Mr. Lincoln was not therefore in the humor to be rebuked by Congress. Though the least pretentious of men, he had an abounding self-respect and a full appreciation of the dignity and power of his office. He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective departments of the Government, and he was not willing that his judgment should be revised or his course censured, however indirectly, by a co-ordinate branch of the Government. He therefore declined to sign the bill. He did not veto it but let it quietly die. Four days after the session had closed, he issued a proclamation in which he treated the bill merely as the expression of an opinion by Congress as to the plan of Reconstruction--"which plan," he remarked, "it is thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration." The President further stated in his proclamation that he had "already propounded one plan of restoration," and that he was "unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration," and also "unprepared to declare that the Free-State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Louisiana and Arkansas shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort;" and also "unprepared to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States"--though "sincerely hoping at the same time that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in all the States might be adopted." While with these objections Mr. Lincoln could not approve the bill, he concluded his proclamation in these words: "Nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in this 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 so soon as the 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 cases military governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill."