“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 seceded 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 a question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it, as it 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 material could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. “As yet, whatever it may become hereafter, 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 practical 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 50,000, 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about 12,000, as it does. “It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored men. I would myself prefer that it were 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?