opinions." By this time we had reached the President's, and hurried up stairs to his room fronting the Potomac, which I found, as usual, crowded with people. But Mr. Lincoln was always more than kind to me, and we soon obtained an audi

ence.

First joking with McLean because he was so earnest a Democratic editor, Mr. Lincoln then listened to my appeal for General Pryor. I still see his expression and the humorous sparkle of his eye as I told my story. Then pausing he said, "I have a kindly recollection of Roger A. Pryor. He is the man who, when a company of Pennsylvania volunteers were taken prisoners at Petersburg, Virginia, (Pryor then lived at Petersburg), found them almost starving on the streets and took them home, and gave them, not only a hearty breakfast, but literally swept his house clean to make them comfortable, and I think I have here a little memorandum to that effect signed by these Pennsyl vania boys." And so turning around, he took from his pigeon-hole a paper testifying to this fact, and also urging that General Pryor's kindness should never be forgotten by the American Government.

This proves the fidelity of Abraham Lincoln's gratitude and good memory. He then gave me a card to the commandant of Fort Lafayette in New York harbor, Colonel Burke, asking him to release the Confederate General Pryor, who would report

And

to his friend Col. Forney on Capitol Hill. McLean rushed off to New York by the next train, returning to Washington the subsequent evening with Roger A. Pryor on his arm, who came to my house on Capitol Hill and remained with me as my guest for more than a month, even down to the fall of Richmond.

There was a great deal of opposition to this peculiar pardon of the President, in some quarters, coming from the men who then, as now, tried to show their patriotism by proclaiming their unforgiveness and hatred of the South. But the President stood firm to the last, and General Pryor remained with me until he found it convenient to return to his home. At parting, he showed much emotion, and declared that while he never would forget all the kindness that had been shown to him, I would live to see the day when he would prove that he would labor as hard to re-unite the country and restore kindly relations in the North and South as he had fought hard to separate them. Nobly has Pryor kept his faith. The last evidence of it is the speech that I hold in my hand, uttered a few days ago, early in July, 1880, from which I take this remarkable extract:

"Hancock was not the preference of the Southern people for President. Their choice-unanimous and enthusiastic-was Bayard, of Delaware. How, then, came the Southern delegates to proffer Hancock as the candidate of the Democracy? I will tell you, and mark well the significance of the fact: Since the close of the war the Repub

lican party in the North, for purposes of party aggrandizement, have persisted contrary to fact, contrary to truth, in representing the Southern people as enemies still of the Union, and as cherishing yet the exploded dogma of secession as a tenet of the States Rights creed. In vain have the Southern people endeavored to vindicate their patriotism by protestation and acts of loyal devotion to the Union. Hitherto, in every election, it has sufficed for the defeat of the Democracy that the 'bloody shirt' was waved by stalwart arms, and fabricated 'outrages' propagated by Republican papers. So, at Cincinnati, the Southera delegates said:

'You may impute to us hostility to the Union, but we will refute the calumnious accusation by setting as sentinel over the Union the vigilant and unconquerable hero of the Union. You may impute to us the mischievous heresy of State sovereignty, involving the right of secession. Now, we will disprove the charge by nominating for the Presidency a man educated by the General Government, and taught the supremacy of the Nation as the first and fundamental rule of political faith; a man who holds his commission from the Federal Government; who gets his subsistence from the Federal Government, for whom no career is open but in the service of the Federal Government, who knew no other object of fealty than the Federal flag-a'man, in short, whose every interest binds him to the support of the Union by the most intimate and indisputable ties.' 'You say we are still unreconciled to the North, and that in our hearts still burns the secret flame of sectional animosity; then, to repel the reproach, we take to our bosoms the man from whom we sustained the severest blows in our Confederate struggle-the man who arrested our retreat at Williamsburg; who checked our pursuit at Fraser's Farm; who hurled our assaulting columns from the heights of Gettysburg; who drenched the soil of the South with the best blood of the South; the man who smote our ill-starred Confederacy to the ground.""

I repeat the question, How long is this bloody shirt to be waved; how long are the millions of Southern people to be distrusted; how long shall

the corrupt politicians in the North be kept in power by this fiendish hatred of your own brothers? As I said before, Mr. Lincoln began to forgive the Southern people in the midst of their sins, and even as he died, he died with Christ-like pardon for them on his lips, and when he had passed away, the Republican party of the United States, when it was led by statesmen and inspired by patriots, incorporated into the Constitution those great practical guarantees, not only that the slave should be free, not only that the freedman should vote, but that the so-called rebels should be forgiven, their property restored to them and their right to vote in all our elections secured; in other words, universal suffrage with universal amnesty. And now when the South gives the pledge, in the words of Roger A. Pryor himself, a forgiven man by the President of the United States, that pledge made in the person of the soldier who by the admission of the Republican leaders themselves saved the Republic in the extremest peril, the Southern people are still to be hounded on by the declaration that the South shall never be trusted; it is not surprising that the great body of the humane people of the United States should rise against this savage exhibition of party malevolence, and, worse than that, unpatriotic contempt for the great example of Lincoln and the solemn covenant of the Constitution of the United States!

CHAPTER IX.

THE CONQUERED CONFEDERATES.

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HIS is the moment when every kind word spoken and every good action done by the ple of the North and South respectively should be cherished. Already a new civil war, so far as the revival of sectional animosities is concerned, has been determined upon by the Republican leaders, and if there is a moderate and thoughtful patriot in these United States to-day, he should be roused to reprobation of the inhuman spectacle. It is clear that every other question will be subordinated by the violent men who still hold possession of the Republican party in order that they may keep themselves in office. Not the least surprising feature of this conspiracy to re-light the fires of hatred between the States is the activity in it of many of the organizers of the movement to make Horace Greeley President in 1872.

The platform of these men eight years ago was