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and which establishes, beyond all future cavil, which side was the aggressor in bringing on this conflict.
We propose to introduce Mr. Lincoln himself. In the latest life of this remarkable man, written by Ida M. Tarbell, and published by Doubleday & McClure Co. in 1900, she introduces a statement made to her by the late Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, of what took place between Mr. Lincoln and a Committee of which he (Medill) was a member, sent from Chicago to Washington, to intercede with the authorities there to be relieved from sending more troops from Cook county, as was required by the new draft just then ordered, and which, as we know, produced riots in several parts of the North.
The author makes Medill tell how his Committee first applied for relief to Mr. Stanton, and was refused, how they then went to Mr. Lincoln, who went with them to see Stanton again, and there listened to the reasons assigned pro and con for a change of the draft.
He then says:
I shall never forget how he (lincoln) suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face: “Gentlemen,” he said, in a voice full of bitterness, “After Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South, as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for emancipation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked, you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you. Go home and raise your 6,000 extra men.”And Medill adds that he was completely silenced by the truth of Lincoln's accusation, and that they went home and raised the 6,000 additional troops. We could multiply testimony of this kind almost indefinitely; but surely we have introduced enough not only to prove that the statement made by Mr. Phillips is utterly without foundation, but to show further, by the testimony of our quondam enemies themselves, that they were the aggressors from every point of view, and that the South only resisted when, as the New York Express said of it at the time, it had, ‘in self-preservation, been driven to the wall, and forced to proclaim its independence.’
