rapidly and as smoothly as we might desire, I will admit; but I am profoundly convinced that it is, after all, the most rapid and the safest that can be devised.
It is evident that the political disqualifications and disabilities, especially the exclusion of large numbers of people from the ballot-box, have to disappear before this great end of moral pacification can be accomplished; for nothing will remind men more painfully of our past conflicts, nothing is more calculated to stir up from day to day the heartburnings of defeat and a deep dissatisfaction with the existing condition of things, than an abnormal and degrading position in society, which imposes all the duties and burdens of citizenship without coupling with them the corresponding rights.
But still another thing appeared to me most essential to the restoration of fraternal feeling. It was that the same party under whose auspices those political disqualifications had been imposed, and which was accused of a desire to continue them for the selfish purpose of perpetuating its ascendency, should, while in the full possession of the powers of the Government, with free and frank generosity remove them; thus furnishing conclusive proof that such measures had not been dictated by a spirit of hatred and vindictiveness, but by the necessity to establish in the shortest possible time that which would be for the common good of all, and that the first opportunity to abolish invidious distinctions was embraced not only willingly, but with gladness.
In forming these conclusions I was not governed by a mere sentimental and hasty generosity, although I am willing to admit that it is against my nature to deprive others without the most irresistible necessity of rights which I myself enjoy; but I followed the plainest rule of statesmanship, which, under existing circumstances, could have no higher aim than to bring the late rebels
