hope of a satisfactory arrangement at Washington. There are some men there of our way of thinking who will do the best they can—or at least try.
Now I want you to understand that I do not submit these questions in any spirit hostile to your scheme. I shall be very glad to be convinced of its practicability, and as you have undoubtedly thought about it a good deal, I want to have the whole of your idea as soon as possible. Why not communicate it to your father at once and have his opinion?
I shall be happy to give whatever aid I can to the execution of any Constitutional and practicable plan to remove the decision of the Presidential question from the theater of party-strife in Congress so as to secure at least a National Government whose legitimacy cannot be called in question.
TO B. B. CAHOON
. . . It seems to me, the most important thing to be kept in view is, that the Republic should have a Government the legitimacy of which cannot be seriously questioned. When we once have a President going into office by a method more or less revolutionary, we shall have more of that sort of thing, and worse in point of character. I think it therefore of very great consequence, that in so great a matter Constitutional forms should be guarded as scrupulously as possible.
If the counting of the votes and the determination of the results be undertaken on the 14th of February without any previous authoritative settlement of the question, What is the meaning of the provision of the Constitution as to the relative power of the President of the Senate and of the two houses of Congress? we may witness a furious and unscrupulous struggle of party interests, which may land us nobody knows where. It was mainly for this reason
