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troops with him, and by charging each new failure to some alleged dereliction of the Secretary of War and President, had created an impression among them that the administration was hostile to him, and withheld vital elements of success that should have been accorded to him, and which, in some instances, he falsely represented as having been promised to him. He said, with much deliberation, that he believed the restoration to command of McClellan, Porter, and other of his chiefs, in the face of the treasonable misconduct of which they had been so flagrantly guilty in the sacrifice of Pope's army, was the greatest trial and most painful duty of his official life. Yet, situated as he was, it seemed to be his duty, and in opposition to every member of his Cabinet he performed it, and felt no regret for what he had done.

"I am now," said he, "stronger with the Army of the Potomac than McClellan. The supremacy of the civil power has been restored, and the Executive is again master of the situation. The troops know, that if I made a mistake in substituting Pope for McClellan, I was capable of rectifying it by again trusting him. They know, too, that neither Stanton nor I withheld any thing from him at Antietam, and that it was not the administration, but their own former idol, who surrendered the just results of their terrible sacrifices and closed the great fight as a drawn battle, when, had he thrown Porter's corps of fresh men and other available troops upon Lee's army, he would inevitably have driven it in disorder to the river and captured most of it before sunset."

When we parted, Mr. Lincoln had not said in direct terms that it was his purpose to relieve McClellan; he had, however, discussed the relative availability of certain generals for the command, and the tenor of his remarks justi

fied me in saying to some of my fellow-citizens, on my return to Philadelphia, that McClellan's military career had practically ended, and that he would soon be succeeded in command by Hooker or Burnside. At Warrenton, Va., on the 7th of November, Geo. B. McClellan received an order to turn his command over to General Burnside, and report to the Department by letter from Trenton, New Jersey, by a prompt compliance with which order he closed his inglorious military career.

Under a sense of obligation to the truth of history, and to the memory of two men who, while bearing the burdens of the grandest of civil wars, admitted me to their confidence and such intimate relations as enabled me to see, in their example, with how single an eye to the good of their country men may devote their lives, have I thus endeavored to discharge a solemn duty.

APPENDIX.

While compiling the foregoing vindication of President Lincoln and Mr. Stanton, I dictated an article for a volume which will shortly appear under the title of "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Men Who Knew Him," in which I embodied vivid and, in several instances, oftrepeated recollections of interviews with Mr. Lincoln. Of these, one was with a deputation of Progressive Friends, and another with Prof. Goldwin Smith, both of which were published in the New York Tribune and other papers. To my account of the interview with the Friends Mr. Oliver Johnson took exception, and in a letter to the Tribune criticised it sharply and denied its allegations. The confidence with which Mr. Johnson disputed my statements demanded a reply, which I submitted through the columns of the Tribune. As the historical facts, by reference to which I make good my disputed assertions, might well have been incorporated in the original text,and as the volume has not yet gone through the press,I herewith append the letter to the Tribune in which they were embodied.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE Tribune.

SIR :-In the Tribune of September 6th is a communication from Oliver Johnson, which would have received earlier attention had I not been enjoying needed rest in the health-giving

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valley of the Genesee, and away from books, papers, and cor respondence. It purports to correct my account of the interview of the Progressive Friends with Mr. Lincoln, and closes with the remark “that if the Tribune' Reminiscences of Lincoln' are to take a permanent form in our literature Mr. Kelley's contribution will need to be carefully expurgated and reconstructed."

As the Tribune has said that too much light cannot be thrown on that important matter-Mr. Lincoln's attitude toward the Abolitionists before he emancipated the slaves,-you will, I doubt not, give me space in which to show that it is Mr. Johnson who is in error on that point. He says I

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was unable to give the name of the religious body which the deputation represented, and could only describe it vaguely as an independent organization'; that it was the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends which the deputation represented; that the object was not, as I had said, to present a Minute, but a formal and solemn Memorial, to the President; and that I appear not to have recollected the name of a single member of the deputation."

It happens that although the gentleman who acted as my amanuensis at the time I dictated the article under consideration has resided in Virginia for more than sixty days, and had, before leaving, destroyed much rejected manuscript, I find among my papers a number of pages of his first draft, from one of which I quote as follows: "It was, I believe, during 1852 that there was organized at Longwood, Chester County, Pa., a religious society to be known as Progressive Friends, to consist of men and women who attached higher importance to purity of life and unselfish conduct than to creeds and dogmas. That the observance of the Sabbath should be maintained by this sect without a creed, and church without a preacher, a meeting-house was erected in which a hymn is sung on each First Day, after which earnest men and women may deliver to assembled Friends communications on

questions of duty with which they may believe themselves to be charged Here the yearly meeting of the Society is held in June, the most delightful part of the year, in that region of beautiful grass and foliage and flowers. John G. Whittier, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Dr. William Elder, George William Curtis, Henry Wilson, and scores of distinguished Liberals have participated in these thoughtful anniversaries."

I find, too, that I named Oliver Johnson as the person who read the Minute to the President; and I aver that I vividly remembered the names of four of the six delegates whom he mentions.

Mr. Johnson and others may ask why, if all this and much more on the same subject was written, did none of it appear in the article as printed? The reason was that the object of my paper was to present, in compliance with the request of the person who invited me to do the work, facts illustrative of Mr. Lincoln's character. "It is not," said he, "for impressions of his character, for but incidents illustrative thereof, that we ask "; and while I deemed the interview under consideration an eminently characteristic incident, I feared that if I printed what I had dictated, the article might be regarded as a reminiscence of Progressive Friends, and not of Mr. Lincoln. I therefore struck out what related solely to the Society and its members, and thus furnished Mr. Johnson ground for his erroneous conclusion that my recollection of the occasion was "of a very shadowy kind."

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One fact I did not remember it was the day of the month on which the interview occurred; but, in the absence of that knowledge and while believing it to have been much earlier in the month, I was able to say, from the President's appearance and manner when we entered the room, "that the visit was inopportune. The air was full of evil rumors from the Peninsula, and the President had evidently passed a night of anxiety"; to which I added, "that the guests, who were strangers to the

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