“In all available ways,” he wrote, “give the people a chance to express their wishes at these elections.  Follow forms of law as far as convenient, but at all events get the expression of the largest number of the people possible.  All see how such action will connect with and affect the proclamation of September 22.  Of course the men elected should be gentlemen of character, willing to swear support to the Constitution as of old, and known to be above reasonable suspicion of duplicity.”

But the President wished this to be a real and not a sham proceeding, as he explained a month later in a letter to Governor Shepley: 

“We do not particularly need members of Congress from there to enable us to get along with legislation here.  What we do want is the conclusive evidence that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be members of Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and that other respectable citizens there are willing to vote for them and send them.  To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives, elected, as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at the point of the bayonet, would be disgraceful and outrageous; and were I a member of Congress here, I would vote against admitting any such man to a seat.”

Thus instructed, Governor Shepley caused an election to be held in the first and second congressional districts of Louisiana on December 3, 1862, at which members of Congress were chosen.  No Federal office-holder was a candidate, and about one half the usual vote was polled.  The House of Representatives admitted them to seats after full scrutiny, the chairman of the committee declaring this “had every essential of a regular election in a time of most profound peace, with the exception of the fact that the proclamation was issued by the military instead of the civil governor of Louisiana.”

Military affairs were of such importance and absorbed so much attention during the year 1863, both at Washington and at the headquarters of the various armies, that the subject of reconstruction was of necessity somewhat neglected.  The military governor of Louisiana indeed ordered a registration of loyal voters, about the middle of June, for the purpose of organizing a loyal State government; but its only result was to develop an inevitable antagonism and contest between conservatives who desired that the old constitution of Louisiana prior to the rebellion should be revived, by which the institution of slavery as then existing would be maintained, and the free-State party which demanded that an entirely new constitution be framed and adopted, in which slavery should be summarily abolished.  The conservatives asked President Lincoln to adopt their plan.  While the President refused this, he in a letter to General Banks dated August 5, 1863, suggested the middle course of gradual emancipation.

“For my own part,” he wrote, “I think I shall not, in any event, retract the emancipation proclamation; nor, as Executive, ever return to slavery any person who is freed by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress.  If Louisiana shall send members to Congress, their admission to seats will depend, as you know, upon the respective houses and not upon the President.”