The extremists
still distrusted Mr. Lincoln, and regarded him as an obstruction to
sound policies. Senator Chandler of Michigan, a fine sample of the
radical Republican, instructed him that, by the elections, Conservatives
and traitors had been buried together, and begged him not to exhume
them, since they would "smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been
buried three days." Apparently he ranked Seward among these defunct and
decaying Conservatives; certainly he regarded the secretary as a
"millstone about the neck" of the President.[52] Still, in spite of such
denunciations, times were not in this respect so bad as they had been,
and the danger that the uncompromising Radicals would make wreck of the
war was no longer great.
* * * * *
Another event, occurring in this autumn of 1863, was noteworthy because
through it the literature of our tongue received one of its most
distinguished acquisitions. On November 19 the national military
cemetery at Gettysburg was to be consecrated; Edward Everett was to
deliver the oration, and the President was of course invited as a guest.
Mr. Arnold says that it was actually while Mr. Lincoln was "in the cars
on his way from the White House to the battlefield" that he was told
that he also would be expected to say something on the occasion; that
thereupon he jotted down in pencil the brief address which he delivered
a few hours later.
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