d be one of
us!"

The ninth of April arrived and the news of Lee's surrender.

"The popular excitement over the victory was such that on Monday, the
tenth, crowds gathered before the Executive Mansion several times during
the day and called out the President for speeches. Twice he responded
by coming to the window and saying a few words which, however, indicated
that his mind was more occupied with work than with exuberant rejoicing.
As briefly as he could he excused himself, but promised that on the
following evening for which a formal demonstration was being arranged,
he would be prepared to say something."(3)

The paper which he read to the crowd that thronged the grounds of
the White House on the night of April eleventh, was his last public
utterance. It was also one of his most remarkable ones. In a way, it
was his declaration of war against the Vindictives.(4) It is the final
statement of a policy toward helpless opponents--he refused to call them
enemies--which among the conquerors of history is hardly, if at all, to
be paralleled.(5)

"By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national
authority--reconstruction--which has had a large share of thought from the
first, is pressed more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with
great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations,
there is no authorized organ for us to treat with-no one man has
authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must
begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor
is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ
among ourselves as to the mode, manner and measure of reconstruction.
As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon
myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly
offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my
knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up
and seeking to sustain the new State government of Louisiana."

He reviewed in full the history of the Louisiana experiment From that he
passed to the theories put forth by some of his enemies with regard to
the constitutional status of the Seceded States. His own theory that
the States never had been out of the Union because constitutionally
they could not go out, that their governmental functions had merely been
temporarily interrupted; this theory had always been roundly derided by
th