tion of the hostility of Republican
members toward Mr. Lincoln at the final adjournment, while it was
the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held
in Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was going to hell, and
that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in
comparison with what we should see here.

Just before leaving Washington I called on the President again,
and told him I was going to take the stump, and to tell the people
that he would co-operate with Congress in vigorously carrying out
the measures we had inaugurated for the purpose of crushing the
rebellion, and that now the quickest and hardest blows were to be
dealt. He told me I was authorized to say so, but said that more
than half the popular clamor against the management of the war was
unwarranted; and when I referred to the movements of General
McClellan he made no committal in any way.

On the nineteenth of August Horace Greeley wrote his famous anti-
slavery letter to the President, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty
Millions." It was one of the most powerful appeals ever made in
behalf of justice and the rights of man. In his reply Mr. Lincoln
said: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I
would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would
do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others
alone, I would do that." These words served as fresh fuel to the
fires of popular discontent, and they were responded to by Mr.
Greeley with admirable vigor and earnestness. The anti-slavery
critics of the President insisted that in thus dealing with slavery
as a matter of total indifference he likened himself to Douglas,
who had declared that he didn't care whether slavery was voted up
or voted down in the Territories. They argued that as slavery was
the cause of the war and the obstacle to peace, it was the duty of
the Government to lay hold of the conscience of the quarrel, and
strike at slavery as the grand rebel. Not to do so, they contended,
now that the opportunity was offered, was to make the contest a
mere struggle for power, and thus to degrade it to the level of
the wars of the Old World, which bring with them nothing for freedom
or the race. They insisted that the failure of the Government to
give freedom to our millions in bondage would be a crime only to
be measured by that of putting them in chains if they were free.
They reminded the President of his declara