[ { "id": "L5-0090#0", "doc": "L5-0090", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Farewell address at Springfield, 11 Feb 1861 (Lapsley)", "text": "MY FRIENDS:--One who has never been placed in a like position cannot understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than twenty-five years I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here the most cherished ties of earth were assumed. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you, my friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me I cannot prevail; but if the same almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me I shall not fail; I shall succeed. Let us pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask that with equal sincerity and faith you will all invoke His wisdom and goodness for me. With these words I must leave you; for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now wish you an affectionate farewell.", "words": 223 }, { "id": "basler-IV-0356#0", "doc": "basler-IV-0356", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 22 Feb 1861 (reported)", "text": "FELLOW CITIZENS: — I am invited and called before you to participate in raising above Independence Hall the flag of our country, with an additional star upon it. (Cheers.) I propose now, in advance of performing this very pleasant and complimentary duty, to say a few words. I propose to say that when that flag \"was originally raised here it had but thirteen stars. I wish to call your attention to the fact, that, under the blessing of God, each additional star added to that flag has given additional prosperity and happiness to this country until it has advanced to its present condition; and its welfare in the future, as well as in the past, is in your hands. (Cheers.) Cultivating the spirit that animated our fathers, who gave renown and celebrity to this Hall, cherishing that fraternal feeling which has so long characterized us as a nation, excluding passion, ill-temper and precipitate action on all occasions, I think we may promise ourselves that not only the new star placed upon that flag shall be permitted to remain there to our permanent prosperity for years to come, but additional ones shall from time to time be placed there, until we shall number as was anticipated by FEBRUARY 22, l86l the great historian, five hundred millions of happy and prosperous people. (Great applause.) With these few remarks, I proceed to the very agreeable duty assigned me.", "words": 235 }, { "id": "L5-0128#0", "doc": "L5-0128", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1861, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself, and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse.", "words": 173 }, { "id": "L5-0128#1", "doc": "L5-0128", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1861, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "L5-0128#2", "doc": "L5-0128", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1861, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successors. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals.", "words": 151 }, { "id": "L5-0128#3", "doc": "L5-0128", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1861, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "L5-0128#4", "doc": "L5-0128", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1861, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to \"preserve, protect, and defend\" it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.", "words": 191 }, { "id": "basler-IV-0617#0", "doc": "basler-IV-0617", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Ephraim D. and Phoebe Ellsworth, 25 May 1861 (ALS)", "text": "My dear Sir and Madam, In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one's country, and of bright hopes for one's self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall. In size, in years, and in youthful appearance, a boy only, his power to command men, was surpassingly great. This power, combined with a fine intellect, an indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military, constituted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent, in that department, I ever knew'. And yet he was singularly modest and deferential in social intercourse. My acquaintance with him began less than two years ago; yet through the latter half of the intervening period, it was as intimate as the disparity of our ages, and my engrossing engagements, would permit.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "basler-IV-0617#1", "doc": "basler-IV-0617", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Ephraim D. and Phoebe Ellsworth, 25 May 1861 (ALS)", "text": "To me, he appeared to have no indulgences or pastimes; and I never heard him utter a profane, or an intemperate word. What was conclusive of his good heart, he never forgot his parents. The honors he la- MAY 26, l86l bored for so laudably, and, in the sad end, so gallantly gave his life, he meant for them, no less than for himself. In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child. May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power. Sincerely your friend in a common affliction —", "words": 120 }, { "id": "basler-IV-0931#0", "doc": "basler-IV-0931", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Mrs. John C. Fremont, 12 Sep 1861 (ADfS)", "text": "My dear Madam — Your two notes of to-day are before me. I answered the letter you bore me from Gen. Fremont, on yesterday; and not hearing from you during the day, I sent the answer to him by mail. It is not exactly correct, as you say you were told by the elder Mr. Blair, to say that I sent Post-Master-General Blair to St. Louis to examine into that Department, and report. Post-Master-General Blair did go, with my approbation, to see and converse with Gen. Fremont as a friend. I do not feel authorized to furnish you with copies of letters in my possession without the consent of the writers. No impression has been made on my mind against the honor or integrity of Gen. Fremont; and I now enter my protest against being understood as acting in any hostility towards him. Your Obt. Servt", "words": 150 }, { "id": "L6-0118#0", "doc": "L6-0118", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Appeal to the border-state representatives, 12 Jul 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "GENTLEMEN:--After the adjournment of Congress now very near, I shall have no opportunity of seeing you for several months. Believing that you of the border States hold more power for good than any other equal number of members, I feel it a duty which I cannot justifiably waive to make this appeal to you. I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual-emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended. And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and swift means of ending it. Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "L6-0118#1", "doc": "L6-0118", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Appeal to the border-state representatives, 12 Jul 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "But you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own States. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever. Most of you have treated me with kindness and consideration and I trust you will not now think I improperly touch what is exclusively your own, when, for the sake of the whole country, I ask, Can you, for your States, do better than to take the course I urge? Discarding punctilio and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and looking only to the unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you do better in any possible event?", "words": 151 }, { "id": "L6-0118#2", "doc": "L6-0118", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Appeal to the border-state representatives, 12 Jul 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "You prefer that the constitutional relation of the States to the nation shall be practically restored without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty in this respect, under the Constitution and my oath of office, would be performed. But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war. The incidents of the war cannot be avoided. If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion--by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event!", "words": 157 }, { "id": "L6-0150#0", "doc": "L6-0150", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Horace Greeley, 22 Aug 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "DEAR SIR:--I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself through the New York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may 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 any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "L6-0150#1", "doc": "L6-0150", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Horace Greeley, 22 Aug 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "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. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "L6-0150#2", "doc": "L6-0150", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Horace Greeley, 22 Aug 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. Yours,", "words": 127 }, { "id": "L6-0192#0", "doc": "L6-0192", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to a serenade, 24 Sep 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "I appear before you to do little more than acknowledge the courtesy you pay me, and to thank you for it. I have not been distinctly informed why it is that on this occasion you appear to do me this honor, though I suppose it is because of the proclamation. What I did, I did after a very full deliberation, and under a very heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. I can only trust in God I have made no mistake. I shall make no attempt on this occasion to sustain what I have done or said by any comment. It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment and, maybe, take action upon it. I will say no more upon this subject. In my position I am environed with difficulties.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "L6-0192#1", "doc": "L6-0192", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to a serenade, 24 Sep 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "Yet they are scarcely so great as the difficulties of those who upon the battle-field are endeavoring to purchase with their blood and their lives the future happiness and prosperity of this country. Let us never forget them. On the fourteenth and seventeenth days of this present month there have been battles bravely, skillfully, and successfully fought. We do not yet know the particulars. Let us be sure that, in giving praise to certain individuals, we do no injustice to others. I only ask you, at the conclusion of these few remarks, to give three hearty cheers for all good and brave officers and men who fought those successful battles.", "words": 111 }, { "id": "L6-0232#0", "doc": "L6-0232", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Carl Schurz, 24 Nov 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "MY DEAR SIR--I have just received and read your letter of the 20th. The purport of it is that we lost the late elections and the administration is failing because the war is unsuccessful, and that I must not flatter myself that I am not justly to blame for it. I certainly know that if the war fails the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me. I understand you now to be willing to accept the help of men who are not Republicans, provided they have \"heart in it.\"", "words": 135 }, { "id": "L6-0232#1", "doc": "L6-0232", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Carl Schurz, 24 Nov 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "Agreed. I want no others. But who is to be the judge of hearts, or of \"heart in it\"? If I must discard my own judgment and take yours, I must also take that of others and by the time I should reject all I should be advised to reject, I should have none left, Republicans or others not even yourself. For be assured, my dear sir, there are men who have \"heart in it\" that think you are performing your part as poorly as you think I am performing mine. I certainly have been dissatisfied with the slowness of Buell and McClellan; but before I relieved them I had great fears I should not find successors to them who would do better; and I am sorry to add that I have seen little since to relieve those fears.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "L6-0232#2", "doc": "L6-0232", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Carl Schurz, 24 Nov 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "I do not see clearly the prospect of any more rapid movements. I fear we shall at last find out that the difficulty is in our case rather than in particular generals. I wish to disparage no one certainly not those who sympathize with me; but I must say I need success more than I need sympathy, and that I have not seen the so much greater evidence of getting success from my sympathizers than from those who are denounced as the contrary. It does seem to me that in the field the two classes have been very much alike in what they have done and what they have failed to do. In sealing their faith with their blood, Baker and Lyon and Bohien and Richardson, Republicans, did all that men could do; but did they any more than Kearny and Stevens and Reno and Mansfield, none of whom were Republicans, and some at least of whom have been bitterly and repeatedly denounced to me as secession sympathizers?", "words": 168 }, { "id": "L6-0232#3", "doc": "L6-0232", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Carl Schurz, 24 Nov 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "I will not perform the ungrateful task of comparing cases of failure. In answer to your question, \"Has it not been publicly stated in the newspapers, and apparently proved as a fact, that from the commencement of the war the enemy was continually supplied with information by some of the confidential subordinates of as important an officer as Adjutant-General Thomas?\" I must say \"No,\" as far as my knowledge extends. And I add that if you can give any tangible evidence upon the subject, I will thank you to come to this city and do so. Very truly your friend,", "words": 101 }, { "id": "L6-0237#0", "doc": "L6-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Annual message to Congress, 1 Dec 1862, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "What I have said of the proportion of free colored persons to the whites in the District is from the census of 1860, having no reference to persons called contrabands nor to those made free by the act of Congress abolishing slavery here. The plan consisting of these articles is recommended, not but that a restoration of the national authority would be accepted without its adoption. Nor will the war nor proceedings under the proclamation of September 22, 1862, be stayed because of the recommendation of this plan. Its timely adoption, I doubt not, would bring restoration, and thereby stay both. And notwithstanding this plan, the recommendation that Congress provide by law for compensating any State which may adopt emancipation before this plan shall have been acted upon is hereby earnestly renewed.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "L6-0237#1", "doc": "L6-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Annual message to Congress, 1 Dec 1862, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "Such would be only an advance part of the plan, and the same arguments apply to both. This plan is recommended as a means, not in exclusion of, but additional to, all others for restoring and preserving the national authority throughout the Union. The subject is presented exclusively in its economical aspect. The plan would, I am confident, secure peace more speedily and maintain it more permanently than can be done by force alone, while all it would cost, considering amounts and manner of payment and times of payment, would be easier paid than will be the additional cost of the war if we rely solely upon force. It is much, very much, that it would cost no blood at all. The plan is proposed as permanent constitutional law. It cannot become such without the concurrence of, first, two thirds of Congress, and afterwards three fourths of the States.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "L6-0237#2", "doc": "L6-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Annual message to Congress, 1 Dec 1862, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "The requisite three fourths of the States will necessarily include seven of the slave States. Their concurrence, if obtained, will give assurance of their severally adopting emancipation at no very distant day upon the new constitutional terms. This assurance would end the struggle now and save the Union forever. I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the chief magistrate of the nation, nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me you will perceive no want of respect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may seem to display.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "L6-0237#3", "doc": "L6-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Annual message to Congress, 1 Dec 1862, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here--Congress and executive--can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means so certainly or so speedily assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not \"Can any of us imagine better?\" but \"Can we all do better?\" Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, \"Can we do better?\" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "L6-0237#4", "doc": "L6-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Annual message to Congress, 1 Dec 1862, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.", "words": 199 }, { "id": "L6-0261#0", "doc": "L6-0261", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Fanny McCullough, 23 Dec 1862 (Lapsley)", "text": "DEAR FANNY:--It is with deep regret that I learn of the death of your kind and brave father, and especially that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned ever to expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress, perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say, and you need only to believe it to feel better at once. The memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before. Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother. Your sincere friend,", "words": 192 }, { "id": "L6-0288#0", "doc": "L6-0288", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To the working-men of Manchester, 19 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to fireside in the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of administration which have been and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our frame of government and my official oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "L6-0288#1", "doc": "L6-0288", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To the working-men of Manchester, 19 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public safety from time to time to adopt. I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people; but I have at the same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has served to authorize a belief that the past actions and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have, therefore, reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances--to some of which you kindly allude--induce me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised by the United States, they would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain.", "words": 167 }, { "id": "L6-0288#2", "doc": "L6-0288", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To the working-men of Manchester, 19 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic. I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "L6-0288#3", "doc": "L6-0288", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To the working-men of Manchester, 19 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the working-men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstance, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments, you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.", "words": 179 }, { "id": "L6-0294#0", "doc": "L6-0294", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Joseph Hooker, 26 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "GENERAL:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer.", "words": 157 }, { "id": "L6-0294#1", "doc": "L6-0294", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Joseph Hooker, 26 Jan 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit that you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. Yours very truly,", "words": 185 }, { "id": "L6-0399#0", "doc": "L6-0399", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Erastus Corning and others, 12 Jun 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "General Jackson arrested him. When the officer undertook to serve the writ of habeas corpus, General Jackson took it from him, and sent him away with a copy. Holding the judge in custody a few days, the general sent him beyond the limits of his encampment, and set him at liberty with an order to remain till the ratification of peace should be regularly announced, or until the British should have left the southern coast. A day or two more elapsed, the ratification of the treaty of peace was regularly announced, and the judge and others were fully liberated. A few days more, and the judge called General Jackson into court and fined him $1000 for having arrested him and the others named. The General paid the fine, and then the matter rested for nearly thirty years, when Congress refunded principal and interest.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "L6-0399#1", "doc": "L6-0399", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Erastus Corning and others, 12 Jun 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "The late Senator Douglas, then in the House of Representatives, took a leading part in the debates, in which the constitutional question was much discussed. I am not prepared to say whom the journals would show to have voted for the measure. It may be remarked--first, that we had the same Constitution then as now; secondly, that we then had a case of invasion, and now we have a case of rebellion; and, thirdly, that the permanent right of the people to public discussion, the liberty of speech and of the press, the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the habeas corpus suffered no detriment whatever by that conduct of General Jackson, or its subsequent approval by the American Congress. And yet, let me say that, in my own discretion, I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.", "words": 147 }, { "id": "L6-0399#2", "doc": "L6-0399", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Erastus Corning and others, 12 Jun 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "While I cannot shift the responsibility from myself, I hold that, as a general rule, the commander in the field is the better judge of the necessity in any particular case. Of course I must practice a general directory and revisory power in the matter. One of the resolutions expresses the opinion of the meeting that arbitrary arrests will have the effect to divide and distract those who should be united in suppressing the rebellion, and I am specifically called on to discharge Mr. Vallandigham. I regard this as, at least, a fair appeal to me on the expediency of exercising a constitutional power which I think exists. In response to such appeal I have to say, it gave me pain when I learned that Mr. Vallandigham had been arrested (that is, I was pained that there should have seemed to be a necessity for arresting him), and that it will afford me great pleasure to discharge him so soon as I can by any means believe the public safety will not suffer by it.", "words": 175 }, { "id": "L6-0399#3", "doc": "L6-0399", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Erastus Corning and others, 12 Jun 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "I further say that, as the war progresses, it appears to me, opinion and action, which were in great confusion at first, take shape and fall into more regular channels, so that the necessity for strong dealing with them gradually decreases. I have every reason to desire that it should cease altogether, and far from the least is my regard for the opinions and wishes of those who, like the meeting at Albany, declare their purpose to sustain the government in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the rebellion. Still, I must continue to do so much as may seem to be required by the public safety.", "words": 108 }, { "id": "L6-0440#0", "doc": "L6-0440", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 7 Jul 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call; but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called. How long ago is it Eighty-odd years since, on the Fourth of July, for the first time in the history of the world, a nation, by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth \"that all men are created equal.\" That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the Fourth of July has had several very peculiar recognitions. The two men most distinguished in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having penned it, and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate--the only two of the fifty-five who signed it and were elected Presidents of the United States.", "words": 157 }, { "id": "L6-0440#1", "doc": "L6-0440", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 7 Jul 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper, it pleased Almighty God to take both from this stage of action. This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history. Another President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence on the same day and month of the year; and now on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day. And not only so, but in the succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly fought that they might be called one great battle, on the first, second, and third of the month of July; and on the fourth the cohorts of those who opposed the Declaration that all men are created equal, \"turned tail\" and run.", "words": 166 }, { "id": "L6-0440#2", "doc": "L6-0440", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 7 Jul 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme, and the occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the occasion. I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of their country from the beginning of the war. These are trying occasions, not only in success, but for the want of success. I dislike to mention the name of one single officer, lest I might do wrong to those I might forget. Recent events bring up glorious names, and particularly prominent ones; but these I will not mention. Having said this much, I will now take the music.", "words": 121 }, { "id": "L6-0481#0", "doc": "L6-0481", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James H. Hackett, 17 Aug 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "MY DEAR SIR:--Months ago I should have acknowledged the receipt of your book and accompanying kind note; and I now have to beg your pardon for not having done so. For one of my age I have seen very little of the drama. The first presentation of Falstaff I ever saw was yours here, last winter or spring. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay is to say, as I truly can, I am very anxious to see it again. Some of Shakespeare's plays I have never read, while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any un-professional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard III., Henry VIII., Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing \"Oh, my offense is rank,\" surpasses that commencing \"To be or not to be.\" But pardon this small attempt at criticism. I should like to hear you pronounce the opening speech of Richard III. Will you not soon visit Washington again? If you do, please call and let me make your personal acquaintance. Yours truly,", "words": 192 }, { "id": "L6-0486#0", "doc": "L6-0486", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James C. Conkling, 26 Aug 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "Among the commanders who hold these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called \"Abolitionism,\" or with \"Republican Party politics,\" but who hold them purely as military opinions. I submit their opinions are entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith. You say that you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively, to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "L6-0486#1", "doc": "L6-0486", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James C. Conkling, 26 Aug 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept. The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "L6-0486#2", "doc": "L6-0486", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James C. Conkling, 26 Aug 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand. On the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "L6-0486#3", "doc": "L6-0486", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James C. Conkling, 26 Aug 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "At all the watery margins they have been present; not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic--for the principle it lives by and keeps alive--for man's vast future--thanks to all. Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "L6-0486#4", "doc": "L6-0486", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James C. Conkling, 26 Aug 1863, closing part (Lapsley)", "text": "And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it. Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will give us the rightful result. Yours very truly,", "words": 101 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0038#0", "doc": "basler-VII-0038", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Remarks to citizens of Gettysburg, 18 Nov 1863 (reported)", "text": "I appear before you, fellow-citizens, merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while at least, were I to commence to make a speech. I do not appear before you for the purpose of doing so, and for several substantial reasons. The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make. Laughter. In my position it is somewhat important that I should not say any foolish things. A VOICE — If you can help it. Mr. LINCOLN — It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all. Laughter. Believing that is my present condition this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from addressing you further.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "L7-0027#0", "doc": "L7-0027", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Gettysburg Address, 19 Nov 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "L7-0027#1", "doc": "L7-0027", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Gettysburg Address, 19 Nov 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.", "words": 129 }, { "id": "L7-0012#0", "doc": "L7-0012", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To James H. Hackett, 2 Nov 1863 (Lapsley)", "text": "[Private.] EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 2, 1863. JAMES H. HACKETT. MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of October 22d is received, as also was, in due course, that of October 3d. I look forward with pleasure to the fulfillment of the promise made in the former to visit Washington the following winter and to \"call.\" Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject mentioned in that of the 22d. My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print, yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments upon it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0555#0", "doc": "basler-VII-0555", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association, 21 Mar 1864 (reported)", "text": "The honorary membership in your Association, as generously tendered, is gratefully accepted. You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing re-bellion, means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of African Slavery — that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working people. Partly to show that this view has not escaped my attention, and partly that I cannot better express myself, I read a passage from the Message to Congress in December 1861: \"It continues to develop that the insurrection ******* * * * till all of liberty shall be lost.\"2 The view's then expressed remain unchanged, nor have I much to add. None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudice, working division and hostility among themselves.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0555#1", "doc": "basler-VII-0555", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association, 21 Mar 1864 (reported)", "text": "The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer, was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family re-lation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprize. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0606#0", "doc": "basler-VII-0606", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr 1864 (ADfS)", "text": "My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows: \"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0606#1", "doc": "basler-VII-0606", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr 1864 (ADfS)", "text": "I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every in-dispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0606#2", "doc": "basler-VII-0606", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr 1864 (ADfS)", "text": "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come.", "words": 148 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0606#3", "doc": "basler-VII-0606", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr 1864 (ADfS)", "text": "When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, — no loss by it any how or any2 where.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0606#4", "doc": "basler-VII-0606", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr 1864 (ADfS)", "text": "On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure. \" And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth. \" I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0654#0", "doc": "basler-VII-0654", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 18 Apr 1864 (AD)", "text": "Ladies and Gentlemen — Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people, assembled here, to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago, the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now, is both great, and gratifying. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it. But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0654#1", "doc": "basler-VII-0654", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 18 Apr 1864 (AD)", "text": "Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected — how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes, and God disposes. But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future. The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's APRIL l8, 1864 labor.", "words": 172 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0654#2", "doc": "basler-VII-0654", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 18 Apr 1864 (AD)", "text": "Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and in-compatable names — liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.", "words": 153 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0654#3", "doc": "basler-VII-0654", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 18 Apr 1864 (AD)", "text": "Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary, has been repudiated. It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at great length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought to say a word. A painful rumor, true I fear, has reached us of the massacre, by the rebel forces, at Fort Pillow, in the West end of Tennessee, on the Mississippi river, of some three hundred colored soldiers and white officers, who had just been overpowered by their assailants.2 There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the government is doing it's duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0654#4", "doc": "basler-VII-0654", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 18 Apr 1864 (AD)", "text": "At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I re-solved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am re-sponsible for it to the American people, to the Christian world, to history, and on my final account to God. Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it. It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "basler-VII-0765#0", "doc": "basler-VII-0765", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to Methodists, 18 May 1864 (ADS)", "text": "In response to your address, allow me to attest the accuracy of it's historical statements; indorse the sentiments it expresses; and thank you, in the nation's name, for the sure promise it gives. Nobly sustained as the government has been by all the churches, I would utter nothing which might, in the least, appear invidious against any. Yet, without this, it may fairly be said that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is, by it's greater numbers, the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be God, Who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "L7-0172#0", "doc": "L7-0172", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at the Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia, 16 Jun 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "I suppose that this toast is intended to open the way for me to say something. War at the best is terrible, and this of ours in its magnitude and duration is one of the most terrible the world has ever known. It has deranged business totally in many places, and perhaps in all. It has destroyed property, destroyed life, and ruined homes. It has produced a national debt and a degree of taxation unprecedented in the history of this country. It has caused mourning among us until the heavens may almost be said to be hung in black. And yet it continues. It has had accompaniments not before known in the history of the world. I mean the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, with their labors for the relief of the soldiers, and the Volunteer Refreshment Saloons, understood better by those who hear me than by myself, and these fairs, first begun at Chicago and next held in Boston, Cincinnati, and other cities.", "words": 163 }, { "id": "L7-0172#1", "doc": "L7-0172", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at the Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia, 16 Jun 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "The motive and object that lie at the bottom of them are worthy of the most that we can do for the soldier who goes to fight the battles of his country. From the fair and tender hand of women is much, very much, done for the soldier, continually reminding him of the care and thought for him at home. The knowledge that he is not forgotten is grateful to his heart. Another view of these institutions is worthy of thought. They are voluntary contributions, giving proof that the national resources are not at all exhausted, and that the national patriotism will sustain us through all. It is a pertinent question, When is this war to end? I do not wish to name the day when it will end, lest the end should not come at the given time.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "L7-0172#2", "doc": "L7-0172", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Address at the Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia, 16 Jun 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "We accepted this war, and did not begin it. We accepted it for an object, and when that object is accomplished the war will end, and I hope to God that it will never end until that object is accomplished. We are going through with our task, so far as I am concerned, if it takes us three years longer. I have not been in the habit of making predictions, but I am almost tempted now to hazard one. I will. It is, that Grant is this evening in a position, with Meade and Hancock, of Pennsylvania, whence he can never be dislodged by the enemy until Richmond is taken. If I shall discover that General Grant may be greatly facilitated in the capture of Richmond by rapidly pouring to him a large number of armed men at the briefest notice, will you go? Will you march on with him? [Cries of \"Yes, yes.\"] Then I shall call upon you when it is necessary.", "words": 164 }, { "id": "basler-VII-1103#0", "doc": "basler-VII-1103", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment, 22 Aug 1864 (reported)", "text": "I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country. I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "basler-VII-1103#1", "doc": "basler-VII-1103", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment, 22 Aug 1864 (reported)", "text": "It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright — not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.", "words": 87 }, { "id": "basler-VII-1153#0", "doc": "basler-VII-1153", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Eliza P. Gurney, 4 Sep 1864 (ALS)", "text": "My esteemed friend. Washington, September 4. 1864. I have not forgotten — probably never shall forget — the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends visited me on a Sabbath forenoon two years ago. Nor has your kind letter, written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten. In all, it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance on God. I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "basler-VII-1153#1", "doc": "basler-VII-1153", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Eliza P. Gurney, 4 Sep 1864 (ALS)", "text": "Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay. Your people — the Friends — have had, and are having, a verygreat trial. On principle, and faith, opposed to both war and oppression, they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In this hard dilemma, some have chosen one horn and some the other. For those appealing to me on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall do, the best I could and can, in my own conscience, under my oath to the law. That you believe this I doubt not; and believing it, I shall still receive, for our country and myself, your earnest prayers to our Father in Heaven. Your sincere friend", "words": 148 }, { "id": "L7-0237#0", "doc": "L7-0237", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to the loyal colored people of Baltimore, 7 Sep 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "I can only say now, as I have often said before, it has always been a sentiment with me, that all mankind should be free. So far as I have been able, so far as came within my sphere, I have always acted as I believed was just and right, and done all I could for the good of mankind. I have, in letters sent forth from this office, expressed myself better than I can now. In regard to the great Book, I have only to say it is the best gift which God has ever given to man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book. But for that Book, we could not know right from wrong. All those things desirable to man are contained in it. I return you sincere thanks for this very elegant copy of this great Book of God which you present.", "words": 155 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0182#0", "doc": "basler-VIII-0182", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 8 Nov 1864 (reported)", "text": "FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: Even before 1 had bean in-formed by you that this compliment was paid m« by loyal citizens of Pennsylvania friendly to me, I had inferred that you were of that portion of my countrymen who think that the bent interests of the nation are to be subserved by the* support of the present Adniin* istratlon. I do not pretend to say that you who think so embrace all the patriotism and loyalty of the country. But 1 do believe, and I trust, without personal interest* that the welfare of the* country does require that such support and indorsement Iw given* f earnestly believe that the consequences of tins day's work, if it be* as you assure me and as now seems prolmble, will lie to the lasting advantage, if not to the very salvation, of the country.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0182#1", "doc": "basler-VIII-0182", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 8 Nov 1864 (reported)", "text": "I cannot at this hour say what has }x*en the result of the election; hut, whatever It may be* I have no desire to modify this o|miit»u<- • that all who have labored to-day in behalf of the Union organization, have wrought for the best interests of their country ami the world, not only for the present, but for all future ages. I am thankful to fkwl for this approval of the people. But while tlwply grateful for this murk of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph* 1 dci licit impugn the* motives of any one opposed to me. It is 210 pleasure to to triumph over any one; Imt I give thanks to tho for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by government nncl the rights of humanity, 1 New Ycirk TiVwrjr, November 10* iftft*. Till* if g^ 1864, in Nicolay and Hay (X, 361-64), Hity** trttmrription of this fi{w«tch, st*t tlie note to $*titc;t»ivt%i tn n uti Nov«*rnb^r to, infra.", "words": 189 }, { "id": "L7-0276#0", "doc": "L7-0276", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 10 Nov 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point the present rebellion brought our government to a severe test, and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections; and if the election could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "L7-0276#1", "doc": "L7-0276", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 10 Nov 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. But the election, along with its incidental and undesirable strife, has done good, too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "L7-0276#2", "doc": "L7-0276", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 10 Nov 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "It shows, also, how sound and strong we still are. It shows that even among the candidates of the same party, he who is most devoted to the Union and most opposed to treason can receive most of the people's votes. It shows, also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, and patriotic men are better than gold. But the rebellion continues, and, now that the election is over, may not all have a common interest to reunite in a common effort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "L7-0276#3", "doc": "L7-0276", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade, 10 Nov 1864 (Lapsley)", "text": "While I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God, for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed by the result. May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit towards those who have? And now, let me close by asking three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers and seamen, and their gallant and skillful commanders.", "words": 97 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0216#0", "doc": "basler-VIII-0216", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to Maryland Union Committee, 17 Nov 1864 (reported)", "text": "The President, in reply, said: \"He had to confess that he was fully notified of the intention thus kindly to call upon him, and by that means he had a fair opportunity offered to be ready with a set speech; but he had not prepared one, having been very busy with his public duties; therefore, he could only speak as the thoughts might occur to him. He would not attempt to conceal from them the fact that he was gratified at the results of the Presidential election, and he would assure them that he had kept as near as he could to the exercise of his best judgment, for the promotion of the interests of the whole country; and now, to have the seal of approbation marked on the course he had pursued was exceedingly gratifying to his feelings.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0216#1", "doc": "basler-VIII-0216", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to Maryland Union Committee, 17 Nov 1864 (reported)", "text": "He might go further and say that, in as large proportion as any other man, his pleasure consisted in the belief that the policy he had pursued would be the best and the only one that could save the country. He had said before, and would now repeat, that he indulged in no feeling of trittmph over any one who thought or acted differently from himself. He had no such feeling towards any living man. \"When he thought of Maryland in particular, it was that the people had more than double their share in what had occurred in the elections. He thought the adoption of their free State constitution was a bigger thing than their part in the Presidential election. He could, any day, have stipulated to lose Maryland in the Presidential election to save its free constitution, because the Presidential election comes every four years and the adoption of the constitution, being a good thing, could not be undone.", "words": 160 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0216#2", "doc": "basler-VIII-0216", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to Maryland Union Committee, 17 Nov 1864 (reported)", "text": "He therefore thought in that they had a victory for the right worth a great deal more than their part in the Presidential election, although he thought well of that. He once before said, and would now say again, that those who had differed from us and opposed us would see that it was better for their own good that they had been defeated, rather than to have been successful. Thanking them for their compliment, he said he would bring to a close that short speech.\"", "words": 86 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0334#0", "doc": "basler-VIII-0334", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To William T. Sherman, 26 Dec 1864 (ALS)", "text": "My dear General Sherman. Dec. 26, 1864. Many, many, thanks for your Christmas-gift — the capture of Savannah. When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious s if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that \"nothing risked, nothing gained\" I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce. And, taking the work of Gen. Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages; but, in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole — Hood's army — it brings those who sat in darkness, to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave Gen. Grant and yourself to decide. Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army, officers and men. Yours very truly A. Lm COUNT.", "words": 192 }, { "id": "L7-0324#0", "doc": "L7-0324", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to a committee, 24 Jan 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "I accept with emotions of profoundest gratitude, the beautiful gift you have been pleased to present to me. You will, of course, expect that I acknowledge it. So much has been said about Gettysburg and so well, that for me to attempt to say more may perhaps only serve to weaken the force of that which has already been said. A most graceful and eloquent tribute was paid to the patriotism and self-denying labors of the American ladies, on the occasion of the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, by our illustrious friend, Edward Everett, now, alas! departed from earth. His life was a truly great one, and I think the greatest part of it was that which crowned its closing years, I wish you to read, if you have not already done so, the eloquent and truthful words which he then spoke of the women of America. Truly, the services they have rendered to the defenders of our country in this perilous time, and are yet rendering, can never be estimated as they ought to be. For your kind wishes to me personally, I beg leave to render you likewise my sincerest thanks. I assure you they are reciprocated. And now, gentlemen and ladies, may God bless you all.", "words": 212 }, { "id": "L7-0332#0", "doc": "L7-0332", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade on the Thirteenth Amendment, 1 Feb 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "He supposed the passage through Congress of the Constitutional amendment for the abolishing of slavery throughout the United States was the occasion to which he was indebted for the honor of this call. The occasion was one of congratulation to the country, and to the whole world. But there is a task yet before us--to go forward and consummate by the votes of the States that which Congress so nobly began yesterday. He had the honor to inform those present that Illinois had already done the work. Maryland was about half through, but he felt proud that Illinois was a little ahead. He thought this measure was a very fitting if not an indispensable adjunct to the winding up of the great difficulty. He wished the reunion of all the States perfected, and so effected as to remove all causes of disturbance in the future; and, to attain this end, it was necessary that the original disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "L7-0332#1", "doc": "L7-0332", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Response to a serenade on the Thirteenth Amendment, 1 Feb 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "He thought all would bear him witness that he had never shirked from doing all that he could to eradicate slavery, by issuing an Emancipation Proclamation. But that proclamation falls short of what the amendment will be when fully consummated. A question might be raised whether the proclamation was legally valid. It might be added, that it only aided those who came into our lines, and that it was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up; or that it would have no effect upon the children of the slaves born hereafter; in fact, it would be urged that it did not meet the evil. But this amendment is a king's cure for all evils. It winds the whole thing up. He would repeat, that it was the fitting if not the indispensable adjunct to the consummation of the great game we are playing. He could not but congratulate all present--himself, the country, and the whole world upon this great moral victory.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0657#0", "doc": "basler-VIII-0657", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Reply to notification committee, 1 Mar 1865 (AD)", "text": "Having served four years in the depths of a great, and yet -emended national peril, I can view this call to a second term, in nowise more flatteringly to myself, than as an expression of the public judgment, that I may better finish a difficult work, in which I have labored from the first, than could any one less severely schooled to the task. In this view, and with assured reliance on that Almighty Ruler who has so graceously sustained us thus far; and with increased gratitude to the generous people for their continued confidence, I accept the renewed trust, with it's yet onerous and perplexing duties and responsibilities. Please communicate this to the two Houses of Congress.", "words": 118 }, { "id": "L7-0364#0", "doc": "L7-0364", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:--At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "L7-0364#1", "doc": "L7-0364", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population was colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "L7-0364#2", "doc": "L7-0364", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.", "words": 153 }, { "id": "L7-0364#3", "doc": "L7-0364", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. \"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.\" If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "L7-0364#4", "doc": "L7-0364", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar 1865 (Lapsley)", "text": "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, \"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.\" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "basler-VIII-0724#0", "doc": "basler-VIII-0724", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "To Thurlow Weed, 15 Mar 1865 (ALS)", "text": "My dear Sir. Washington, March 15, 1865. Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as — perhaps better than — any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it. Yours truly A. LiisrcoLjisr", "words": 129 }, { "id": "L7-0408#0", "doc": "L7-0408", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Last public address, 11 Apr 1865, opening part (Lapsley)", "text": "FELLOW-CITIZENS--We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be parceled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you. But no part of the honor for plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skillful officers, and brave men, all belongs.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "L7-0408#1", "doc": "L7-0408", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Last public address, 11 Apr 1865, opening part (Lapsley)", "text": "The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part. By these recent successes, the reinauguration of the national authority--reconstruction which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with--no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, Wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.", "words": 147 }, { "id": "L7-0408#2", "doc": "L7-0408", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Last public address, 11 Apr 1865, opening part (Lapsley)", "text": "In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows. In the Annual Message of December, 1863, and the accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State, would be acceptable to and sustained by the Executive Government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan that might possibly be acceptable, and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "L7-0408#3", "doc": "L7-0408", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Last public address, 11 Apr 1865, opening part (Lapsley)", "text": "This plan was in advance submitted to the then Cabinet, and approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members of Congress. But even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "L7-0408#4", "doc": "L7-0408", "author": "lincoln", "group": "lincoln_matched", "label": "Last public address, 11 Apr 1865, opening part (Lapsley)", "text": "So that, as it applied to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any professed emancipationist came to my knowledge until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested in seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident that the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try it.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#0", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "The beginnings of great periods have often been marked and made memorable by striking events. Out of the cloud that hangs around the vague inceptions of revolutions, a startling incident will sometimes flash like lightning, to show that the warring elements have begun their work. The scenes that attended the birth of American nationality formed a not inaccurate type of those that have opened the crusade for its perpetuation. The consolidation of public sentiment which followed the magnificent defeat at Bunker's Hill, in which the spirit of indignant resistance was tempered by the pathetic interest surrounding the fate of Warren, was but a foreshadowing of the instant rally to arms which followed the fall of the beleaguered fort in Charleston harbor, and of the intensity of tragic pathos which has been added to the stern purpose of avenging justice by the murder of Colonel Ellsworth.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#1", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth was born in the little village of Mechanicsville, on the left bank of the Hudson, on the 23d day of April, 1837. When he was very young, his father, through no fault of his own, lost irretrievably his entire fortune, in the tornado of financial ruin that in those years swept from the sea to the mountains. From this disaster he never recovered. Misfortune seems to have followed him through life, with the insatiable pertinacity of the Nemesis of a Greek tragedy. And now in his old age, when for a moment there seemed to shine upon his path the sunshine that promised better days, he finds that suddenly withdrawn, and stands desolate, \"stabbed through the heart's affections, to the heart.\" His younger son died some years ago, of small-pox, in Chicago, and the murder at Alexandria leaves him with his sorrowing wife, lonely, amid the sympathy of the world.", "words": 154 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#2", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "The days of Elmer's childhood and early youth--were passed at Troy and in the city of New York, in pursuits various, but energetic and laborious. There is little of interest in the story of these years. He was a proud, affectionate, sensitive, and generous boy, hampered by circumstance, but conscious of great capabilities,--not morbidly addicted to day-dreaming, but always working heartily for something beyond. He was still very young--when he went to Chicago, and associated himself in business with Mr. Devereux of Massachusetts. They managed for a little while, with much success, an agency for securing patents to inventors. Through the treachery of one in whom they had reposed great confidence they suffered severe losses which obliged them to close their business, and Devereux went back to the East.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#3", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "The next year of Ellsworth's life was a miracle of endurance and uncomplaining fortitude. He read law with great assiduity, and supported himself by copying, in the hours that should have been devoted to recreation. He had no pastimes and very few friends. Not a soul beside himself and the baker who gave him his daily loaf knew how he was living. During all that time, he never slept in a bed, never ate with friends at a social board. So acute was his sense of honor, so delicate his ideas of propriety, that, although himself the most generous of men, he never would accept from acquaintances the slightest favors or courtesies which he was unable to return. He told me once of a severe struggle between inclination and a sense of honor.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#4", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "At a period of extreme hunger, he met a friend in the street who was just starting from the city. He accompanied his friend into a restaurant, wishing to converse with him, but declined taking any refreshment. He represented the savory fragrance of his friend's dinner as almost maddening to his famished senses, while he sat there pleasantly chatting, and deprecating his friend's entreaties to join him in his repast, on the plea that he had just dined. What would have killed an ordinary man did not injure Ellsworth. His iron frame seemed incapable of dissolution or waste. Circumstance had no power to conquer his spirit. His hearty good-humor never gave way. His sense of honor, which was sometimes even fantastic in its delicacy, freed him from the very temptation to wrong.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#5", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He knew there was a better time coming for him. Conscious of great mental and bodily strength, with that bright outlook that industry and honor always give a man, he was perfectly secure of ultimate success. His plans mingled in a singular manner the bright enthusiasm of the youthful dreamer and the eminent practicality of the man of affairs. At one time, his mind was fixed on Mexico,--not with the licentious dreams that excited the ragged Condottieri who followed the fated footsteps of the \"gray-eyed man of Destiny,\" in the wild hope of plunder and power,--nor with the vague reverie in which fanatical theorists construct impossible Utopias on the absurd framework of Icarias or Phalansteries. His clear, bold, and thoroughly executive mind planned a magnificent scheme of commercial enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude along the tortuous banks of the Rio San José.", "words": 161 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#6", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "This was to be the beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise. Then he dreamed of the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of events leading on, first, Emigration, then Protection, and at last Annexation. Yet there was no thought of conquest or rapine. The idea was essentially American and Northern. He never wholly lost that dream. One day last winter, when some one was discussing the propriety of an amputation of the States that seemed thoroughly diseased, Ellsworth swept his hand energetically over the map of Mexico that hung upon the wall, and exclaimed,--\"There is an unanswerable argument against the recognition of the Southern Confederacy.\" But the central idea of Ellsworth's short life was the thorough reorganization of the militia of the United States.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#7", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He had studied with great success the theory of national defence, and, from his observation of the condition of the militia of the several States, he was convinced that there was much of well-directed effort yet lacking to its entire efficiency. In fact, as he expressed it, a well-disciplined body of five thousand troops could land anywhere on our coast and ravage two or three States before an adequate force could get into the field to oppose them. To reform this defective organization, he resolved to devote whatever of talent or energy was his. This was very large undertaking for a boy, whose majority and moustache were still of the substance of things hoped for. But nothing that he could propose to himself ever seemed absurd. He attacked his work with his usual promptness and decision.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#8", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "The conception of a great idea is no proof of a great mind; a man's calibre is shown by the way in which he attempts to realize his idea. A great design planted in a little mind frequently bursts it, and nothing is more pitiable than the spectacle of a man staggering into insanity under a thought too large for him. Ellsworth chose to begin his work simply and practically. He did not write a memorial to the President, to be sent to the Secretary of War, to be referred to the Chief Clerk, to be handed over to File-Clerk No. 99, to be glanced at and quietly thrust into a pigeon-hole labelled \"Crazy and trashy.\" He did not haunt the anteroom of Congressman Somebody, who would promise to bring his plan before the House, and then, bowing him out, give general orders to his footman, \"Not at home, hereafter, to that man.\"", "words": 155 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#9", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He did not float, as some theorists do, ghastly and seedy, around the Adyta of popular editors, begging for space and countenance. He wisely determined to keep his theories to himself until he could illustrate them by living examples. He first put himself in thorough training. He practised the manual of arms in his own room, until his dexterous precision was something akin to the sleight of a juggler. He investigated the theory of every movement in an anatomical view, and made several most valuable improvements on Hardee. He rearranged the manual so that every movement formed the logical groundwork of the succeeding one. He studied the science of fence, so that he could hold a rapier with De Villiers, the most dashing of the Algerine swordsmen. He always had a hand as true as steel, and an eye like a gerfalcon.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#10", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He used to amuse himself by shooting ventilation-holes through his window-panes. Standing ten paces from the window, he could fire the seven shots from his revolver and not shiver the glass beyond the circumference of a half-dollar. I have seen a photograph of his arm taken at this time. The knotted coil of thews and sinews looks like the magnificent exaggerations of antique sculpture. His person was strikingly prepossessing. His form, though slight,--exactly the Napoleonic size,--was very compact and commanding; the head statuesquely poised, and crowned with a luxuriance of curling black hair; a hazel eye, bright, though serene, the eye of a gentleman as well as a soldier; a nose such as you see on Roman medals; a light moustache just shading the lips, that were continually curving into the sunniest smiles.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#11", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "His voice, deep and musical, instantly attracted attention; and his address, though not without soldierly brusqueness, was sincere and courteous. There was one thing his backwoods detractors could never forgive: he always dressed well; and sometimes wore the military insignia presented to him by different organizations. One of these, a gold circle, inscribed with the legend, NON NOBIS, SED PRO PATRIA, was driven into his heart by the slug of the Virginian assassin. He had great tact and executive talent, was a good mathematician, possessed a fine artistic eye, sketched well and rapidly, and in short bore a deft and skilful hand in all gentlemanly exercise. No one ever possessed greater power of enforcing the respect and fastening the affections of men. Strangers soon recognized and acknowledged this power; while to his friends he always seemed like a Paladin or Cavalier of the dead days of romance and beauty.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#12", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He was so generous and loyal, so stainless and brave, that Bayard himself would have been proud of him. The grand bead-roll of the virtues of the Flower of Kings contains the principles that guided his life; he used to read with exquisite appreciation these lines:-- \"To reverence the King as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,-- To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,-- To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,-- To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,-- To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,-- To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her\"; and the rest,-- \"high thoughts, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.\"", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#13", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "Such, in person and character, was Ellsworth, when he organized, on the 4th day of May, 1859, the United States Zouave Cadets of Chicago. This company was the machine upon which he was to experiment. Disregarding all extant works upon tactics, he drew up a simpler system for the use of his men. Throwing aside the old ideas of soldierly bearing, he taught them to use vigor, promptness, and ease. Discarding the stiff buckram strut of martial tradition, he educated them to move with the loafing insouciance of the Indian, or the graceful ease of the panther. He tore off their choking collars and binding coats, and invented a uniform which, though too flashy and conspicuous for actual service, was very bright and dashing for holiday occasions, and left the wearer perfectly free to fight, strike, kick, jump, or run.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#14", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He drilled these young men for about a year at short intervals. His discipline was very severe and rigid. Added to the punctilio of the martinet was the rigor of the moralist. The slightest exhibition of intemperance or licentiousness was punished by instant degradation and expulsion. He struck from the rolls at one time twelve of his best men for breaking the rule of total abstinence. His moral power over them was perfect and absolute. I believe anyone of them would have died for him. In two or three principal towns of Illinois and Wisconsin he drilled other companies: in Springfield, where he made the friends who best appreciated what was best in him; and in Rockford, where he formed an attachment which imparted a coloring of tender romance to all the days of his busy life that remained.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#15", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "This tragedy would not have been perfect without the plaintive minor strain of Love in Death. His company took the Premium Colors at the United States Agricultural Pair, and Ellsworth thought it was time to show to the people some fruit of his drill. They issued their soldierly défi and started on their Marche de Triomphe. It is useless to recall to those who read newspapers the clustering glories of that bloodless campaign. Hardly had they left the suburbs of Chicago when the murmur of applause began. New York, secure in the championship of half a century, listened with quiet metropolitan scorn to the noise of the shouting provinces; but when the crimson phantasms marched out of the Park, on the evening of the 15th of July, New York, with metropolitan magnanimity, confessed herself utterly vanquished by the good thing that had come out of Nazareth.", "words": 147 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#16", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "There was no resisting the Zouaves. As the erring Knight of the Round Table said,-- \"men went down before his spear at a touch, But knowing he was Lancelot; his great name conquered.\" There were one or two Southern companies that issued insulting defiances, but, after a little expenditure of epistolary valor, prudently, though ingloriously, stayed afar,--as is usual in New Gascony. With these exceptions, the heart of the nation went warmly out to these young men. Their endurance, their discipline, their alertness, their élan, surprised the sleepy drill-masters out of their propriety, and waked up the people to intense and cordial admiration. Chicago welcomed them home proudly, covered with tan and dust and glory. Ellsworth found himself for his brief hour the most talked-of man in the country.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#17", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "His pictures sold like wildfire in every city of the land. School-girls dreamed over the graceful wave of his curls, and shop-boys tried to reproduce the Grand Seigneur air of his attitude. Zouave corps, brilliant in crimson and gold, sprang up, phosphorescently, in his wake, making bright the track of his journey. The leading journals spoke editorially of him, and the comic papers caricatured his drill. So one thing was accomplished. He had gained a name that would entitle him hereafter to respectful attention, and had demonstrated the efficiency of his system of drill. The public did not, of course, comprehend the resistless moral power which he exercised,--imperiously moulding every mind as he willed,--inspiring every soul with his own unresting energy. But the public recognized success, and that for the present was enough.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#18", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He quietly formed a regiment in the upper counties of Illinois, and made his best men the officers of it. He tendered its services to Governor Yates immediately on his inauguration, \"for any service consistent with honor.\" This was the first positive tender made of an organized force in defence of the Constitution. He seemed to recognize more clearly than others the certainty of the coming struggle. It was the soldierly instinct that heard \"the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.\" Still intent upon the great plan of militia reform, he came to Springfield. He hoped, in case of the success of Mr. Lincoln in the canvass then pending, to be able to establish in the War Department a Bureau of Militia, which would prove a most valuable auxiliary to his work.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#19", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "His ideas were never vague or indefinite. Means always presented themselves to him, when he contemplated ends. The following were the duties of the proposed bureau, which may serve as a guide to some future reformer: I copy from his own exquisitely neat and clear memorandum, which lies before me:-- \"First. The gradual concentration of all business pertaining to the militia now conducted by the several bureaus of this Department. \"Second. The collection and systematizing of accurate information of the number, arm, and condition of the militia of all classes of the several States, and the compilation of yearly reports of the same for the information of this Department. \"Third. The compilation of a report of the actual condition of the militia and the working of the present systems of the General Government and the various States.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#20", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "\"Fourth. The publication and distribution of such information as is important to the militia, and the conduct of all correspondence relating to militia affairs. \"Fifth. The compilation of a system of instruction for light troops for distribution to the several States, including everything pertaining to the instruction of the militia in the school of the soldier,--company and battalion, skirmishing, bayonet, and gymnastic drill, adapted for self-instruction. \"Sixth. The arrangement of a system of organization, with a view to the establishment of a uniform system of drill, discipline, equipment, and dress, throughout the United States.\" His plan for this purpose was very complete and symmetrical. Though enthusiastic, he was never dreamy. His idea always went forth fully armed and equipped. Nominally, he was a student of law in the office of Lincoln and Herndon, but in effect he passed his time in completing his plans of militia reform.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#21", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He made in October many stirring and earnest speeches for the Republican candidates. He was very popular among the country people. His voice was magnificent in melody and volume, his command of language wonderful in view of the deficiencies of his early education, his humor inexhaustible and hearty, and his manner deliberate and impressive, reminding his audiences in Central Illinois of the earliest and best days of Senator Douglas. When the Legislature met, he prepared an elaborate military bill, the adoption of which would have placed the State in an enviable attitude of defence. The stupid jealousy of colonels and majors who had won bloodless glory, on both sides, in the Mormon War, and the malignant prejudice instigated by the covert treason that lurked in Southern Illinois, succeeded in staving off the passage of the bill, until it was lost by the expiration of the term.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#22", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "Many of these men are now in the ranks, shouting the name of Ellsworth as a battle-cry. He came to Washington in the escort of the President elect. Hitherto he had been utterly independent of external aid. The time was come when he must wait for the cooperation of others, for the accomplishment of his life's great purpose. He wished a position in the War Department, which would give him an opportunity for the establishment of the Militia Bureau. He was a strange anomaly at the capital. He did not care for money or luxury. Though sensitive in regard to his reputation, for the honor of his work, his motto always was that of the sage Merlin,--\"I follow use, not fame.\" An office-seeker of this kind was an eccentric and suspicious personage.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#23", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed at Willard's thought him one of them, only deeper and slier. The simplicity and directness of his character, his quick sympathy and thoughtless generosity, and his delicate sense of honor unfitted him for such a scramble as that which degrades the quadrennial rotations of our Departments. He withdrew from the contest for the position he desired, and the President, who loved him like a younger brother, made him a lieutenant in the army, intending to detail him for special service. The jealousy of the staff-officers of the regular army, who always discover in any effective scheme of militia reform the overthrow of their power, and who saw in the young Zouave the promise of brilliant and successful innovation, was productive of very serious annoyance and impediment to Ellsworth.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#24", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "In the midst of this, he fell sick at Willard's. While he lay there, the news from the South began to show that the rebels were determined upon war, and the rumors on the street said that a wholesome North-westerly breeze was blowing from the Executive Mansion. These indications were more salutary to Ellsworth than any medicine. We were talking one night of coming probabilities, and I spoke of the doubt so widely existing as to the loyalty of the people. He rejoined, earnestly,--\"I can only speak for myself. You know I have a great work to do, to which my life is pledged; I am the only earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I regard as dearer than my own: yet I could ask no better death than to fall next week before Sumter.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#25", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "I am not better than other men. You will find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps.\" Sumter fell, and the sleeping awoke. The spirit of Ellsworth, cramped by a few weeks' intercourse with politicians, sprang up full-statured in the Northern gale. He cut at once the meshes of red tape that had hampered and held him, threw up his commission, and started for New York without orders, without assistance, without authority, but with the consciousness that the President would sustain him. The rest the world knows. I will be brief in recalling it. In an incredibly short space of time he enlisted and organized a regiment, eleven hundred strong, of the best fighting material that ever went to war. He divided it, according to an idea of his own, into groups of four comrades each, for the campaign.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#26", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "He exercised a personal supervision over the most important and the most trivial minutiae of the regimental business. The quick sympathy of the public still followed him. He became the idol of the Bowery and the pet of the Avenue. Yet not one instant did he waste in recreation or lionizing. Indulgent to all others, he was merciless to himself. He worked day and night, like an incarnation of Energy. When he arrived with his men in Washington, he was thin, hoarse, flushed, but entirely contented and happy, because busy and useful. Of the bright enthusiasm and the quenchless industry of the next few weeks what need to speak? Every day, by his unceasing toil and care, by his vigor, alertness, activity, by his generosity, and by his relentless rigor when duty commanded, he grew into the hearts of his robust and manly followers, until every man in the regiment feared him as a Colonel should be feared, and loved him as a brother should be loved.", "words": 167 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#27", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "On the night of the twenty-third of May, he called his men together, and made a brief, stirring speech to them, announcing their orders to advance on Alexandria. \"Now, boys, go to bed, and wake up at two o'clock for a sail and a skirmish.\" When the camp was silent, he began to work. He wrote many hours, arranging the business of the regiment. He finished his labor as the midnight stars were crossing the zenith. As he sat in his tent by the shore, it seems as if the mystical gales from the near eternity must have breathed for a moment over his soul, freighted with the odor of amaranths and asphodels. For he wrote two strange letters: one to her who mourns him faithful in death; one to his parents.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_ellsworth_1861#28", "doc": "hay_ellsworth_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Ellsworth (Atlantic Monthly, July 1861)", "text": "There is nothing braver or more pathetic. With the prophetic instinct of love, he assumed the office of consoler for the stroke that impended. In the dewy light of the early dawn he occupied the first rebel town. With his own hand he tore down the first rebel flag. He added to the glories of that morning the seal of his blood. The poor wretch who stumbled upon an immortality of infamy by murdering him died at the same instant. The two stand in the light of that event--clearly revealed--types of the two systems in conflict to-day: the one, brave, refined, courtly, generous, tender, and true; the other, not lacking in brute courage, reckless, besotted, ignorant, and cruel. Let the two systems, Freedom and Slavery, stand thus typified forever, in the red light of that dawn, as on a Mount of Transfiguration. I believe that may solve the dark mystery why Ellsworth died.", "words": 156 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#0", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "RIVERS form no less striking features in the pictures of history than in the face of nature. When dignified by the passage of armies, their course runs broadening through fame. The crossing of the Rubicon by the legions of the bankrupt Roman centuries ago, has given to the rhetoric of the world a metaphor crystallized into the ordinary speech of men who never heard of the Gallic war. We never realized that the shock of arms was coming between the Sardinian King and the Austrian Kaiser until the troops of Francis-Joseph stood on the Italian brink of the Ticino. The Danube, the Elbe, and the Po run through their ancient dominions sad with the memories of slaughter and of battles. Hitherto the western world has had no dower of associations to link with its streams.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#1", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "The peaceful charms of growing opulence and advancing arts were all that hallowed our rivers after we had forgotten our vague traditions of savage ambuscade and midnight massacre. But they can never again claim that happy immunity from the red suggestions of strife. The waters of the Missouri are darkening with a tint more deep than the amber of the mountains; the Mississippi will soon become the sepulchre of heroes; and the fair ripples of the Potomac, that have never blushed before except with the dalliance of the evening sunlight streaming rosily over the Virginian hills, will henceforth flow grimly into history stained with the costliest blood of the land. As if the significance of the forward movement of the armies of the republicwere not enough to stamp the crossing of the river indelibly into the mind of the world, the noblest lives in the army were sacrificed at Alexandria and Ball's Bluff, whose fame will rescue the event from all the possibilities of oblivion.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#2", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "The boast of Virginians becomes justified, and the ground becomes \" sacred soil,\" when hallowed by blood like that of Elmer Ellsworth and Edward Dickinson Baker. These heroic men, falling gloriously on the southern shore of the dividing river, call eloquently to their countrymen who, pressing on to avenge them, are too busy to weep for them. Not now shall their history be written. When the storm is overpast, and peace brings leisure for eulogy, it will be time to tell the story and educe the lessons of their lives. To posterity, therefore, we will intrust the work of worthily honoring the dead Senator. At present we can only snatch from forgetfulness the simple facts of his life, and say what manner of man we have lost. The scattered garlands which affection to-day is casting upon his grave shall be hereafter gathered and woven into unfading chaplet of enduring fame.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#3", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "\"Forget not the faithful dead\" was the pathetic adjuration of the dying warrior-poet Korner; and it is ill for a republic when its martyrs begin to be forgotten. Edward Dickinson Baker, United States Senator from Oregon, who died in battle near Conrad's Ferry on the 21st day of October, 1861, was born in the city of London on the 24th day of February, in the year 1811. His father, Edward Baker, was a man of education and refinement. His mother was the sister of Captain Thomas Dickinson of the British navy, an officer of great ability and distinction, who fought under Collingwood at Trafalgar. When Edward was four years of age his family came to America and lived for about ten years in the city of Philadelphia. He always fondly remembered his residence in Philadelphia, and his citizenship was through life, both to him and to Philadelphians, a source of mutual pride.", "words": 153 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#4", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Early in the spring of the year 1825 the elder Baker, impelled by that spirit of restless adventure and enterprise that seems the heritage of all the race, gathered up his household gods and turned his face once more to the sunset. Over the trackless mountains, along the strange rivers, through the still wildernesses where life was bursting into beauty and bloom, he journeyed until, tired of wandering, he rested in the rich valley of the Wabash. Only a little while though; for in a year or so we find him at the pleasant old town of Belleville, in the county of St. Clair, the earliest settled of all Central Illinois, filled with a population more wealthy and refined than that which settled in the Southern peninsula between the Mississippi and the Ohio, or that which fought and traded along the Illinois and Rock rivers.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#5", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Most of the educational and social advantages of the State clustered at that early day around the villages facing the trading station that Laclede had built and called St. Louis, and those that nestled cozily in the winding valley of Kaskaskia. In later years these towns have lost their ancient prosperity, and all that reminds the visitor of what has been is the dignified idleness of the men and the still, proud beauty of the women. Finding in the good county of St. Clair a congenial social atmosphere, the elder Baker pitched there his tent, and opened an academy for boys, which he continued with great success for many years, conducting it upon a system of instruction then called the Lancasterian plan. His son, Edward, then a handsome lad of fifteen, by the grace and dignity of his bearing, by his personal beauty, and by the astonishing charm of conversation which even at that early day distinguished him, became a general favorite in the best society there.", "words": 167 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#6", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He was always received with kindness in the family of Governor Edwards, a magnificent old gentleman in fair top-boots and ruffled wristbands, who added to a character of great generosity and executive ability the grand Seigneur airs of the Old School. Young Baker availed himself with avidity of the treasures of the Governor's library, the best in the State. He was always a ravenous reader. He had one of those rare memories — wax to receive, and marble to retain. He was indebted to its trustiness and quickness for much of his success as a debater. He was rarely mistaken, and never at fault for a fact or an allusion. Thus reading and remembering, dreaming and growing, he passed the pleasant days in pleasant Belleville, in congenial study and edifying society.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#7", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He took much interest in the political contests that convulsed the State upon the old and always mischievous question of Slavery — in which, singularly enough, Northern and Eastern men favored the introduction of Slavery, while the Governor and his Kentucky associates opposed it. By their untiring efforts Slavery was prohibited, and Illinois remained a free State. From Belleville young Baker went to Carrollton, in Greene County, a town of less social culture, though filled with a wealthy and sterling population. Here he studied law in the office of Judge Caverly, and practiced for some time with indifferent success. He married here a lady of high character and position, who still survives him, in desolation and sorrow, on the far shore of the Pacific Ocean. He removed to Springfield, afterward the capital city of the State, in 1835.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#8", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "In 1837, when Dan Stone — the member who joined Abraham Lincoln in what his opponents styled the \" Abolition protest\" — resigned his seat in the Legislature to assume a place on the Supreme Bench, Baker was elected to fill the vacancy thus created, and re-elected soon thereafter. He paid little attention to Legislative business; was often out of his seat, and more pleasantly employed. He was, however, always called on when an obnoxious measure was to be defeated or an opponent demolished. He mastered details with great ease when he cared, but he did not often care. He was State Senator from 1840 to 1844, defeating in the canvass John Calhoun, who afterward became memorable on account of.an election manoeuvre in Kansas not wholly unconnected with candle-boxes. All this time he was applying himself assiduously to the practice of law.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#9", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "His infallible memory, his quickness of perception, and his ardent eloquence, were powerful agencies in the management of juries, and were usually successful against the most determined energy and labor. His bonhomie and impetuosity of delivery were irresistible to Western men; and his Kentucky admirers delighted to liken him to the great lights of the Southwestern bar, Barry and Grundy. He was fortunate in being associated with men of industry and learning, such as Judge Logan, the Nestor of the profession in Illinois; M. Hay; and, for a while, Albert T. Bledsoe, lately Assistant Secretary of War in the Southern Confederacy. It would be hard to find in any backwoods town, at the period of which I have been speaking, a coterie of equal ability and equal possibilities with those who plead, and wrangled, and electioneered together in Springfield.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#10", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Logan, one of the finest examples of the purely legal mind that the West has ever produced; M'Dougal, who afterward sought El Dorado; Bissell, and Shields, and Baker, brothers in arms and in council, the flower of the Western chivalry, and the brightest examples of Western oratory; Trumbull, then as now, with a mind pre-eminently cool, crystalline, sagacious; Douglas, heart of oak and brain of fire, of energy and undaunted courage unparalleled, ambition insatiate and aspiration unsleeping; Lincoln, then as afterward, thoughtful, and honest, and brave, conscious of great capabilities and quietly sure of the future, before all his peers in a broad humanity, and in that prophetic lift of spirit that saw the triumph of principles then dimly discovered in the contest that was to come. Baker was elected to Congress in 1844, from the Sangamon District.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#11", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He occupied his seat there, serving with distinction, when the Mexican war broke out. Though opposed to the war in its inception, the call of his country was imperative to him. There was something in his veins that would not let him be quiet when there was fighting going on. He had had some little experience of soldiering in the Black Hawk War — as who had not? Lincoln was a captain there, Robert Anderson and Jefferson Davis were together in an expedition up the Mississippi, and Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis probably bivouacked together in the Iowa forests and dreamed of battles by the dying fire. Baker left Washington and came to Springfield and called a thousand young men around him. They were immediately accepted by the Government as the \"Fourth Illinois,\" and embarked for the war.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#12", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Arriving at Matamoras, on the discovery of dangerous irregularities that absolutely demanded attention, Colonel Baker was sent to Washington as a bearer of dispatches. When he came there Congress was in session. He availed himself of his right of membership, and in a speech of great fire and force he plead the cause of the Volunteers, then resigned his seat, and went back to the war. He joined his regiment in time to share in the victorious termination of the siege of Vera Cruz. He advanced into the interior with the main body of Scott's army, and gained an opportunity for hot work at Cerro Gordo. When Shields's Brigade had turned the Mexican position in the rear of the mountain, and the column emerged from the chaparral into the Jalapa road, a concealed battery suddenly opened with deadly effect upon the Illinoisans.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#13", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Shields fell with a hurt in his breast large enough to let out the life of any man but him; and Baker, without an instant's confusion or hesitation, took command of the brigade, and charged magnificently upon the enemy's guns, taking the position which enabled him to cut off the retreat, and completing the utter rout of the Mexican army. It was in reference to this incident, and in remembrance of the conduct of Burnett's regiment, that he said, last April, in Union Square, \" I know what New York can do when her blood is up.\" He was succeeded in his Congressional District by Abraham Lincoln, and shortly thereafter he removed to Galena, up in the lead-mines. The inevitable popularity that always attended his footsteps like a shadow followed him into the North, and placed him in Congress again within a very few months after his arrival in Galena.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#14", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "It is impossible for people living in cities, or in the heart of a dense population, to form any adequate conception of the intense affection and eager interest that a handsome, jolly, eloquent, and discreet partisan leader excites among his constituency of the backwoods. The rural school-houses and groves form the arena of his triumphs. His wit is rewarded by hearty laughter, and his eloquence by yells of approbation. Where excitements are few, a popular orator, who can make men laugh and cry, becomes entwined with their sluggish, emotional natures, and a speech is to them not an incident of an evening, but the event of a week. They show their appreciation of him by always designating him by some affectionate and slightly depreciatory epithet, which, though at first annoying, becomes in time a badge of honor and a cry of onset.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#15", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "They are hardly the most elegant names to go into the measures of history, but no titles have ever been more lovingly given than Honest Old Abe — the Little Giant — Old Tippecanoe— Old Zack— the Old WheelHorse. In this power of enchaining the love of a people, who though rude are always manly, and never grow maudlin in their devotion, but retain in their utterances of praise the privilege of judicious abuse, Baker was unparalleled. Though free from all degrading vices, the worst men loved him; and the rough dwellers in the mines and the timber came eagerly to hear him discourse of things above the reaches of their souls. He served these last years in the House of Representatives with great industry and success. His principal oratorical effort of these days was the pathetic and musical eulogy he pronounced at the death of his old commander, when the honest and sagacious old warrior went to heaven from the Executive mansion.", "words": 161 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#16", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Declining a reelection, his restless and original brain fastened upon a project as wild as it was engaging. Forming a business connection with the Panama Railroad Company, he sent a body of four hundred men under his brother, the genial and talented Dr. Alfred Baker, soon following them himself. Those who have read the narrative of Lieutenant Strain, where the intensity of suffering charms while you shudder, may form an idea of the dispiriting experiences of this little band. In the depth of the matted rankness of the forests — on the humid banks of sluggish rivers — lying in the night amidst the tangled luxuriance of the wilderness — the moist splendors of tropical summer around them, and the wild voices of tropical and savage life in the pathless jungles filling the unquiet air — one by one they sunk beneath the insidious beguiling of the malarious atmosphere, and the Northern strength melted in the Southern fervors.", "words": 154 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#17", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "At last their untiring leader fell sick, nearly unto death, and his brother brought him tenderly home, to see familiar skies and breathe the honest air of the prairies again. He recovered slowly: but his heart leaned always westward. It is men like him that form the dazzling crest of the foremost wave of emigration, that never ceases to roll onward till caught and shattered into quiet by impassable boundaries. He went to California in 1852. The wild tumult of earlier years had begun to settle into the habitudes of civilized life, and the arts of peace had begun to supplant the savageries of nature. People were arriving at that point of social and moral development when they thought, on the whole, it was as well to litigate a claim as to fight about it.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#18", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Retainers began to supplant revolvers, and briefs to supply the place of bowies: which was a bad thing for surgeons, and a very good one for lawyers. Among the lawyers of California Baker was easily chief. The astonishing ease and felicity of his diction, his marvelous quickness of apprehension, bred a careless habit in him that often exposed him to the charge of indolence and superficiality. There never was a greater mistake, though this delusion is one very frequently entertained in the case of men of great sprightliness of mind. Baker never neglected or slighted his business. His cases required little hard work, but they always received it. There was nothing slovenly or heedless about any of his habits of thought. His pleadings were always eminently safe, and his forensic harangues were models of perspicuity and force, without ornament or verbiage.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#19", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "His popularity increased with his success. He took his place at once, almost without effort, at the head of the profession in the State. A large proportion of all important civil causes were brought to him; and those social philosophers whose principles, embodied in practice, ran counter to the established prejudices of courts and statutes became imbued with a kind of superstitious confidence in his powers. There was certainly nothing lacking in Baker to the perfect advocate if he had cared to become so. His fascinating power with juries — his clear analytic processes of thought — his torrent of tempestuous eloquence, made him well-nigh irresistible. His success was commensurate with his powers. He was popular in California, in spite of his politics. It was not possible for a man of such positive and aggressive character to seek power and position by subserviency to the prejudices of the people.", "words": 148 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#20", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "By ancient affiliations, by accustomed habits of thought, by strong instincts of a liberal philanthropy, he was identified with the party opposed to the extension of slavery. In those early days the population of the Golden State had not yet perfectly polarized its constituent elements upon this subject of slavery. The free State colonists were largely, of course, in the ascendant; but a majority of them, led by the old traditions of organization, joined with the Southern residents on the question of propagandism. The majority was thus hopelessly against the Republicans when their party, struggling from the ashes of old defeats, unfurled the banner of Free Soil upon the Pacific shore. But there never was a fight more dauntless than that made by the forlorn hope of Republicans — Baker, Stanford, Nunes, Tracy, and a handful of followers— in the diggings and ranches of California.", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#21", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "There was none of that sleepy security that characterizes the wordy wars of Eastern tribunes. When a man went to talk for Fremont among the squatters of Mariposa, or inveigh against slavery among the refuse ruffianism of the Gulf that haunted Yuba and Sonoma, or expound a hated doctrine to the desperadoes of Tuolumne, he took his life in his hand, and considered his pistols and knife as necessary companions as his pamphlets and papers. And who was so qualified as Baker for a strife like this? His geniality beguiled as much as his courage impressed. Because he was always known to be ready for a fight, it was never necessary. He won the hearts of the rough people who cursed his doctrine, and his name became coupled in the mouths of the mountaineers with every expletive of profane admiration.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#22", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He was utterly at home on the hustings. Those who are acquainted only with his grave senatorial efforts can form no adequate idea of the ready, sparkling, ebullient wit — the glancing and playful satire, mirthful while merciless — the keen syllogisms— and the sharp sophisms, whose fallacies, though undiscoverable, were perplexing — and the sudden splendors of eloquence that formed the wonderful charm of his backwoods harangues. His fame became coextensive with the coast; and the people, in allusion to \" the good gray head which all men knew,\" used to call him the \"Gray Eagle.\" Years passed on, and Baker made money and friends in California. At last the great party of the North became divided on the interminably vexing question of slavery in the Territories. Broderick — one of the truest diamonds that ever existed in the rough — after battling with unavailing pluck for what he deemed truth and justice in the Senate, came back to rally his clansmen for conflict with a haughty and implacable organization.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#23", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Here was a conflict that at once enlisted all the soul of Baker. It was not so forlorn in prospect as his former one, and a glimmer of hope is very inspiriting in politics. A coalition was effected between the Republicans and the Douglas Democrats, by which Baker and M'Kibbin became the candidates for Congress against the distinctive proslavery men. The story of that well-fought campaign was not a particularly pleasant one. It was like all sudden insurrections of free thought and manhood against powerful and disciplined tyranny. The Broderick ticket was defeated, and the baffled Senator was bullied into a criminal folly that his better judgment condemned, and was slain. His last words were, \"They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt Administration.\"", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#24", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "The words and the event fell heavily on the heart of the nation. Far more crushingly they rested on the saddened spirits of his friends. The dull heaviness of their grief forbade parade, and made ceremony mockery. The American mind runs naturally to committees when great men fall. But there was that within the hearts of Broderick's friends, like the anguish of the royal Dane, \"passing show.\" By common consent Baker was the funeral orator. With none of the ordinary accessories of solemn burials, the dead Senator lay in the great square of the city, and the saddened people flocked silently to the scene. From all the streets of the crowded town they gathered in the hush of the autumnal noon, till the square was filled with the mourning multitudes, whispering with lowered voices of the virtues of the departed, and striving to come near enough to gaze upon the calm features of the murdered tribune, turned stonily to the brightness of the skies.", "words": 164 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#25", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Aloft the church bells were jangling mournfully, and their wild lament, floating down to earth, deepened the emotion of the hour. As their ringing vibrated into silence the voice of the orator stole out upon the air, tremulous with tender feeling and musical with the memories of dead friendship. The mind of the mighty multitude, softened by the excitement of their sorrow, lay plastic to his hand, and for an hour the homage of tears and sobs was paid to Baker's genius and Broderick's memory, until he ended in those grandly pathetic words, whose touching music breathes alike the abandon of sorrow and the joy of ultimate fame: \"The last word must be spoken, and the imperious mandate of death must be fulfilled. Thus, O brave heart! we bear thee to thy rest.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#26", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Thus, surrounded by tens of thousands, we leave thee to the equal grave. As in life, no other voice among us so rang its trumpet blast upon the ear of freemen, so in death its echoes will reverberate amidst our mountains and our valleys until truth and valor cease to appeal to the human heart. ''Good friend! true hero! hail and farewell!\" It is worth while to die if one could be mourned so gloriously. After the death of Broderick and the impunity of his murderer, Baker, as if to free himself from the haunting presence of the unatoned crime, went to Oregon. He entered with all his might into the election of 1859 in that State, working with his usual self-forgetting energy for David Logan, a young friend from Springfield.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#27", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Logan, though making a most brilliant canvass, was defeated for Congress; but the Legislature was carried, and Baker, who had by this time become the Republican party of Oregon, was proposed for the Senate. As soon as it became apparent that a Republican would be elected, the opposition, unused to any thing but victory, and unable in any other way to baffle defeat, \"took to the bush,\" and actually spent several days in the tall timber to prevent an election being held. The sergeant-at-arms organized a hunting party, and going into the woods soon bagged enough for a quorum, and Baker was elected to the Senate of the United States. He had at last attained the summit of political ambition. As far as his nativity would permit him to be honored, he had been.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#28", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He had arrived at the goal of a brilliant career before he had completed his half-century of years. And the end was not far. Coming to California, on his way to the East, he scattered his perfect and jewel-like speeches all along his route. One evening, in San Francisco, after it had been surmised that his being elected by a coalition would induce lukewarmness of sentiment and expression, he took occasion to renew his fealty to the principles of his life. I do not think this wonderful speech was ever reported. Every word of it seemed to flame and sparkle with the miraculous fire of genius. It brought the audience to their feet. The very spirit of liberty seemed ennobled by his apostrophe. He at once took his place among the foremost debaters of the Senate.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#29", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "For the first time in his life he was placed in a position which was entirely appropriate to him. The decorum and courtesy that usually marks the intercourse of Senators was most grateful to his habits of thought and feeling. The higher range of discussion, and the more cultivated tone of sentiment and discourse prevalent there, gave him an opportunity, that all his life had lacked, of doing his best among his equals. Among these refined members of the most august of representative assemblies, there was none more courteous, more polished, than this Western lawyer, this rouser of the dwellers in the backwoods. He shed honor enough upon Oregon to atone even for General Lane. Let it be remembered to his lasting praise, now that he is gone, in proof of the paternal and cherishing interest which he always exhibited in behalf of the common soldiers, that he exerted himself to the utmost in procuring the late increase in the rations of the rank and file.", "words": 166 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#30", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "The heightened health and comfort of our brave soldiery will be the best monument to his wise forethought and liberal humanity. In fervid, impressive oratory — in that peculiar ability which starts a man to his feet unprepared, and enables him to always do himself justice in the hurry and glow of debate, it would be hard to say what equal Baker has left in the Senate. His mind was always fully determined upon questions at issue. His convictions were firm and ardent. His opulence of expression and imagery was absolutely inexhaustible. Other men, upon the frame-work of a great idea, by labor and toil produce finished orations, and when they are done, however ornate, the fulfillment is found to lag behind the intention. But Baker never labored and never pondered; and so powerful and ready were the processes of his mind, so rich the resources of his imagination, and so warm and glowing the fervors of his spirit, that the creations of his genius came forth in the full perfection of their finished grace and beauty, with a light and a life and a color fairer than he had known.", "words": 191 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#31", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "He was especially great upon great occasions. He was a man whom the subtle magnetism of events always inspired. Those who heard will surely never forget the magnificent burst of redhot rhetoric with which he electrified the crowding thousands that filled Union Square last April. It was a mighty assemblage — great in numbers— tremendous in earnestness — awful in aroused enthusiasm. We saw that day how hard it was for common men to address that crowd. Some simply raved, mastered by emotion. Some, wishing to be solemn, prosed. There were few who could ride on that whirlwind and direct that storm. Baker was one. From the instant when his graceful form was discovered on the stand — his handsome face, pale but quiet; his eye fierce in its brilliancy; his white hair crowning the splendid head like a halo; and ithe tones of his clear, firm voice rang out on the air in the words, \"The majesty of the people is here to-day to sustain the majesty of the Constitution\" — to the moment when he closed in a gust of passionate plaudits, he held the audience fettered and still.", "words": 188 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#32", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "A visible thrill ran through the dense mass when, in closing, he consecrated himself anew to the service of his country in these words of exquisite melody: \"And if from the far Pacific a voice, feebler than the feeblest murmur upon its shore, may be heard to give you courage and hope in the contest, that voice is yours to-day; and if a man whose hair is gray, who is well-nigh worn out in the battle and toil of life, may pledge himself on such an occasion and in such an audience, let me say — as my last word — that, as when, amidst sheeted fire and flame, I saw and led the hosts of New York as they charged in contest upon a foreign soil, for the honor of your flag; so again, if Providence shall will it, this feeble hand shall draw a sword never yet dishonored, not to fight for distant honor in a foreign land, but to fight for country, for home, for law, for government, for constitution, for right, for freedom, for humanity, and in the hope that the banner of my country may advance, and wheresoever that banner waves there glory may pursue and freedom be established!", "words": 204 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#33", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "\" This was no idle trick of rhetoric. Before the echoes of his words had died he was hard at work recruiting the California regiment. It filled rapidly. Men came from a distance to join in squads or singly. Many came from Philadelphia and its outlying country. He liked to receive these. \"There must be a fighting streak somewhere about us Quakers,\" he used to say. There was an inspiration in this man's words and presence that made men love to fight under him. His regiment soon was over-full. The President appointed him a Brigadier-General. He declined it. The same friendly hand desired to place upon his shoulder-straps the double star of a Major-General. He quietly refused it, and kept the eagles to which his regiment entitled him.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#34", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "As for honors, he had enough of them in another field. He went into this war for use, not fame. The time for use was coming and for fame as well, though hidden behind the forbidding mask of disaster and death. It seems as if Colonel Baker himself was not unmindful of his coming fate. It is so easy for people after a battle to remember that the dead were haunted by the coming probabilities, and for sentimental youths to say before a skirmish their farewell to the world, that newspaper reports of presentiments are usually not devoid of ludicrous associations. But sometimes you see, in a man whose character renders a suspicion of affectation impossible, an awful solemnity, born neither of fear nor of responsibility, but as if the black plumes of the wings of Azrael, the Death Angel, had touched him, or the ghostly gales out of the opened gates of eternity had blown for an instant over his brow.", "words": 162 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#35", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Else why that solemn farewell to his parents penned by the dauntless Ellsworth, as live a man as ever breathed, in the dead of the last midnight that he ever watched? Why the strange reckless bewilderment of the brave Lyon on that disastrous day when his gallant heart was breaking under the double conviction that death had marked him, and the Government had forgotten him? Colonel Baker for several days was oppressed by this overhanging consciousness. He became as restless as an eagle in his camp. He came down to Washington and settled all his affairs. He went to say farewell to the family of the President. A lady — who in her high position is still gracefully mindful of early friendships — gave him a bouquet of late flowers. \"Very beautiful,\" he said, quietly.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#36", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "\" These flowers and my memory will wither together.\" At night he hastily reviewed his papers. He indicated upon each its proper disposition \"in case I should not return.\" He pressed with quiet earnestness upon his friend Colonel Webb, who deprecated such ghostly instructions, the measures which might become necessary in regard to the resting-place of his mortal remains. All this without any ostentation. He performed all these offices with the quiet coolness of a soldier and a man of affairs, then mounted his horse and rode gayly away to his death. On the 20th day of October, the movement of General M'Call upon Dranesville having excited the attention of the enemy at Leesburg, and a regiment of gray uniforms having been observed cautiously advancing from the west and taking position behind a hill near Edwards's Ferry, General Stone, commanding the army of observation on the Potomac, resolved upon an armed reconnoissance to ascertain the position and feel the strength of the rebel force across the river.", "words": 167 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#37", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "A scouting party sent out from Conrad's Ferry scoured the country rapidly in the direction of Leesburg, and when within about a mile of the town were suddenly confronted by what in the uncertain light appeared to be rows of tents, but which were afterward ascertained to be merely openings in the frondage of the woods. Upon this report, brought back by the mistaken scouts, Colonel Devens, of the Massachusetts Fifteenth, was ordered to attack and destroy the supposed camp at daybreak, and return to Harrison's Island, between Conrad's and Edwards's Ferries, or, in case he found no enemy, to hold a secure position and await sufficient force to reconnoitre. Colonel Baker was ordered to have his Californians at Conrad's Ferry at sunrise, and the rest of his brigade ready to move early.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#38", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Colonel Devens crossed and proceeded to the point indicated, and General Stone ordered a party of Van Allen's cavalry under Major Mix, accompanied by that most accomplished of English dragoons, who veils his titles under the sobriquet of Captain Stewart, to advance along the Leesburg road and ascertain the condition of the heights in the vicinity of the enemy's battery near Goose Creek. This was performed in dashing style. They came upon a Mississippi regiment, received and returned its fire, and brought off a prisoner. Meantime Colonel Devens had discovered the error in regard to the supposed encampment, and had been attacked by a superior force of the enemy and fallen back in good order upon the position of Colonel Lee, who had been posted to support him on the bluff.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#39", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Presently he again advanced, his men, as General Stone reports, behaving admirably, fighting, retiring, and advancing in perfect order, and exhibiting every proof of high courage and good discipline. At this juncture Colonel Baker, who early in the morning had conferred with the commanding general at Edwards's Ferry and received his orders from him, began transporting his brigade across the narrow but deep channel that ran between Harrison's Island and the Virginia shore. The means of transportation were lamentably deficient — three small boats and a scow, which the soldiers say was miserably heavy and water-logged. With such means the crossing was slow and tedious. While they were toiling across, Devens and Lee, with their little commands, were in desperate peril in front, the wide battalions of the enemy closing exultingly around them, with savage prudence availing themselves of every advantage of ground, and flanking by the power of numbers the handful of heroes they dared not attack in front.", "words": 160 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#40", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Baker was not the man to deliberate long when the death-knell of his friends was ringing in his ears in the steady, continuous rattle of the rebel musketry. He advanced to the relief of Devens with a battalion of his Californians under Wistar, the most gallant of the fighting Quakers, and a portion of the Twentieth Massachusetts. With this devoted band, 1720 men all told, for more than an hour he stood the fire of the surrounding and hidden foe, as from the concealing crescent of the trees they poured their murderous volleys. Bramhall and French struggled up the precipitous banks with a field-piece and two howitzers, which did good service till the gunners dropped dead, and the officers hauled them to the rear to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#41", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Every man there fought in that hopeless struggle as bravely as if victory were among possibilities. No thought was there of flight or surrender even when all but honor was lost. Their duty was to stand there till they were ordered away. Death was merely an incident of the performance of that duty; and the coolest man there was the Colonel commanding. He talked hopefully and cheerily to his men, even while his heart was sinking with the sun, and the grim presence of disaster and ruin was with him. He was ten paces in their front, where all might see him and take pattern by him. He carried his left hand nonchalantly in his breast, and criticised the firing as quietly as if on parade. \"Lower, boys! Steady there!", "words": 130 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#42", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Keep cool now and fire low, and the day is ours!\" All at once, as if moved by one impulse, a sudden sheet of fire burst from the curved covert of the enemy, and Edward Dickinson Baker was promoted, by one grand brevet of the God of Battles, above the acclaim of the field, above the applause of the world, to the heaven of the martyr and the hero. When with dirges due I saw him borne to his grave, with the dull cadence of muffled drums, with draped banners, and slow-pacing soldiers, and all the solemn adjuncts with which affection seeks to alleviate and homage to ennoble death, I could not but think of what Douglas said last year. When the October elections had made a Republican success an event beyond contingency, Douglas, always a magnanimous man and a true friend, said in conversation, \"We Springfield people will take the capital next year.", "words": 155 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#43", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "Lincoln in the White House, Baker, and M'Dougal, and I in the Senate — we will make Washington jolly in spite of politics.\" Alas, for the dead hours of honest friendship! the goodly fellowship of noble spirits! Where are the good fellows who were friends at Springfield in the happier days? Hardin's spirit went up through the murky canopy whose baleful shadow hung over the battling legions at Buena Vista — Bissell passed from lingering pain to Paradise, honored in the highest by the State that he had honored — Douglas lies under the prairie sod in the dear old State, whose halfestranged heart burned with more than the old love for him before he died — Baker rests glorious in death, a precious offering to the Spirit of Freedom to which through life his worship was paid — and Lincoln stands, lonely in his power, a sadder, silenter, greater man than of old, time beginning to sift its early snows upon the blackness of his hair, his heart heavy with the sorrows of a nation, his mind and soul pledged to solemn and self-abnegating effort to keep from detriment in his hands the costly treasure of Constitutional Government.", "words": 195 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#44", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "For this Douglas toiled and Baker died. High examples are not without their uses; and, perchance, from the grave of the dead Senator may spring the living flowers of sacrifice and bright endeavor. Let no man now excuse himself from the service of his country by paltry suggestions of rank, of position, of diverse usefulness. Baker sacrificed more than others can. He was a Senator; he became a recruitingofficer. He was a man of extensive affairs; he neglected all for the camp. He was a man of delicate and scholarly tastes; he forsook books for bayonets, and slighted letters to study tactics. He had a family, which he tenderly loved; he bade farewell to his wife, and enlisted his son in his regiment. He enjoyed life with the intense vitality of a perfect manhood; he gave his life for his country.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#45", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "And all with no bravado, no barbaric thirst for excitement. He obeyed an imperious mandate of duty; and warfare with him rose to the dignity of religion. Through the storm and gloom of the present his prophetic spirit caught the distant sunshine of a righteous peace, to which the war was a necessary and painful introduction. Let us all remember those eloquent words of lofty cheer with which, standing in his place, bronzed in the summer weather, his fatigue uniform travel -stained and dusty from camp and field, the warrior-statesman closed his reply to the sneering cavils of the fallen angel of Kentucky — and let them end this sketch of him whose memory may safely be confided to the jealous keeping of impartial fame: \" There Avill be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection; there will be some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need for labor to procure the necessaries of life.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "hay_baker_1861#46", "doc": "hay_baker_1861", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_essay", "label": "Colonel Baker (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1861)", "text": "When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the Constitution, free government— with these will return all the blessings of well - ordered civilization; the path of the country will be a career of greatness and glory such as, in the olden time, our fathers saw in the dim visions of years yet to come; and such as would have been ours to-day if it had not been for the treason for which the Senator too often seeks to apologize.\"", "words": 89 }, { "id": "hay_condolence_1864#0", "doc": "hay_condolence_1864", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_condolence", "label": "Hay to a friend in Massachusetts, 9 June 1864 (Bullard 154), fragment", "text": "I will not intrude upon your sorrow further than to express my deep sympathy for your great loss and my prayer that a merciful God may give you that consolation which mortal love is too weak to offer. I have sent your letter to my mother who will join me in my sympathy and prayers.", "words": 55 }, { "id": "hay-0007#0", "doc": "hay-0007", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MRS. R-, 1861-03-19 (letter)", "text": "An enterprising genius has just opened a little collection of Japanese curiosities under Willard's, and everybody goes there and gets unmercifully cheated. I was beguiled into the shop to-day and my eyes fell upon these little mother-of-pearl trinkets. I inquired their possible use and was told they were used in Japanese gambling, but were sold here for counters. I remembered the pleasant whist-parties at your house, and take the liberty of sending them. There is nothing domestic about them. The box, the wood and the paper are all d1 outre mer. Mr. B and his cara sposa left us to-day. It made me positively homesick. I would give everything for a day or two in Springfield. Not that I love Washington less, but that I love Springfield more. This town will be very pleasant after a while when we have leisure to enjoy it. With great respect.", "words": 152 }, { "id": "hay-0008#0", "doc": "hay-0008", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MISS MARY R-, 1861 (letter)", "text": "I send you this book l because it is new — that is its only recommendation. It sketches with the most miraculous fidelity characters that are not worth sketching. It reminds me of a satiric cartoon of a Dutch painter, representing Art knocking in vain at his door, and the artist within industriously engaged in drawing an old shoe. This woman has wonderful power but is wasting it on unworthy subjects. There is something strange, almost startling in this story. There is not one single character in it who is not below mediocrity in mind, morals and manners. Yet these people, so drearily commonplace, in actual life, move us strongly in the book. It is not sympathy with the people ; it is sympathy with the success of the portraits. When women write books they make young people fall in love very foolishly.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "hay-0008#1", "doc": "hay-0008", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MISS MARY R-, 1861 (letter)", "text": "I want to write a novel on common-sense principles and change all that, some day, when I have grown rich and idle, and have forgotten to-day and yesterday. We are very jolly here now, on a warfooting. We are hoping for a little brush with the traitors, but are very much afraid they will deprive us of that pleasure I wish I were in Springfield for a little while. I am afraid to leave here just now, lest I should lose some fun in my absence. Your friend.", "words": 90 }, { "id": "hay-0009#0", "doc": "hay-0009", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-18 (diary)", "text": "The White House is turned into barracks. J. L marshalled his Kansas warriors to-day at Willard's and placed them at the disposal of Major H , who turned them to-night into the East Room. It is a splendid company, worthysuch an armory. Besides the western jayhawkers, it comprises some of the best material of the east. Senator P and old Anthony B stood shoulder to shoulder in the ranks. J. L walked proudly up and down the ranks with a new sword that the Major had given him. The Major has made me his aid, and I labored under some uncertainty as to whether I should speak to privates or not All day the notes of preparation have been heard at the public buildings and the armories. Everybody seems to be expecting a son or brother or \"young man\" in the coming regiments.", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay-0009#1", "doc": "hay-0009", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-18 (diary)", "text": "To-night Edward brought me a card from Mrs. Ann S. S expressing a wish to see the President on matters concerning his personal safety. As the Ancient was in bed, I volunteered to receive the harrowing communication. Edward took me to the little room adjoining the hall, and I waited. Mrs. S , who is neither young nor yet fair to any miraculous extent, came in leading a lady, who was a little of both, whom she introduced as Mrs. Col. L . I was de- lighted at this chance interview with the Medea, the Julia, the Mona Lisa of my stage-struck days. After many hesitating and bashful trials, Mrs. L told the impulse that brought them. Some young Virginian, long-haired, swaggering chivalrous of course, and indiscreet friend, had come into town in great anxiety for a new saddle, and meeting her had said that he, and half a dozen others, including a dare-devil guerilla from Richmond, named F , would do a thing within forty-eight hours that would ring through the world.", "words": 175 }, { "id": "hay-0010#0", "doc": "hay-0010", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-19 (diary)", "text": "Early this morning I consulted with Major H as to measures proper to be taken in the matter of guarding the house. He told me that he would fulfil any demand I should make. The forenoon brought us news of the destruction of Government property at Harper's Ferry. It delighted the Major, regarding it as a deadly blow at the prosperity of the recusant Virginia. I called to see Joe J , and found him more of a gentleman than I had expected. A very intellectual face, thin and eager, with large, intense blue eyes, the lines firm, and the hair darker than I had thought. I then went to see Mrs. L , and made her tell her story all over again \"just by way of a slant.\" Miss L the sculptor was there.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay-0010#1", "doc": "hay-0010", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-19 (diary)", "text": "Coming up, I found the streets full of the bruit of the Baltimore mob,1 and at the White House was a nervous gentleman who insisted on ^Abraham Lincoln, iv, 123. The attack on the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment took place in Baltimore towards noon this day. seeing the President to say that a mortar batteryhas been planted on the Virginia heights, commanding the town. He separated himself from the information and instantly retired. I had to do some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. L in regard to the assassination suspicion. After tea came P and P from Baltimore. They came to announce that they had taken possession of the Pikes ville Arsenal in the name of the Government — to represent the feeling of the Baltimore conservatives in regard to the present imbroglio there, and to assure the President of the entire fidelity of the Governor and the State authorities.", "words": 154 }, { "id": "hay-0011#0", "doc": "hay-0011", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-20 (diary)", "text": "Colonel Washington called this morning but could not see the President. It would seem like a happy chance to have a General Washington living and fighting among us at this time. The streets were full of the talk of Baltimore. It seems to be generally thought that a mere handful of men has raised this storm that now threatens the loyalty of a State. I went up with N , P and W to see the Massachusetts troops quartered in the Capitol. The scene was very novel. The contrast was very painful between the grey-haired dignity that filled the Senate Chamber when I saw it last, and the present throng of bright-looking Yankee boys, the most of them bearing the signs of New England rusticity in voice and manner, scattered over the desks, chairs and galleries, some loafing, many writing letters slowly and with ploughhardened hands, or with rapid-glancing clerkly fingers, while G stood patient by the desk and franked for everybody.", "words": 164 }, { "id": "hay-0011#1", "doc": "hay-0011", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-20 (diary)", "text": "The Hall of Representatives is as yet empty. Lying on a sofa and looking upward, the magnificence of the barracks made me envy the soldiers who should be quartered there. The wide-spreading sky-lights overarching the vast hall like heaven, blushed and blazed with gold and the heraldic devices of the married States, while, all around it, the eye was rested by the massive simple splendor of the stalagmitic bronze reliefs. The spirit of our institutions seemed visibly present to inspire and nerve the acolyte, sleeping in her temple beside his unfleshed sword The town is full to-night of feverish rumors about a meditated assault upon the town, and one, which seems to me more probable, on Fort McHenry. The garrison there, is weak and inadequate, and in spite of the acknowledged bravery of R and H , it must fall if attacked.", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay-0012#0", "doc": "hay-0012", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-21 (diary)", "text": "(Sunday). This morning came a penitent and suppliant crowd of conditional secessionists from Baltimore, who, having sowed the wind, seem to have no particular desire to reap the whirlwind. They begged that no more federal troops should be sent through Baltimore at present ; that their mob was thoroughly unmanageable, and that they would give the government all possible assistance in transporting its troops, safely, across the State by any other route. The President, always inclined to give all men credit for fairness and sincerity, consented to this arrangement, contrary to the advice of some of his most prominent counsellors ; and afterwards said that this was the last time he was going to interfere in matters of strictly military concernment ; that he would leave them hereafter wholly to military men. I spoke of the intended resignation of Col. M .", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0012#1", "doc": "hay-0012", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-21 (diary)", "text": "The Tycoon was astonished. Three days ago M had been in his room making the loudest protestations of undying devotion to the Union. This canker of secession has wonderfully demoralised the army. Capt. F is the firmest and soundest man I meet. He seems to combine great honesty of purpose with accurate and industrious business habits and a lively and patriotic soldier's spirit that is better than anything else to-day. This morning we mounted the battlements of the Executive Mansion, and the Ancient took a long look down the bay. It was a \" water-haul.\" Any amount of feverish rumors filled the evening. The despatch from M. A , in regard to 1,500 Massachusetts troops being seen off Annapolis, seemed to please the President very much. Then there was a Fort Monroe rumor and a 7th Regiment rumor, and a Rhode Island rumor ; all which, to-morrow will sift.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay-0013#0", "doc": "hay-0013", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-22 (diary)", "text": "The whining traitors from Baltimore were here again this morning. The President, I think, has done with them. In conversation with Major H last night, in reply to the Major's blunt assertion that the troops should have been brought through Baltimore if the town had to be leveled to the earth, he said that that order commanding them to return to Pennsylvania was given at the earnest solicitation of the Maryland conservatives who avowed their powerlessness in Baltimore, but their intention to protect the federal troops elsewhere, granted them as a special extension ; as an exhaustion of the means of conciliation and kindness. Hereafter, however, he would interfere with no war measures of the army. A young lady called to-day from Baltimore, sent by her father, H. P , Esq., to convey to the Government information as to the state of affairs in the Plug-ugly city.", "words": 147 }, { "id": "hay-0013#1", "doc": "hay-0013", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-22 (diary)", "text": "She was very pretty and southern in features and voice, and wonderfully plucky and earnest in the enunciation of her devotion to the Stars and Stripes. She stated that the mails had been stopped at the Baltimore Post-office — arms exj^ected from Virginia — Fort McHenry to be attacked to-night— the scared Commanders here thoroughly traitorous, and other things. I met her again this afternoon and talked three hours. Her quiet courage and dauntless patriotism brought back to me the times of De Montfort and Queen Eleanor, and the girl of Dom E-emy. I gained a new idea of the possibilities of true, brave hearts being nourished in Republics. Just as she stepped into her carriage, her friend called her \" Lilie,\" and I knew her name. She seemed so heart whole in her calm devotion to the Union that flirtation died in her presence and better thoughts than politicians often know, stole through the mind of one who listened to the novelty of an American woman, earnest, intelligent, patriotic and pretty.", "words": 173 }, { "id": "hay-0014#0", "doc": "hay-0014", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-23 (diary)", "text": "This morning D. W came rushing into the office, looking for S with what he called important news. He said that the two ships at the Navy Yard were the Pawnee and the Kingston. They brought marines and naval stores from Norfolk, which place they left after carrying what government property they could not remove. The Premier cursed quietly because the Baltic had not come ; told W not to contradict the report that the Baltic had come ; said the treason of H would not surprise him ; that the Seventh could cut their way through three thousand rioters ; that Baltimore delenda est ; and other things, — and strolled back into the audience chamber. At dinner we sat opposite old Gen. S , who was fierce and jubilant. No frenzied poet ever predicted the ruin of a hostile house with more energy and fervor than he issued the rescript of destiny against Baltimore.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "hay-0014#1", "doc": "hay-0014", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-23 (diary)", "text": "\" We've got 'em,\" he said. \"It is our turn now. We keep steadily one week ahead of them, as S says. We have burned their hospital and poor-house, Harper's Ferry and the Norfolk Navy Yard. Now let them fight or starve.\" He was peculiarly disgusted with the impertinence of Delaware. \" The contemptible little neighborhood without population enough for a decent country village, gets upon her hind legs and talks about armed neutrality. The only good use for traitors is to hang them. They are worth more, dead than alive.\" — Thus the old liberty-loving Teuton raged. A gaunt, tattered, uncombed and unshorn figure appeared at the door and marched solemnly up to the table. He wore a rough, rusty overcoat, a torn shirt, and suspenderless breeches. His thin hair stood fretful-porcupine-quill-wise upon his crown.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0015#0", "doc": "hay-0015", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-24 (diary)", "text": ". This has been a day of gloom and doubt. Everybody seems filled with a vague distrust and recklessness. The idea seemed to be reached by Lincoln when chatting with the volunteers this morning, he said : \"I don't believe there is any North ! The Seventh Regiment is a myth ! Rhode Island is not known in our geography any longer. You are the only Northern realities.\" Reward's messengers, sent out by the dozen, do not return. The Seventh and Butler's are probably still at Annapolis. A rumor this evening says the Railroad is in the hands of the Government and the Seventh's sappers and miners are at work repairing it", "words": 108 }, { "id": "hay-0016#0", "doc": "hay-0016", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-25 (diary)", "text": "At the request of the Tycoon, who imagined he had seen something significant steaming up the river, I went down to the Navy Yard. Saw D , who at once impressed me as a man of great coolness and power. The boat was the Mt. Vernon, who reported everything right in the river. About noon the Seventh Regiment came. I went to the Depot and saw L , who communicated the intelligence of their peaceful passage, with which I straightway gladdened the heart of the Ancient. C. S was with him as I returned. He was just reading a letter from H advising the immediate manufacture of rifled cannon from the Chicopee Works. Lincoln seemed to be in a pleasant, hopeful mood, and, in the course of the conversation, partially foreshadowed his present plan.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0016#1", "doc": "hay-0016", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-25 (diary)", "text": "He said : \" I intend, at present, always leaving an opportunity for change of mind, to fill Fortress Monroe with men and stores ; blockade the ports effectually ; provide for the entire safety of the Capital ; keep them quietly employed in this way, and then go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing her.\" General B has sent an imploring request to the President to be allowed to bag the whole nest of traitorous Maryland legislators and bring them in triumph here. This the Tycoon, wishing to observe every comity even with a recusant State, forbade. To-day we got a few letters and papers and felt not quite so forlorn", "words": 114 }, { "id": "hay-0017#0", "doc": "hay-0017", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-26 (diary)", "text": "Massachusetts and Rhode Island troops in large numbers arrived to-day I called on S , the Governor of Rhode Island, with N . A small insignificant youth, who bought his place; but who is certainly all right now. He is very proud of his company, of its wealth and social standing. C. S was here to-day. He spoke with wild enthusiasm of his desire to mingle in this war. He has great confidence in his capability of arousing the enthusiasm of the young. He contemplates the career of a great guerilla chief with ardent longing. He objects to the taking of Charleston and advises forays on the interior states The Seventh Regiment band played gloriously on the shaven lawn at the south front of the Executive Mansion. The scene was very beautiful. Through the luxuriant grounds, the gaily dressed crowd idly strolled, soldiers loafed on the promenades, the martial music filled the sweet air with vague suggestion of heroism, and C S and the President talked war.", "words": 167 }, { "id": "hay-0019#0", "doc": "hay-0019", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-29 (diary)", "text": "Going into N 's room this morning, C. S and J. L were sitting. J was at the window, filling his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplation of a secession flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria. \" Let me tell you,\" said he to the elegant Teuton, \" we have got to whip these scoundrels like h — 1, C. S . They did a good thing stoning our men at Baltimore and shooting away the flag at N ter. It has set the great North a howling for blood, and they'll have it.\" \" I heard,\" said S , \" you preached a sermon to your men yesterday.\" \"No, sir ! this is no time for preaching. When I went to Mexico there were four preachers in my regiment. In less than a week I issued orders for them all to stop preaching and go to playing cards.", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay-0019#1", "doc": "hay-0019", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-29 (diary)", "text": "In a month or so, they were the biggest devils and best fighters I had.\" An hour afterward C. S told me he was going home to arm his clansmen for the wars. He has obtained three months' leave of absence from his diplomatic duties, and permission to raise a cavalry regiment. I doubt the propriety of the movement. He will make a wonderful land pirate; bold, quick, brilliant and reckless. He will be hard to control and difficult to direct. Still, we shall see. He is a wonderful man.", "words": 90 }, { "id": "hay-0020#0", "doc": "hay-0020", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-30 (diary)", "text": "Three Indians of the Potta- watomies called to-day upon their great father The President amused them greatly by airing the two or three Indian words he knew. I was amused by his awkward efforts to make him- self understood by speaking bad English : e. g. — Where live now ? When go back Iowa ? Frederick H and I dined together. He seems stung by the inaction which his lameness, besides his foreign duties, imposes upon him. He evidently chafes with generous emulation of the coming glories of S in the field. He is a delicate-souled and thoughtful genius, but has not the vigor and animal arrogance that help S to bully his way through life. H will probably indulge his bent for literature in the high solitude of Quito. He intimated a course of articles in the A and an ultimate book.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay-0020#1", "doc": "hay-0020", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-04-30 (diary)", "text": "Coming home from the theatre I met B , S and F coming out of the audience chamber. Going in, I saw the great map of Virginia, newly hung, and fronted by consciouslooking chairs. The air is full of ghastly promises for Maryland and Virginia. Meanwhile the north is growing impatient. Correspondents talk impertinently, and the N. Y. T advises the immediate resignation of the Cabinet, and warns the President that he will be superseded", "words": 74 }, { "id": "hay-0021#0", "doc": "hay-0021", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-05-01 (diary)", "text": "There were a half-dozen goodlooking members of the Seventh Regiment called upon the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies and Navies this afternoon. He was very frank and cordial with them. He spoke amusedly of the T 's proposition of deposing him, and said that the Government had three things to do : — Defend Washington ; Blockade the Ports ; and retake Government property. All the possible despatch was to be used in these matters, and it would be well if the people would cordially assist in this work before clamoring for more. The proclamation calling out the troops is only two weeks old. No people on earth could have done what we have in that time. M. B came in with the intelligence that our office-holders had been quietly installed at Baltimore under the floating of the constellated banner, and that the police-board had removed the restriction on the sale of flour. He thought the outbreak at the Massachusetts passage was the work of secession officials who were unwilling to lose their lease of plunder. He thoroughly believed in the loyalty of Maryland. The President seemed to think that if quiet was kept in Baltimore, a little longer, Maryland might be considered the first of the redeemed", "words": 208 }, { "id": "hay-0022#0", "doc": "hay-0022", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-05-04 (diary)", "text": "The Maryland disunionists — that branch of them represented by B. McL called to-day upon the President They roared as gently as 'twere any nightingale. The only point they particularly desired to press was that there was no special necessity at present existing for the armed occupation of Maryland They also implored the President not to act in any spirit of revenge for the murdered soldiers. The President coolly replied that he never acted from any such impulse ; and, as to their other views, he should take them into consideration, and should decline giving them any answer at present. Gen'l S gave orders to Gen'l B to occupy the Belay House as soon as practicable, and B instantly replied that he should hold divine service with his command there to-morrow (Sunday).", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0024#0", "doc": "hay-0024", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-05-07 (diary)", "text": "I went in to give the President some little items of Illinois news, saying among other things that S was behaving very badly. He replied with emphasis that S was a miracle of meanness ; calmly looking out of the window at the smoke of two strange steamers puffing up the way, resting the end of the telescope on his toes sublime. I spoke of the proposition of B to sub-jugate the South, establish a black republic in lieu of the exterminated whites, and extend a protectorate over them while they raised our cotton. He said : \" Some of our northerns seem bewildered and dazzled by the excitement of the hour. D seems inclined to think that this war is to result in the entire abolition of slavery. Old Col. H , a venerable and most respectable gentleman, impresses upon me most earnestly the propriety of enlisting the slaves in our army.\"", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay-0024#1", "doc": "hay-0024", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-05-07 (diary)", "text": "I told him his daily correspondence was thickly interspersed by such suggestions. \" For my own part,\" he said, \" I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether, in a free government, the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves. There may be one consideration used in stay of such final judgment, but that is not for us to use in advance : That is, that there exists in our case an instance of a vast and far-reaching disturbing element, which the history of no other free nation will probably ever present. That, however, is not for us to say at present. Taking the government as we found it, we will see if the majority can pre-serve it.\" He is engaged in constant thought upon his Message. It will be an exhaustive review of the questions of the hour and of the future", "words": 187 }, { "id": "hay-0026#0", "doc": "hay-0026", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-05-10 (diary)", "text": "C. S loafed into my room this morning, and we spoke of the slaves and their ominous discontent. He agreed with me that the Commandants at Pickens and Monroe were unnecessarily squeamish in imprisoning and re-turning to their masters the fugitives who came to their gates begging to be employed S says that thousands of Democrats are declaring that now is the time to remove the cause of all our woes. What we could not have done in many life-times the madness and folly of the South had accomplished for us. Slavery offers itself more vulnerable to our attack than at any point in any century, and the wild malignity of the South is excusing us before God and the world. So we talked in the morning. But to-night I saw a letter from Mrs. W stating that T. E , T. W. H , the essayist of Boston, and young J. B , were \"going to free the slaves.\" What we were dreaming of came over my mind with horrible distinctness, but I shrank from the apparition. This is not the time nor are these the men to do it. They should wait till the government gives some kind of sanction to the work", "words": 205 }, { "id": "hay-0028#0", "doc": "hay-0028", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO JAMES A. HAMILTON., 1861-08-19 (letter)", "text": "I am the unluckiest wretch that lives. I did not receive the kind note you sent me until Friday night at Long Branch. As it was horribly dull there, I concluded instantly upon reading your kind invitation, to return to New York and go to you Saturday afternoon. But then I found there was no telegraphic station at Irvington or Dobb's Ferry, and that I could not apprize you of my coming. I went down town and lunched with Mr. K at Exchange Place. Coming back I was thunder-struck to find you had been at my hotel and were gone. There were only three resources left me : — Suicide, intoxication or profanity. As I never drink and am still living, you can imagine which I chose. I thought my stupidity could only be expiated by a rigorous penance. So I resolved not to return to* Long Branch, not to enjoy myself in New York, but to go sulkily back to Washington and stay^ at my desk until my luck changed. Some day, before long, I will take my fate by the throat and conquer it. It has become a monomania with me to eat salt with you at Nevis, and it shall be done. Very gratefully.", "words": 206 }, { "id": "hay-0029#0", "doc": "hay-0029", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MRS. E-, 1861-08-21 (letter)", "text": "If the events of the last few days were to be taken as an earnest of the future, I would invest my surplus shekels in a cheap tombstone, write \" Miserrimus \" on it, and betake myself to Prussic acid glace. I have been like Poe's Raven's \" un-happy master whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster, till he thought all life a bore.\" It is not a particularly hilarious chronicle, but here it is. Finding it hideously dull at Long Branch (the gay and festive Jenkins of the H is paid by the line for making the world believe that the place is not ghastly and funereal, the crowd a sort of queer half-baked New Jersey confectionery, with a tendency to stammer when spoken to and to flatten its nose against our windows while we ate), I determined to go up to New York and accept a most kind invitation from Col. Hamilton to come to him Saturday.", "words": 159 }, { "id": "hay-0029#1", "doc": "hay-0029", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MRS. E-, 1861-08-21 (letter)", "text": "Arriving there I found there was no telegraph to Irvington or Dobb's Ferry. I could not apprize him of my coming or arrange for him to meet me. I blasphemed at this a little, and went quietly down town and was busy for an hour or two. Coming back I found Mr. Hamilton's card at the Hotel. He had been and gone. My rage transcended grief. I was so mad at myself that I was uncivil to everyone else. Mr. D came in with brilliant plans for the next day. I mildly but firmly requested him to mobilize himself for an instant trip to the Court of His Most Sulphurous Majesty. I concluded to take a royal revenge on myself by ordering myself back to Washington. I came and found the air like a damp oven.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0031#0", "doc": "hay-0031", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1861-08-24 (letter)", "text": "Yours of the 22d received this morning. I don't wish to hurry you, but write simply to say that Dr. P 's prediction has been realized. I am flat on my back with bilious fever. I had a gay, old delirium yesterday, but am some better to-day. Doctor thinks I will be round in a day or two. Bob L came this morning bringing positive orders from his mother for me to join her at New York for an extension of her trip. Of course I can't go — as things look. There is no necessity whatever for you to return just now. There is no business in the office, and S is here all the time. He can do as well as either of us. As soon as I get able I shall leave. The air here is stifling. You had better stay as long as you like, for there is nothing but idleness here. As soon as I get on my pins I shall start. It will be a sort of breach of etiquette, but as Joe Gargery feelingly observes : — \" Manners is manners, but your 'elth's your 'elth ! \" Don't come till you get ready.", "words": 196 }, { "id": "hay-0034#0", "doc": "hay-0034", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-10 (diary)", "text": "To-night I went over to McCquarters with the President and S . I was with us part of the way. L was gasconading a little. He said he would like a good place to die in with a corporal's guard, to set the nation right in the face of the world after the cowardly shame of Bull Eun. The President, as L walked off, said : — \" If he really wanted a job like that, I could give it to him. Let him take his squad and go down behind Manassas and break up their railroad.\" S said he disbelieved in personal courage as a civilised institution. He had always acted on the opposite principle, — admitting you are scared, and assuming that the enemy is. If this matter had been managed on his basis, it would have been arranged satisfactorily before now.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0034#1", "doc": "hay-0034", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-10 (diary)", "text": "We came to McC 's quarters and met in the telegraph office a long and awkward youth who spoke in a high-pitched and rapid tone to S : — \"We are just in from a ride of all day.\" S introduced him to me as Capt. Orleans. He went up-stairs to call McC , and the President said quietly : \" One doesn't like to make a messenger of the King of France, as that youth, the Count of Paris, would be, if his family had kept the throne.\" McC came hurriedly in and began to talk with the President. They discussed the events of to-day and yesterday. McC was much pleased at the conduct of his men — no rowdyism or plundering to-day. He was merely to-day finishing yesterday's work.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "hay-0035#0", "doc": "hay-0035", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-12 (diary)", "text": "To-night the President went to S 's, I with him. At the door a telegram was handed him from McC stating that the enemy was before him in force and would probably attack in the morning. \"If they attack,\" he added, \"I shall beat them.\" We went to S 's and talked of many things. S spoke of L 's restlessness and griefs at inaction ; his offered resignation, and resolve to go West and begin again, — that watching the Potomac was not congenial, and other such. Gen. S was already fixing his orders for exactly the work he wanted to do. Col. S came in with despatches from McC , ordering H 's Bladensburg Brigade in — one countermanding and one reaffirming. S then went out to order transportation for 6,000.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0035#1", "doc": "hay-0035", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-12 (diary)", "text": "G. V. F came in and began to talk about the great expedition that is fitting at Annapolis. He wants, when they have sailed, to have 14,000 more men detached from the Army of the Potomac to be held in readiness awaiting the result of the expedition. If it causes a retreat of the rebels, then this additional force can be easily spared. The fleet will probably sail on Tuesday, and will have some work to do at Fernandina, Pensacola, Mobile. Gen'l S told F that 3,500 men would be enough to take Mobile, assisted by their ships. F himself seemed very confident that the expedition would succeed. His only nervousness was in relation to submarine batteries which modern science has rendered very destructive and entirely feasible. S spoke also of M 's despatch which seems to contain a most cheering account of honest sympathy existing in the best class of English society towards us. M 's letter embraced free and cordial conversations with Earl K , Earl G , C , M. N , Prince A and the Queen. There was much talk of D. W , in which the financial sanssoucism of the great man was strikingly prominent. S thought he would not live, nor C , a tithe as long as J. Q. A . The President disagreed with him, and thought W will be read forever.", "words": 225 }, { "id": "hay-0036#0", "doc": "hay-0036", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-17 (diary)", "text": "At S 's to-night we met Capt. S who showed very bad taste by alluding to the Chicago Convention and S . The President told a good yarn. One day in Springfield shortly after some of the lower counties had held meetings and passed Resolutions eulogistic of Trumbull, John Wentworth sitting near Lincoln at breakfast one morning, said: — \"Lincoln, have you seen them Resolutions ? \" \"I have seen what I suppose you refer to.\" \" Them Trumbull fellers are going to trick you again.\" \" I don't see any trickery about it, and if there was, there is no way to help the matter.\" \" I tell you what, Lincoln,\" said John, with a look of unutterable sagacity ; \" You must do, like Seward does — get a feller to run you.\" It was vastly amusing to both the President and Secretary.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0036#1", "doc": "hay-0036", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-17 (diary)", "text": "The Secretary of State talked about intercepted correspondence, and the double-dealing and lying of our English friends F and B . Going to McC 's with B , they talked about the campaign. McC thought the enemy were massing at Manassas. He said he was not such a fool as to buck against that place in the spot designated by the foe. While there the President received a despatch from S at Annapolis, asking for the 79th New York, the Highlanders. The President was vexed at this, and at S 's intimation that the fleet would not sail before Sunday. McC was also bored by the request, but S strongly seconded it. McC said he would sleep on it. We came away, the President still vexed at S . At S 's door he turned suddenly and said : — \" I think I will telegraph to S that I will not break up McC ''s command, and that I haven't much hope of his expedition anyway.\" \" No,\" said S , \" You won't say discouraging things to a man going off with his life in his hands. Send them some hopeful and cheering despatch.\" The President came home and this morning telegraphed S : — \"I will not break up Mc 's army without his consent. I do not think I will come to Annapolis.\" This was all. I think his petulance very unaccountable.", "words": 226 }, { "id": "hay-0037#0", "doc": "hay-0037", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-22 (diary)", "text": "This has been a heavy day. Last night Col. B was killed at Leesburg at the head of his Brigade. Mc and the President talked sadly over it. Mc said, \"There is many a good fellow that wears the shoulder-straps going under the sod before this thing is over. There is no loss too great to be repaired. If I should get knocked on the head, Mr. President, you will put another man immediately into my shoes.\" \"I want you to take care of yourself,\" said the President. McC seemed very hopeful and confident — thought he had the enemy, if in force or not. We left him making arrangements for the morrow. (During this evening's conversation, it became painfully evident that he had no plan, nor the slightest idea of what S was about).", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay-0037#1", "doc": "hay-0037", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-22 (diary)", "text": "To-night we went over again. McC was at Poolesville. Telegraphs that loss is heavy and that troops behaved well. All right in that quarter. At S 's to-night the President talked about Secession, Compromise, and other such. He spoke of a committee of southern pseudo-unionists coming to him before Inauguration for guaranties, etc. He promised to evacuate Sumter if they would break up their Convention, without any row or nonsense. They demurred. Subsequently he renewed proposition to S , but without any result. The President was most anxious to pre-vent bloodshed. I never heard secession made more absurd than by the conversation of to-night ; S , C , K and Bishop Mel . To-day Deputy-Marshal came and asked what he should do with process to be served on P in contempt business. I took him over to S , and S said : \" The President instructs you that the Habeas Corpus is suspended in this city at present, and forbids you to serve any process upon any officer here.\" Turning to me : \" That is what the President says, is it not, Mr. Hay ? \" \" Precisely his words,\" I replied ; and the thing was done.", "words": 194 }, { "id": "hay-0038#0", "doc": "hay-0038", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-26 (diary)", "text": "This evening the Jacobin Club, represented by T , C and W came up to worry the administration into a battle. The agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President defended McC 's deliberateness. We then went over to the General's Headquarters. \"We found Col. K there. He was talking also about the grand necessity of an immediate battle to clean out the enemy at once. He seemed to think we were ruined if we did not fight. The President asked what McC thought about it. K ■ answered : — \" The General is troubled in his mind. I think he is much embarrassed by the radical difference between his views and those of Gen'l S .\" Here McC came in, — K went out, — the President began to talk about his wonderful new repeating-battery of rifled guns, shooting 50 balls a minute.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0038#1", "doc": "hay-0038", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-26 (diary)", "text": "The President is delighted with it, and has ordered ten, and asks McC to go down and see it, and if proper, detail a corps of men to work it. He further told the General that R. J wants the Maryland volunteers in Maryland to vote in November. All right. They then talked about the Jacobins. McC said that W preferred an unsuccessful battle to delay. He said a defeat could be easily repaired by the swarming recruits. McC answered that \" he would rather have a few recruits before a victory, than a good many after a defeat.\" The President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but at the same time said it was a reality, and should be taken into the account : — \" At the same time, General, you must not fight till you are ready.\" \" I have everything at stake,\" said the General ; \" if I fail, I will not see you again or anybody.\" \" I have a notion to go out with you, and stand or fall with the battle \"", "words": 172 }, { "id": "hay-0039#0", "doc": "hay-0039", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-27 (diary)", "text": "We went over to S 's to-night and found C and W there. They had been talking to S to get up a battle, saying that one must be fought ; saying that defeat was no worse than delay, and a great deal more trash. M and S then began to growl about their guns. S and the President soon dried that up. W came in, a strong, healthy, hearty, senator, soldier and man. He was bitter on the Jacobins, saying the safety of the country demanded that the General should have his time. Going up to McC 's the Leesburg business was discussed ; McC saying that S 's report would be in to-morrow ; every one forebore comment The night of the 1st November we went over to McC 's. The General was there and read us his General Order in regard to S 's resignation and his own assumption of command.", "words": 153 }, { "id": "hay-0039#1", "doc": "hay-0039", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-10-27 (diary)", "text": "The President thanked him for it and said it greatly relieved him. He added: — \"I should be perfectly satisfied if I thought that this vast increase of responsibility would not embarrass you.\" \"It is a great relief, Sir ! I feel as if several tons were taken from my shoulders, to-day. I am now in contact with you and the Secretary. I am not embarrassed by intervention.\" \" Well,\" says the President, \" draw on me for all the sense I have, and all the information. In addition to your present command, the supreme command of the army will entail a vast labor upon you.\" \" I can do it all,\" McC said quietly. Going to S 's he talked long and earnestly about the matter. He had been giving a grave and fatherly lecture to McC which was taken in good part ; advising him to enlarge the sphere of his thoughts, and feel the weight of the occasion. Then we went up and talked a little while to the Orleans princes. De Joinville is deaf and says little. The boys talk very well and fluently", "words": 183 }, { "id": "hay-0040#0", "doc": "hay-0040", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-11-08 (diary)", "text": "Here is a cheeky letter just received. MY DEAR SIR : Gen'l W has resigned. Gen'l F must. Gen'l S has retired. I have an ambition, and I trust a laudable one, to be Major-General of the United States Army. Has anybody done more to deserve it? No one will do more. May I rely upon you, as you may have confidence in me, to take this matter into consideration? I will not disgrace the position. I may fail in its duties. Truly yrs., The President. P. S. — I have made the same suggestion to others of my friends.", "words": 99 }, { "id": "hay-0042#0", "doc": "hay-0042", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-11-13 (diary)", "text": "I wish here to record what I consider a portent of evil to come. The President, Governor 8' and I went over to McC 's house to-night. The servant at the door said the General was at the wedding of Col. W at Gen'l B 's and would soon return. We went in, and after we had waited about an hour, McC came in, and without paying any particular attention to the porter who told him the President was waiting to see him, went up-stairs, passing the door of the room where the President and Secretary of State were seated. They waited about half an hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there ; and the answer came that the General had gone to bed.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0042#1", "doc": "hay-0042", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1861-11-13 (diary)", "text": "I merely record this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without comment. It is the first indication I have yet seen of the threatened supremacy of the military authorities. Coming home I spoke to the President about the matter, but he seemed not to have noticed it, specially, saying it was better, at this time, not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity. On the 27th of January the President issued his General War Order No. 1, to those whose direction it was to be. He wrote it without any consultation, and read it to the Cabinet, not for their sanction but for their information. From that time he influenced actively the operations of the campaign. He stopped going to McC 's, and sent for the General to come to him.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0046#0", "doc": "hay-0046", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1862-04-09 (letter)", "text": "Glorious news comes borne on every wind but the South Wind. While P is crossing the turbid and broad torrent of the Mississippi in the blaze of the enemy's fire, and G is fighting the overwhelming legions of B at Pittsburg, the little Napoleon sits trembling before the handful of men at Yorktown afraid either to fight or run. 8- feels devilish about it. He would like to remove him if he thought it would do. Things go on here about as usual. There is no fun at all I am getting along pretty well. I only work about twenty hours a day. I do all of your work and half of my own now you are away. Don't hurry yourself. We are getting on very well. I talk a little French too now. I have taken a great notion to the G s. I went to see them the other day. The children were less scared than usual, and they and Madame la Baronne talked long and earnestly of the state of your hygiene, and said \"it was good intentions you for to go to the West for small time.\"", "words": 191 }, { "id": "hay-0048#0", "doc": "hay-0048", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1862-08-11 (letter)", "text": "You will have seen by the papers that P has been running his head into a hornet's nest. He fought a desperate battle the other day — or rather B did — P coming up at the end of it. He stands now in good position, eager for another fight and confident of licking the enemy. The Tycoon has given orders that he shan't fight unless there is a first-rate chance of cleaning them out. The Tycoon thinks a defeat there would be a greater nuisance than several victories would abate. There is no further news. It is horribly hot, all but me who have gone to shaking again. Your infernal south windows always give me the chills. S has broken them up, however, and doses me remorselessly to keep them away.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0048#1", "doc": "hay-0048", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1862-08-11 (letter)", "text": "If in the wild woods, you scrouge an Indian damsel, steal her moccasins while she sleeps and bring them to me. The Tycoon has just received a pair, gorgeously quilled, from an Indian Agent who is accused of stealing. He put them on and grinned. Will he remember them on the day when C proposes another to fill the peculating donor's office ? I fear not, my boy ! I fear not ! Aug. 30. Saturday morning, the 30th of August, I rode out into the country and turned in at the Soldiers' Home. The President's horse was standing by the door, and in a moment the President appeared, and we rode into town together. We talked about the state of things by Bull Run and P 's prospect. The President was very outspoken in repard to McC 's present conduct.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0049#0", "doc": "hay-0049", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1862-08-27 (letter)", "text": "Where is your scalp ? If anybody believes you don't wish you were at home, he can get a pretty lively bet out of me. I write this letter firing into the air. If it hits you, well. It will not hurt so much as a Y 's rifle. If in God's good Providence your long locks adorn the lodge of an aboriginal warrior and the festive tomtom is made of your stretched hide, I will not grudge the time thus spent, for auld lang syne. In fancy's eye I often behold you the centre and ornament of a wildwood circle, delighting the untutored children of the forest with Tuscan melodies. But by the rivers of Babylon you refuse to yield to dalliance — yea, you weep when you remember Washington whose magnificent distances are nevermore for you.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0049#1", "doc": "hay-0049", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1862-08-27 (letter)", "text": "Washington is not at the present speaking an alluring village. Everybody is out of town and nobody cares for nobody that is here. One ex-ception tres charmante which is French for devilish tidy. Miss C K is here with a pretty cousin from B which E S is quite spooney about her while I am languidly appreciative. G 's Theatre re-opens next Saturday and D breathes again. Some pretty women are engaged, to whom I am promised introductions. There is also a new Club House established in the city, to which I have sometimes gone to satisfy the ragings of famine. I think you will patronize it extensively when you come back. I ride on horseback mornings. I ride the off horse. He has grown so rampagious by being never driven (I have no time to drive) that no one else whom I can find can ride him. S B and L ride sometimes the near horse. I am yours,", "words": 162 }, { "id": "hay-0050#0", "doc": "hay-0050", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MISS MARY R ., 1863-01-22 (letter)", "text": "I suppose you have long before this decided that I was never again to be believed or trusted, it has been so long since you kindly gave me permission to send you these books. But I am not so much to blame as you would think. I have made myself a nuisance at the book-stores asking for them ever since I returned. The demand for them, Mr. P informs me, has been so great that the supply was temporarily exhausted and I have been compelled to wait until now for a complete set. I have just finished reading the entire work. I think nothing approaching it in sustained excellence has been written in our day. It is a great novel, a splendid historical monogram, a brilliant theological disquisition, and a profound treatise of political philosophy.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0050#1", "doc": "hay-0050", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO MISS MARY R ., 1863-01-22 (letter)", "text": "No man in our day has thought it worth while to use the vehicle of fiction for the transmission of such weighty and portentous truths. No philosopher or statesman has had sufficient grace and vigor of imagination to envelope his ideas in a garb so attractive, and no novelist has been gifted with that strength and scope of intellect which would enable him to grasp with so firm a hand the gravest problems of society and progress. In delicacy and fervor of fancy and depth of pathos, in sustained and unflagging power, and in absolute mastery of the machinery of artistic construction, I have read nothing that can even be brought into comparison with it.1 Of course there will be many things in it which you will not approve, and many which you will not understand fully until you have finished the book ; and even then if you are dissatisfied, it is not with the author but with society and the great social wrongs against which he is a crusader. I envy you heartily, Miss Mary, the leisure xThe French edition of \" Les Miserables.\" which you are to devote to this wonderful book. I deeply regretted the quiet and \" the tranquil mind,\" with which I should have read it in Springfield a year or two ago. Very truly your friend as then and there.", "words": 225 }, { "id": "hay-0051#0", "doc": "hay-0051", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-08 (letter)", "text": "I arrived here to-night at the General's headquarters and was very pleasantly received by both him and H . They are both in fine health and spirits. H is looking better than I ever saw him before. They asked after you. On the way down I had for compagnons de voyage Gen'ls V and G ; G on sick leave and V to report for duty. I hear nothing but encouraging accounts of the fight of yesterday in Charleston harbor. Gen'l S , chief of staff, says we are sure to whip them ; much surer than we were before the attack. The monitors behaved splendidly. The Keokuk was sunk and the Patapsco somewhat damaged, but as a whole they encountered the furious and concentrated fire of the enemy in a style for which even our own officers had scarcely dared to hope.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0051#1", "doc": "hay-0051", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-08 (letter)", "text": "The attack will soon be resumed with greater confidence and greater certainty of what they are able to do than before. An expedition is on for the army from which they hope important results. The force of the enemy is much larger than ours, but not so well posted, and as they are entirely ignorant of our plans they are forced to scatter and distribute their strength so as greatly to diminish its efficiency. Our troops are in good order and fine spirits apparently. I think highly of S from the way he talks ; like a firm, quick and cool-headed man. On the whole, things look well, if not very brilliant. The General says he is going to announce me to-morrow as a volunteer Aide without rank. I am glad of it as the thing stands.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0052#0", "doc": "hay-0052", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-10 (letter)", "text": "I have written some particulars of my interview with Admiral D which I thought the Presi- dent should know. Please give it to him, reading it yourself if you care to. I went up into the harbor yesterday. The gray-coated rascals were on both sides, waiting for another attack. A crowd of them were crawling cautiously over the bluff to look at the wreck of the Keokuk which has sunk near the shore. They are very busy throwing up new batteries on Morris Island, and did not fire on us though we were in easy range. While I was gone they published the order making me Voln. A. D. C.", "words": 111 }, { "id": "hay-0053#0", "doc": "hay-0053", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN., 1863-04-10 (letter)", "text": "I went yesterday morning to Charleston Harbor to deliver to Admiral D the despatches with which the Navy Department had charged me. I found the Admiral on board the \"Ironsides,\" which, with the rest of the Monitor fleet, was lying inside the bar, at the point where they had anchored after the engagement of Tuesday. I delivered my despatches, and, while he was reading them, I had some conversation with Capt. B, , fleet captain of the S. A. B. Squadron. He said that although the attack had been unsuccessful and the failure would of course produce a most unhappy effect upon the country, which had so far trusted implicitly in the invincibility of the Monitors, all the officers of the Navy, without exception, united in the belief that what they had attempted was impossible, and that we had reason for congratulation that what is merely a failure had not been converted into a terrible disaster.", "words": 155 }, { "id": "hay-0053#1", "doc": "hay-0053", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN., 1863-04-10 (letter)", "text": "The matter has now been fairly tried. With favoring circumstances, with good officers, with good management, the experiment has completely failed. We sailed into the harbor not sanguine of victory. We fought only about forty minutes, and the unanimous conclusion of the officers of the Navy is that an hour of that fire would have destroyed us. We had reached and touched the obstructions. To have remained there long enough to have removed them would have ensured the destruction of some of the vessels. If the others had gone by the fort they would still have been the target of the encircling batteries. There was no sufficient land force to have taken possession of the city. There was no means of supplying them with ammunition and provision, for no wooden ship could live ten minutes in that fire.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0054#0", "doc": "hay-0054", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-14 (letter)", "text": "Here is one of the cleverest things I have seen since the war began. It is an impromptu order of H 's on Miss Mary Brooks, a New York lady, who was down here on a visit with Mrs. R . The \" Hay \" is, of course, Charlie, not the Colonel. We are living very pleasantly here since the return from Charleston of the K 's. The General has some fine horses and the rides are pleasant. Yours truly, Headquarters, Dept. of the South, Hilton Head, S. C, March 25, 1863. SPECIAL ORDERS, A. No. 1. I. With her charming looks And all her graces, Miss Mary Brooks, Whose lovely face is The sweetest thing we have seen down here On these desolate Islands for more than a year, Is hereby appointed an extra Aide On the Staff of the General Commanding, With a Captain of Cavalry's strap and grade, And with this most definite understanding.", "words": 154 }, { "id": "hay-0054#1", "doc": "hay-0054", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-14 (letter)", "text": "II. That Captain Mary, Gay and airy, At nine each day, until further orders, To Colonel Halpine shall report For special duty at these Headquarters : — And Captain Mary, (Bless the fairy !) Shall hold herself, upon all occasions, Prepared to ride At the Adjutant's side And give him of flirting his regular rations ; And she shan't vamoose With the younglings loose Of the junior Staff, — such as Hay and Skinner ; But, galloping onward, she shall sing, Like an everlasting lark on the wing — And she shan't keep the Adjutant late for dinner. III. The Chief Quartermaster of Department Will give Captain Mary a riding garment : — A long, rich skirt of a comely hue, Shot silk, with just a suspicion of blue, — A gipsey hat, with an ostrich feather, A veil to protect her against the weather, And delicate gauntlets of pale buff leather ; Her saddle with silver shall all be studded And her pony, — a sorrel, — it shall be blooded : Its shoes shall be silver, its bridle all ringing With bells that shall harmonize well with her singing. And thus Captain Mary, Gay, festive and airy, Each morning shall ride At the Adjutant's side And hold herself ready, on all fit occasions, To give him of flirting his full army rations. By Command of Maj.-Gen'l D. Hunter, Ed. W. Smith, Assistant Adjutant- General. Official Copy : Chas. G. Halpine, Lieut. - Col. and Assistant Adjutant- General, 10th Army Corps, and Department of the South.", "words": 242 }, { "id": "hay-0055#0", "doc": "hay-0055", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-16 (letter)", "text": "The General and the Admiral this morning received the orders from Washington directing the continuance of operations against Charleston. The contrast was very great in the manner in which they received them. The General was absolutely delighted. He said he felt more encouraged, and was in better heart and hope than before, at this indication of the earnestness of the government to finish this business here. He said, however, that the Admiral seemed in very low spirits about it. He talked despondingly about it, adhering to the same impressions of the desperate character of the enterprise as I reported to the President after my first interview with him. Perhaps having so strongly expressed his belief that the enterprise was impracticable he feels that he is rebuked by an opposite opinion from Washington.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0055#1", "doc": "hay-0055", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-16 (letter)", "text": "Gen'l H is in the best feather about the matter. He believed before we came back that with the help of the gunboats we could take Morris Island and from that point reduce Fort Sumter ; and he is well pleased to have another chance at it. Whether the intention of the government be to reduce Charleston now, with adequate men and means, or by powerful demonstrations to retain a large force of the enemy here, he is equally anxious to go to work again. I write this entirely confidentially for you and for the President to know the ideas prevalent here. Gen'l S has been with you before this, and has given to the government the fullest information relative to military matters here. His arrival, I suppose, will only confirm the resolution already taken. Admiral D 's despatches by the Flambeau of course put a darker shade on the matter than anything S will say, as he was strongly in favor of staying there and fighting it out", "words": 168 }, { "id": "hay-0056#0", "doc": "hay-0056", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-23 (letter)", "text": "In yours of the 15th received last night, you say \"there was verbal indication of much wrath at the report that D intended to withdraw his fleet and abandon his position.\" I was surprised at this. If you have received my different letters you will see why. He would have obeyed orders had he done so. You say we have gained points (Tappui for future work. The navy say not. They say they cannot lie off Morris Island to cover the landing of our troops, (or rather the crossing from Folly Island, the only practicable route), without imminent danger of being driven ashore and wrecked by the first northeasterly breeze that comes. It is not for me to say what is, or what is not, possible. My old ideas have been horribly shattered when I have seen two men, each of whom I had formerly considered an oracle on every subject connected with ships, accusingeach other of ignorance and charlatanism.", "words": 160 }, { "id": "hay-0056#1", "doc": "hay-0056", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-04-23 (letter)", "text": "I do not think D is either a fool or a coward. I think there is a great deal of truth in his statement that, while the fight in Charleston harbor demonstrated the great defensive properties of the Monitors, it also proved that they could not be relied upon for aggressive operations. With an adequate force I think H could dislodge the enemy from Morris Island, and from that point make a hole in Fort Sumter ; but even then little has been done. The General is sanguine. He wants a fight. I hope he may have one before I return. To-day I start for Florida Saturday, the 11th of July, 1863. The President seemed in a specially good humor to-day, as he had pretty good evidence that the enemy were still on the north side of the Potomac, and N had announced his intention of attacking them in the morning.", "words": 152 }, { "id": "hay-0057#0", "doc": "hay-0057", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-08-07 (letter)", "text": "B and his mother have gone to the white mountains. (I don't take any special stock in the matter, and write the locality in small letters.) B was so shattered by the wedding of the idol of all of us, the bright particular Teutonne, that he rushed madly off to sympathise with nature in her sternest aspects. They will be gone some time. The newspapers say the Tycoon will join them after a while. If so, he does not know it. He may possibly go for a few days to C M , where H L is now staying, though that is not certain. This town is as dismal now as a defaced tombstone. Everybody has gone. I am getting apathetic and write blackguardly articles for the Chronicle from which W extracts the dirt and fun, and publishes the dreary remains.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0057#1", "doc": "hay-0057", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-08-07 (letter)", "text": "The Tycoon is in fine whack. I have rarely seen him more serene and busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once. I never knew with what tyrannous authority he rules the Cabinet till now. The most important things he decides, and there is no cavil. I am growing more and more firmly convinced that the good of the country absolutely demands that he should be kept where he is till this thing is over. There is no man in the country so wise, so gentle and so firm. I believe the hand of God placed him where he is. They are all working against him like braves though, — H and that crowd — but don't seem to make anything by it. I believe the people know what they want, and unless politics have gained in power and lost in principle, they will have it", "words": 156 }, { "id": "hay-0058#0", "doc": "hay-0058", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-08-09 (diary)", "text": "This being Sunday and a fine day I went down with the President to have his picture taken at G 's. He was in very good spirits. He thinks that the rebel power is at last beginning to disintegrate ; that they will break to pieces if we only stand firm now. Referring to the controversy between two factions at Richmond, one of whom believes still in foreign intervention, northern treason, and other chiniseras ; and the other, the administration party, trusts to nothing but the army, he said : — \" D is right. His army is his only hope, not only against us, but against his own people. If that were crushed, the people would be ready to swing back to their old bearings.\" He is very anxious that Texas should be occupied and firmly held in view of French possibilities. He thinks it just now more important than Mobile. He would prefer that G should not throw his army into the Mobile business before the Texas matter is safe. He wrote in that sense, I believe, to G to-day", "words": 178 }, { "id": "hay-0059#0", "doc": "hay-0059", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-08-13 (diary)", "text": "Rode to-day with the President and the Secretary of State to the Capitol. Saw the statuary of the east pediment. The President objected to P 's statue of the Wood chopper, as he did not make a sufficiently clean cut. Coming home the President told S of what F B said about an interview he had had with P in the West. P said, \" We are gone up ; there is no further use of talking! \" \" How about your institution ? \" F asked. \" Gone to the Devil ! \" S said : \" Slavery is dead ; the only trouble is that the fools who support it from the outside do not recognise this, and will not, till the thing is over. In our Masonic warfare we made a great fight. The Masons were beaten ; they knew and felt it, and retired from the fight. But the Jack Masons, as they were called, kept up their dismal howls of sympathy for the masons, long after they had given up the fight and forgotten all about it. So now, though slavery is dead, the Democratic party insists on devoting itself to guarding the corpse.\"", "words": 187 }, { "id": "hay-0060#0", "doc": "hay-0060", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-08-19 (diary)", "text": "This evening and yesterday evening an hour was spent by the President in shooting with S 's new repeating rifle. A wonderful gun, loading with absolutely contemptible simplicity and ease, with seven balls, and firing the whole, readily and deliberately, in less than half a minute. The President made some pretty good shots. S , the inventor, a quiet little Yankee who sold himself in relentless slavery to his idea for six weary years before it was perfect, did some splendid shooting An irrepressible patriot came up and talked about his son John who, when lying on his belly on a hill-top at Gettysburg, feeling the shot fly over him, like to lost his breath — felt himself puffing up like a toad — thought he would bust. Another, seeing the gun recoil slightly, said it wouldn't do ; too much powder ; a good piece of audience shouldn't rekyle ; if it did at all, it should rekyle a little torrid.", "words": 157 }, { "id": "hay-0060#1", "doc": "hay-0060", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-08-19 (diary)", "text": "22 August. The President to-day said J L was acting so splendidly now that he absolved him in his own mind for all the wrong he ever did, and all he will do hereafter 23 August. Last night we went to the Observatory with Mrs. Y . They were very kind and attentive. The President took a look at the moon and Arcturns. I went with him to the Soldiers' Home, and he read Shakespeare to me, the end of Henry V, and the beginning of Richard III, till my heavy eyelids caught his considerate notice, and he sent me to bed. This morning we ate an egg, and came in very early. He went to the library to write a letter to C , and I went to pack my trunk for the North Staid about a week at Long Branch. Fine air — disgusting bathing — pretty wornen, and everything lovely. No politics, no war, nothing to remind me while there that there was such a thing as government or a soul to save. Count G was an undertone of nuisance — that was all.", "words": 183 }, { "id": "hay-0061#0", "doc": "hay-0061", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-09-09 (diary)", "text": "Dined with W . Met H , B and F . H was in fine flow. Before dinner we talked about H and bis connection with H 's resignation. He says he was forced to ask to be relieved by repeated acts which proved that he was not to be allowed to manage his army as he thought best, but that it was to be manoeuvred from Washington. He instanced Maryland Heights, whose garrison he was forbidden to touch, yet which was ordered to be evacuated by the very mail which brought his (H 's) relief. And other such many. At dinner he spoke of our army. He says : \" It was the finest on the planet. He would like to see it fighting with foreigners. It gave him an electric feeling to be with it.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0061#1", "doc": "hay-0061", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-09-09 (diary)", "text": "It was far superior to the Southern army in everything but one. It had more valor, more strength, more endurance, more spirit ; the rebels are only superior in vigor of attack. The reason of this is that, in the first place our army came down here capable of everything but ignorant of everything. It fell into evil hands — the hands of a baby, who knew something of drill, little of organisation, and nothing of the morale of the army. It was fashioned by the congenial spirit of this man into a mass of languid inertness destitute of either dash or cohesion. The Prince de Joinville, by-far the finest mind I have ever met with in the army, was struck by this singular, and as he said, inexplicable contrast between the character of American soldiers as integers and in mass.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0062#0", "doc": "hay-0062", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-09-10 (diary)", "text": ". I dined to-night at W 's with H , B , F , W , and Col. B, of P H says : — \" Our war has developed no great cavalry officer. S has good points, but does not fulfil his early promise. P is splendid, enterprising and brave, but full of mannerisms and weaknesses. B is far superior to any others in all the qualities of a great rider. But none of them approach the ideal.\" Speaking of L , he expressed himself slightingly of L 's abilities. He says he was never much respected in the army. In Mexico he was surpassed by all his lieutenants. In the cavalry he was held in no esteem. He was regarded very highly by Gen'l S . He was a courtier, and readily recommended himself by his insinuating manner to the General, whose petulant and arrogant temper has driven of late years all officers of spirit and self-respect away from him.", "words": 154 }, { "id": "hay-0062#1", "doc": "hay-0062", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-09-10 (diary)", "text": "\" Look at all his staff-officers ! sleek and comfortable and respectable and obsequious : T , C , H , W , etc.\" \" The strength of the rebel army rests on the broad shoulders of L . He is the brain of L , as S J was his right arm. Before every battle he has been advised with. After every battle L may be found in his tent. He is a weak man and little of a soldier. He naturally rests on L , who is a soldier, born.", "words": 82 }, { "id": "hay-0063#0", "doc": "hay-0063", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-09-11 (letter)", "text": "A week or so ago I got frightened at ' ' The brow so haggard, the chin so peaked, Fronting me silent in the glass,\" and sending for S (who had been giving the northern watering places for the last two months a model of high breeding and unquestionable deportment), I left for a few days at Long Branch and two or three more at Providence. I was at the Commencement at B University, and made a small chunk of a talk. I only staid a little over a week, and came back feeling heartier. I must be in Warsaw early in October on account of family affairs. As I infer from your letter that you cannot return before November, or, as Judge O says, before December, I will have to give the reins up for a few days to S and H again.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay-0063#1", "doc": "hay-0063", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-09-11 (letter)", "text": "I hope the daring youth will not reduplicate the fate of Phaeton. Washington is as dull here as an obsolete almanac. The weather is not so bad as it was. The nights are growing cool. But there is nobody here except us old stagers who can't get away. We have some comfortable dinners and some quiet little orgies on whiskey and cheese in my room. And the time slides away. We are quietly jolly over the magnificent news from all round the board. R won a great and bloodless victory at Chattanooga which he had no business to win. The day that the enemy ran, he sent a mutinous message to H complaining of the very things that have secured us the victories, and foreshadowing only danger and defeat. You may talk as you please of the Abolition Cabal directing affairs from Washington ; some well-meaning newspapers advise the President to keep his fingers out of the military pie, and all that sort of thing.", "words": 165 }, { "id": "hay-0064#0", "doc": "hay-0064", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863 (diary)", "text": "20 September. Sunday morning, the 20th of September, the President showed me R 's despatches of the day before, detailing the first day's fighting, and promising a complete victory on the next day. The President was a little uneasy over the promise, and very uneasy that B was not within supporting distance. The next morning he came into my bed-room before I was up, and sitting down on my bed said : — \" Well, R has been whipped as I feared. I have feared it for several days. I believe I feel trouble in the air before it comes. R says we have met with a serious disaster — extent not ascertained. B instead of obeying the orders which were given on the 14th, and going to R , has gone up on a foolish affair to Jonesboro to capture a party of guerillas who are there.\"", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay-0064#1", "doc": "hay-0064", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863 (diary)", "text": "Day by day the news brightens up. N — held his own magnificently, and virtually whipped the enemy opposed to him. The scattered divisions came together. The enemy halted. B established himself again at Chattanooga. The stampede seemed to be over. On Wednesday night, the 23d, coming home, I found on my table some interesting despatches from the rebel papers which I thought the President would like to read. They contained pretty full accounts of rebel losses in the late battles ; among other things chronicling the death of B. H H , Mrs. L 's brother-in-law, who spent some time with the family here and was made a paymaster by the President. I took them over to the War Department to give them to an orderly to carry to the President.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0065#0", "doc": "hay-0065", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-18 (diary)", "text": "Sunday. I arrived in Washington to-day after an absence of a little more than two weeks. On presenting myself to the President this morning I gave him my impression of the conduct of Mr. C in trying to cut under in the way he is doing, instancing what D of New York had related. He said \" it was very bad taste, but that he had determined to shut his eyes to all these performances ; that C made a good Secretary, and that he would keep him where he is : — if he becomes President, all right ! I hope we may never have a worse man. I have all along clearly seen his plan of strengthening himself. Whenever he sees that an important matter is troubling me, if I am compelled to decide it in a way to give offence to a man of some influence, he always ranges himself in opposition to me, and persuades the victim that he (C.) would have arranged it very differently.", "words": 166 }, { "id": "hay-0065#1", "doc": "hay-0065", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-18 (diary)", "text": "It was so with Gen'l F , — with Gen'l H , when I annulled his hasty proclamation — with Gen'l B , when he was recalled from New Orleans, — with the Missouri people when they called the other day. I am entirely indifferent as to his success or failure in these schemes, so long as he does his duty as the head of the Treasury Department.\" He talked of the Missouri matter, and read to me the letter he had written D for the Committee. As it will probably be published, I forbear synopsis. It is a superb affair, perfectly just and frank, courteous but immoveable. He will not be bullied even by his friends. He tries to reason with these infuriated people. The world will hear him, if they do not. He read to me a letter which he has to-day written to Gov. G , who, it seems, is anxious to have the President espouse his side of the quarrel, and to recognise him as the State Government, and use the federal authority to crush out the radicals, who, he says, meditate revolution and civil war in Missouri.", "words": 186 }, { "id": "hay-0068#0", "doc": "hay-0068", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-22 (diary)", "text": "I spoke to the President to-day about B , his Rockville speech, and the action of the Union League of Philadelphia leaving out his name in Resolutions electing the Cabinet honorary members of the League. He says B is anxious to run S and beat W D . The President on the contrary says that as D is the nominee of the Union Convention, and as we have recognised him as our candidate, it would be mean to do anything against him now. Things in Maryland are badly mixed. The unconditional Union people are not entirely acting in concert. T seems acceptable to everyone. C is going to make a good run. But S is complicating the canvass with an embarrassing element, that of forcible negro-enlistments. The President is in favor of the voluntary enlistment of the negroes with the consent of their masters and on payment of the price.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay-0068#1", "doc": "hay-0068", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-22 (diary)", "text": "But S 's favorite way, (or rather B 's, whom S • approves) is to take a squad of soldiers into a neighborhood and carry off into the army all the able-bodied darkies they can find, without asking master or slave to consent. Hence results like the case of W and S . \" The fact is,\" the President observes, \" S is wider across the head in the region of the ears, and loves fight for its own sake, better than I do.\"", "words": 81 }, { "id": "hay-0071#0", "doc": "hay-0071", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-29 (diary)", "text": "I went down to W 's to-day and got from P , who is here, a free ticket to New York and back for W. W , the poet, who is going to New York to electioneer and vote for the union ticket. Saw G and H . H is just starting for the West on a tour of inspection. I would give my chances for to go with him, but N still stays in the sunset, and I am here with a ball and chain on my leg I told the President that C would try to make capital out of this R business. He laughed and said, \" I suppose he will, like the blue-bottle fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find.\" He seems much amused at C 's mad hunt after the Presidency. He says it may win. He hopes the country will never do worse. I said he should not, by making all C 's appointments, make himself particeps criminis. He laughed on, and said he was sorry the thing had begun, for though the matter did not annoy him, his friends insisted that it ought to.", "words": 193 }, { "id": "hay-0072#0", "doc": "hay-0072", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-30 (diary)", "text": ". The President and Mrs. L went to see F . About midnight, the President came in. I told him about D 's note and asked if D ■ had not always been a C man. He said: — \"Yes, until recently, but he 114 LETTERS OP JOHN HAY seems now anxious for my reelection.\" I said O was expected here to-day, and told the President the story of N and O . He went on and gave me the whole history of the visit they made to S ■, — B , O , and H , — of the appointment of B , — of the way O rode him — of his final protest, and the break. I said \" O now was determined to have the Custom House cleaned out.\" \" He will have a good time doing it.\" He went on telling the history of the Senate raid on S , — how he had and could have no adviser on that subject, and must work it out by himself, — how he thought deeply on the matter, — and it occurred to him that the way to settle it was to force certain men to say to the Senators here what they would not say elsewhere.", "words": 193 }, { "id": "hay-0072#1", "doc": "hay-0072", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-10-30 (diary)", "text": "He confronted the Senate and the Cabinet. He gave the whole history of the affairs of S and his conduct, and the assembled Cabinet listened and confirmed all he said. \" I do not now see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed S , the thing would all have slumped over one way, and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When C • sent in his resignation I saw that the game was in my own hands, and I put it through. When I had settled this important business at last with much labor and to my entire satisfaction, into my room one day walked D. D. N and G. O , and began a new attack upon me to remove S .", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay-0073#0", "doc": "hay-0073", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-01 (diary)", "text": "This evening Gen'l S ■, accompanied by Gen'l G and Judge K , came in to insist upon some order which would prevent disloyal people from voting at the ensuing Maryland election. Before going into the President's room (K and G sitting with me in the ante-room) K spoke very bitterly of B 's working against the Union party in Maryland. After they were gone I handed the President B 's R speech, telling him I had read it carefully, and saving a few intemperate and unwise expressions against leading Republicans which might better have been omitted, I saw nothing in the speech which would have given rise to such violent criticism. \" Really,\" says the President, \" the controversy between the two sets of men represented by him and by Mr. S is one of mere form and little else.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0073#1", "doc": "hay-0073", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-01 (diary)", "text": "I do not think Mr. B would agree that the States in rebellion are to be permitted to come at once into the political family and renew the very performances which have already so bedeviled us. I do not think Mr. S would insist that when the loyal people of a State obtain the supremacy in their councils and are ready to assume the direction of their own affairs, that they should be excluded. I do not understand Mr. B to admit that J D may take his seat in Congress again as a representative of his people; I do not understand Mr. S to assert that J M B may not. So far as I understand Mr. S he seems in favor of Congress taking from the Executive the power it at present exercises over insurrectionary districts, and assuming it to itself.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "hay-0074#0", "doc": "hay-0074", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-02 (diary)", "text": "The President says B has been tendered F 's department, while F goes to relieve B , who resigns. It is not yet known whether B will accept. I asked about R . The President says he sees no immediate prospect of assigning him to command ; — that he had thought, when the trouble and row of this election in Missouri is over, and the matter will not be misconstrued, of sending R to Missouri and S into the field. He says that it was because of G 's opposition that E. is not in the Army of the Cumberland. When it was decided to place G in command of the whole Military Division, two sets of orders were made out, one contemplating K, 's retention of the command of his own army, and the other his relief.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay-0074#1", "doc": "hay-0074", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-02 (diary)", "text": "G was to determine the question for himself. He said at once that he preferred K, should be relieved, — that he (E. ) never would obey orders. This consideration of course involves a doubt as to whether R should be placed in command of a district from which G must, to a certain extent, derive supplies and reinforcements on occasion. To-night S sent for copies of the correspondence between the President and B . The Tycoon came into my room with the despatch in his hands, clad in an overcoat, pure and simple, reaching to his knees, and sleepily fumbled for the papers in his desk till he found them, and travelled back to bed Sunday, 8 Nov. The President tells me that M is at last after the enemy and that G will attack to-morrow.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0076#0", "doc": "hay-0076", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-18 (diary)", "text": "We started from Washington to go to the consecration of the Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg. On our train were the President, S , U and B ; N and myself; M and Admiral K ; B and Capt. I and Lieut. M and C ; Mrs. W ; W. McV ; McD of C ; and one or two others. We had a pleasant sort of a trip. At Baltimore S 's staff joined us. Just before we arrived at Gettysburg, the President got into a little talk with McV' about Missouri affairs. McV. talked radicalism until he learned that he was talking recklessly. The President disavowed any knowledge of the E case ; said that B said to him, as indeed he said to me, that E was inefficient and must be removed for that reason. At Gettysburg the President went to Mr. W who expected him, and our party broke like a drop of quicksilver spilt.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay-0076#1", "doc": "hay-0076", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-18 (diary)", "text": "McV , young S and I foraged around for a while — walked out to the College, got a chafing dish of oysters, then some supper, and, finally, loafing around to the Court House where L was holding a meeting of marshals, we found F , and went around to his place, Mr. F 's, and drank a little whiskey with him. He had been drinking a good deal during the day, and was getting to feel a little ugly and dangerous. He was particularly bitter on M. B . McV was telling him that he pitched into the President coming up, and told him some truths. He said the President got a good deal of that, from time to time, and needed it. He says : — \" H , you are a fortunate man. You have kept yourself aloof from your office.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0077#0", "doc": "hay-0077", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-22 (diary)", "text": "This evening S read to the President a despatch from C. C , in which he discussed the whole field of American politics — European diplomacy — and the naval improvements of the century. This man is certainly the most wonderful ass of the age. He recently sent a despatch to S , criticising in his usual elusive and arrogant style, the late Oration of S on Foreign Relations, concluding in regular diplomatic style by saying : — \" You will read this to Mr. S , and if lie desires it, give him a copy.\" S says : — \" It is saddening to think of the effect of prosperity on such a man. Had not we succeeded, and he prospered, he would always have been known as a brave, sincere, self-sacrificing and eloquent orator. I went all the way to K to see and to encourage him.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay-0077#1", "doc": "hay-0077", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-22 (diary)", "text": "It is prosperity that has developed that fearful un-derlying vanity that poisons his whole character.\" I asked Mr. S if he heard of the three revolutions of Matamoras, of which we have been talking to-day. He said : — \" Yes ! I have re-ceived a despatch about it from Gov. B . I am surprised that a man so sagacious and cautious should have been on the brink of doing so imprudent a thing.\" \" He was about to fire on them then ? \" said the President. \"Yes!\" said N . \"Our consul at Matamoras asked for protection, and he brought his guns to bear on the Castle for that purpose. I wrote to him at once that that would be war; that if our consul wanted protection he must come to B for it.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0079#0", "doc": "hay-0079", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1863-11-25 (letter)", "text": "G 's and W 's despatches are so cheering this morning that I sent you a cautious despatch this morning. H (fighting J ) (Fight- inger than ever) has done gloriously ; carried the north slope of Lookout Mountain and gobbled a thousand prisoners. T and S have also done all they attempted, and G is to advance to-day along his whole line. B has sent a courier through to W and says he is all right as yet ; is not hungry or thirsty, and has not quite begun his share of the fighting. Everything looks well. Don't, in a sudden spasm of good-nature, send any more people with letters to me requesting favors from S . I would rather make the tour of a small-pox hospital.", "words": 127 }, { "id": "hay-0082#0", "doc": "hay-0082", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-28 (diary)", "text": "The Secretary of State came in this morning and gave me his contribution to the President's Message, relating exclusively to Foreign Affairs. He then said he had a matter to submit which was strictly confidential: — \"I saw a great while ago that the President was being urged to do many things which were to redound to the benefit of other men, he taking the responsibility and the risk. I preferred to leave to these men the attitude they coveted, of running before, and shouting for the coming events. I preferred to stay behind, to do with and for the President what seemed best, to share with him the criticism and the risk, and to leave the glory to him and to God. \"Among other measures to unite good men and to divide the opposition was the Loyal League Association of the country.", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay-0082#1", "doc": "hay-0082", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-11-28 (diary)", "text": "I saw very early that they would be valuable in bringing over to our side the honest War Democrats, and I therefore encouraged them as far as possible with my influence and my money. Soon I discovered a wheel within the enterprise — a secret, Know Nothing, Masonic Order with signs and pass-words. They asked me for money. They sent to me from California for charters. Not to make trouble I complied with all requests. You will see for what purpose this machine is being used.\" Here he handed me a scrap of paper on which was scrawled in T. W 's handwriting : — \" Loyal Leagues, into which Odd Fellows and Know Nothings rush, are fixing to control delegate appointments for Mr. C .\" S , still scribbling, said: — \"If you want to be cheated, join a secret society.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0083#0", "doc": "hay-0083", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-09 (diary)", "text": "In the evening J and XI , and N and I were talking politics and blackguarding our friends in the Council Chamber. A great deal had been said about the folly of the E B letter— the N B speech, etc. — when the President came in. They at once opened on him, and after some talk he settled down to give his ideas about the B business. He said : — \" The B s have, to an unusual degree, the spirit of clan. Their family is a close corporation. F is their hope and pride. They have a way of going with a rush for anything they undertake ; — especially have M and the Old Gentleman. When this war first began, they could think of nothing but F ; they expected everything from him ; and upon their earnest solicitation he was made a General, and sent to Missouri.", "words": 143 }, { "id": "hay-0083#1", "doc": "hay-0083", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-09 (diary)", "text": "I thought well of F . Even now I think he is the prey of wicked and designing men, and I think he has absolutely no military capacity. He went to Missouri, the pet and protege of the B 's. At first they corresponded with him and with F , who was with him, fully and confidently thinking his plans and his efforts would accomplish great things for the country. At last the tone of F 's letters changed. It was a change from confidence to doubt and uncertainty. They were pervaded with a tone of sincere sorrow, and of fear that F would fail. M showed them to me, and we were both grieved at the prospect. Soon came the news that F had issued his Emancipation Order, and had set up a Bureau of Abolition, giving free papers, and occupying his time apparently with little else.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "hay-0084#0", "doc": "hay-0084", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-10 (diary)", "text": "S speaks of the Message with great gratification. It satisfies his idea of proper reconstruction without insisting on the adoption of his peculiar theories. The President repeated, what he has often said before, that there is no essential contest between loyal men on this subject, if they consider it reasonably. The only question is : — Who constitute the State ? When that it is decided, the solution of subsequent questions is easy. He says that he wrote in the Message originally that he considered the discussion as to whether a State has been at any time out of the Union, as vain and profitless. We know that they were — we trust they shall be — in the Union. It does not greatly matter whether, in the meantime, they shall be considered to have been in or out.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "hay-0084#1", "doc": "hay-0084", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-10 (diary)", "text": "But he afterwards considered that the 4th Section, 4th Article of the Constitution, empowers him to grant protection to States in the Union, and it will not do ever to admit that these States have at any time been out. So he erased that sentence as possibly suggestive of evil. He pre-ferred, he said, to stand firmly based on the Constitution rather than work in the air. Talking about the M matter, he said these radical men have in them the stuff which must save the State, and on which we must mainly rely. They are absolutely uncorrosive by the virus of secession. It cannot touch or taint them. While the conservatives, in casting about for votes to carry through their plans, are tempted to affiliate with those whose record is not clear.", "words": 134 }, { "id": "hay-0085#0", "doc": "hay-0085", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-12 (diary)", "text": "I met at the Theatre S. S. C , who was speaking of the statesmanship and success of Gov. S , attributing much to the bon- hommie and affability of his manners. He says S sent for him the other day and asked him if he wanted to retain his place on the Committee of Foreign Relations, and if he wished to designate what gentlemen on the Democratic side should be associated with him, promising to speak to C for him. This frank kindliness seemed to have won C over very much personally. S is unquestionably gaining in popularity very fast. M said of him the other day : — \" II est tres sage.\" The diplomatic body have all apparently stopped abusing him, and those who do not like, have been forced to respect.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "hay-0086#0", "doc": "hay-0086", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-13 (diary)", "text": "The President, speaking to-day about M matters, said he had heard some things of S which had very much displeased him : — That while W was in M , he saw or thought he saw that S was working rather energetically in the politics of the State, and that he approached S and proposed that he should use his influence to harmonize the conflicting elements so as to elect one of each wing, G B and H . S 's reply was that he would not consent to the election of G B . Again when G B was about coming to Washington, he sent a friend to S to say that he would not oppose his confirmation, if he (S ) would, so far as his influence extended, agree to a Convention of M to make necessary alterations in her State Constitution.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay-0086#1", "doc": "hay-0086", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-13 (diary)", "text": "S 's reply, as reported by B to the President was that he would not consent to a State Convention. These things, the President says, are obviously transcendent of his instructions and must not be permitted. He has sent for S to come to Washington and explain these grave matters. The President is inclined to put R in S 's place, and to give to Gen'l C the Department of Kansas. But H and S stand in his way, and he has to use the strong hand so often with those impractical gentlemen that he avoids it when he can To-night H arrived and spent the evening with the President. The conversation at first took a professional turn, the President showing a veryintimate knowledge of those plays of Shakespeare where FalstafF figures.", "words": 133 }, { "id": "hay-0089#0", "doc": "hay-0089", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-23 (diary)", "text": "I took to the Senate to-day the nomination of S as Major General. The President had previously spoken to some of the Senators about it. He is anxious that S should be confirmed so as to arrange this M matter promptly. I told S , W , H and D . Senator F also agreed to do all he could to put the matter properly through. But on the nomination being read in Executive Session, H of M objected to its consideration and it was postponed. S and D tell me it will certainly go through when it is regularly taken up. L came up to the President about it, and told him this. L is very anxious to have the K part of the plan at once carried out. M says that G. B gave to S to present to the Senate the radical protest against S 's confirmation, and that S presented it to-day.", "words": 155 }, { "id": "hay-0089#1", "doc": "hay-0089", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-23 (diary)", "text": "The President sent for S , but he was not at his lodgings. The President is very much disappointed at B . After three interviews with him he understood that B would not oppose the confirmation. It is rather a mean dodge to get S to do it in his stead The President to-night had a dream : — He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said : — \" He is a very common-looking man.\" The President replied : — \"The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.\"", "words": 109 }, { "id": "hay-0090#0", "doc": "hay-0090", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-24 (diary)", "text": "I dined to-day with S. S. C . He spoke of G 's foolish C ex-plosion the other night at W. P 's Cooper Institute meeting, and said C was working night and day. He has gotten nearly the whole strength of the New England States. If there is any effort made in O he can be beaten there. He has little strength in his own State. I asked him whom his party would nominate. \" Gen'l McC ! We will run McC . He is our best ticket. He lost some prestige by his W letter. But it was necessary. He never would have gotten the nomination without it.\" \" You don't agree with the H on G ? \" \" G belongs to the Eepublicans. We can't take him after his letter to W .", "words": 130 }, { "id": "hay-0090#1", "doc": "hay-0090", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-24 (diary)", "text": "But for that, we might have taken him. The Republicans won't take him either. They have got his in-fluence, and have no further use for him.\" \" If I were a soldier I should much prefer com- manding the U. S. Army for life, to four years in the Executive Mansion. I think G would.\" \"So would McC , I know.\" I met him again to-night in the Theatre. He says he is getting tired of Washington. He wants to spend a few years in Europe. He will go, if McC is next President; — thinks he will anyhow. Says it is delightful to be in the minority ; you are not bored by your people for office. — \" Glad you like it ! \" quoth I. \" We will try to keep you so.\"", "words": 129 }, { "id": "hay-0091#0", "doc": "hay-0091", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-25 (diary)", "text": "A lonesome sort of Christmas. I breakfasted, dined and supped alone. Went to the Theatre and saw Macbeth alone. The President to-day got up a plan for extending to the people of the rebellious districts the practical benefits of the Proclamation. He is to send record-books to various points to receive subscriptions to the Oath, for which certificates will be given to the man taking the oath. He has also prepared a placard himself giving notice of the opening of the books and the nature of the oath required. He sent the first of the books to P to be used in Virginia. The second he will probably send to Arkansas. The President was greatly amused at G *s hasty C explosion and its elaborate explanation in the T .", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0091#1", "doc": "hay-0091", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-25 (diary)", "text": "He defended Gov. C from N 's unjust attacks, saying that he thought C 's banking system rested on a sound basis of principle ; that is, causing the capital of the country to become interested in the sustaining of the National credit. That this was the principal financial measure of Mr. C , in which he (L ) has taken an especial interest. Mr. C had frequently consulted him in regard to it. He had generally delegated to Mr. C exclusive control of those matters falling within the province of his Department. This matter he had shared in to some extent", "words": 99 }, { "id": "hay-0092#0", "doc": "hay-0092", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1863-12-28 (diary)", "text": "I received to-night letters from P and S asking me to come down to Florida and be their Representative in Congress. Talked with the President about the matter of the reconstruction of Florida. He wants me to take one of his Oath-books down to Point Lookout, and get the matter going there, and after that he will appoint me a Commissioner to go to Florida and engineer business there. By their meeting at St. Augustine, the other day, there seems a prospect of getting the State under way early next Spring. I will go down and form my plans after I get there as to my own course", "words": 110 }, { "id": "hay-0093#0", "doc": "hay-0093", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-01 (diary)", "text": "I left W 's yesterday and went to live at Club to-day. Point Lookout. The President and Secretary of War to-day (Jan. 2, 1864), commissioned me to go down to Point Lookout, and deliver to Gen'l M the book of oaths and the accompanying blanks, and explain to him the mode in which they are to be used. Gen'l B was ordered by telegraph to meet me there and consult as to the manner of carrying out the President's plan for pardoning and enlisting the repentant rebels. I bore a letter for Gen'l B 's instruction. I went on board a little tug at the Seventh Street Wharf, and rattled and rustled through the ice to Alexandria where I got on board the Clyde, most palatial of steam tugs, fitted up with a very pretty cabin and berths heated by steam and altogether sybaritic in its appointments.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "hay-0093#1", "doc": "hay-0093", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-01 (diary)", "text": "The day was bitterly cold, and the wind was malignant on the Potomac. I shut myself up in my gorgeous little cabin and scribbled and read and slept all day. The captain thought best to lay to for a while in the night, so we put in at Smith's Creek, and arrived at Point Lookout in the early morning. I went to the head-quarters of the General, accompanied by a young officer who asked my name and got it. I felt little interest in his patronymic, and it is now gone into the oblivion of those ante Agamemnona. It was so cold that nobody was stirring. A furry horse was crouching by the wall. \" Hello, Billy ! cold ! Ain't it ? \" said my companion. Billy was indignantly silent. We stumbled on over the frozen ground past the long line of cottages that line the beach, built by the crazy proprietor of the land who hoped to make here a great watering-place which would draw the beauty and fashion of the country away from Long Branch, and make Newport a Banz des Vaches.", "words": 182 }, { "id": "hay-0094#0", "doc": "hay-0094", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-08 (diary)", "text": "N and I visited to-night the Secretaries of the Interior and of the Treasury. U talked about the vacancy occasioned by the death of C. B. S . Said he understood S to be for him, when he was asking it for himself. O is an admirable man for the place, but U • does not want to lose him from the Department. We found at C 's a most amusing little toy, \" the Plantation Breakdown.\" The Secretary and his daughter were busily engaged exhibiting it to some grave and reverend old fellows who are here at the meeting of the Society of Arts and Sciences. In the course of conversation the Secretary said to me : — \" It is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery, failing after enormous exertions ; and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose.\" A noble sentiment, Mr. Secretary !", "words": 158 }, { "id": "hay-0095#0", "doc": "hay-0095", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-09 (diary)", "text": "C has written to the President that the entire Union force of the P Legislature, House and Senate, have subscribed a request that the President will allow himself to be re-elected, and that they intend visiting Washington to present it. He says: — \"I have kept my promise.\" The indications all look that way. The loud Lincoln men, who are useful only as weather- gauges to show the natural drift of things, are laboring hard to prove themselves the original friends of the President. M. D is talking about the C plot to ruin him and Lincoln. He says P is to be at the head of the new F party that is soon to be placed in commission ; and much of this. On the other hand, W. McV , who dined with me to-day, says that the strugglers now seem to get ahead of each other in the nomination.", "words": 150 }, { "id": "hay-0095#1", "doc": "hay-0095", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-09 (diary)", "text": "The New Hampshire occurrence startled the Union League of P . They saw their thunder stolen from their own arsenals. They fear their own endorsement will be passee before long, and are now casting about to get some arrangement for putting him in nomination at once, W. told a very funny story about F and C in conversation about politics on the train. F bibulously insisting that if he had beaten C for the Senate, there would have been no war.", "words": 80 }, { "id": "hay-0096#0", "doc": "hay-0096", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-13 (diary)", "text": "I received to-day my commission as A. A. G. from the War Department, and accepted it, taking the oath of allegiance before Notary C . Made a visit or two. Went into the President's room and announced myself ready to start. \" Great good luck and God's blessing go with you, John ! \" How long will you stay, one month or six months ? New York, Jan. 15. On board the Fulton. The embarcation of the 54th Boys. Variety of complexions — redheads, — riling into their places on deck — singing, whistling, smoking and dancing — eating candy and chewing tobacco. Jolly little cuss, round, rosy and half-white, singing : — Oh John Brown dey hung him We're gwine to jine de Union Army Oh John Brown dey hung him We're gwine to Dixie's land. Way down by James' Kiver Old massa's grave is made And he or me is sure to fill it When he meets de black Brigade. We're gwine to trabbel to de Souf To smack de rebels in de mouf. Tuesday, 19. A cold, raw day. Passed Charleston early in the morning. Fort Sumter lit up by a passing waft of sunshine. A shot fired from Cumming's Point as we passed. The weather — demoralized by Yankee contact — growing so cold as to drive passengers below stairs to euchre.", "words": 215 }, { "id": "hay-0097#0", "doc": "hay-0097", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-20 (diary)", "text": "On arriving at Hilton Head yesterday afternoon I found that Gen'l G 's Headquarters were now at Hilton Head. I went on shore, met Col. S , and made an appointment to be presented to Gen'l G later. Took tea at the Port Royal House and was told by the gentlemanly proprietor that I had better forage on my friends for a bed. Was presented to the General and delivered my letter to Gen'l G . He seemed perplexed rather, and evidently thought he was expected to undertake some immediate military operation to effect the occupation and reconstruction. He dwelt on the deficiency of transportation in the Department and the immobility of his force for the purposes of land attack. He has only now after great efforts succeeded in mounting a regiment of infantry for cavalry service, etc., etc. I told him it was not the President's intention to do anything to embarrass his military operations ; that all I wished from him was an order direct- ing me to go to Florida and open my books of record for the oaths ; as preliminary to future proceedings. He said we would speak farther of it. Meanwhile I will wait for my papers delayed at New York.", "words": 203 }, { "id": "hay-0098#0", "doc": "hay-0098", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-01-23 (diary)", "text": "Saturday. Saturday night I went on board the Ben Deford with the General to visit Folly and Morris Islands. Col. J , Major B , Capt. R and F were in the party. In the morning we were at Pawnee Landing, Folly River. We mounted and rode to Gen'l T 's headquarters; saw model of Fort Wagner. T joined G and we went up the beach to Light House Inlet ; saw the scene of the crossing by S ; crossed and went in ambulances to Wagner ; spent some time there. From Wagner walked up to Gregg, leaving our ambulance. Saw the mortar batteries before getting there. From Gregg had a good view of Fort Sumter — silent as the grave — flag flying over it — a great flag flying over the battery on Sullivan's Island. The city, too, was spread out before us like a map ; everything very silent ; a ship lying silent at the wharf. No sign of life in Bipley, Johnson or Pinckney.", "words": 160 }, { "id": "hay-0100#0", "doc": "hay-0100", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-01 (diary)", "text": "and 2nd. Evening of February 1st Gen'l T and I got on board a noisy little tug at the wharf which took us to the Ben Deford. We went upstairs and drank a few whiskey punches, and then to sleep. In the morning found ourselves off Stone ; — tide too low to let us over the bar ; — were rowed ashore, — Gen'l T , Turner and I. Stopped at lower end of Folly for an ambulance ; rode to Gen'l T 's headquarters and took horses to ride to Light House Inlet; crossed in a boat and walked up to Col. D . Col. D. full of a plan for capturing the Sumter garrison. We went in ambulance to Wagner. The sound of firing had been heard all the morning. It grew more frequent, and Davies told us it was directed at a stranded blockade-runner.", "words": 141 }, { "id": "hay-0100#1", "doc": "hay-0100", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-01 (diary)", "text": "Just as we got in sight of Wagner a white smoke appeared in the clear air (the fog had lifted suddenly) and a sharp crack was heard. It seemed as if a celestial popcorn had been born in the ether. \" There's a shell from Simkins,\" said Turner. We went on, and there were more of them. As we got to Wagner we got out and sent the ambulance to a place of safety under the walls. They were just making ready to discharge a great gun from Wagner, The Generals clapped hands to their ears. The gun was fired, and the black globe went screaming close to the ground over the island, over the harbor, landing and bursting near the helpless blockade-runner stranded half-way from Fort Beauregard to Fort Moultrie.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0101#0", "doc": "hay-0101", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-02 (diary)", "text": "The enemy's fire was getting prettywarm. They had the range perfectly ; most of the shell burst in or over the works ; but the men were so well protected that all the time we were there but three were hit, and they were said to be imprudent. The men dodged and broke to cover at the flashing of the enemy's battery, but the officers exposed themselves with perfect in-souciance. The shells had singular voices. Some screamed frightfully ; some had a regular musical note like Chu-chu-weechu-weechu-&r7T ; and each of the fragments a wicked little whistle of its own. Many struck in the black, marshy mud behind us, burying themselves, and casting a malodorous shower into the air. Others burrowed in the sand. One struck the face of C , while I was standing on the parapet, with a heavy thud, and in a moment afterward threw a cloud of sand into the air.", "words": 155 }, { "id": "hay-0101#1", "doc": "hay-0101", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-02 (diary)", "text": "I often saw in the air a shell bursting,— fierce, jagged white lines darting out first, like javelins — then the flowering of the awful bud into full bloom, — all in the dead silence of the upper air ; — the crack and the whistle of the fragments. Col. D ■ took us to see the great 300- pounder Parrot. At a very little distance, an ugly-looking hole where a shell had just burst ; — beside the gun traces in the sand of hasty trampling and wagon-wheels ; — dark stains soaking into the sand ; — a poor fellow had just had his leg taken off by a piece of a shell. I saw them putting a crushed and mangled mass into an ambulance. He was still and pale. The driver started off at a merry trot.", "words": 131 }, { "id": "hay-0102#0", "doc": "hay-0102", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-09 (diary)", "text": "Jacksonville We came to Jacksonville, gay with flags and busy with shipping at noon. I landed and found no General, no staff, no means of information. Ignorance the densest. Met D , who took me to Mrs. . I saw in a few moments' glance the wretched story of two years. A lady, well-bred and refined, dressed worse than a bound girl, with a dirty and ragged gown that did not hide her trim ankles and fine legs. A white-haired, heavy-eyed, slow-speaking old young man. A type of thousands of homes where punishment of giant crimes has lit on humble innocents. I put on my seven-leaguers and rode with K and P in the afternoon around the pickets. P selected points for fortifications. We saw two negro regiments, one at dress parade, gay with banners, one in camp, fragrant with salt-horse. Some firing in the front, with ultimate intentions of mutton or fresh pork. As we came home we saw a train going to provision Gen'l G 's advance ; — a pretty dowdy walking in the silent street, — and some blue-bellied vandals making themselves agreeable to one of the few remaining families.", "words": 196 }, { "id": "hay-0103#0", "doc": "hay-0103", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-10 (diary)", "text": "Yesterday I had a number of copies of the Proclamation posted through the town. The few citizens gathered around, the lettered reading, the unlettered listening with something that looked like a ghost of interest At 2i p. m. Gen'l G and staff came clattering into the cabin of the Ben Deford. They seemed greatly elated by the success of the expedition, and were full of Col. H 's achievement in the capture of artillery beyond Camp Finegan. In the afternoon Lieut. M came in with his railway train from Baldwin. He had four mules for locomotive who had a playful habit of humping themselves and casting off their riders. He had a young woman on board to whom he showed the usual courtesies of railroad Conductors.", "words": 126 }, { "id": "hay-0104#0", "doc": "hay-0104", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-11 (diary)", "text": "By direction of Gen'l G I went to the prisoners confined in the guard-house, read to them the Proclamation, and said I had come to inform them \" of this executive act, and extend to you its benefits. I have in my possession a book for the record of oaths. I have certificates entitling those signing the book to the benefit of the act. If you sign, you will be released or allowed to return to your houses, if they are not, etc. If not, you will be sent North as prisoners of war for exchange. By signing it you will entitle yourselves to all your rights as citizens of the United States. It is a matter for your choice. There is to be neither force nor persuasion used in the matter.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0104#1", "doc": "hay-0104", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-11 (diary)", "text": "It is a matter that you must decide for yourselves. There has been some doubt ex-pressed as to whether you will be protected. I am authorized to promise that you will be. The occupation does it for the present. Men enough. Inducement is peace and protection and reestablishment of your State Government.\" When I had finished the little I had to say, they crowded around me asking innumerable questions. I got away and had an office fixed up in the quartermaster's block and waited for my flock. They soon came, a dirty swarm of grey coats, and filed into the room, escorted by a negro guard. Fate had done its worst for the j)oor devils. Even a nigger guard didn't seem to excite a feeling of resentment. They stood for a moment in awkward attitudes along the wall.", "words": 140 }, { "id": "hay-0105#0", "doc": "hay-0105", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-12 (diary)", "text": "Received orders from the General to go to St. Augustine with despatches for Col. O ■ to move his force, except two companies, to Picolata. (S asked last night for the 54th Mass. without delay. \" One company is enough for St. Augustine.\" \" Cool for a sub-ordinate,\" said Q. A.) I went over to H and transferred my blasphemy business to him, and made ready at once to go to the Helen Getty. I concluded to go by way of Fernandina to get near my base of supplies My first day's operations in Jacksonville were such as to give me great encouragement. I enrolled in all sixty names — some of them men of substance and influence. The fact that more than fifty per cent, of the prisoners of war were eager to desert and get out of the service shows how the spirit of the common people is broken.", "words": 148 }, { "id": "hay-0105#1", "doc": "hay-0105", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-12 (diary)", "text": "Everybody seemed tired of the war. Peace on any terms was what they wanted. They have no care for the political questions involved. Most of them had not read the oath, and when I insisted on their learning what it was, they would say listlessly : — \" Yes, I guess I'll take it.\" Some of the more intelligent cursed their politicians and especially South Carolina; but most looked hopefully to the prospect of having a government to protect them after the anarchy of the few years past. There was little of what might be called loyalty. But what I build my hopes on is the evident weariness of the war, and anxiety for peace.", "words": 112 }, { "id": "hay-0106#0", "doc": "hay-0106", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-21 (diary)", "text": "Hilton Head. Got over bar this morning soon after day. B woke me up with the miserable news of H 's death, loss of seven pieces, capture of four hundred wounded, and our total repulse about seven miles beyond Sanderson. He has despatches from T to G . Arrived at Hilton Head about 9? after a good run of 14i hours. Delivered our news to Gen'l G . The General was much shocked. He said : — \" This comes of disobeying orders.\" He dwelt on this for some time. He said afterwards : — \" I should rather he had lost these men in obedience to orders than in disobedience.\" S has been very unsteady and queer since the beginning of this campaign. He has been subject to violent alternations of timidity and rashness, now declaring Florida loyalty was all bosh, now lauding it as the purest article extant ; now insisting that B was in his front with the whole confederacy, and now asserting that he could whip all the rebels in Florida with a good brigade. He was ordered to fortify St. Mary's and Baldwin, but pushed out beyond Sanderson instead and got severely punished.", "words": 189 }, { "id": "hay-0107#0", "doc": "hay-0107", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-22 (diary)", "text": ". There was a ball to-night at Beaufort, gotten up by young officers there in honor of the 22d. Gen'l G went up for a few moments to lend his influence to counteract the gloom which was overspreading the camp. We got there early and loafed about till the dancing began. The room was exquisitely decorated ; several very clever pictures, eagles, etc., were done on the walls with magnolia leaves ; flags of all nations, from the Navy, etc. I left with Gen'l G and went on board the Hospital Ship, filled with wounded ; went through hold and up-stairs where the artillery boys were. Saw many desperately wounded ; Col. R mortally, clutching at his bed-clothes and passing garments ; picked up, bed and all, and carried away, picking out his clothes from a pile by shoulder-straps — \" Major ?", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0107#1", "doc": "hay-0107", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-02-22 (diary)", "text": "\" \" No ! Lieutenant- Colonel.\" H , M , D and E , all very chipper and jolly; M shot in toes and hat (like a parenthesis) and sabre ; Hbetween seat and saddle, and in fore-arm. N proposed to H \"to go to party; I'll do dancing, and you hugging.\" Suddenly Gen'l S , who had been much moved by R 's appearance, started off up to the ball. He arrived during a moment's pause in the Lanciers. He stamped his foot : \" Let the music stop ! \" and it did. \" The ball cannot go on. Lights to be out in half an hour.\" A friend of the General asked : — \" Can we eat supper?\" \"Anyone who has the heart to eat at such a time.\" All had a heart of that peculiar construction, for all ate. He came back glowing with the triumph of a generous action performed, and asked us up to his room, where we drank champagne and whiskey, and ate cake. Coming out found the grumbling feasters and went to Hilton Head after two o'clock.", "words": 171 }, { "id": "hay-0113#0", "doc": "hay-0113", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-03 (diary)", "text": "We went out to the bar and passed it. I heard the sea hammering on the guards, and turned over for another nap. Came back to Fernandina. The sea was very heavy ; a steady line of breakers rolling in over the bar without a break in three fathoms water I spent part of evening on board the Peconic. Trash for a little while till I got opportunity to talk to Judge F who seems a sincere and candid man with clear views. He thinks the time is not yet come for Florida. I am very sure that we cannot now get the President's 10th, and that to alter the suffrage law for a bare tithe would not give us the moral force we want. The people of the interior would be indignant against such a snap-judgment taken by incomers and would be jealous and sallow.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "hay-0114#0", "doc": "hay-0114", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-05 (diary)", "text": "Did not get up until tea to-day. \" In bunco tutissimus ibis ! \" There has been quite a heavy swell. To-night the phosphorescent show is the finest I have yet seen. A broad track of glory follows the ship. By the sides abaft the wheels, the rushing waves are splendid silver, flecked here and there with jets of flame ; while outside the silvery trouble, the startled fish darting from our track mark the blue waters with curves and splashes of white radiance. Occasionally across our path drifts a broad blotch of luminous brilliancy, a school of fishes brightening the populous waters.", "words": 101 }, { "id": "hay-0115#0", "doc": "hay-0115", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-06 (diary)", "text": "A beautiful Sunday ; the purest southern day ; the air cool but cherishing and kindly ; the distant shore fringed with palms and cocoanuts ; the sea a miracle of color ; on the one hand a bright vivid green ; on the other a deep dark blue ; flaked by the floating shadows cast by the vagrant clouds that loaf in the liquid sky. Florida Keys. Passed Hillsboro and New River Inlet in the morning, and made Cape Florida at noon. We struck out seaward there, skirting the inner edge of the Gulf-Stream where the pure emerald of the water was marred by the darker waves of the Gulf. Lighter around the vessel grew the pale green of the sea ; more vivid and brilliant the shine in shore. When we passed the shoals off the Cape and took our southerly course outside the reefs I thought I had never seen so splendid a prodigality of coloring in any marine picture.", "words": 156 }, { "id": "hay-0115#1", "doc": "hay-0115", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-06 (diary)", "text": "On our left, towards the horizon, rolled the dark azure of the Gulf-Stream ; before us, and to our right, as far as the distant shore, the vivid emerald of these strange Floridian waters, the darker vegetation of the coral keys throwing its pale beauty into finer relief, while the sunny skies were flushed with a faint auroral radiance of pearl and pink, such as tinges the polished lips of the sea-shells of this coast. Leaning over the starboard rail, gazing with a lazy enjoyment at this scene of enchantment, at the fairy islands scattered like a chain of gems on the bosom of this transcendent sea, bathed in the emerald ripples and basking in the rosy effulgence of the cherishing sky; the white sails flitting through the quiet inlets ; the soft breeze causing the sunny waters to sparkle and the trees to wave, I thought that here were the Isles of the Blessed ; within the magic ring of these happy islands the syrens were singing, and the maids were twining their flowing hair with sprays of the coral.", "words": 180 }, { "id": "hay-0116#0", "doc": "hay-0116", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-07 (diary)", "text": "Key West. We steamed away as it grew light and arrived at Key West about noon. The Key lies bathed in the quiet ripples of the pale green water, whitened by the coral. So bright green that I cannot describe the gem-like shine of the distant waters. The sea-gulls that soar above the sea have their white breasts and inside wings splendidly stained with green by the reflection of the gleaming water. I went ashore, and after several inquiries found that Gen'l W lived half a mile from the dock. I went to a hotel to inquire about a carriage, and was referred to a Jew druggist, — who pointed to a bay rat hitched to a shay in front of his door, and implored me for pure love of God to be back by two.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay-0116#1", "doc": "hay-0116", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-07 (diary)", "text": "I drove out by the beach to the barracks ; passed two black sentries, and found the General's Adjutant, Capt. B , and soon thereafter Gen'l W . I was expected, Gen'l B s' orders having arrived some time ago. I arranged my matters in half an hour In the evening S and I went out to see a \" popular nigger \" named Sandy. Some young \" Knavies \" were there. They chatted a moment, ordered some sapodillos (which tasted like Castile soap and rotten apples), and then went away saying they were going to see the ladies. Whereat Sandy chuckled and guffawed to the imminent danger of his supper, which he had been eating quietly, sensibly refusing to let our entrance disturb him. Sandy talked mostly of his influential friends. \" Captains and Colonels and them things,\" and gingerly of the rebellious and fugacious.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0118#0", "doc": "hay-0118", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-09 (diary)", "text": "Wednesday I found a very decent darkey with a very decent buggy belonging to a v. d. Dr. S ; and they, all together, took me riding to my engagements. The only blot of decency on the Key West escutcheon. Otherwise they are a race of thieves and a degeneration of vipers. We cast off about noon, and night came on us before we had made Indian Head, which was to be our anchorage for the night, as we wanted to be in the lee of Alligator Bank and reef to avoid the fresh gale now blowing in the gulf. We all stood wide-legged and anxious on the forecastle as men will about little things on ships, — Joe heaving the lead, — the Captain leaning to the breeze, his alpaca coat bagging like a seedyballoon, — old R confident and oracular, — till S who had been hanging like a pointer dog over the rail, sung out — \" Light ho ! 4.\" This was old B , and we at once knew where we were. We anchored and lay there quietly. I finished my poem, \" Northward,\" begun to-day on leaving Key West.", "words": 187 }, { "id": "hay-0121#0", "doc": "hay-0121", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-19 (diary)", "text": "The General tells me he intends to ask of the War Department permission to take the 10th Army Corps away from here and lead it in the field himself. H has asked him how many troops he can spare, reserving enough for purely defensive operations. He says he can spare eight or nine thousand. Now, the effective force of the 10th Corps is eleven thousand men, and the troops composing it are such as have been longest in the Department, and the medical director advises that they be moved first. Gen'l G will make this application by to-day's steamer. We got on board at about four o'clock and soon after weighed anchor. We lay in the stream until Gen'l G boarded us in a tug, and gave me despatches for H and C ■ of the tenor aforesaid. Wednesday, 23. Lay to, soon after midnight. A full attendance at breakfast. Three inches of snow on deck ; effeminate southerners of six months' standing, shivering like Italian greyhounds We drove to the hotel and played soldier like young idiots coming home from school Arrived at Washington, half past six.", "words": 187 }, { "id": "hay-0122#0", "doc": "hay-0122", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-24 (diary)", "text": "I arrived at Washington this morning, finding N in bed at 7 o'clock in the We talked over matters for a little while and I got some ideas of the situation from him. After breakfast I talked with the President. There was no special necessity of presenting my papers, as I found he thoroughly understood the state of affairs in Florida, and did not seem in the least annoyed by the newspaper falsehoods about the matter. Gen'l H , I learn, has continually given out that the expedition was the President's and not his (IT 's), — so F tells me. The President said he has not seen G 's letters to H , but said he had learned from S that they had nothing to bear out IT 's assertion. I suppose H is badly bilious about G .", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0122#1", "doc": "hay-0122", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-03-24 (diary)", "text": "G , the President says, is Commander-in-Chief, and H is now nothing but a staff officer. In fact, says the President, \"when McC seemed incompetent to the work of handling an army and we sent for H to take command, he stipulated that it should be with the full power and responsibility of Commanderin-Chief. He ran it on that basis till P 's defeat; but ever since that event he has shrunk from responsibility whenever it was possible.\"", "words": 80 }, { "id": "hay-0123#0", "doc": "hay-0123", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-04-24 (diary)", "text": "To-day the President, loafing into my room, picked up a paper and read the R E 's recent attack on J D . It amused him. \" Why,\" said he, \" the E seems about as fond of J as the W is of me.\" E. L. S , son of Lord S ■, has been here for a week. I took him over to Arlington and showed him the African. He asked more questions than I ever dreamed of in similar circumstances. He applied a drastic suction to every contraband he met with, and came back with brain and note-book crammed with instructive miscellany. He has been exhausting everybody in the same way, till his coming is dreaded like that of the schoolmaster by his idle flock. He is a most intelligent gentleman — courteous and ready — a contrast to most Englishmen in his freedom from conceit and prejudice. He leaves town to-day. I gave him my autograph book ; we exchanged Cartes \" like two young shepherds, very friendly and pastoral.\"", "words": 168 }, { "id": "hay-0124#0", "doc": "hay-0124", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO C. G. H ALPINE., 1864-04-13 (letter)", "text": "I thank you for your kind and most unjust letter. I did call at your house on Bleecker Street, and you were not at home — nor was M. le General. I am too old a soldier to pass through your camp without reporting. I thank you for offering to set me right with the pensive public. But the game is not worth so bright a candle. The original lie in the H was dirty enough, and the subsequent commentaries were more than usually nasty. But the Tycoon never minded it in the least, and, as for me, at my age the more abuse I get in the newspapers, the better for me. I shall run for constable some day on the strength of my gory exploits in Florida. I am stationed here for the present.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay-0124#1", "doc": "hay-0124", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO C. G. H ALPINE., 1864-04-13 (letter)", "text": "I fear I shall not get away soon again. I have a great deal to do. It is the best work that I can do if I must stay here. To-night (April 24) Gen'l B came up with me from Willard's to see the President. LETTERS OP JOHN HAY 183 They talked about the opening campaign more than anything else He gave some interesting reminiscences of the siege of Knoxville (Tad laughing enormously whenever he saw his father's eye twinkle, though not seeing clearly why). B and S are the only ones in motion in accordance with the Order for a general movement on the 23d. April 25. This morning B came in with F , a fine handsome fellow who looks like a soldier at least If I can get away during this campaign I think I will go either with B or G .", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay-0125#0", "doc": "hay-0125", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO CHARLES EDWARD HAY., 1864-05-08 (letter)", "text": "I have received and read with great pleasure your long letter about the good fortune that has come to you.1 I congratulate you very heartily and say God bless you and her whom you have chosen. I knew her very intimately when I was in Springfield, and have rarely met anyone so young who was so sensible, so good and true. I think I have never known a girl more sincere and conscientious. It is with none but the brightest anticipations and hopes for your future that I congratulate you and her. I do not know whether you have yet made up your minds as to time and seasons. I want very much to see you and talk over a thousand things that it is inconvenient to write about.", "words": 130 }, { "id": "hay-0125#1", "doc": "hay-0125", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO CHARLES EDWARD HAY., 1864-05-08 (letter)", "text": "I hope that you will conclude to delay for a while the consummation of your intentions. You are both very young. You can of course trust each other fully. I doubt if you will ever meet a nicer girl anywhere, and I think it will puzzle her to find a better fellow. So now in your jolly youth, you had better wait awhile, don't you think ? You will be a Captain some of these fine mornings. You are now third on the list of Lieutenants. Why not wait that long at least? Although I know nobody whom I would sooner have chosen for a sister than her you have chosen for me, I cannot think of losing you, my dear boy, without a feeling of sadness. We have not been very much together, but we have been friends as well as brothers, and so the past is very much endeared to me.", "words": 152 }, { "id": "hay-0126#0", "doc": "hay-0126", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1864-06-20 (letter)", "text": "I went blundering through the country after leaving you, missing my connections and buying tickets until I landed in Baltimore without a cent ; had to borrow money of the Eutaw to pay for my dinner and hack. Got home tired, dusty and disgusted. The Tycoon thinks small beer of R 's mare's nest. Too small, I rather think. But let 'em work ! V 's sudden Avatar rather startles the Corps here away. B. M asks me how much we gave F for importing him. Society is nil here. The L s go to-morrow — last lingerers. We mingle our tears and ex-change locks of hair to-night in Corcoran's Bow, — some half hundred of us. I went last night to a Sacred Concert of pro-fane music at Ford's. Young Kretchmar and old Kretchpar were running it.", "words": 138 }, { "id": "hay-0126#1", "doc": "hay-0126", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1864-06-20 (letter)", "text": "— H s and H both sang ; — and they kin if anybody kin. The Tycoon and I occupied private box, and both of us carried on a hefty flirtation with the M Girls in the flies. Madame is in the North. The President has gone to-day to visit N. I am all alone in the White pest-house. The ghosts of twenty thousand drowned cats come in nights through the south windows. I shall shake my buttons off with the ague before you get back", "words": 85 }, { "id": "hay-0127#0", "doc": "hay-0127", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864 (diary)", "text": "Thursday night, June 9, the President came into my room just before bed-time, and said that R had been sending despatches requesting that an officer of his staff might be sent to Washington to lay before the President matters of great importance in regard to a conspiracy to overthrow the government. He asked for this permission on account of the outrage committed upon Major B of his staff, who was some time ago courtmartialed for coming to Washington under Gen'l K 's orders. Recently Gov. Y has joined in R 's request asking that S shall be sent for. \"If it is a matter of such overwhelming importance,\" said the President, \" I don't think S is the proper person to whom to entrust it. I am inclined to think that the object of the General is to force me into a conflict with the Secretary of War, and to make me overrule him in this matter.", "words": 157 }, { "id": "hay-0127#1", "doc": "hay-0127", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864 (diary)", "text": "This, at present, I am not inclined to do. I have concluded to send you out there to talk it over with K and to ascertain just what he has. I would like you to start to-morrow.\" He gave me in the morning, before I was out of bed, this note to deliver to E, : — Friday afternoon, June 10, I left Washington and passed through Harrisburg at midnight ; Pittsburgh, noon on the 11th ; through Mingo, Cadiz, to Cincinnati, where I arrived on Sunday morning. I washed my face and went out ; saw a plain, old church covered with ivy, and congratulated myself that there I would find some decent people worshipping God comme il faut; and was horribly bored for my worldliness. After dinner, where I met a rascally looking Jew, who was dining with a gorgeous lorette, and who insisted on knowing me and recognising me from a picture in Harper's Weekly, I strolled out to make visits.", "words": 160 }, { "id": "hay-0129#0", "doc": "hay-0129", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-06-23 (diary)", "text": "The President arrived to-day from the front, sunburnt and fagged, but still refreshed and cheered. He found the army in fine health, good position, and good spirits ; G quietly confident ; he says, quoting the Richmond papers, it may be a long summer's day before he does his work, but that he is as sure of doing it as he is of anything in the world. S is now on a raid, the purpose of which is to sever the connection at junction of the Richmond and Danville Railroads at Burk's, while the army is swinging around to the south of Petersburg and taking possession of the roads in that direction. G says he is not sufficiently acquainted with H to say with certainty whether it is possible to destroy him : but that he has confidence in him that he will not be badly beaten.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay-0129#1", "doc": "hay-0129", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-06-23 (diary)", "text": "When McP or S or S or W is gone on any outside expedition, he feels perfectly secure about them, knowing that, while they are liable to any of the ordinary mischances of war, there is no danger of their being whipped in any but a legitimate way. B says of G that he seems to arrive at his conclusions without any intermediate reason- ing process — giving his orders with the greatest rapidity and with great detail. Uses the theoretical staff-officers very little. z", "words": 85 }, { "id": "hay-0130#0", "doc": "hay-0130", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-06-24 (diary)", "text": "To-day a Resolution came from the Senate asking information about War and Treasury Orders concerning exportation of arms to Mexico. I did not like to act without consulting S , so took the papers to him, asking if it would be well to send copies to Secretaries of War and Treasury or not. He said, — \" Yes ! send the Resolution to the Secretary of War ; a copy to the Secretary of the Treasury ; askingreports from them, and then when the reports are in, \" Did you ever hear Webster's recipe for cooking a cod ? He was a great fisherman and fond of cod. Some one once asking him the best way to prepare a cod for the table, he said : — ' Denude your cod of his scales — cut him open carefully — put him in a pot of cold water — heat it until your fork can pass easily through the fish — take him out — spread good fresh butter over him liberally, — sprinkle salt on the butter — pepper on the salt — and — send for George A and me.'", "words": 173 }, { "id": "hay-0130#1", "doc": "hay-0130", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-06-24 (diary)", "text": "\"When the Reports are in, let me see them ! \" He got up, stumped around the room enjoying his joke, then said : — \" Our friends are very anxious to get into a war with France, using this Mexican business for that purpose. They don't consider that England and France would surely be together in that event. France has the whiphand of England completely. England got out of the Mexican business into which she had been deceived by France, by virtue of our having nothing to do with it. They have since been kept apart by good management ; and our people are laboring to unite them again by making war on France. Worse than that, instead of doing something effective, if we must fight, they are for making mouths and shaking fists at France, warning and threatening and inducing her to prepare for our attack when it comes.\"", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay-0131#0", "doc": "hay-0131", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-07 (diary)", "text": "Got in to New York at 6 o'clock the 16th, Saturday, and, while I was washing my face, came up G 's card. I went down to the parlor and delivered the (President's) letter to him. He didn't like it, evidently ; thought he was the worst man that could be taken for that purpose ; that as soon as he arrived there the newspapers would be full of it; that he would be abused and blackguarded, etc., etc. Then he said, if the President insisted on his going he would go, but he must have an absolute safe-conduct for four persons, saying the President's letter would not protect him against our own officers. This seemed to me reasonable, and I had even presented the matter to the President in the same way.", "words": 132 }, { "id": "hay-0131#1", "doc": "hay-0131", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-07 (diary)", "text": "I wrote the despatch, and sent it to Washington. About noon came the answer. I then wrote the safe-conduct and took it to the T office. I left the names blank, and was going to let G fill them up, but he said \" no,\" in his peculiar, querulous tone : — \" I won't write a word. I expect to be pitched into everywhere for this ; but I can't help it.\" I was going to write a safe-conduct for \" H. G and four others;\" but he would not permit it. \" I want no safe-conduct. If they will catch me and put me in Fort La Fayette, it will suit me first-rate.\" I wrote the names in and gave it to him. \" I will start to-night,\" said he ; \" I shall expect to be in Washington Tuesday morning if they will come.\"", "words": 142 }, { "id": "hay-0132#0", "doc": "hay-0132", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NTCOLAY., 1864-08-25 (letter)", "text": "We are waiting with the greatest interest for the hatching of the big peace-snake at Chicago. There is throughout the country, I mean the rural districts, a good, healthy Union feeling, and an intention to succeed in the military and the political contests; but everywhere in the towns the copperheads are exultant, and our own people either growling and despondent or sneakingly apologetic. I found among my letters here, sent by you, one from J. M , inconceivably impudent, in which he informs me that on the 4th of next March, thanks to Mr. Lincoln's blunders and follies, we will be kicked out of the White House. The d d scoundrel needs a day's hanging. I won't answer his letter till I return and let you see it. Old Uncle J is talkinglike an ass, — says if the Chicago nominee is a good man, he don't know, etc., etc.", "words": 149 }, { "id": "hay-0132#1", "doc": "hay-0132", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NTCOLAY., 1864-08-25 (letter)", "text": "He blackguards you and me — says we are too big for our breeches, — a fault for which it seems to me Nature or our tailors are to blame. After all your kindness to the old whelp and his cub of a son lie hates you because you have not done more. I believe he thinks the Executive Mansion's somehow to blame Land is getting up near the stars in price. It will take all I am worth to buy a tater-patch. I am after one or two small pieces in Hancock for reasonable prices, 20 to 30 dollars an acre. L paid $70,000 for a farm a short while ago, and everybody who has greenbacks is forcing them off like waste paper for land. I find in talking with well-informed people a sort of fear of Kansas property, as uncertain in future settlement and more than all uncertain in weather.", "words": 153 }, { "id": "hay-0133#0", "doc": "hay-0133", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-23 (diary)", "text": "Senator H thinks that B 's support is so important, especially considered as to its bearing on the soldier vote, that it would pay to offer him a foreign mission for it, and so told me. F has also had a man talking to the cannie Scot who asked plumply, \" Will I be a welcome visitor at the White House if I support Mr. Lincoln ? \" What a horrible question for a man to be able to ask ! So thinks the President apparently. It is probable that B will stay about as he is, thoroughly neutral, balancing carefully until the October elections, and will then declare for the side which he thinks will win. It is better in many respects to let him alone.", "words": 123 }, { "id": "hay-0134#0", "doc": "hay-0134", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-24 (diary)", "text": "This morning I asked the President if the report of the resignation of B were true. He said it was. \" Has D been appointed to succeed him ? \" \" I have telegraphed to him to-day — have as yet received no answer.\" \" What is Mr. B going to do ? \" \"He is going up to Maryland to make speeches. If he will devote himself to the success of the national cause without exhibiting bad temper towards his opponents, he can set the B family up again.\" \" W. D is taking the stump also. I doubt if his advocacy of you will be hearty enough to be effective.\" \" If he and the rest can succeed in carrying the State for emancipation, I shall be very willing to lose the electoral vote.\"", "words": 127 }, { "id": "hay-0135#0", "doc": "hay-0135", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1864-09-24 (letter)", "text": "Your despatch was just brought in. I took it to the President, and he told me to tell you, you had better loaf round the city a while longer. You need some rest and recreation and may as well take it in New York as anywhere else. Besides, you can't imagine how nasty the house is at present. You would get the painters' colic in twenty-four hours if you came home now. Politicians still unhealthily haunt us. Loose women flavor the anteroom. Much turmoil and trouble The world is almost too many for me. I take a dreary pleasure in seeing P eat steamed oysters by the half-bushel. He has gotten a haven of rest in the family of some decayed Virginian gentry ; really a very lucky chance, good, respectable, and not dear.", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay-0135#1", "doc": "hay-0135", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLAY., 1864-09-24 (letter)", "text": "S ■ must be our resource this winter in clo'. If you don't want to be surprised into idiocy, don't ask C ■ and L the price of goods. A faint rumor has reached me and paralyzed me. I am founding a \"Shabby Club\" to make rags the style this winter. Write to me some morning while you are waiting for your cocktail, and tell me how's things. Give my love to the fair you are so lucky as to know. Isn't it bully about S ?", "words": 84 }, { "id": "hay-0136#0", "doc": "hay-0136", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-25 (diary)", "text": "Sunday. Yesterday 3ST who has been several days in New York telegraphed to the President that T. W had gone to Canada, and asking if he (N.) had better return. I answered he had better amuse himself there for a day or two. This morning a letter came in the same sense. The President, when I showed it to him, said, — \" I think I know where Mr. W. has gone. I think he has gone to Vermont not Canada. I will tell you what he is trying to do. I have not as yet told anybody. \"Some time ago, the Governor of Vermont came to me ' on business of importance ' he said. I fixed an hour and he came. His name is S . He is, though you wouldn't think it, a cousin of B. S .", "words": 135 }, { "id": "hay-0136#1", "doc": "hay-0136", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-25 (diary)", "text": "B. is large, blonde, florid. The Governor is a little, dark sort of man. This is the story he told me, giving Gen'l B. S as his authority. \" When Gen'l McC was here at Washington, B. S was very intimate with him. They had been together at West Point, and friends. McC had asked for promotion for B. from the President, and got it. They were close and confidential friends. When they went down to the peninsula, their same intimate relations continued, the General talking freely with S about all his plans and prospects ; until one day F. W and one other politician from New York appeared in camp and passed some days with McC . From the day that this took place S saw, or thought he saw, that McC was treating him with unusual coolness and re-serve.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay-0137#0", "doc": "hay-0137", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-26 (diary)", "text": "N has gone into Maryland stumping. He was very much surprised when he got the President's note. He had thought the opposition to him was dying out. He behaves very handsomely, and is doing his utmost. He speaks in New York Tuesday night. B , in spite of some temporary indiscretions, is a good and true man and a most valuable public officer. He stood with the President against the whole Cabinet in favor of reinforcing Fort Sumter. He stood by F in his Emancipation Decree, though yielding when the President revoked it. He approved the Proclamation of January, 1863, and the Amnesty Proclamation, and has stood like a brother beside the President always. What have injured him are his violent personal antagonisms and indiscretions. He made a bitter and vindictive fight on the radicals of Missouri, though ceasing it at the request of the President.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay-0137#1", "doc": "hay-0137", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-26 (diary)", "text": "He talked with indecorous severity of Mr. C , and with unbecoming harshness of 8 , saying on street-corners \" this man is a liar, that man is a thief.\" He made needlessly enemies among public men who have pursued him fiercely in turn. W. R said to-day that H was going to placard all over Maryland this fall : — \" Your time has come ! \" I said, \"he won't do anything of the kind, and moreover M. B will do more to carry emancipation in Maryland than any one of those who abuse him.\" N got home this morning, looking rather ill. I wish he would start off and get hearty again, coming back in time to let me off to Wilmington. He says W said he was on the track of the letter and hoped to get it", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0138#0", "doc": "hay-0138", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-09-29 (diary)", "text": "W has just returned here from the North. He says New York is absolutely safe ; that N . is advising his friends to bet ; that T>. R is despondent— saying the Democratic party are half traitors. Things looked very blue a month ago. A meeting was held in New York (to which Geo. W refers) of Union men opposed to Lincoln, and it was resolved that he should be requested to withdraw from the canvass. But Atlanta and the response of the country to the Chicago infamy set matters right G is moving on L . This morning early the President telegraphed to G expressing his anxiety that L should not reinforce E against S . G answered that he had taken measures to prevent it by attacking L himself. He is moving in two columns ; O south, and B north of the James. S was much excited on hearing the news and said \"he will be in Richmond to-night.\" \"No,\" said the President; \" H , what do you think ? \" H answered that he would not be surprised if he got either Richmond or Petersburg by the manoeuvre.", "words": 185 }, { "id": "hay-0139#0", "doc": "hay-0139", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-10-02 (diary)", "text": "To-day I received a letter from W. N. G saying certain of his friends had agreed to press his name for Judge of the District Court, Western Missouri, in place of Judge W . He adds, however, that, in case Judge B , N torney-General, should desire the appointment, he would not stand in his way, believing that B 's appointment would be very advantageous and satisfactory to the Union people of the State. He requested me to make this known both to Mr. B and the President. I read his letter to the President, and, at the same time referred to the recent indiscreet announcement made by C , that in the event of a reelection the President would call around him fresh and earnest men. He said : \" They need not be especially savage about a change.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay-0139#1", "doc": "hay-0139", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-10-02 (diary)", "text": "There are now only three left of the original Cabinet with the Government.\" He added that he rather thought he would appoint Mr. B to the vacant judgeship if he desired it. He said he would be troubled to fill his place in the Cabinet from Missouri, especially from among the radicals. I thought it would not be necessary to confine himself to Missouri ; that he might do better farther South by taking Mr. H from Kentucky. He did not seem to have thought of that before. But said at once : \" That would do very well ; that would be an excellent appointment. I question if I could do better than that I had always thought, though I had never mentioned it to anyone, that if a vacancy should occur in the Supreme Bench in any Southern District, I would appoint him, but giving him a place in the Cabinet would not hinder that.\" I told him I should show G 's letter to Judge B , to which he assented.", "words": 169 }, { "id": "hay-0140#0", "doc": "hay-0140", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-10-07 (diary)", "text": "I showed B the letter to-day. He said some friends of his had previously spoken to him in the same sense ; that he was friendly to G ; thought well of him as a gentlemam and a lawyer, and knew of no one whom he would sooner see appointed. That he would not take the office himself in any case. That he had earnest antagonisms in that State ; he was fighting those radicals there that stood to him in the relation of enemies of law and order. \" There is no such thing as an honest and patriotic American radical. Some of the transcendental, red-Republican Germans were honest enough in their moon-struck theorising ; but the Americans imprudently and dishonestly arrogate to themselves the title of unconditional loyalty, when the whole spirit of the faction is contempt of, and opposition to law While the present state of things continues in Missouri, there is no need of a Court, — so says Judge T , and I agree with him.\"", "words": 167 }, { "id": "hay-0142#0", "doc": "hay-0142", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-10-11 (diary)", "text": ". I was mentioning old Mr. B 's very calm and discreet letter of October 5 to the President to-day contrasting it with M 's indiscretions ; and the President said : — \" Yes, they remind me of . He was sitting in a bar-room among strangers who were telling of some affair in which his father, as they said, had been tricked in a trade, and he said, ' That's a lie ! ' Some sensation. ' What do you mean ? ' ' Why the old man ain't so easy tricked. You can fool the boys but ye can't the old man.' \" At eight o'clock the President went over to the War Department to watch for despatches. I went with him. We found the building in a state of preparation for siege. S had locked the doors and taken the keys up-stairs, so that it was impossible even to send a card to him.", "words": 147 }, { "id": "hay-0142#1", "doc": "hay-0142", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-10-11 (diary)", "text": "A shivering messenger was passing to and fro in the moonlight over the withered leaves who, catching sight of the President, took us around by the Navy Department and conducted us into the War Office by a side door. The first despatch we received contained the welcome intelligence of the election of E and H in the C district. This was from S at C who also promised considerable gains in Indiana, made good a few minutes after by a statement of 400 gain in Noble County. Then came in a despatch from S stating we had 2500 in the city of Philadelphia and that leading Democrats had given up the State. Then S was seen to be crowding S. C veryhard in the C district, in some places increasing B 's colossal vote of last year.", "words": 137 }, { "id": "hay-0143#0", "doc": "hay-0143", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO NICOLA Y., 1864-10-13 (letter)", "text": "I suppose you are happy enough over the elections to do without letters. Here are two. I hope they are duns to remind you that you are mortal. Indiana is simply glorious. The surprise of this good thing is its chief delight. Pennsylvania has done pretty well. We have a little majority on home vote as yet, and will get a fair vote from the soldiers, and do better in November. The wild estimates of F and C , founded on no count or thorough canvass, are of course not fulfilled, but we did not expect them to be. Judge T died last night. I have not heard anything this morning about the succession. It is a matter of the greatest personal importance that Mr. Lincoln has ever decided. W. D s' clique was badly scooped out in the mayoralty election at Baltimore yesterday. C (regular Union) got nearly all the votes cast", "words": 152 }, { "id": "hay-0145#0", "doc": "hay-0145", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-11-08 (diary)", "text": "The house has been still and almost deserted to-day. Everybody in Washington, not at home voting, seems ashamed of it and stays away from the President. I was talking with him to-day. He said : — \" It is a little singular that I, who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness : — always but once. When I came to Congress it was a quiet time. But always besides that, the contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with great rancor. During the afternoon few despatches were received. At night, at seven o'clock, we started over to the AVar Department to spend the evenins:. Just as we started we received the first gun from Indianapolis showing a majority of 8,000 there, a gain of 1,500 over M 's vote.", "words": 145 }, { "id": "hay-0145#1", "doc": "hay-0145", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-11-08 (diary)", "text": "The vote itself seemed an enormous one for a town of that size, and can only be accounted for by considering the great influx, since the war, of voting men from the country into the State centres where a great deal of army business is done. There was less significance in this vote on account of the October victory which had disheartened the enemy and destroyed their incentive to work. The night was rainy, steamy and dark. We splashed through the grounds to the side door where a soaked and smoking sentinel was standing in his own vapor with his huddled-up frame covered with a rubber cloak. Inside, a half-dozen idle orderlies ; up-stairs the clerks of the telegraph. As the President entered, they handed him a despatch from F claiming ten thousand Union majority in Pennsylvania.", "words": 139 }, { "id": "hay-0146#0", "doc": "hay-0146", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-11-11 (diary)", "text": "At the meeting of the Cabinet to-day the President took out a paper from his desk, and said : — \" Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your names to the back of a paper of which I did not show you the inside? This is it? Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing it.\" He had pasted it up in so singular style that it required some cutting to get it open. He then read as follows : — This was indorsed : — William H. Seward, W. P. Fessenden, Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, Edw. Bates, M. Blair, J. P. Usher. 244 LETTERS OP JOHN HAY The President said : — \" You will remember that this was written at a time (six days before the Chicago nominating Convention) when as yet we had no adversary, and seemed to have no friends.", "words": 146 }, { "id": "hay-0146#1", "doc": "hay-0146", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1864-11-11 (diary)", "text": "I then solemnly resolved on the course of action indicated above. I resolved, in case of the election of Gen'l McC , being certain that he would be the candidate, that I would see him and talk matters over with him. I would say, \" General, the election has demonstrated that you are stronger, have more influence with the American people than I. Now let us together, you with your influence, and I with all the executive power of the government, try to save the country. You raise as many troops as you possibly can for this final trial, and I will devote all my energies to assisting and finishing the war.\" S said : — \"And the General would answer you ' Yes, Yes; ' and the next day when you saw him again, and pressed these views upon him, he would say, ' Yes, Yes ; ' and so on forever, and would have done nothing at all.\"", "words": 151 }, { "id": "hay-0147#0", "doc": "hay-0147", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO CHARLES EDWARD HAY., 1865-03-18 (letter)", "text": "I have been a little neglectful of my duties to you lately. I have written almost no letters except on business for some time. I am getting very hurried as the time approaches for me to give my place in the Executive Office to some new man. The arrears of so long a time cannot be settled in a day. You have probably seen from the papers that I am to go to Paris as Secretary of Legation. It is a pleasant and honorable way of leaving my present post which I should have left in any event very soon. I am thoroughly sick of certain aspects of life here, which you will understand without my putting them on paper, and I was almost ready, after taking a few months' active service in the field, to go back to Warsaw and try to give the Vineyard experiment a fair trial, when the Secretary of State sent for me and offered me this position abroad.", "words": 164 }, { "id": "hay-0147#1", "doc": "hay-0147", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO CHARLES EDWARD HAY., 1865-03-18 (letter)", "text": "It was entirely unsolicited and unexpected. I had no more idea of it than you have. But I took a day or two to think it over, the matter being a little pressing, — as the Secretary wanted to let Mr. B know what he was to expect, — and at last concluded that I would accept. The President requested me to stay with him a month or so longer to get him started with the reorganised office, which I shall do, and shall sail probably in June. Meanwhile N , whose health is really in a very bad state, has gone off down the coast on a voyage to Havana, and will be gone the \" heft \" of the month of April, and I am fastened here, very busy. I don't like to admit and will not yet give up that I can't come on to your \" happiest-day-ofyour-life ; \" but I must tell you that it looks uncommonly like it just now. But whether I come or not, I will be with you that day in my love and my prayers that God will bless you and yours forever. I very much fear that all my friends will disapprove this step of mine, but if they know all that induced me to it they would coincide. LETTERS OP JOHN HAY 255", "words": 220 }, { "id": "hay-0148#0", "doc": "hay-0148", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "HAY TO ALBERT RHODES., 1865-09-07 (letter)", "text": "I have just received your lively letter of the last of August from which I infer that the agony of tearing yourself loose from your adored Paris has been met in a heroic spirit and survived. \" Parigi O cara \" is very hot and nasty now. \"All in a hot and copper sky. The bloody sun at noon blisters and broils the asphalt pave as hot as Hell in June,\" as our mutual friend the Ancient Mariner says. I feel deep sympathy for fat women at this season. They pay a heavy tax for your admiration. Your anxiety in regard to Mr. P I am happy to relieve by stating, that he has returned in an astounding state of Teutonic health. He was detained by sickness in Bonn but is now quite well. I congratulate you on making the acquaintance of Mrs. L . One of the cleverest women I know. And thoroughly feminine and amiable. I saw in the street the other day a handsome Spaniard named B , Secretary of Legation at Stockholm, who asked tidings of you. I said you were in England. He looked polite commiseration and we drifted apart.", "words": 191 }, { "id": "hay-0149#0", "doc": "hay-0149", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1865 (diary)", "text": "Paris, Sept. 25, 1866. The Reverend Dr. S , Professor of Dog^- matic Theology in the Propaganda Fide College at Rome, called to-day and talked a good while about American and Roman politics. I am not in the condition to give anybody the most direct and valuable instructions about our politics, and I hope the Doctor got some more definite idea from my talk than there was in it. I got one idea from him which was definite enough, to wit, the condition of absolute uncertainty in which the Roman politicians are as to the future. He says the Pope really is not fixed in any plan. It seems to be now certain that the French will withdraw in December. Then, what will happen, remains to be seen. If the enemies of the Temporal Power are willing to allow him to exercise the sovereignty over the little patch of earth around the Eternal City, he can still retain his position and prestige in the Catholic World.", "words": 166 }, { "id": "hay-0149#1", "doc": "hay-0149", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1865 (diary)", "text": "If on the contrary he is made the object of violent attack from without, he will retire from Rome. There are unquestionably many revolutionists in Rome. But it is not from them that danger is apprehended. The Romans are themselves too weak, too destitute of enterprise to accomplish anything. The friends and foes of the Pope in Rome are of the same feeble stamp. The only thing to be feared is the flood swelling in from Italy and submerging Rome. But, I asked, is it considered impossible, among reasonable men around the Pope, to treat with the King of Italy and to obtain from him the protection he would doubtless gladly accord ? The Doctor shook his head and said slowly, \" I do not see how it can be done. There are some compromises which would destroy the very essence of the principle in question.", "words": 144 }, { "id": "hay-0151#0", "doc": "hay-0151", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1865-09-30 (diary)", "text": "This morning I found at the Legation a despatch from Mr. S (sent through the French Ministere de lTnterieur) saying: \"Resignation accepted — Gen'l D appointed successor — leaves here 28 October \" — dated Washington, 29th September, 12.45 at night. I sent copy to Biarritz. The morning papers contained the bare announcement. The Patrie in the afternoon contained an attack on Mr. B for his ultra American stiffness in the Mexican question. The Constitutional this morning shows by its announcement that it has been made acquainted with S 's despatch. The General (Dix), immediately after his arrival, was presented by Mr. B to the Marquis de M and a few days afterwards received from the Grand Master of Ceremonies a letter informing him that he would be received by the Emperor on Sunday, the 23d, at two o'clock.", "words": 136 }, { "id": "hay-0151#1", "doc": "hay-0151", "author": "hay", "group": "hay_letters_diary_1861_65", "label": "DIARY, 1865-09-30 (diary)", "text": "He afterwards received a note from the Duke de Fascher la Pajerie informing him that the Empress would receive him immediately after his audience with the Emperor. I hired a carriage and two servants in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas for H and myself. It was a highly respectable looking affair, not fresh enough to look hired, with a couple of solemn flunkies that seemed to have been in the family for at least a generation. We went to the General's and in a few moments came in the Baron de la J . He said he was very much crowded to-day with besogne, that he had five Ministers to bring to the Palace and that therefore we would please excuse his hurry. Upon which we all rose and went to the door, where we found a court carriage, the Imperial arms blazing on the panels and the harness, drawn by four horses and accompanied by two mounted outriders.", "words": 158 } ]