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Lincoln's
Last Public Address
Abraham
Lincoln
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 can not 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
parceled 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 Gen. 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 re-inauguration 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 a 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 means 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 can not 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 Dec. 1863 and accompanying
Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction
(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 begun to move in accordance with it.
From about July 1862, I had corresponded with
different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking
a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana.
When the message of 1863, with the plan before
mentioned, reached New-Orleans, Gen. Banks wrote me
that he was confident the people, with his military
co-operation, 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 seceding 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 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 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 fifty, thirty, or even twenty
thousand, instead of only about 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. 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
nations recognition and it's 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 men "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 be safely
prescribed as to details and colatterals [sic]. 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.
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