In the second place, and by a second proclamation, issued on the same day, May 29th, the President appointed a Provisional Governor for North Carolina, and authorized and commanded him to cause the election of delegates to, and their assembly in, a constitutional convention of the "State" for the reconstruction of the "State," and its restoration to its constitutional relations to the United States. The electorate to be employed by the Provisional Governor should be those persons who were qualified to vote by the laws of North Carolina in force immediately before the 20th of May, 1861, and had taken the oath prescribed in the first proclamation. This second proclamation also commanded the heads of the departments of the United States Government to put the laws of the United States into operation in North Carolina, the United States judges to open the United States courts and proceed to business, and the military officers in the district to aid the Provisional {36} Governor in carrying the duties assigned to him into effect, and to abstain from hindering, impeding, or discouraging, in any manner, the organization of a "State" government as authorized by the proclamation. [Sidenote: The identity of Johnson's plan with that of Lincoln.] It will thus be seen that Mr. Johnson's plan of Reconstruction was in substance the same as that of Mr. Lincoln. It rested upon the theory of the indestructibility of the "States," their perdurance as "States" throughout the period of rebellion, the commission of treason and rebellion by combinations of private persons, the right of the Executive to withdraw his military powers and put his civil powers in operation, whenever, in his judgment, the circumstances would warrant him in so doing, and his authority to recognize the old electorates of the "States" in which rebellion had existed as the respective constituent bodies of the "States," upon such terms and under such limitations as he might prescribe. He did not lay down any rule as to the numerical proportion which the modified electorates should bear to the old, in order to make their acts legitimate, as Mr. Lincoln did; and he did declare in his second proclamation that the North Carolina convention, when convened, or the legislature that might be thereafter assembled, should prescribe the qualification of electors, and the eligibility of persons to hold office under the constitution and laws of the "State," which Mr. Lincoln did not do in his proclamation. But there is no doubt that Mr. Lincoln would have indorsed this proposition. He could not have avoided it, while holding the theory that North Carolina was a "State" simply engaged in amending its constitution, the theory which his own proclamation apparently set up. In a word Johnson's policy and acts in reconstructing the "States" in which secession ordinances had been passed, and rebellion committed, were {37} but a continuation of those of Mr. Lincoln. If Lincoln was