The war of Reconstruction in Louisiana was fairly well launched in the Constitutional Convention of 1864. The issue on which this body divided was what treatment should be accorded the freedmen. The two parties had much difficulty in reaching an agreement.[103] P. M. Tourne was sent to Washington to see President Lincoln. He had already suggested the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation and the education of the colored youth.[104] In a letter congratulating the recently elected Governor Hahn on his election as the "first free-state governor of Louisiana" in 1864, Lincoln suggested suffrage for the more intelligent Negroes, and those who had served the country in the capacity of soldiers. This letter of Lincoln's, says Blaine, was the first proposition from any authentic source to endow the Negro with the right of suffrage.[105] In his last public utterance on April 11, 1865, Lincoln again touched the subject of suffrage in Louisiana, repeating that he held it better to extend to the more intelligent colored men the elective franchise, giving the recently emancipated a prize to work for in obtaining property and education.[106] The Convention tried in vain to declare what constituted a Negro, giving it up in disgust. It did abolish slavery in general; granted suffrage to those whites who were loyal to the government; and to colored men according to educational and property qualifications. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and the body adjourned. The culmination of the fight between the Democrat and the Radical was in the struggle over the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in July, 1866. An attempt was made to re-open the Constitutional Convention of 1864.[107] The delegates, who favored the reopening of the convention, formed in the streets of New Orleans, and proceeded to march to the famous Mechanics Hall, the scene of almost every political riot in the history of the city. The paraders became involved in a brawl with the white spectators; the police were called in; and the colored members of the convention and their white sympathizers fled to the hall where they attempted to barricade themselves. A general fight ensued, and over two hundred were killed.[108] The effect of this riot was electrical, not only in Louisiana but in the North, where it was construed as a deliberate massacre, and an uprising against the United States Government by the unreconstructed Louisianians.[109]