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Nicolay and Hay say that he did not yield to the pressure until he was assured of his reëlection, and that then he yielded only because he felt that he ought not obstinately to retain an adviser in whom the party had lost confidence. On September 23 he wrote to Mr.
The world turned suddenly into a graveyard. "I have acquired the funeral habit." "Nicolay is dying. I went to see him yesterday, and he did not know me." Among the letters of condolence showered upon him was one from Clarence King at Pasadena, "heart-breaking in grace and tenderness the old King manner"; and King himself "simply waiting till nature and the foe have done their struggle."
So droll were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his story-telling. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John, Hay. J. McCan Davis, of Springfield, Illinois, who had already made a special study of this period of Mr.
There is, at the same time, documentary evidence that Lincoln had been continually urging this precise plan on all his generals. Mr. Hay therefore distrusts the accuracy of General Grant's memory. To the present writer, there is no mystery in the matter. The full truth is large enough to include the statement of Grant as well as that of Nicolay and Hay. Mr.
He spent the time during the usual business hours of each day in the governor's room of the State-house at Springfield, attended only by his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay. Friends and strangers alike were able to visit him freely and without ceremony, and few went away without being impressed by the sincere frankness of his manner and conversation.
That it was "the turning-point of the fortunes of the war in Virginia," was the verdict of a Confederate officer of high rank, and Nicolay and Hay in the "Life of Lincoln" describe it as "one of the most important of the war."
And Lincoln's generosity was no less; his private secretary, Nicolay, saw these papers; but no other man knew anything of Seward's abortive rebellion against Lincoln till after they both were dead.
I was not present at the first inauguration of President Lincoln, but I visited Washington many times during the years that he was President, and, knowing him as well as I did, and having known both Nicolay and Hay, his secretaries, in Springfield, I naturally spent much time around the executive offices. I had many conversations with him during the early years of the war.
Nicolay corrected another copy, which was furnished to the press for publication and is now in my possession. Mr. Seward had, from the moment that his offered services as Secretary of State were accepted, acted as chief of the incoming Administration, and undertook to have a voice in the appointment of his associates. Mr. Lincoln, however, was determined to make his own selections.
Thomas Russell, Judge of the Superior Court, sat close under the platform, clapping his hands like pistol shots. John A. Andrew's testimony before the Harper's Ferry investigating committee has a historical value which Hay and Nicolay, Wilson, and Von Holst would have done well to have taken into consideration; but the definitive history of the war period is yet to be written.
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