within the hotel, every entry and
passageway jammed with people, that we were near being crushed. Three
policemen before me could scarcely open a way for the General, who held
my arm, to pass only a few yards to our room.

"After taking my leave I succeeded with difficulty in pressing my way
through the crowd within and without the hotel, and have just got into my
quiet library and must now retire, for I am too fatigued to do anything
but sleep. Good-night."

A short time after this the election was held, and this enthusiastic
advocate of what he considered the right learned the bitter lesson that
crowds, and shouting, and surface enthusiasm do not carry an election.
The voice of that Sovereign to whom he had sworn loyalty spoke in no
uncertain tones, and Lincoln was overwhelmingly chosen by the votes of
the People.

Morse was outvoted but not convinced, and I shall make but one quotation
from a letter of November 9, to his brother Richard, who had also
remained firm in spite of his brother's pleading: "My consolation is in
looking up, and I pray you may be so enlightened that you may be
delivered from the delusions which have ensnared you, and from the
judgments which I cannot but feel are in store for this section of the
country. When I can believe that my Bible reads 'cursed' instead of
'blessed' are the 'peacemakers,' I also shall cease to be a peace man.
But while they remain, as they do, in the category of those that are
blessed, I cannot be frightened at the names of 'copperhead' and
'traitor' so lavishly bestowed, with threats of hanging etc., by those
whom you have assisted into power."

In a letter of Mr. George Wood's, of June 26, 1865, I find the following
sentences: "I have to acknowledge your very carefully written letter on
the divine origin of Slavery.... I hope you have kept a copy of this
letter, for the time will come when you will have a biography written,
and the defense you have made of your position, taken in your pamphlet,
is unquestionably far better than he (your biographer) will make for
you."

The letter to which Mr. Wood refers was begun on March 5, 1865, but
finished some time afterwards. It is very long, too long to be included
here, but in justice to myself, that future biographer, I wish to state
that I have already given the main arguments brought forward in that
letter, in quotations from previous letters, and that I have attempted no
defense further than to emphasize the fact t