re you live where
rebel sentiments prevail and where they are surrounded by deadly
enemies. They return at the risk of their lives, and let me tell you
that if any of their lives are sacrificed by reason of the military
administration you maintain in Missouri, their blood will be upon your
garments and not upon ours."

The President, evidently greatly surprised, made no oral reply.
Instead of speaking he raised his handkerchief to his eyes. Seeing
that he was weeping, the delegates quietly and quickly filed out,
leaving Mr. Lincoln with his face still concealed.

The President denied the delegation's request, although his formal
decision was not announced for several days, and its members returned
to their homes, when fortunate enough to have them, sorely
disappointed.

It is here well enough to state that two or three months later the
President relieved Scofield from his Missouri command and sent him to
the front in the South, much to the betterment of his military
reputation, and doubtless to his own personal gratification. Rosecrans
was made his successor. Among the earliest things he did was the
bringing into the State of a considerable force of Federal troops
under Generals Pleasanton and A.J. Smith. These were sent through the
State. The effect was almost magical. Some of the guerrilla bands went
South to join Price, but the most of them dissolved and disappeared.
Their members, doubtless, went back to their former occupations, and
that was the last of them. Missouri was pacified.

But were the Missouri Radicals so far disheartened by their rebuffs
from the President that they gave up the fight? Not a bit of it. There
was a tribunal in some respects higher than the President, and to that
they resolved to go. The National Republican Convention to nominate a
successor to Mr. Lincoln was approaching, and they decided to appeal
to it in a way that would compel a decision between them and the
President. They appointed a delegation to the convention, which they
instructed for General Grant. The Claybanks also appointed a
delegation, which they instructed for Mr. Lincoln, and thus the issue
was made. The convention, although nominating Mr. Lincoln by a vote
that, outside of Missouri's, was unanimous, admitted the Charcoals and
excluded the Claybanks by the remarkable vote of four hundred and
forty to four.

While of no special consequence, some rather humorous experiences in
connection with the events just spoken