The message was indeed throughout a sarcastic reflection upon the action of Congress. It was as if the President had said, "You have passed a resolution making certain declarations which nobody controverts: you have claimed certain powers which nobody denies. If I should sign your resolution without explanation, it might imply my right to veto it, and thereby take from you your undoubted Constitutional power. You are really guilty of weakening your own prerogatives under the Constitution by asking me to assent to their existence. If you intended your resolution as a reflection on my policy of reconstruction, you might have spared yourself the trouble, for that policy never contemplated the slightest violation of the rights and prerogatives of Congress." The message throughout was a singularly apt illustration of that keen perception and abounding common sense which made Mr. Lincoln so formidable an antagonist in every controversy political and official in which he became involved. His triumph was complete both in the estimation of Congress and of the people. Mr. Lincoln really adhered with unexpected tenacity to the plan of reconstruction which he had attempted, and which, putting aside the opprobrious names applied to it, was called by himself "The Louisiana Plan." He had stubbornly maintained his ground against the almost unanimous protest of Republican senators and representatives, and he justified himself by elaborate argument. He had been much influenced by the representations made by General Banks who was commander of the Military District, and much impressed by the perfect faith in its success entertained by leading men of the State. In the last speech he ever made (April 11, 1865), referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the Louisiana Government, the President said, "If we now reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We say to the white man, you are worthless or worse. We will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the black man we say, this cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when and where and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing to both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, they recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand men to adhere to their work and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and with energy and daring to the same end. Grant that he desired the elective franchise.