Reconstruction: A Letter to President Johnson

LOYAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 863 BROADWAY. No. 87. LETTE R FROM COUNT DE GASPARIN TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON. TRANSLA TED BY MABY L. BOOTH. To Mr. Andrew Johnson, President of the United States : Mr. President : Pardon me this step. I should have entreated your permission to address you thus publicly, but time was lacking. And this was my fault ; I hesitated till the last moment ; I said to myself that ray opinion was not of sufficient importance to be made known, and that questions of internal organization should not be meddled with by foreigners. Now, at the last instant, as it were, when scarcely a month separates us from the opening of Congress, when it is scarcely possible to trace these pages in haste and to transmit them in time to America, my conscience cries out that I was wrong ; that a sincere word always has its value ; that the present moment may be decisive ; that you are about to take an irrevocable step, and that a friend of America has no right to be silent if he believes that he has any counsel to give which might be useful.

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