" ...  In honestly seeking to preserve the Union, it is not for President Lincoln to seek, by a special edict applied to a particular State or locality, to do violence to a universal rule, accepted and acted upon from the beginning till now by the States in their individual sovereignty....  Nor, if the freed blacks were admitted to the polls by Presidential fiat do I see any permanent advantage likely to be secured by it; for, submitted to as a necessity at the outset, as soon as the State was organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white population with their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices, and exclude those thus summarily brought to the polls.  Coercion would gain nothing.”  A very remarkable prophecy, which has since been exactly fulfilled in the Southern States.  Garrison, however, in the subsequent struggle between Congress and Mr. Lincoln’s successor over this selfsame point in its wider relation to all of the Southern States, took sides against Andrew Johnson and in favor of the Congressional fiat method of transforming chattels personal into citizens.  The elimination of Abraham Lincoln from, and the introduction of Andrew Johnson upon the National stage at this juncture, did undoubtedly effect such a change of circumstances, as to make the Congressional fiat method a political necessity.  It was distinctly the less of two evils which at the moment was thrust upon the choice of the Northern people.

The same breadth and liberality of view, which marked his treatment of Mr. Lincoln upon the subject of emancipation and of that of reconstruction, marked his treatment also of other questions which the suppression of the rebellion presented to his consideration.  Although a radical peace man, how just was his attitude toward the men and the measures of the War for the Union.  Nothing that he did evinced on his part greater tact or toleration than his admirable behavior in this respect.  To his eldest son, George Thompson, who was no adherent of the doctrine of non-resistance, and who was commissioned by Governor Andrew, a second lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, the pioneer wrote expressing his regret that the young lieutenant had not been able “to adopt those principles of peace which are so sacred and divine to my soul, yet you will bear me witness that I have not laid a straw in your way to prevent your acting up to your own highest convictions of duty.”  Such was precisely his attitude toward the North who, he believed, in waging war against the South for the maintenance of the Union, was acting up to her own highest convictions of duty.  And not a straw would he place across her path, under those circumstances, though every step bore witness to one of the most gigantic and destructive wars in history.