Chapter LXXVI

In August following the rebel raid, Judge J. T. Mills, of Wisconsin, in company with ex-Governor Randall, of that State, called upon the President at the “Soldiers’ Home.”

Judge Mills subsequently published the following account of the interview, in the “Grant County (Wisconsin) Herald”:--

* * * * *

“The Governor addressed him: ‘Mr. President, this is my friend and
your friend Mills, from Wisconsin.’

“‘I am glad to see my friends from Wisconsin; they are the hearty
friends of the Union.’

“‘I could not leave the city, Mr. President, without hearing words
of cheer from your own lips. Upon you, as the representative of
the loyal people, depend, as we believe, the existence of our
government and the future of America.’

“‘Mr. President,’ said Governor Randall, ‘why can’t you seek
seclusion, and play hermit for a fort-night? it would reinvigorate
you.’

“‘Aye,’ said the President, ‘two or three weeks would do me good,
but I cannot fly from my thoughts; my solicitude for this great
country follows me wherever I go. I don’t think it is personal
vanity or ambition, though I am not free from these infirmities,
but I cannot but feel that the weal or woe of this great nation
will be decided in November. There is no programme offered by any
wing of the Democratic party but that must result in the permanent
destruction of the Union.’

“‘But Mr. President, General McClellan is in favor of crushing out
the rebellion by force. He will be the Chicago candidate.’

“‘Sir,’ said the President, ‘the slightest knowledge of arithmetic
will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed by
democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the
North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States
near two hundred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them
under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory. The democratic
strategy demands that these forces should be disbanded, and that
the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The black
men who now assist Union prisoners to escape are to be converted
into our enemies, in the vain hope of gaining the good-will of
their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one.

“‘You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate
success; and the experience of the present war proves their success
is inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of millions of
black men into their side of the scale. Will you give our enemies
such military advantages as insure success, and then depend on
coaxing, flattery, and concession, to get them back into the Union?
Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men; take two hundred
thousand men from our side and put them in the battle-field or
cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war
in three weeks.

“‘We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places; where
are the Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field
was open to the War Democrats to put down this rebellion by
fighting against both master and slave long before the present
policy was inaugurated.

“‘There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to
slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win
the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should
deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will
keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I am now
carrying on this war for the sole purpose of Abolition. So long
as I am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of
restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion
without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy
calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.

“‘Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men raised on Southern
soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has subtracted
from the enemy, and instead of alienating the South, there are now
evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our men and
the rank and file of the rebel soldiers. Let my enemies prove to
the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a
restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue.’

“I saw that the President was a man of deep convictions, of abiding
faith in justice, truth, and Providence. His voice was pleasant,
his manner earnest and emphatic. As he warmed with his theme,
his mind grew to the magnitude of his body. I felt I was in the
presence of the great guiding intellect of the age, and that those
‘huge Atlantean shoulders were fit to bear the weight of mightiest
monarchies.’ His transparent honesty, republican simplicity, his
gushing sympathy for those who offered their lives for their
country, his utter forgetfulness of self in his concern for its
welfare, could not but inspire me with confidence that he was
Heaven’s instrument to conduct his people through this sea of blood
to a Canaan of peace and freedom.”