r. Lincoln drew up a final paper, "To Whom it
may Concern," formally restating his position, and despatched Major Hay
with it to Niagara. This ended the conference; the Confederates charging
the President through the newspapers with a "sudden and entire change of
views"; while Mr. Greeley, being attacked by his colleagues of the press
for his action, could defend himself only by implied censure of the
President, utterly overlooking the fact that his own original letter had
contained the identical propositions Mr. Lincoln insisted upon.

The discussion grew so warm that both he and his assailants at last
joined in a request to Mr. Lincoln to permit the publication of the
correspondence. This was, of course, an excellent opportunity for the
President to vindicate his own proceeding. But he rarely looked at such
matters from the point of view of personal advantage, and he feared that
the passionate, almost despairing appeals of the most prominent
Republican editor of the North for peace at any cost, disclosed in the
correspondence, would deepen the gloom in the public mind and have an
injurious effect upon the Union cause. The spectacle of the veteran
journalist, who was justly regarded as the leading controversial writer
on the antislavery side, ready to sacrifice everything for peace, and
frantically denouncing the government for refusing to surrender the
contest, would have been, in its effect upon public opinion, a disaster
equal to the loss of a great battle. He therefore proposed to Mr.
Greeley, in case the letters were published, to omit some of the most
vehement passages; and took Mr. Greeley's refusal to assent to this as a
veto on their publication.

It was characteristic of him that, seeing the temper in which Mr.
Greeley regarded the transaction, he dropped the matter and submitted
in silence to the misrepresentations to which he was subjected by reason
of it. Some thought he erred in giving any hearing to the rebels; some
criticized his choice of a commissioner; and the opposition naturally
made the most of his conditions of negotiation, and accused him of
embarking in a war of extermination in the interests of the negro.
Though making no public effort to set himself right, he was keenly alive
to their attitude. To a friend he wrote:

"Saying reunion and abandonment of slavery would be considered, if
offered, is not saying that nothing else or less would be considered, if
offered.... Allow me to remind you t