Reading it over carefully, he handed it to me, and gave a little sigh of relief. General conversation ensued. Despondent and weighed down with his load of care, he sought relief in frank speaking. He said, with great earnestness: "God knows that I want to do what is wise and right, but sometimes it is very difficult to determine."
Mr. Lincoln's Familiar Conversation.
He conversed freely of military affairs, but suddenly remarked: "I am talking again! Of course, you will remember that I speak to you only as friends; that none of this must be put in print."
Touching an attack upon Charleston which had long been contemplated, he said that Du Pont had promised, some weeks before, if certain supplies were furnished, to make the assault upon a given day. The supplies were promptly forwarded; the day came and went without any intelligence. Some time after, he sent an officer to Washington, asking for three more iron-clads and a large quantity of deck-plating as indispensable to the preparations.
"I told the officer to say to Commodore Du Pont," observed Mr. Lincoln, "that I fear he does not appreciate at all the value of time."
Opinions about McClellan and Vicksburg.
The Army of the Potomac was next spoken of. The great Fredericksburg disaster was recent, and the public heart was heavy. In regard to General McClellan, the President spoke with discriminating justice:—
"I do not, as some do, regard McClellan either as a traitor or an officer without capacity. He sometimes has bad counselors, but he is loyal, and he has some fine military qualities. I adhered to him after nearly all my Constitutional advisers lost faith in him. But do you want to know when I gave him up? It was after the battle of Antietam. The Blue Ridge was then between our army and Lee's. We enjoyed the great advantage over them which they usually had over us: we had the short line, and they the long one, to the Rebel Capital. I directed McClellan peremptorily to move on Richmond. It was eleven days before he crossed his first man over the Potomac; it was eleven days after that before he crossed the last man. Thus he was twenty-two days in passing the river at a much easier and more practicable ford than that where Lee crossed his entire army between dark one night and daylight the next morning. That was the last grain of sand which broke the camel's back. I relieved McClellan at once. As for Hooker, I have told him forty times that I fear he may err just as much one way as McClellan does the other—may be as over-daring as McClellan is over-cautious."
We inquired about the progress of the Vicksburg campaign. Our armies were on a long expedition up the Yazoo River, designing, by digging canals and threading bayous, to get in the rear of the city and cut off its supplies. Mr. Lincoln said:—
"Of course, men who are in command and on the spot, know a great deal more than I do. But immediately in front of Vicksburg, where the river is a mile wide, the Rebels plant batteries, which absolutely stop our entire fleets. Therefore it does seem to me that upon narrow streams like the Yazoo, Yallabusha, and Tallahatchie, not wide enough for a long boat to turn around in, if any of our steamers which go there ever come back, there must be some mistake about it. If the enemy permits them to survive, it must be either through lack of enterprise or lack of sense."