58 and shun the temptations of dictatorship, the attempts at prolonged military occupation and conquest. Confidence has in itself a marvellous power of pacification- And what a power is also in liberty ! It solves insoluble questions ; it reconciles irreconcilable enemies. Thanks to it, there are no vanquished, for the common law exists, and all use it ; all feel themselves equals, and no diminished position continues, in some sort sanctions, and forever revives the memory of the battle. I see among you two extremes of policy, contending for the direction of your affairs. I hope that you will reject both. The one desires, in the ardor of reconciliation, not only that you should forget the commonest rules of prudence, but also the obligations contracted toward that race whose liberation you have begun, and which will perish, perhaps, if you do not complete its freedom. They will hear neither of imposing conditions on the South before readmission, nor of taking precautions for some time in the South to protect the first steps of the freedmen. Let the doors of Congress be opened wide from the first moment ! Leave to the Southern states themselves the charge of hereafter granting or refusing the right of suffrage to the colored race ! Veil the Constitution which protests against the creation of a race of Helots throughout a whole section of the United States ! The other, without aspiring to absolute vengeance, seems not to be sorry to humiliate the South and to make it feel its defeat. 11 is displeased at the pardons ; it is alarmed at the speedy reorganizations ; it would gladly give to the military occupation proportions and a duration which would almost remind us of conquest. It would seem as if its ideal consisted in transforming the Southern states into territories. It does not recoil before the prospect of dictatorships and military regimes ; and the perils which in this case would brood over the political liberties of the Union do not disturb it beyond measure. It is between these two extremes that the true policy is found. It borrows from the first the lively desire to conciliate and reconcile, the generous pardons, the bold disbanding
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