either States nor
State governments, and incapable of being legalized by any action of
the Executive or of Congress, may, nevertheless, be legalized by being
indorsed or acquiesced in by the territorial people. They are wrong,
as are all usurpations; they are undemocratic, inasmuch as they attempt
to give the minority the power to rule the majority; they are dangerous
inasmuch as they place the State in the hands of a party that can stand
only as supported by the General government, and thus destroy the
proper freedom and independence of the State, and open the door to
corruption, tend to keep alive rancor and ill feeling, and to retard
the period of complete pacification, which might be effected in three
months as well as in three years, or twenty years; yet they can become
legal, as other governments illegal in their origin become legal, with
time and popular acquiescence. The right way is always the shortest and
easiest; but when a government must oftener follow than lead the
public, it is not always easy to hit the right way, and still less easy
to take it. The general instincts of the people are right as to the end
to be gained, but seldom right as to the means of gaining it; and
politicians of the Union party, as well as of the late secession party,
have an eye in reconstructing, to the future political control of the
State when it is reconstructed.

The secessionists, if permitted to retain their franchise, would, even
if they accepted abolition, no doubt re-organize their respective
States on the basis of white suffrage, and so would the Unionists, if
left to themselves. There is no party at the South prepared to adopt
negro suffrage, and there would be none at the North if the negroes
constituted any considerable portion of the population. As the
reconstruction of a State cannot be done under the war power, the
General government can no more enfranchise than it can disfranchise any
portion of the territorial people, and the question of negro suffrage
must be left, where the constitution leaves it--to the States
severally, each to dispose of it for itself. Negro suffrage will, no
doubt, come in time, as soon as the freedmen are prepared for it, and
the danger is that it will be attempted too soon.

It would be a convenience to have the negro vote in the reconstruction
of the States disorganized by secession, for it would secure their
re-construction with antislavery constitutions, and also make sure of
the