The excluded classes had been the leaders, the commanders, the men of position, the friends and the patrons of those who, only less guilty because less influential and powerful, were now intrusted with the initial work in the re-establishment of civil Government in their respective States.
It was not a possible supposition that these men, when they assembled in convention, would exclude the entire leading class of the South, or even one member of it, from the full constitutional privileges and benefits of the civil Government they were about to re-organize.

The suffrage conferred on others would, in like manner, be conferred on them: the offices of rank and emolument in the new Government would likewise be open to them, and it would thus be made evident that the President's exclusion of these classes was merely an inhibition from doing a preliminary work which others would do equally well for them.
Unless, therefore, some other form of denial or exclusion should be announced,--and none other apparently was intended,--the President's policy would end in promptly handing over to the authors and designers of the Rebellion the complete control of the States whose civil power they had willfully perverted and turned against the National authority.
Mr.Seward's magnanimity, his boundless confidence in human nature, had led him to believe that this was wise policy.

He believed it so firmly that he had persuaded the President--against his own will and purpose -- to adopt it, and to attempt its enforcement.
It soon became evident that President Johnson realized how completely he had excluded men of the colored race from any share of political power in the Southern States by his process of reconstruction.

It is true that he stood loyally by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had been submitted to Congress before his accession to the Presidency but had not yet been ratified by the States.

He used his influence, which was commanding, to induce the Southern States to accept it in good faith.