[328]
As a statesman, he was credited with some shrewdness—practical, self-possessed, as devoid of enthusiasm as free from prejudice.
I had some acquaintance with him. I had met him privately several times before leaving France.
I had introduced to him one of the delegates whom, at an early stage of the conflict, some of the Southern States had sent abroad (I believe it was the delegate from South Carolina), and had noticed on every occasion his readiness to receive information and the unbiased, practical view he took of the conflict.
With him I could talk without hindrance.
I could see him privately, informally.
He could listen to me day after day without in any manner committing his government, ask any questions he liked, and elicit every information more freely from a mere eye-witness, bearing no credentials, than he could do from an authorized representative of the Confederate Government.
Here, then, was an advantage which I intended to turn to account during a temporary absence from the field.
This text is part of:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.