Senate is quite strong
and confident of success. I did not mean to allude to the controversy,
but was compelled to by the dispatch which got into our columns.
I observe J. W. wrote 'locality' as he says, but the change to
'loyalty' was a very awkward one in these days; so I felt compelled
to correct it.

"I fear more the raids of Thad. Stevens on the treasury than those
of Mosby on our lines.

"Yours,
"Horace Greeley."

When Congress met on the 4th of December, 1865, it had before it
two important problems which demanded immediate attention. One
was a measure for the reconstruction of the states lately in
rebellion and the other was a plan for refunding and paying the
public debt. It was unfortunate that no measure had been provided
before the close of the war defining the condition of the states
lately in rebellion, securing the freedmen in their new-born rights,
and restoring these states to their place in the Union. Therefore,
during the long vacation, from April to December, the whole matter
was left to executive authority. If Lincoln had lived, his action
would have been acquiesced in. It would have been liberal, based
upon universal emancipation of negroes, and pardon to rebels. It
was supposed that President Johnson would err, if at all, in imposing
too harsh terms upon these states. His violent speeches in the
canvass of 1864, and his fierce denunciation of the leaders in the
Rebellion, led us all to suppose that he would insist upon a
reconstruction by the loyal people of the south and that reasonable
protection would be extended to the emancipated negroes. The
necessity of legislation for the reconstruction of the Confederate
states was foreseen and provision had been made by Congress, during
the war, by what was known as the Wade-Davis bill, to provide for
the reorganization of these states. During the 37th Congress,
Henry Winter Davis, though not then a Member of the House of
Representatives, prepared a bill to meet this exigency. It was a
bill to guarantee to each state a republican form of government.
It embodied a plan by which these states, then declared by Congress
to be in a state of insurrection, might, when that insurrection
was subdued or abandoned, come back freely and voluntarily into
the Union. It provided for representation, for the election of a
convention and a legislature, and of Senators and Members of
Congress. It was a complete guarantee to the people of the
insurre