the
president, said to him:

"General Sheridan has performed his civil duties faithfully and
intelligently. His removal will only be regarded as an effort to
defeat the laws of Congress. It will be interpreted by the
unreconstructed element in the South--those who did all they could
to break up this government by arms, and now wish to be the only
element consulted as to the method of restoring order--as a
triumph. It will embolden them to renewed opposition to the will of
the loyal masses, believing that they have the executive with
them."

This presents exactly the question before the people. We want the
loyal people of the country, the victors in the great struggle we
have passed through, to do the work; we want reconstruction upon
such principles, and by means of such measures that the causes
which made reconstruction necessary shall not exist in the
reconstructed Union; we want that foolish notion of State rights,
which teaches that the State is superior to the Nation--that there
is a State sovereignty which commands the allegiance of every
citizen higher than the sovereignty of the nation--we want that
notion left out of the reconstructed Union; we want it understood
that whatever doubts may have existed prior to the war as to the
relation of the State to the National government, that now the
National government is supreme, anything in the constitution or
laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. Again, as one of
the causes of the rebellion, we want slavery left out, not merely
in name, but in fact, and forever; we want the last vestige, the
last relic of that institution, rooted out of the laws and
institutions of every State; we want that in the South there shall
be no more suppression of free discussion. I notice that in the
long speech of my friend, Judge Thurman, he says that for nearly
fifty years, throughout the length and breadth of the land, freedom
of speech and of the press was never interfered with, either by the
government or the people. For more than thirty years,
fellow-citizens, there has been no such thing as free discussion in
the South. Those moderate speeches of Abraham Lincoln on the
subject of slavery--not one of them--could have been delivered
without endangering his life, south of Mason and Dixon's