A State governor came to Washington, furious at the number of troops headquarters commanded of him and the mode of collecting them. Irate as he was, General Fry saw him bidding good-by to the Capitol with a placid, even pleased, mien. The general inquired of Lincoln himself how he had been so miraculously mollified.
"I suppose you had to make large concessions to him, as he returns from you entirely satisfied?" suggested the general.
"Oh, no," replied the President, "I did not concede anything.
"You know how that Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the middle of his field? To the inquiries of his neighbors, he announced he had gotten rid of it.
"'How did you do it?' they asked. 'It was too big to haul away, too knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn. Whatever did you do?'
"'Well, now, boys, if you won't tell the secret, I'll tell you how. I just plowed 'round it!'
"Now, Fry, don't tell anybody, but I just plowed around the governor!"--(On the authority of General James B. Fry.)
NOT THE RIGHT "CLAY" TO CEMENT A UNION.
In 1864, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and a great authority among the farming class and the extremists, consented to attend an abortive peace consultation with Southern representatives, George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, and Clement C. Clay, at Niagara Falls. Clay was so set upon Jefferson Davis being still left as a ruler in some high degree which would condone his action as President of the seceded States, the project, like others, was a "fizzle," as Lincoln would have said. To our President, Henry Clay was the "beau-ideal of a statesman"; but it was clear that his namesake was not of the Clay to cement a new Union!