But his ingenious
phraseology was of no avail. Mr. Lincoln said: "The request of A.H.
Stephens is inadmissible. The customary agents and channels are adequate
for all needful communication and conference between the United States
forces and the insurgents." Thus the shrewd instinct of the Northerner
brought to naught a scheme conceived in the spirit of the old-time
Southern politics, a scheme which was certainly clever, but which,
without undue severity, may also be called a little artful and
insidious; for Mr. Stephens himself afterward confessed that it had, for
its ulterior purpose, "not so much to act upon Mr. Lincoln and the then
ruling authorities at Washington as through them, when the
correspondence should be published, upon the great mass of the people in
the Northern States." The notion, disseminated among the people, that
Mr. Lincoln would not listen to proposals for peace, would greatly help
malcontents of the Fernando Wood school.
It is necessary now to turn from the Eastern field of operations to the
Middle and Western parts of the country, where, however, the control
exercised by Mr. Lincoln was far less constant than at the East. After
the series of successes which culminated at Corinth, the Federal good
fortune rested as if to recuperate for a while. A large part of the
powerful army there gathered was carried away by Buell, and was soon
given occupation by General Bragg.
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