US Presidency
1865

Persons who are charged with its commission should havefair and impartial trials in the highest civil tribunals of the country, in order that the Constitution and the laws may be fully vindicated, thetruth dearly established and affirmed that treason is a crime, that traitorsshould be punished and the offense made infamous, and, at the same time, that the question may be judicially settled, finally and forever, thatno State of its own will has the right to renounce its place in the Union. The relations of the General Government toward the 4,000,000 inhabitantswhom the war has called into freedom have engaged my most serious consideration. On the propriety of attempting to make the freedmen electors by the proclamationof the Executive I took for my counsel the Constitution itself, the interpretationsof that instrument by its authors and their contemporaries, and recentlegislation by Congress. When, at the first movement toward independence, the Congress of the United States instructed the several States to institutegovernments of their own, they left each State to decide for itself theconditions for the enjoyment of the elective franchise.