“Why, if any one else had been President and had gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed; but I was not scared about myself a bit.”
JEFF. DAVIS’ REPLY TO LINCOLN.
On the 20th of July, 1864, Horace Greeley crossed into Canada to confer with refugee rebels at Niagara. He bore with him this paper from the President:
“To Whom It May Concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war with the United States, will be received and considered by the executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms and other substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways.”
To this Jefferson Davis replied: “We are not fighting for slavery; we are fighting for independence.”
LINCOLN WAS a GENTLEMAN.
Lincoln was compelled to contend with the results of the ill-judged zeal of politicians, who forced ahead his flatboat and rail-splitting record, with the homely surroundings of his earlier days, and thus, obscured for the time, the other fact that, always having the heart, he had long since acquired the manners of a true gentleman.
So, too, did he suffer from Eastern censors, who did not take those surroundings into account, and allowed nothing for his originality of character. One of these critics heard at Washington that Mr. Lincoln, in speaking at different times of some move or thing, said “it had petered out;” that some other one’s plan “wouldn’t gibe;” and being asked if the War and the cause of the Union were not a great care to him, replied: