"I concur in your judgment that the paramount issue in the coming election would be 'the restoration of the ten absent States to the Union, with all the rights and privileges of the other States, and with their local government in the hands of the white population; and that all else must be subordinate and secondary.'
"Our position must be condemnation and reversal of negro supremacy in the ten States (added to that in Tennessee), created by the measures of the Federal government—first, by disfranchising the whites and overawing them by military force, and, secondly, by admitting the blacks and organizing them through the Freeman's Bureau, not only involving us in a partnership in self-government with a mass of voters (in all the U. S. over 900,000), confessedly incompetent at the present time to exercise the suffrage wisely or safely, and without any of the training, habits, or aspirations of freemen, but, by thus obtaining control of nearly one-third of the Senate and nearly one-quarter of the House, establishing a practical dominion of the same character over the great free States of the North and over the whole country.
"Associated with this issue are all those measures by which the Senate is to be packed by the admission of new States—the subdivision of the present States—added to the control of 20 from the ten States and others constituting a Senatorial dynasty of long tenure, and the usurpation by the Senate thus constituted of the opportunity, power, and the absorption by it and the House of the rightful authorities of the Executive and of the Judiciary.
"In my judgment, if we obscure or weaken this issue, we shall not only fail to meet the necessities of the present condition of the country, but we shall commit a great political blunder.
"On no other question can we be so unanimous among ourselves. On no other question can we draw so much from the other side and from the undetermined. It appeals peculiarly to the adopted citizens, whether Irish or Germans; to all the working-men; to the young men just becoming voters. The Republican party contains large numbers who are naturally hampered by its position on this issue; and large numbers of old Federal and old Whig antecedents, who do not think that any poor man, white or black, ought to vote; and though they may go along with their party on the theory that the blacks are a counterpoise to the adopted citizens, their hearts misgive them. The pride of a superior race and self-esteem, well founded in this case, are a universal power.
"The more we concentrate the public attention on this issue, so that the people will act with reference to it, the better our chance of success will be.
"Subordinate, but next in importance, is the financial question.
"The best aspect of that is its connection with the other issue. It is now costing the country, directly and indirectly, 100 millions a year—perhaps as much even as the whole interest on the public debt—to carry on the reconstruction system and the measures associated with it. The army expenses are now about 144 millions, exclusive of pensions.