In forming an estimate of the probably response of the South to the plan of reconstruction now submitted, the Administration was certainly justified in believing that its own spirit of liberality and good will would be met with like spirit by those who, having failed in war, were specially interested in promptly securing all the conditions of a magnanimous peace. It could not anticipate that quibbles would be made by the defeated and lately suppliant parties, that captious objections would be interposed, that carping criticism would be indulged, that gross outrages would be perpetrated, that absurd conditions would be demanded, and that finally a postponement of the whole procedure would be hazarded, indeed its utter failure secured, by the lack of tact, by the willfulness, and by the apparent ignorance of the Southern men who were in control. The kindness, consideration, gentleness of Mr. Seward's recommendations, instead of securing a return of like feeling, seemed rather to inflame the misjudging men of the South with a new sense of resentment. Instead of calling forth the natural and proper response, it appeared rather to impress them afresh with that vain imagination of Northern timidity which had always been the besetting weakness of the South. It seemed impossible at the time, it seems even more plainly impossible on a review of the facts after the lapse of years, that any body of reasonable men could behave with the ineffable folly that marked the proceedings of the Reconstruction Conventions in the South, and the still greater folly that governed the succeeding Legislatures of the lately rebellious States.