ost
a son or a husband. I lost two brothers. It was hard for the mothers."

THEY DIDN'T BUILD IT.

In 1862 a delegation of New York millionaires waited upon President
Lincoln to request that he furnish a gunboat for the protection of New
York harbor.

Mr. Lincoln, after listening patiently, said: "Gentlemen, the credit of
the Government is at a very low ebb; greenbacks are not worth more than
forty or fifty cents on the dollar; it is impossible for me, in the
present condition of things, to furnish you a gunboat, and, in this
condition of things, if I was worth half as much as you, gentlemen, are
represented to be, and as badly frightened as you seem to be, I would
build a gunboat and give it to the Government."

STANTON'S ABUSE OF LINCOLN.

President Lincoln's sense of duty to the country, together with his keen
judgment of men, often led to the appointment of persons unfriendly to
him. Some of these appointees were, as well, not loyal to the National
Government, for that matter.

Regarding Secretary of War Stanton's attitude toward Lincoln, Colonel A.
K. McClure, who was very close to President Lincoln, said:

"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, the Cabinet, the Republican Congress, and the general policy of
the Administration.

"These letters speak freely of the 'painful imbecility of Lincoln,'
of the 'venality and corruption' which ran riot in the government, and
expressed the belief that no better condition of things was possible
'until Jeff Davis turns out the whole concern.'

"He was firmly impressed for some weeks after the battle of Bull Run
that the government was utterly overthrown, as he repeatedly refers to
the coming of Davis into the National Capital.

"In one letter he says that 'in less than thirty days Davis will be in
possession of Washington;' and it is an open secret that Stanton advised
the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln government, to be replaced by
General McClellan as military dictator. These letters, bad as they are,
are not the worst letters written by Stanton to Buchanan. Some of
them were so violent in their expressions against Lincoln and the
administration that they have been charitably withheld from the
public, but they remain in the possession of the surviving relatives of
Pr