e him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the
result is known. Such has been my only agency in getting up the
Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before
stated. But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat
this as a bad promise and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that
keeping it is adverse to the public interest; but I have not yet been so
convinced. I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an
able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not
seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded
States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps add
astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found
professed Union men endeavouring to answer that question, I have
purposely forborne any public expression upon it....

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper
practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the
government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again
get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not
only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even
considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than
with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing
the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between
these States and the Union, and each for ever after innocently indulge
his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from
without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never
having been out of it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which
the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all if
it contained forty thousand, or thirty thousand, or even twenty
thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand as it does. It is also
unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the
coloured man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the
very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it
stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be
wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and
disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought into proper practic