He was ready, however, to cooperate with the people of any State who wished to accept the plan prepared by Congress and he hoped that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery would be adopted.
Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, and he had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed that the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation.
The nearest he came to recommending the vote for the Negro was in a communication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March 1864: "I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.

They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom.

But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone." Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state organizations in the South were illegal because disloyal and that new governments must be established.

But just at the close of the war, probably carried away by feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia Confederate Government as competent to bring the state back into the Union.

While in Richmond on April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a statement of terms: the national authority to be restored; no recession on slavery by the executive; hostile forces to disband.