n that slavery must be destroyed, and
he had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed
that the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation.
The nearest he came to recommending the vote for the Negro was in a
communication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March 1864: "I barely
suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored
people may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and
especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would
probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty
within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the
public, but to you alone."

Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state
organizations in the South were illegal because disloyal and that new
governments must be established. But just at the close of the war,
probably carried away by feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia
Confederate Government as competent to bring the state back into the
Union. While in Richmond on April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a
statement of terms: the national authority to be restored; no recession
on slavery by the executive; hostile forces to disband. The next day he
notified General Weitzel, in command at Richmond, that he might permit
the Virginia Legislature to meet and withdraw military and other support
from the Confederacy. But these measures met strong opposition in
Washington, especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade and other
congressional leaders, and on the 11th of April, Lincoln withdrew his
permission for the legislature to meet. "I cannot go forward," he said,
"with everybody opposed to me." It was on the same day that he made his
last public speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy,
remarked that "the President's speech and other things augur confusion
and uncertainty in the future, with hot contumacy." At a cabinet meeting
on the 14th of April, Lincoln made his last statement on the subject.
It was fortunate, he said, that Congress had adjourned, for "we shall
reanimate the States" before Congress meets; there should be no killing,
no persecutions; there was too much disposition to treat the Southern
people "not as fellow citizens."

The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln was
assassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, not
a doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, L