been in actual operation for nearly
a year. Though Congress had denounced it; though the Manifesto had held
it up to scorn as a monarchial outrage; Lincoln had quietly, steadily,
protected and supported it. It was discharging the function of a regular
State government. A governor had been elected and inaugurated-that
Governor Hahn whom Lincoln had congratulated as Louisiana's first Free
State Governor. He could say this because the new electorate which his
mandate had created had assembled a constitutional convention and had
abolished slavery. And it had also carried out the President's views
with regard to the political status of freedmen. Lincoln was not a
believer in general negro suffrage. He was as far as ever from the
theorizing of the Abolitionists. The most he would approve was the
bestowal of suffrage on a few Superior negroes, leaving the rest to
be gradually educated into citizenship. The Louisiana Convention had
authorized the State Legislature to make, when it felt prepared to do
so, such a limited extension of suffrage.(6)

In setting up this new government, Lincoln had created a political
vessel in which practically all the old electorate of Louisiana could
find their places the moment they gave up the war and accepted the two
requisites, union and emancipation. That electorate could proceed at
once to rebuild the social-political order of the State without any
interval of "expiation." All the power of the Administration would
be with them in their labors. That this was the wise as well as the
generous way to proceed, the best minds of the North had come to see.
Witness the conversion of Trumbull. But there were four groups of
fanatics who were dangerous: extreme Abolitionists who clamored for
negro equality; men like Wade and Chandler, still mad with the lust of
conquest, raging at the President who had stood so resolutely between
them and their desire; the machine politicians who could never
understand the President's methods, who regarded him as an officious
amateur; and the Little Men who would have tried to make political
capital of the blowing of the last trump. All these, each for a separate
motive, attacked the President because of Louisiana.

The new government had chosen Senators. Here was a specific issue over
which the Administration and its multiform opposition might engage in a
trial of strength. The Senate had it in its power to refuse to seat the
Louisiana Senators. Could the Vindictive