He was generous and considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the leaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be welcomed back without loss of rights.

"There is," he declared, "too little respect for their rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat them as fellow citizens.
This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the war as opportunity offered.

The President used the army to hold the Border States in the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and in establishing West Virginia.

The army, used to preserve the Union might be used also to restore disturbed parts of it to normal condition.
Assuming that the "States" still existed, "loyal" state governments were the first necessity.

By his proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln suggested a method of beginning the reconstruction: he would pardon any Confederate, except specified classes of leaders, who took an oath of loyalty for the future; if as many as ten percent of the voting population of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state government the executive would recognize it.