Men stood in little groups and discussed in whispers the significance of his continued stay in the Capital.
"If the President has any friends, the hour has come when they've got to stand by him!" The speaker was a man of fifty, a foreigner who had made Washington his home and liked Lincoln.
"Nonsense, my dear fellow," a tall Westerner replied, "we may have to get a few rifles and guard the White House from somebody's attempt to occupy it, but we'll not need any big guns."
"If you'd heard the talk last night," the foreigner replied, with a shrug of his shoulder, "you'd change your mind——"
The Westerner shook his head:
"No! The General's not that big a fool and the men around him have better sense. And if they haven't—if they all should go crazy—it couldn't be done. They couldn't control the army."
"Did you ever hear the army cheer as 'Little Mac' rides along the line?"
"Yes, but it don't mean an Emperor for all that——"
"I'm not so sure!"
And there were men of National reputation who considered the chances of the man on horseback good at this moment. Such a man had openly attached himself to the General as his attorney—no less a personage than the distinguished Attorney General of the late Cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton. During the closing days of Buchanan's crumbling administration Stanton had become the dominating force of the Capital. His daring and his skill had defeated the best laid schemes of the Southern party and broken its grip on the administration. He had remained in Washington as a lawyer practicing before the Supreme Court and had become the most aggressive observer and critic of Lincoln and his Cabinet. His scorn for the President knew no bounds.