"In all available ways," he wrote, "give the people a chance to express
their wishes at these elections. Follow forms of law as far as
convenient, but at all events get the expression of the largest number
of the people possible. All see how such action will connect with and
affect the proclamation of September 22. Of course the men elected
should be gentlemen of character, willing to swear support to the
Constitution as of old, and known to be above reasonable suspicion of
duplicity."
But the President wished this to be a real and not a sham proceeding, as
he explained a month later in a letter to Governor Shepley:
"We do not particularly need members of Congress from there to enable us
to get along with legislation here. What we do want is the conclusive
evidence that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be
members of Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and that
other respectable citizens there are willing to vote for them and send
them. To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives, elected,
as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at the point of the
bayonet, would be disgraceful and outrageous; and were I a member of
Congress here, I would vote against admitting any such man to a seat."
Thus instructed, Governor Shepley caused an election to be held in the
first and second congressional districts of Louisiana on December 3,
1862, at which members of Congress were chosen.
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