"The editor of the Tribune, gentleman, if on my side, is equal to an army of a hundred thousand men in the field. I've known this from the first. Against me he throws this army in the rear and fires into my back. My grievance is that his Prayer which you have made yours is being used for ammunition in this rear attack. It should have been presented to me first, if it were a genuine prayer. I have read it carefully. It is full of blunders of fact and reasoning, but it fairly expresses the discontent in the minds of many. Its unfair assumptions will poison millions of readers against me——"
He paused, opened a drawer in his desk, took from it a sheet of paper on which he had written in firm, clear hand a brief message in reply, and turned to his petitioners:
"And therefore, gentlemen, I have written a few words in answer to this attack. I ask you to give it the same wide hearing you have accorded the assault. I'll read it to you:
"'Dear Sir:—I have just read yours of the 19th instant addressed to myself through the New York Tribune.
"'If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact, which I know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them.
"'If there be any influences which I believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against them.
"'If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
"'As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution.
"'The sooner the National authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be,—the Union as it was.
"'If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them.