re 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 mold 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 cannot 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. In
this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows.
In the annual message of December, 1863, and in the accompanying
proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes,
which I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to and
sustained by the executive government of the nation. I distinctly
stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be
acceptable, and I also distinctly protested that the executive claimed
no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in
Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the
then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of
them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the
Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia
and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship
for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own
power in regard to the admission of members to Congress. But even he
approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been
employed or touched by the action of Louisiana.

The new Constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole
State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously
excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and it is
silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of
members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member
of the cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress,
and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and
not a single objection to it from any professed emancipationist came to
my knowledge until after the news reached Washington