he day after he heard of the awful slaughter at
Fredericksburg, he remarked at the War Office: "If any of the lost in
hell suffered worse than I did last night, I pity them." Nothing but
iron nerves and a dependence on the divine arm bore him through. He once
said: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming
conviction that I had nowhere else to go; my own wisdom and that of all
around me seemed insufficient for the day." We call him "Our Martyr
President," but the martyrdom lasted for four whole years!

The darkest crisis of the whole war was in the summer of 1862. I slipped
away for a few weeks of relaxation to Europe, sailing on the Cunarder
_China_, the first screw steamer ever built by that company. She was
under the command of Captain James Anderson, who was afterwards knighted
by Queen Victoria for his services in laying the Atlantic cable, and is
better known as Sir James Anderson. There was no Atlantic cable in those
days, and our steamer carried out the news of the seven days' battles
before Richmond, which terminated in the retreat of General McClellan.
We had a Fourth of July dinner on board, but between seasickness and
heart sickness it was the toughest experience of making a spread-eagle
speech I ever had. After landing at Queenstown I went to Belfast and
thence to Edinburgh. I found the people of Edinburgh intensely excited
over our war and the current of popular sentiment running against us
like a mill-race. For instance, I was recognized by my soft hat on the
street; a shoemaker put his head out of the door and shouted as I
passed: "I say, when are you going to be done with your butchering over
there?" The _Scotsman_ was hostile to the Union cause, and the old
_Caledonian Mercury_ was the only paper that stood by us; but it did so
manfully. On the day of my arrival a bulletin was posted in the
newspaper offices and on Change that McClellan and the Union army had
surrendered. The baleful report was received with no little exultation
by all who were engaged in the cotton trade. I sat up until midnight
with the editor of the _Mercury_, helping him to squelch the rumor and
the next morning expose the falsity of the news in his columns.

Dr. John Brown, the immortal author of "Rab and His Friends," had called
on me at the Waverly Hotel, and that morning I breakfasted with him. At
the breakfast table I made a statement of our side of the conflict and
Dr. Brown said: "If you will write up th