Whitelaw Reid: “So, too, when necessarily that other question arose: “Shall we give arms to the black men?” I could not doubt or…”

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out.

With her, then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship, and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.

Fully believing the debts of their Rebel Government legal and just, they were prepared to repudiate them at a hint from Washington.