Johnson, who was already Senator for that State.
In Louisiana and elsewhere Lincoln encouraged the
citizens who would unreservedly accept the Union to
organise State Governments for themselves. Where
they did so there was friction between them and the
Northern military governor who was still indispensable.
There was also to the end triangular trouble between
the factions in Missouri and the general commanding
there. To these little difficulties, which were
of course unceasing, Lincoln applied the firmness
and tact which were no longer surprising in him, with
a pleasing mixture of good temper and healthy irritation.
But further difficulties lay in the attitude of Congress,
which was concerned in the matter because each House
could admit or reject the Senators or Representatives
claiming to sit for a Southern State. There were
questions about slavery in such States. Lincoln,
as we have seen, had desired, if he could, to bring
about the abolition of slavery through gradual and
through local action, and he had wished to see the
franchise given only to the few educated negroes.
Nothing came of this, but it kept up the suspicion
of Radicals in Congress that he was not sound on slavery;
and, apart from slavery, the whole question of the
terms on which people lately in arms against the country
could be admitted as participators in the government
of the country was one on which statesmen in Congress
had their own very important point of view. Lincoln’s
main wish was that, with the greatest speed and the
least heat spent on avoidable controversy, State government
of spontaneous local growth should spring up in the
reconquered South. “In all available ways,”
he had written to one of his military governors, “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 people possible.” Above all
he was afraid lest in the Southern elections to Congress
that very thing should happen which after his death
did happen. “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.”
For a time he and Congress worked together well enough,
but sharp disagreement arose in 1864. He had
propounded a particular plan for the reconstruction
of Southern States. Senator Wade, the formidable
Chairman of the Joint Committee on the War, and Henry
Winter Davis, a keen, acrid, and fluent man who was
powerful with the House, carried a Bill under which
a State could only be reconstructed on their own plan,
which differed from Lincoln’s. The Bill
came to Lincoln for signature in the last hours of
the session, and, amidst frightened protests from friendly
legislators then in his room, he let it lie there
unsigned, till it expired with the session, and went
on with his work. This was in July, 1864; his
re-election was at stake. The Democrats were