, which forbade the
exclusion of the negroes from the elective franchise.

In Georgia the white voters held control of their State from the
beginning. In the other seceding States the government passed, at
various times and by various methods during the next six years after
1871, under control of the whites, who still retain control. One of the
avowed objects of reconstruction has thus failed; but, to one who does
not presume that all things will be accomplished at a single leap, the
scheme, in spite of its manifest blunders and crudities, must seem to
have had a remarkable success. Whatever the political status of the
negro may now be in the seceding States, it may be confidently affirmed
that it is far better than it would have been in the same time under
an unrestricted readmission. The whites, all whose energies have been
strained to secure control of their States, have been glad, in return
for this success to yield a measure of other civil rights to the
freedmen, which is already fuller than ought to have been hoped for in
1867. And, as the general elective franchise is firmly imbedded in the
organic law, its ultimate concession will come more easily and gently
than if it were then an entirely new step.

During this long period of almost continuous exertion of national power
there were many subsidiary measures, such as the laws authorizing the
appointment of supervisors for congressional elections, and the use of
Federal troops as a _posse comitatus_ by Federal supervisors, which
were not at all in line with the earlier theory of the division between
Federal and State powers. The Democratic party gradually abandoned
its opposition to reconstruction, accepting it as a disagreeable but
accomplished fact, but kept up and increased its opposition to the
subsidiary measures. About 1876-7 a reaction became evident, and with
President Hayes' withdrawal of troops from South Carolina, Federal
control of affairs in the Southern States came to an end.

Foreign affairs are not strictly a part of our subject; but, as going to
show one of the dangerous features of the Civil War, the possibility
of the success of the secession sentiment in England in obtaining the
intervention of that country, the speech of Mr. Beecher in Liver-pool,
with the addenda of his audience, has been given.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865.)

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861.

FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATE