The President was dismayed; he modified that part of the proclamation referring to slaves, and finally replaced Fremont with General Hunter.
Mrs. Fremont (daughter of Senator T. H. Benton), her husband’s real chief of staff, flew to Washington and sought Mr. Lincoln. It was midnight, but the President gave her an audience. Without waiting for an explanation, she violently charged him with sending an enemy to Missouri to look into Fremont’s case, and threatening that if Fremont desired to he could set up a government for himself.
“I had to exercise all the rude tact I have to avoid quarreling with her,” said Mr. Lincoln afterwards.
“ABE” ON A WOODPILE.
Lincoln’s attempt to make a lawyer of himself under adverse and unpromising circumstances—he was a bare-footed farm-hand—excited comment. And it was not to be wondered. One old man, who was yet alive as late as 1901, had often employed Lincoln to do farm work for him, and was surprised to find him one day sitting barefoot on the summit of a woodpile and attentively reading a book.
“This being an unusual thing for farm-hands in that early day to do,” said the old man, when relating the story, “I asked him what he was reading.
“‘I’m not reading,’ he answered. ‘I’m studying.’