Lincoln's real sentiments, I know from my own experience. I met Mr. Lincoln on board a steamer near City Point, in the early spring of 1865, shortly before the capture of Richmond. He told me then that he had left Washington, partly because he wanted to be near the theater of the important operations then going on, and partly because he wanted to run away from the officeseekers, and he added: “I am afraid that thing is going to ruin republican government,” and much more to the same effect. The expression in quotation marks I remember particularly.
TO THOMAS F. BAYARD
The enclosed correspondence, as I am informed, is going the round of the newspapers. I am also told that it is not altogether wrong in the description of impressions prevailing in Administration circles. As my name is conspicuously mentioned as one of those who are “more disposed to blame than to commend” the President, it is perhaps proper that I should say a word about it. I should write to the President directly had not my last letters to him remained without the courtesy of an acknowledgment. But presuming upon your friendship I would ask you to mention occasionally to the President, that, while I, of course, reserve to myself the right of freely expressing my opinions, I have made it a rule not to say anything about him to others, that I have not said about him to himself, and that in the letters I have addressed to him are criticisms far more pointed than any I have expressed to anybody else. And as to the disposition rather to censure than to commend, I may add that if anybody has borne the brunt of the battle for Mr. Cleveland when he was a candidate, I have. If anybody
