hind.
Impartial suffrage, then, means popular intelligence; it means
progress; it means loyalty; it means harmony between the North and
the South, and between the whites and the colored people.

The Union party believes that the general welfare requires that
measures should be adopted which will work great changes in the
South. Our adversaries are accustomed to talk of the rebellion as
an affair which began when the rebels attacked Fort Sumter in 1861,
and which ended when Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865. It is true
that the attempt by force of arms to destroy the United States
began and ended during the administration of Mr. Lincoln. But the
causes, the principles, and the motives which produced the
rebellion are of an older date than the generation which suffered
from the fruit they bore, and their influence and power are likely
to last long after that generation passes away. Ever since armed
rebellion failed, a large party in the South have struggled to make
participation in the rebellion honorable and loyalty to the Union
dishonorable. The lost cause with them is the honored cause. In
society, in business, and in politics, devotion to treason is the
test of merit, the passport to preferment. They wish to return to
the old state of things--_an oligarchy of race and the sovereignty
of States._

To defeat this purpose, to secure the rights of man, and to
perpetuate the National Union, are the objects of the Congressional
plan of reconstruction. That plan has the hearty support of the
great generals (so far as their opinions are known)--of Grant, of
Thomas, of Sheridan, of Howard--who led the armies of the Union
which conquered the rebellion. The statesmen most trusted by Mr.
Lincoln and by the loyal people of the country during the war also
support it. The Supreme Court of the United States, upon formal
application and after solemn argument, refuse to interfere with its
execution. The loyal press of the country, which did so much in the
time of need to uphold the patriot cause, without exception, are in
favor of the plan.

In the South, as we have seen, the lessons of the war and the
events occurring since the war have made converts of thousands of
the bravest and of the ablest of those who opposed the National
cause. General Longstr