"
"If you'd heard the talk last night," the foreigner replied, with a
shrug of his shoulder, "you'd change your mind----"
The Westerner shook his head:
"No! The General's not that big a fool and the men around him have
better sense. And if they haven't--if they all should go crazy--it
couldn't be done. They couldn't control the army."
"Did you ever hear the army cheer as 'Little Mac' rides along the line?"
"Yes, but it don't mean an Emperor for all that----"
"I'm not so sure!"
And there were men of National reputation who considered the chances of
the man on horseback good at this moment. Such a man had openly attached
himself to the General as his attorney--no less a personage than the
distinguished Attorney General of the late Cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton.
During the closing days of Buchanan's crumbling administration Stanton
had become the dominating force of the Capital. His daring and his skill
had defeated the best laid schemes of the Southern party and broken its
grip on the administration. He had remained in Washington as a lawyer
practicing before the Supreme Court and had become the most aggressive
observer and critic of Lincoln and his Cabinet. His scorn for the
President knew no bounds.
"No one," he wrote to General John A. Dix, "can imagine the deplorable
condition of this city and the hazard of the Government, who did not
witness the weakness and the panic of the administration and the painful
imbecility of Lincoln.
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