organized a State government, adopted a free-State constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the coloured man.  Their legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation.  These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the State,—­committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants,—­and they ask the nation’s recognition and its assistance to make good their committal.

If we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them.  We, in effect, say to the white man:  You are worthless or worse; we will neither help you, nor be helped by you.  To the blacks, 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, where, and how.  If this course, discouraging and paralyzing 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, we 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 to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success.  The coloured man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring to the same end.  Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it, than by running backward over them?

...  I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government?

...  What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States.  And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals.  Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement.  Important principles may and must be inflexible.  In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South.  I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper.

Appendix

ANECDOTES

LINCOLN’S ENTRY INTO RICHMOND THE DAY AFTER IT WAS TAKEN

As Described at that time by a Writer in the “Atlantic Monthly"