"LET THE GRASS GROW WHERE IT MAY!"
Up to the dread day when the news of the flag of our Union being fired upon, in Charleston harbor, the country resembled the sea in one of those calms preceding a storm. When the placidity betrays hidden and mighty currents, and overhead, in the clear sky, one divines the coursers of the tempest gathering to race in strife like that beneath. Up to Lincoln's arrival in Washington, the nest of sedition, the pro-slavery, peace-at-any-price party slackened in no efforts to retain the statu quo, or worse, a new State of the Southern States branching off as suckers strike from the main stem. William E. Dodge had the courage to face the wrought-up Chief Magistrate, chafed with his narrow escape from the assassins of the railroad journey from Baltimore. Said Mr. Dodge:
"It is for you, Mr. President, to say whether the whole nation shall be plunged into bankruptcy (the slaves were valued as property at two thousand million dollars!); whether the grass shall grow in the streets of our commercial cities." (The balance of trade against the South to the manufacturing and supplying North was stupendous.)
"Then, I say, it shall not," replied Lincoln; "if it depends upon me, the grass will not grow anywhere, save in the fields and meadows."
Mr. Dodge persisted in his sordid and businesslike errand.
"Then you will not go to war on account of slavery?"
"I do not know what my acts may be in the future, beyond this: The Constitution will not be preserved and defended until it is enforced and obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced, and defended--let the grass grow where it will!"