He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call
for a national thanksgiving is in the course of preparation, and will be
duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part give us the cause for
rejoicing be overlooked. Their honours must not be parcelled out with
others. I, myself, was near the front, and had the high pleasure of
transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honour for
plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and
brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in
reach to take an active part.

By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national
authority,--reconstruction,--which has had a large share of thought from
the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is
fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent
nations, there is no organized 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 mould 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
approved by every member of it....

When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New
Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident that the people,
with his military co-operation, would reconstruct substantially on that
plan. I wrot