Unless the President calls me, which I think he will not, I shall soon go to St. Louis and try to start a large journalistic enterprise. St. Louis, by its geographical situation, is destined to exercise an immense influence from Galena to New Orleans and from Louisville to the Rocky Mountains. There is the place for a great paper. What do you think of the plan? And if you approve of it, who are, in your opinion, the public men in Missouri likely to go into it?
Now pardon me for taxing your friendship a little. The war has exhausted me a little in a financial point of view, and I must try to make some money next winter by lecturing. Do you know a suitable person who would be able and willing to arrange for me a number of engagements in New England and northern New York, that would cover some six or seven weeks? Years ago, Mr. Charles Slack did that business for me, but I do not know whether he is still in Boston.
I shall remain here two or three weeks longer. May I expect an answer from you here?
TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON
Bethlehem, Pa., June 6, 1865.
The passage in your Executive order concerning the provisional government of North Carolina, to which I had the honor to call your attention at our last interview, has, as I then anticipated, been generally interpreted as a declaration of policy on your part adverse to the introduction of negro suffrage. So far, it is treated with calmness by most of the papers, but it is sure to become a subject of general and fierce discussion—not only among extremists but among men of moderate views—as soon as the old pro-slavery and disloyal element, I mean the oath-taking rebels, will have reasserted their influence
