Note 82 — Chapter XVI

"It gives me some satisfaction now to say that none of those statements of fact have ever been effectually controverted. I cannot speak with the same assurance of my conclusions and recommendations, for they were matters not of knowledge but of judgment. And we stood at that time face to face with a situation bristling with problems so complicated and puzzling that every proposed solution based upon assumptions ever so just, and supported by reasoning apparently ever so logical, was liable to turn out in practice apparently more mischievous than any other. In a great measure this has actually come to pass.... I am far from saying that somebody else might not have performed the task much better than I did. But I do think that this report is the best paper I have ever written on a public matter. The weakest part of it is that referring to negro suffrage—not as if the argument, as far as it goes, were wrong, but as it leaves out of consideration several aspects of the matter, the great importance of which has since become apparent." (Reminiscences, iii, 204, 209.)