"Nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in the bill as one very proper for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall be prepared to give Executive aid and assistance to any such people as soon as military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States--in which Military Governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill." "It must be frankly admitted," says Mr. Blaine in reciting this record in his 'Thirty Years of Congress,' "that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its respects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of the Republican members, and violent criticism from the more radical members of both Houses. * * * Fortunately, the Senators and Representatives had returned to their States and Districts before the Reconstruction Proclamation was issued, and found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support." In the last speech Mr. Lincoln ever made, (April 11th, 1865) referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the Louisiana Government, (on the one-tenth basis) he said: "If we now reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We say to the white man, you are worthless, or worse. We will neither help you or be helped by you. To the black man 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 AND WHERE AND HOW.' If this course, discouraging and paralyzing to 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, they reorganize and sustain the new Government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand men to adhere to their work and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for 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 with energy and daring to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise. HE WILL YET ATTAIN IT SOONER BY SAVING THE ALREADY ADVANCED STEPS TOWARD IT THAN BY RUNNING BACK OVER THEM. Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."