advantage than in the plan of reconstruction he had offered and was trying. It was not the only plan he kept repeating, but it was accomplishing something, was not this something better than nothing? If it proved bad he would change it for a better one, if a better was offered, but until it was shown that it was adverse to the interests of the people he was trying to bring back into the Union he should follow it. As for the abstract question over which a great part of the North was quarrelling, whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it, he would not consider it. It was "bad as the basis of a controversy" he declared