of the Constitution which refers to the term and the election of the President will probably be changed in several respects, and that the amendment you mention will then appear in connection with other cognate propositions. The introduction of the whole subject would, as I thought, open a field of discussion perhaps too wide for the limits to which you might desire to confine your inaugural. I, therefore, submit to your judgment whether you would not prefer, instead of singling out this one particular amendment for presentation at this time, to leave it over for your first annual message and then to set it forth in all its bearings and proper connections.
On the whole, my impression is that your inaugural will best satisfy your own taste as well as that of the public, and also best serve its object, if it is a short, terse and pointed document, setting forth in simple language your political motives and aims in a general way, and that the crowding in of too many subjects and unnecessary details would encumber and thereby rather weaken than strengthen it. If it does not go much beyond two ordinary newspaper columns, it will be read by everybody as it ought to be.
FROM RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
I have your note of the 1st [2d]. It impresses me very strongly. My anxiety to do something to promote the pacification of the South is perhaps in danger of leading me too far. I do not reflect on the use of the military power in the least. But there is to be an end of all that, except in emergencies which I do not think of as possible again. We must do all we can to promote prosperity there. Education, emigration and immigration, improvements, occur to me. But the more I think of it, the more I see in what you say. We must go cautiously—slowly.
