He was breathing heavily and evidently labouring under great emotion. He brought his cane to the floor with violence, placed both hands on its crook, leaned his massive jaws on his hands for a moment, and then said:
"Mr. President, I have not annoyed you with many requests during the past four years, nor am I here to-day to ask any favours. I have come to warn you that, in the course you have mapped out, the executive and legislative branches have come to the parting of the ways, and that your encroachments on the functions of Congress will be tolerated, now that the Rebellion is crushed, not for a single moment!"
Mr. Lincoln listened with dignity, and a ripple of fun played about his eyes as he looked at his grim visitor. The two men were face to face at last,—the two men above all others who had built and were to build the foundations of the New Nation,—Lincoln's in love and wisdom to endure forever, the Great Commoner's in hate and madness, to bear its harvest of tragedy and death for generations yet unborn.
"Well, now, Stoneman," began the good-humoured voice, "that puts me in mind"
The old Commoner lifted his hand with a gesture of angry impatience:
"Save your fables for fools. Is it true that you have prepared a proclamation restoring the conquered province of North Carolina to its place as a state in the Union with no provision for Negro suffrage or the exile and disfranchisement of its rebels?"
