Whether you will choose to listen to their admonishment or wait
for your verdict through future history, or at the bar of God, I do not
know. I can only hope.'"
The President's sombre eyes met his with a penetrating flash and rested
on Senator Winter who remained in the background. He took the paper,
laid it carefully on his desk, threw his right leg across the corner of
the long table in easy, friendly attitude and began his reply
persuasively:
"The editor of the _Tribune_, gentleman, if on my side, is equal to an
army of a hundred thousand men in the field. I've known this from the
first. Against me he throws this army in the rear and fires into my
back. My grievance is that his Prayer which you have made yours is being
used for ammunition in this rear attack. It should have been presented
to me first, if it were a genuine prayer. I have read it carefully. It
is full of blunders of fact and reasoning, but it fairly expresses the
discontent in the minds of many. Its unfair assumptions will poison
millions of readers against me----"
He paused, opened a drawer in his desk, took from it a sheet of paper on
which he had written in firm, clear hand a brief message in reply, and
turned to his petitioners:
"And therefore, gentlemen, I have written a few words in answer to this
attack.
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