But it is most pertinent and important in coming to a decision upon the precise question of Executive duty before him that the President should know what are the real impediments to regular, legal, and peaceful procedures under the laws and constitution of the State of Louisiana by which the anomalies in government there presented may be put in course of settlement without involving the element of military power as either an agent or a makeweight in such solution. The successful ascertainment of these impediments the President would confidently expect would indicate to the people of that State the wisdom and the mode of their removal. The unusual circumstances which attended and followed the State election and canvass, from its relation to the excited feelings and interests of the Presidential election, may have retarded within the State of Louisiana the persuasive influences by which the great social and material interests common to the whole people of a State, and the pride of the American character as a law-abiding nation, ameliorate the disappointments and dissolve the resentments of close and zealous political contests. But the President both hopes and believes that the great body of the people of Louisiana are now prepared to treat the unsettled results of their State election with a calm and conciliatory spirit. If it be too much to expect a complete concurrence in a single government for that State, at least the President may anticipate a submission to the peaceful resources of the laws and the constitution of the State of all their discussions, at once relieving themselves from the reproach and their fellow-citizens of the United States from the anxieties which must ever attend a prolonged dispute as to the title and the administration of the government of one of the States of the Union. The President therefore desires that you should devote your first and principal attention to a removal of the obstacles to an acknowledgment of one government for the purpose of an exercise of authority within the State and a representation of the State in its relations to the General Government under section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States, leaving, if necessary, to judicial or other constitutional arbitrament within the State the question of ultimate right. If these obstacles should prove insuperable, from whatever reason, and the hope of a single government in all its departments be disappointed, it should be your next endeavor to accomplish the recognition of a single legislature as the depositary of the representative will of the people of Louisiana. This great department of government rescued from dispute, the rest of the problem could gradually be worked out by the prevalent authority which the legislative power, when undisputed, is quite competent to exert in composing conflict in the coordinate branches of the government.