tive
because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made,
as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections
made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various
duties of administering the Government--in nearly every case selected
without a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon
recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people.
It is impossible, where so many trusts are to be allotted, that the
right parties should be chosen in every instance. History shows that no
Administration from the time of Washington to the present has been free
from these mistakes. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only
that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do
what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best
interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment,
not of intent.

My civil career commenced, too, at a most critical and difficult time.
Less than four years before, the country had emerged from a conflict
such as no other nation had ever survived. Nearly one-half of the States
had revolted against the Government, and of those remaining faithful
to the Union a large percentage of the population sympathized with the
rebellion and made an "enemy in the rear" almost as dangerous as the
more honorable enemy in the front. The latter committed errors of
judgment, but they maintained them openly and courageously; the former
received the protection of the Government they would see destroyed, and
reaped all the pecuniary advantage to be gained out of the then existing
state of affairs, many of them by obtaining contracts and by swindling
the Government in the delivery of their goods.

Immediately on the cessation of hostilities the then noble President,
who had carried the country so far through its perils, fell a martyr
to his patriotism at the hands of an assassin.

The intervening time to my first inauguration was filled up with
wranglings between Congress and the new Executive as to the best mode
of "reconstruction," or, to speak plainly, as to whether the control
of the Government should be thrown immediately into the hands of those
who had so recently and persistently tried to destroy it, or whether
the victors should continue to have an equal voice with them in this
control. Reconstruction, as finally agreed upon, means this and only
this, except that the late slave was enfr