4 Yes, you are about to take an irrevocable step. The South once returned to Congress, without the negro question having first been regulated, this question is transformed into an insoluble problem, and the whole work of your presidency becomes impossible. The work of Mr. Lincoln was the war and the abolition of slavery ; he gloriously achieved it. Your work, not less glorious, is the reconstruction of the country and the proclamation of the rights belonging to the freed negroes ; and this work you will not suffer to be endangered in any manner whatsoever. I am wrong in making a distinction between the rights of the negroes and the reconstruction of the country. The rights of the negroes are the very condition of reconstruc- tion. Or rather, the war and the reconstruction, the abolition of slavery and the political enfranchisement of the colored race, the work of Mr. Lincoln and your own, are the same thing at the bottom. The rebellion had only one cause, slavery ; the victory over the rebellion was possible only on one condition, the suppression of slavery ; reconstruction will be effected only by one means, the absolute destruction of everything connected with slavery. And this is why you are verging on a critical moment. The Southern representatives and senators are about to knock at the doors of Congress. I am not among those, as you know, who desire that they should be tardily opened. But I should think myself abjuring both your noble cause and the simplest laws of common-sense if I did not place the decision of the questions which concern the situation of the negroes in the South before the return of the South to Congress. The guarantees to be demanded from the South evidently precede its readmission. Guarantees first, readmission afterwards ; such is the logical order. The terms cannot be inverted without risking poignant regret. You have therefore reached your last crisis, and it is not the least perilous one, for the great fundamental question is hidden by a question of form, insignificant in appearance. Unreflecting minds will be tempted to think that the point
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