William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[119] of the President's course. General Sherman takes no pains to hide his views. Vice-President Wilson opposes his official superior, and some of the leading journals are demanding that Grant shall retire from the White House, leaving his powers in Wilson's hands. More than all else, Hamilton Fish declares that if the President sustains Sheridan and justifies Durell and Packard, he will resign his post as Secretary of State. This menace tells. Fish is not only the ablest man in Grant's Cabinet, but one of the ablest men in America. Bristow, Secretary of the Treasury, takes the same line as Fish. Without these gentlemen, the President's Cabinet could not stand a week; and if his Cabinet falls, who knows what else may fall?

The Governors of powerful States are talking in an ominous way. “A State has disappeared,” says Governor Alien to the people of Ohio; “a sovereign State of this Union has no existence this night.” A sovereign State! The President thinks he put an end to all that babble about sovereign States on the battle field, and here, in one of the rich and populous northern cities, the Governor of a great State is talking of Louisiana as a “sovereign ”