On the night of the eleventh of April, the Executive Departments, including the President’s House, as also many places of business and private residences, were illuminated, and adorned with transparencies and national flags; bon-fires blazed in various parts of the city; and rockets were fired. In response to the unanimous call of the thousands of both sexes who surrounded the Executive Mansion, Mr. Lincoln appeared at an upper window, and when the cheering with which he was greeted had subsided, spoke as follows in his last public speech: “FELLOW-CITIZENS:--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 cannot 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--and their honors must not be parcelled 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, or praise, or execution, is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take an active part. By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national authority, and the 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 the 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 amongst ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure 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 cannot properly offer an answer; for, spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured from some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows. In the annual Message of December, 1863, and the accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, 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.