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trade, and have given every facility for carrying cotton and other products to market.
The only obstacles in the way are the restrictions of the Treasury Department.
It would be a blessing to the country if the whole system could be abolished.
Now only one man in North Carolina is authorized to buy cotton, and he does not pay money for it. It is impossible for people to get their products to market in this way.
The imperative need of the
Southern States at the close of the war was temporary military government, and permission, under such full military protection, to reorganize their civil governments.
In the following letter to
General Grant, dated May 10, I submitted my views concerning the policy that ought to be pursued:
I desire to submit to you my views concerning the policy that ought to be pursued in North Carolina, leaving it to your judgment whether or not to submit them to the President or Secretary of War.
I am now led to this mainly by a letter which I received on the 7th from Chief Justice Chase, giving some points of the policy advocated by him, which, if adopted in this State, would in my opinion lead to disastrous results.
The points I refer to are briefly as follows, viz.:
The organization of the State government to be left to the people acting in their original sovereign capacity.
In determining the right of suffrage, the old Constitution, amended in 1835, to be followed in preference to the new one which was in force at the commencement of the rebellion—the object being to give negroes the right to vote.
The first proposition is not, I think, open to serious objection.
With proper assistance from the military authorities, it can be successfully carried out.
The second proposition is the one to which I refer as specially objectionable, and this for two reasons.
First.
The Constitution of the State as it existed immediately prior to the rebellion is still the State Constitution, and there is no power on earth but the people of the State that can alter it.
The operations of the war have freed the slaves in this and most other States, and, doubtless, slavery will be constitutionally
