The Proclamation declared, that, whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one tenth in number of the votes cast in such State at the Presidential election of 1860, each having taken the particular oath prescribed by the Proclamation, and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before its secession, and excluding all others, should _reëstablish_ a State government which should be republican, and in no wise contravening the Proclamation oath, it should be recognized as the true government of the State, which should receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision that “the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” Subsequently, in the same paper, the President declares “that whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to seats constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive.” Nothing is said on the participation of such reorganized State in the approaching Presidential election; and the question seems left open for the judgment of Congress, to which it obviously belongs, to be settled by joint action. It is plain, therefore, that the reorganization contemplated by the President was in nature provisional. It was not complete or permanent, but evidently looked to the action of the legislative power to determine representation, whether in Congress or in the Electoral College. Loyal governments might be established in the manner indicated for the conservation of local order, and these would be recognized and upheld provisionally by the military power. Considered from this point of view, and in the absence of Congressional action, the President’s plan of reconstruction was, to a certain extent, proper, if not necessary, and very little obnoxious to objections sometimes brought against it. A handful of persons keeping their loyalty might justly look to the military power for support against a hostile majority. Such a handful might be allowed to set up a local government for the management of local affairs, and to assist the National Government in the work of restoration. All this is natural. But the limitation is clear. Admitting it right to authorize the establishment of a local government for the benefit of a handful of loyal persons in a Rebel State, it does not by any means follow that such local government can be entitled to representation in the National Government as a loyal unit, on an equality with the loyal States of the Union. The two questions are entirely different, and the latter was wisely left untouched by the Proclamation.