Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

In the far dawn of human history, the blind old bard of Chios, with mental vision doubly clear, surveyed the course of human life, and this true picture drew:

Like leaves on trees, the race of men are found,
     Some green in youth, some withering on the ground.

So generations in their course decay;
     These come to life, and others pass away.

Countless as the leaves of the forest or the sands along the shore are the men who, in ages gone, have run their restless course on this round world, even as the busy ants run to and fro upon their hillock home. Brief parts the actors play; the scene changes and they disappear. I saw a clown upon a narrow stage. Decked in the tawdry tinsel of his craft, he entered on the one side, stopped one moment, and pointing to the other door, he said—not knowing what he said: ‘I came in here to tell you that I am—going out yonder.’ “Alas!” I thought, “this is our human life.” “ Good health to-day, my friend,” I say, and so the greeting passes, “and now—good morrow.”

Millions of millions have passed on; how few are remembered! And, of the few, why keep we record. and memory of their names? Why, and how long? Let us examine the record, and from it learn that a noble life alone is memorable; that man's life is made noble, his memory made sweet, his name engraven where it cannot be effaced, ‘not by might, nor by power,’ but by noble thoughts and noble purposes wrought out in noble deeds, even ‘by the works of [360] that Spirit’ whose fruits are justice, mercy and truth, obedience to law, purity of life, sweet charity, and that self-sacrifice that crowns them all.

A noble life partakes of deity and endures. The test of its high kinship is that it stand for some noble thought—impress upon our rinds and hearts some one of these eternal elements, some attribute of that august character in whom alone they are perfectly developed —each element eternal as His days are without end.

If there be presented for our consideration a character preemi-nently marked by but one of these ennobling features, this is the blood-mark—by this we know the strain of immortality. Let but a spark of the eternal fire burn in the heart of man, there needs no vestal virgin to keep the lamp aflame. It is part of the light of the universe that cannot expire. Man struggles with imperfections. But a little leaven leavens the whole lump. The odor of the violet pervades the garden. The sweet character of Cordelia makes the whole of King Lear a charm.

Full many a shining name, high written on the roll of fame, is doomed to be forgotten.

A monarch grown colossal in his might, boasts that the gods of the nations have not been able to save their people from his destroying arm; a doubtful inscription on a crumbling stone is the record of his deeds. A Pharaoh of four thousand years ago, in the pride of his power, defies the God of Israel and deals hardly with His chosen. See, in this our day, his royal lineaments stripped of their cerements—a spectacle for a gaping crowd to mock at.

An unconquerable phalanx, tramping steadily on, crushing its unsparing way through crowding armies of peoples struggling to be free, bears a hero's banner to the border land beyond which there are no more worlds to conquer. Amid triumphial music, high seated at the feast with his worshippers around him, he

Assumes the nod,
Affects the god,
And seems to shake the spheres.

In a mad debauch he dies, his right hand red with the blood of his friend; and for the world-empire that he founded, the map of the nations bears no trace that it ever existed.

The demon Corsican, with titanic force, shakes the foundations of empires. Like a destroying storm he crosses a continent; the windrows of the dead mark his passage through the nations. The groans [361] of the dying, a helpless woman's cry, and the orphan's wail; these are the antiphone to each song in his praise; these, and these alone, shall be his requiem.

Shall sculptured marble or graven brass, or the limner's art as here displayed, preserve man from the yawning chasm of dark oblivion?

There is an ancient land, across the sea,
     Whence came a traveller telling he had seen
Two vast and trunkless legs stand in the desert;
     Near by, half buried in the sand, a head,
So marred he doubted what it had been;
     The body, deep beyond his ken, or bore away,
Built into some old wall-Ruin's predestined prey.
     The feet stood on a pedestal whereon these words were writ:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,
     Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remained. Round the decay
     Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretched far away.

Not by might nor by power, nor yet by the trumpet of fame, not through wide-reaching opportunity, nor great deed done on a world wide stage—not so is an enduring record made; but by a noble life faithfully lived in daily practice of our poor human share of those virtues which combining, even as the colors of the spectrum, form that pure light which is the light of the world. By such a life as is here exemplified, my friends, so shall a noble ancestry be duly honored; so shall the reverence of contemporaries encircle the hoary head; so shall the generations grow nobler and better because a man has lived.

The life but needs to wear, as this one did, the forehead-mark of high purpose and heaven born inspiration; but needs to stand for some noble, some enduring quality.

The smallest good is a part of the great sum of all good. No need to ‘uplift the millions.’ ‘He who has done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, has done it unto me.’

The lightest chord if in true unison with the music, goes to make the great swelling anthem that lifts man's heart toward the creator.

The tinkle of the widow's mite, as it fell into the treasury, gave the key-note to the sacrificial song of the ages: and after two thousand years, “the nameless widow” means for us,—All for God.

Wheresoever the gospel of faith and love has been and shall be preached, a little deed that a woman did has been and ‘shall be [362] told for a memorial of her;’ so for faith and devotion the name of “Mary of Bethany” shall forever stand.

Thus stands “St. John” for love; “ St. Peter” for repentance unto good works; “St. Paul” for lion-like courage and holy zeal.

Aeneas, with old Anchises on his back, stands for filial piety; Curtius for self-sacrifice; Lucretia for purity; Horatius for courage; Cato, noblest Roman of them all, stands for stern integrity. These illustrate that ancient story and tell us why man's memory endures.

Here in a newer land and a later age, the name of a great Virginian stands for the qualities that mark a grand character, and by these he will be remembered when men have forgotten the operations on the Delaware that won great Frederick's admiration, and the march from the Hudson to the York that broke the yoke of tyranny for mankind.

Need I ask these graybeards around me to search the inner chamber of their hearts and tell me what other Virginian, there enshrined in simple majesty, so rules our lives that at thought of his presence men fear to fail of duty and flee from dishonor! It is the faithful gentleman who left to our English tongue those “words of the wise which are as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies,” ‘The question is, Is it right?’—that supreme maxim which is to remain as an apple of gold in a picture of silver, ‘Duty is the noblest word in our language.’ It is the loved commander who, while the world paused to take record of his deeds and Glory wept for a flag furled forever, was content to utter the simplest, most pathetic words that ever fell from a leader's lips: ‘I and my brave men have done the best we could.’ It is not Sir Lancelot, not Sir Galahad, not Sir Tristram, nor any knight of Table Round,—it is Arthur the King, the royal gentlemen, “whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure;” the incomparable soldier, the Christian—who died at Lexington, his uplifted finger then as always pointing his people ‘Forward!’ to the goal where final Victory waits to welcome that valor and virtue for which his name shall stand 'till Time shall be no more.

The ancient philosopher describes the virtues that made the worthies of Rome's nobler day: ‘quas mihi semper antiponens,’ he says: ‘mentem animumque conformabam’—‘and placing them always before me, so I sought to mould my mind and my soul.’

Let us learn from the wise old heathen, and wisely choose our models for imitation.

If then in the record of this our native land, our own Virginia, a [363] man's life shows that his mind instinctively turned to the ‘pole-star of truth,’ then is his image worthy to be set up that our young men may learn this greatest of all the virtues—greatest of all, for

By the gods, it is not in the power of painting or of sculpture
To fashion ought so divine as the fair form of truth.
The creatures of their art may please the eye,
But her sweet nature captivates the soul.

Have justice and mercy marked his career? Great is the office of the judge. Divine is that justice which with equal balance weighs each man's merit and to each his true desert assigns. Worthy of all honor is he who, like Israel's great judge can “call all men to witness that of none has he taken aught, of none has he received any gift to blind his eyes therewith.” Yet

The marshal's truncheon nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one-half so good a grace
As mercy does.

Justice is

The attribute to awe and majesty.
But earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

Noble is the heart in which they both reside. Worthy of all reverence, the character in which these virtues shine.

Has charity warmed a man's heart and opened his hand stretched out to aid the helpless, until ‘like a watered garden’ he has fed them and ‘like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land’ he has given them rest and refreshment for the journey of life?

Has he so walked among his fellows that

His pity has been as balm to heal their wounds,
His mildness has allayed their swelling griefs,
His mercy dried their water-flowing tears?

If perchance a character is presented combining all these exalted qualities, then have we one of those whose memory is as a sweet savor that no wind of forgetfulness shall ever blow away—then indeed we who are passing away do but our duty to those who shall succeed us, if, by any act of ours, we may provoke their curiosity to enquire, and move them to loving study, when they know, why these walls bear witness to our estimate of the man.

Such a noble character is here represented, my friends, such a [364] noble life, you and your children are here invited to study; such a noble example is here offered for their imitation and for ours.

Fellow citizens and good friends—for these people are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: yonder where the solemn cedars wave, and here where the spire points to heaven, lie the ashes of generations right dear to me; familiar to my childhood are the faces here depicted; to this town of Tappahannock I owe the peaceful ending of an honored father's long labor of love; in the act I now perform, I pay reverent honor to a noble woman, who, once familiar to your eyes, was, as I think, dear to your hearts, and who, when the shadows fell around her, was comforted by the memory of your affection and desired that her last home might be among you.

So thinking and so feeling—thankful for the opportunity to render this service to my people, deeply sensible of the honor I myself receive in having this commission laid upon me—I bring here this picture of Judge William Brockenbrough—learned lawyer and upright judge—Virginia gentleman, true to State and lineage, and careful to hand down to posterity that “good name which is more to be desired than great riches,” —a man whose life stands for learning guided by wisdom, for truth, for purity, for charity towards all, for courage to do right, for justice the ermine adorning, for Christian virtue in that he humbly sought to form his mind and heart by loving study of the only complete example.

True product, this, of the ancient civilization, my young friends—the civilization of the time when the fields were greener, when the summer breeze was softer, when the birds sang more sweetly than now, and all the world was vocal with the sounds that brought us joy;—a civilization (I charge you to observe) which the ignorant, the envious, and the malignant condemn, and for which the weak and the base among ourselves have been fain to apologize. Yet was it so simple and so beautiful, so natural and native to the soil, so rooted in truth, so erect in honor, so lofty and so strong, so abloom with all courtesy, so redolent of nobleness, so fruitful of virtue—that for myself I am profoundly thankful that the men and women before whom my soul stands uncovered, were born under its shadow and that the formative years of my own life were spent beneath its grateful shade.

Therefore, I speak in humble recognition of the Hand that worketh all nobleness in man—in commemoration of that gracious olden time that now is passing away—paying honor where honor is justly due—knowing that the generation so paying its debt of honor to those that have gone is guiding in paths of honor generations yet [365] unborn. For that reason rejoicing thus to aid the work of founding here, in our county of Essex, and for our State of Virginia, this ennobling memorial institution, and praying that your children may prove worthy to guard your precious things—to this Court I present this portrait; to bench and to bar, to counting house and farm, to pew and to pulpit, to youth and to age—I commend the study of this most noble life.

President Lincoln further Arraigned. His Autocratic Sway and ‘want of principle.’

A letter of the subscriber, published in the Richmond Dispatch of the 14th of January, proved by quotations from President Lincoln's most respectable and most eulogistic biographers that Lincoln was habitually indecent in his conversation; that he was guilty of grossly indecent and still more grossly immoral conduct in connection with his Satire called ‘The First Chronicle of Reuben’; that he was an infidel, and was, till he became candidate for the Presidency, a frequent scoffer at religion, and in the habit of using his good gifts to attack its truths; that he was the author of ‘a little book,’ the purpose of which was to attack the fundamental truths of religion, and never denied or retracted any of these views.

That letter further stated that it would be as easy to prove, from precisely the same sort of evidence, that Lincoln's character and conduct provoked the bitterest censure from a very great number of the most distinguished of his co-workers in his great achievements, among whom may be named Greeley, Thad. Stevens, Sumner, Trumbull, Zach. Chandler, Fred. Douglas, Beecher, Fremont, Ben. Wade, Winter Davis and Wendell Phillips, while the most bitter and contemptuous and persistent of all Lincoln's critics were Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice, and Stanton, known ever Ziace as his ‘great War Secretary.’

This letter is intended to prove what is alleged in the last paragraph, [366] and to give some further evidence of the estimate of Lincoln entertained by his contemporaries. Such light is needed, for the paean of praise that began with his death has grown to such extravagance that one of his eulogists, on his birth-day last week, taught that he is ‘first of all that have walked the earth after The Nazarine,’ and another asked us to give up aspirations for a Heaven where Lincoln's presence is not assured. Every author quoted or referred to in this letter is an ardently eulogistic biographer and a partisan of the North against the South.

Colonel A. K. McClure's Lincoln and Men of the War Time, says (page 225, et seq.):

“Greeley was in closer touch with the active, loyal sense of the people than even the President himself,” and ‘Mr. Greeley's Tribune was the most widely read Republican journal in the country, and it was unquestionably the most potent in modelling Republican sentiment. * * * It reached the intelligent masses of the people in every State in the Union, and Greeley was not in accord with Lincoln.’ * * * Greeley ‘was [page 289, et seq.] a perpetual thorn in Lincoln's side, * * * and almost constantly criticised him boldly and often bitterly.’ ‘Greeley * * * labored [page 296] most faithfully to accomplish Lincoln's overthrow’ in his great struggle for re-election in 1864. See also pages 282 to 292, et seq. See Morse's Lincoln, Vol. I, page 193. None will deny that Greeley ardently hated slavery and loved the Union, and was unsurpassed for purity and patriotism.

Dr. J. G. Holland's Life of Lincoln (page 469, et seq.), shows Fremont, Wendell Phillips, Fred Douglas and Greeley as leaders in the very nearly successful effort to defeat Lincoln's second election. The call for the convention for that purpose, held in Cleveland, May 31, 1864, said that ‘the public liberty was in danger;’ that its object was to arouse the people ‘and bring them to realize that, while we are saturating Southern soil with the best blood of the country in the name of liberty, we have really parted with it at home.’

McClure's Lincoln, etc., conceding the hostile attitude towards Lincoln of the leading members of the cabinet, says (page 54):

‘Outside of the cabinet the leaders were equally discordant, and quite as distrustful of the ability of Lincoln to fill his great office. Sumner, Trumbull, Chandler, Wade, Winter Davis, and the men to whom the nation then turned as the great representative men of the new political power, did not conceal their distrust of Lincoln, [367] and he had little support from them at any time during his administration.’

Dr. Holland's Life, etc., shows (page 476, et seq.), that when Lincoln killed, by ‘pocketing’ it, a bill for the reconstruction of the Union, which Congress had passed, Ben Wade and Winter Davis, aided by Greeley, published in Greeley's Tribune of August 5th ‘a bitter manifesto.’ It charged that the President, by this action, ‘holds the electoral vote of the rebel States at the discretion of his personal ambition,’ and that ‘a more studied outrage on the authority of the people has never been perpetrated.’ An examination to-day of the official record of the electoral vote by which Lincoln got his second term, fully verifies the above charge. Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln, and General Benjamin F. Butler's autobiography (the title is Butler's Book), alike concede the fictitious pretense of a State that was counted as casting the vote of the State of Virginia in the electoral college, and similar farces were played in the case of others of the ‘rebel States,’ just as foreseen by Wade and Henry Winter Davis. This accounts for the much boasted majority recorded by the electoral college in Lincoln's favor, and the small majority, as officially recorded, of votes of the people. Mc-Clellan, on a platform that said the war must stop, got eighty-one per cent of the votes that were cast for Lincoln. This was the vote of the people of the ‘loyal’ States, in spite of the fact that criticism of the Administration was, by order of the War Department, treason, triable by court martial, and that a man so enormously popular in his State (Ohio) as Vallandigham lay under sentence of banishment, a punishment new to this country and imposed for a new offense, ‘not for deeds done but for words spoken,’ to use the words in which it was denounced by John Sherman, and these words spoken in public debate and received with wild applause by thousands. Soldiers ruled at the polls. Butler's Book (pages 754 to 773) gives full particulars of the large force with which he occupied New York city and shows how completely he controlled its vote and its opposition to the war and to emancipation that had lately been demonstrated in its great anti-draft riot. This ‘riot’ had countenance from the Governor (Seymour) and the Arch-Bishop (Hughs), as Nicolay and Hay elaborately describe in their Abraham Lincoln; and Gorham, in his lately published Life of Stanton, says that if the battle of Gettysburg, then raging, had been of opposite result, New York would not have submitted.

Lincoln refused to listen at all to the Southern commissioners, [368] Clement C. Clay, Jr., and James P. Holcombe, unless they could show ‘written authority from Jefferson Davis’ to make unconditional surrender. Greeley, who had procured their coming to negotiate for a cessation of the war, protested against Lincoln's action as follows, in a letter written him in July, 1864 (see Holland's Life, etc., page 478): ‘Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations and new rivers of human blood; and there is a widespread conviction that the Government and its supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it.’ He further intimates (page 482) the possibility of a Northern insurrection.

Ben Perley Poore, in Reminiscences of Lincoln, collected and edited by Allen Thorndyke Rice (page 248), shows Beecher's censures of Lincoln, and so do Beecher's editorials in the Independent of 1862. Hapgood's Abraham Lincoln quotes (page 164) Wendell Phillips about Lincoln, ‘Who is this huckster in politics? Who is this county court lawyer?’ Morse's Lincoln (Vol. I, page 177) gives severe censures of Lincoln by Wendell Phillips. McClure's Lincoln, etc., records in two places (pages 112 and 259) the reprobation of Lincoln by Thad. Stevens, ‘The Great Commoner.’ Miss Ida Tarbell, in McClure's Magazine for 1899 (page 277), calls Sumner, Wade, Winter Davis and Chase ‘malicious foes of Lincoln,’ on the authority of one of Lincoln's closest intimates, Leonard Swet, and in the same magazine for July, 1899 (page 218, et seq.), says: ‘About all the most prominent leaders * * * were actively opposed to Lincoln,’ and mentions Greeley as their chief. McClure's Lincoln, etc. (page 54, et seq.), shows the hostility to Lincoln of Sumner, Trumbull and Chandler, and of his Vice-President, Hamlin.

Fremont, who, eight years before, had received every Republican vote for President, charged Lincoln (Holland's Life, etc., page 469, et seq.,) with ‘incapacity and selfishness,’ with ‘disregarding personal rights,’ with ‘violation of personal liberty and the liberty of the press,’ with ‘feebleness and want of principle,’ and we find (page 470, et seq.,) quoted from a letter of Fremont: ‘Had Lincoln remained faithful to the principles he was elected to defend, no schism could have been created and no contest could have been possible. * * * The ordinary rights under the Constitution and laws of the country have been violated;’ and he further accused Lincoln of ‘managing the war for personal ends.’

Seward has been much criticised, and accused of rare presumption, [369] for a letter that he wrote to the President, as Secretary of State, one month after his first inauguration, because the letter manifested a sense of superiority and condescendingly offered his advice and aid. It is probable that Seward did feel something of the contempt for Lincoln that his brethren in the Cabinet—Chase and Stanton—never ceased to express freely for Lincoln, and very frequently showed to his face throughout their long terms of office. Like them, Seward was a man of the highest social standing and of large experience in the highest public functions. It was only after Lincoln's death that any one accounted him a gentleman, much less a hero or a saint. Stanton constantly spoke of him as ‘The Great Original Gorilla.’ What he was capable of, in morals, manners and personal habits, is illustrated (see the letter above referred to, ante, pages 165-173) by the story of ‘The First Chronicle of Reuben.’ He annoyed General McClellan by very frequent visits at his headquarters in Washington, after being repeatedly treated with most humiliating slights there. These details are given by his most unqualified eulogists of all—Nicolay and Hay—and called proofs of their hero's humility, but there is a much more obvious way of accounting for them. Whether Seward's letter gave offense or not, it suggested the policy that Lincoln adopted, which policy was his means of precipitating the war which he, almost alone, desired. The astuteness of that policy has been much commended by his eulogists as something without which neither the success of the war nor the emancipation would have been possible. The policy advised in Seward's letter is, ‘Change the question before the public from the one upon slavery for a, question upon Union or Disunion.’ The letter did not come to light for years, and Seward might well say, as he did, that Lincoln ‘had a cunning that was genius.’ See Don Piatt, in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 487).

McClure's Lincoln, etc., says (page 9): ‘Chase was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln ointment.’ Miss Ida Tarbell, in McClure's Magazine for January, 1899, says: ‘But Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. Lincoln's greatness.’ Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln says (Vol. IX, page 389), about Chase: ‘Even to comparative strangers, he could not write without speaking slightingly of the President. He kept up this habit to the end of Lincoln's life.’ Volume VI, page 264, says: ‘* *But his attitude towards the President, it is hardly too much to say, was one which varied between the limits of active hostility and benevolent contempt.’ [370] Yet none rate Chase higher than Nicolay and Hay do for talent, character and patriotism.

McClure's Lincoln, etc. (page 150, et seq.), says: ‘Stanton had been in open and malignant opposition to the Administration only a few months before.’ This was in January, 1862. ‘Stanton [page 155, et seq.,] often spoke of and to public men, military and civil, with a withering sneer. I have heard him scores of times thus speak of Lincoln, and several times thus speak to Lincoln.’ * * * ‘After Stanton's retirement from the Buchanan Cabinet, when Lincoln was inaugurated, he maintained the closest confidential relations with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters expressing the utmost contempt for Lincoln.’ * * * These letters, given to the public in Curtis' Life of Buchanan, speak freely (see Hapgood's Lincoln, page 254,) of ‘the painful imbecility of Lincoln, the venality and corruption which ran riot in the government,’ and McClure goes on: ‘It is an open secret that Stanton advised the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln government, to be replaced by General Mc-Clellan as military dictator.’ * * * ‘These letters published by Curtis, bad as they are, are not the worst letters written by Stanton to Buchanan. Some of them were so violent in their expression against Lincoln * * * that they have been charitably withheld from the public.’ Whitney, in his On Circuit with Lincoln (page 424), tells of these suppressed letters. See, too, his pages 422 to 424, et seq., and Ben Perley Poore, in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 223), and Kasson, in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 384), all in confirmation of Stanton's estimate and treatment of Lincoln. Hapgood's Abraham Lincoln refers (page 164) to Stanton's ‘brutal absence of decent personal feeling’ towards Lincoln, and tells of Stanton's insulting behavior when they met five years earlier, of which meeting Stanton said that he ‘had met him at the bar, and found him a low, cunning clown.’ (See Ben Perley Poore, in Reminiscences of Lincoln, page 223.) Miss Ida Tarbell, in McClure's Magazine for March, 1899, tells the story of this earliest manifestation of Stanton's contempt for Lincoln.

McClure's Lincoln, etc. (page 123, et seq.), says: ‘Lincoln's desire for a renomination was the one thing ever apparent in his mind during the third year of his administration,’ and he draws a pitiful picture (pages 113 to 115) of Lincoln as he saw him, in fits of abject depression during a considerable time after his second nomination, when he and all the leaders of the Republican party thought his defeat inevitable. Don Piatt depicts (Reminiscences of Lincoln, page [371] 493), in curious contrast to the above, Lincoln's extraordinary insensibility to the ills of others.

After such an array of the concessions against him quoted and referred to above, it is worth while to repeat the statement about those authors that is made in the third paragraph of this letter, and to add that every one of them is shown, in his book quoted or referred to, to be an ardent admirer of Lincoln and a partisan of the North against the South. To reconcile their concessions with their admiration is not the duty of the writer of this letter. There are some unconscious betrayals of their estimate of their hero that are very significant. A number of these eulogists have thought it worth while to declare very expressly their belief that Lincoln did not purposely betray General McClellan and his army to defeat in the Seven Days Battles before Richmond. McClure (page 207) is one; Holland (page 53, et seq.) is another; and John Codman Ropes declares it, in his Story of the Civil War, Part II (page 16), and reaffirms his belief on more than one other page. McClellan, in his celebrated dispatch after his retreat, reproached Stanton with this atrocious crime, and so worded the dispatch that he imputed the same guilt to Lincoln. McClure, in his Lincoln, etc. (page 202), and Nicolay and Hay, in their Abraham Lincoln (pages 441, 442 and 451), deplore that McClellan should have believed Lincoln capable of it, both conceding to McClellan the most exalted character, ability and patriotism. See McClure's Lincoln, etc. (page 208), and Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln (Volume VI, page 189, et seq.)

This letter will also appear in the Richmond Dispatch, as did that of the 14th January last.