Lincoln insisted upon.
The discussion grew so warm that both he and his assailants at last
joined in a request to Mr. Lincoln to permit the publication of the
correspondence. This was, of course, an excellent opportunity for the
President to vindicate his own proceeding. But he rarely looked at such
matters from the point of view of personal advantage, and he feared that
the passionate, almost despairing appeals of the most prominent
Republican editor of the North for peace at any cost, disclosed in the
correspondence, would deepen the gloom in the public mind and have an
injurious effect upon the Union cause. The spectacle of the veteran
journalist, who was justly regarded as the leading controversial writer
on the antislavery side, ready to sacrifice everything for peace, and
frantically denouncing the government for refusing to surrender the
contest, would have been, in its effect upon public opinion, a disaster
equal to the loss of a great battle. He therefore proposed to Mr.
Greeley, in case the letters were published, to omit some of the most
vehement passages; and took Mr. Greeley's refusal to assent to this as a
veto on their publication.
It was characteristic of him that, seeing the temper in which Mr.
Greeley regarded the transaction, he dropped the matter and submitted
in silence to the misrepresentations to which he was subjected by reason
of it.
Pages:
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577