So long as Slavery continued in arms, each and all waxed in vastness; and now, so long as any of these remain, they testify to this same unnatural crime.

Our enormous taxation is only a prolongation of the Rebellion.

Every greenback is red with the blood of fellow-citizens.

Foremost came the suppression of Slavery, in which the Rebellion had its origin.

Common prudence, to say nothing of common humanity, required this consummation, without which there would have been a short-lived truce only.

That whole barbarous code of wrong and outrage, whose first article was the denial of all rights to an oppressed race, was grossly inconsistent with the new order of things.

It was necessary that it should yield to the Equal Rights of All, promised by the Declaration of Independence.

The citizen, lifted from Slavery, must be secured in all his rights, civil and political.

This is the work of Political Reconstruction, constituting the new stage after the overthrow of the Rebellion.

Vain all attempt to reconstruct the national finances while the Rebellion was still in arms.

Vain also while Equal Rights are without a sure defence against the oppressor.

Nothing is more sensitive than Credit, which is the essential element of financial restoration.

All that he has done from the beginning has tended to protract the Rebellion and to extend the disorder of our finances.

So far as their personal interests depended on an improved condition of the finances, they have already suffered; but it is hard that the country should suffer also.

Andrew Johnson has postponed specie payments, and his supporters of all degrees must share the responsibility.

Such is my confidence in the resources of our country, in the industry of its people, and in the grandeur of its destinies, that I cannot doubt the transcendent future.

It will come with the renovated life of the Nation, when it is once more complete in form, when every part is in sympathy with the whole, and the Rebellion, with all its offspring, is trampled out forever.

In such a condition of affairs, inconvertible paper would be an impossibility, as much as a bill of sale for a human being.

Foremost among these I put the absolute dependence of the national finances upon the faithful performance of all our obligations to the national freedmen.

Pardoned Rebels will never look with complacency upon the national debt, or the interest which testifies semiannually to its magnitude.

Therefore, for the sake of the national finances, I insist that the national freedmen shall be secured and maintained in Equal Rights, so that local prejudices and party cries shall be unavailing against them.

You who have at heart the national credit, on which so much depends, must never fail to cherish the national freedmen, treating their enemies as if they were your enemies.

Every blow at them will rebound upon yourselves.

In dealing with the financial question, there are two other points of ever-present importance: first, the necessity of diminishing, so far as practicable, the heavy burden of taxation so oppressive to the people; and, secondly, the…

Here are two objects, which, when accomplished, will add infinitely to the wealth and happiness of the country, besides being the assurance that the Nation has at last reached that condition of repose so much longed for.