59 of the armies, and the fidelity to liberal traditions. It borrows from the second the resolution to put an end to the negro question and not to abandon the freedmen to the despotism of the planters ; and the determination, in fine,not to admit the South without conditions, and to destroy before everything the ground of the ancient strife. It is easy to show yourselves firm after showing yourselves gentle. Your magnanimity comes to the aid of your energy. Of what could the South complain—the South on which you are lavishing pardons ; whose provisional reorganization you are encouraging ; towards whom you are unceasingly testifying your confidence by lessening the number of the troops of occupation ?—of what could it complain if, at the moment when it asks to resume its place in Congress, you should say to it, “ We must first establish the position of the free negroes, who cannot be abandoned to the wishes of the Southern legislators” ? When your true friends entreated you freely to pardon the South, it was by no means a counsel of weakness that they gave you. They felt that, in order to be strong with respect to things, it was necessary to begin by being generous with respect to persons. Perhaps you still remember, Mr. President, in what terms I then asked you to grant me the life of Jefferson Davis. Let a single political scaffold be erected among you, and you quit forever that glorious path in which you have been walking for four years. But between the pardon granted to the greatest criminals, and the justification of an unjustifiable rebellion, there is a broad chasm. The one is the very negation of the other. You pardon, while certifying the crime. You wish, at least so far as the leader of the rebel confederacy is concerned, that a solemn trial should proclaim the guilty attempt, and restore to the rank of insurgents those of whom it has been sought to make belligerents. You arc right, and no one has read without cordially approving this portion of your answer to the South Carolina deputation. Yes, there is no desire for vengeance, no thirst for blood ; only, as there has been
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