Education for young blacks should be included in
the plan. After all, the power or element of 'contract' may be
sufficient for this probationary period, and by its simplicity and
flexibility may be the better."

During the autumn months the President's mind dwelt more and more on
the subject of reconstruction, and he matured a general plan which he
laid before Congress in his annual message to that body on December 8,
1863. He issued on the same day a proclamation of amnesty, on certain
conditions, to all persons in rebellion except certain specified
classes, who should take a prescribed oath of allegiance. The
proclamation further provided that whenever a number of persons so
amnestied in any rebel State, equal to one tenth the vote cast at the
presidential election of 1860, should "reestablish a State government
which shall be republican, and in no wise contravening said oath," such
would be recognized as the true government of the State. The annual
message discussed and advocated the plan at length, but also added:
"Saying that reconstruction will be accepted if presented in a specified
way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other way."

This plan of reconstructing what came to be called "ten percent States,"
met much opposition in Congress, and that body, reversing its action in
former instances, long refused admission to members and senators from
States similarly organized; but the point needs no further mention here.

A month before the amnesty proclamation the President had written to
General Banks, expressing his great disappointment that the
reconstruction in Louisiana had been permitted to fall in abeyance by
the leading Union officials there, civil and military.

"I do, however," he wrote, "urge both you and them to lose no more time.
Governor Shepley has special instructions from the War Department. I
wish him--these gentlemen and others cooeperating--without waiting for
more territory, to go to work and give me a tangible nucleus which the
remainder of the State may rally around as fast as it can, and which I
can at once recognize and sustain as the true State government."

He urged that such reconstruction should have in view a new free-State
constitution, for, said he:

"If a few professedly loyal men shall draw the disloyal about them, and
colorably set up a State government repudiating the emancipation
proclamation and reestablishing slavery, I cannot recognize or sustain
their work.