"The fact is notorious, sir. It will be disputed by no one. The outlook
is black. Meeting after meeting is being held in Indiana demanding peace
at any price, with the recognition of the Southern Confederacy--and,
mark you, what is still more significant the formation of a Northwestern
Confederacy with its possible Capital at your home town of Springfield,
Illinois----"
"No, no!" the President groaned.
"Your last call for three hundred thousand volunteers," the Governor
went on, "as you well know was an utter failure. Only eighty-six
thousand men have been raised under it. I was compelled to use a draft
to secure the number I did in Indiana. It is useless to call for more
volunteers anywhere----"
"Then we'll have to use the draft," was the firm response.
"If we can enforce it!" the Governor warned. "A meeting has just been
held in my State in which resolutions were unanimously passed demanding
that the war cease, denouncing the attempt to use the power to draft
men, declaring that our volunteers had been induced to enter the army
under the false declaration that war was waged solely to maintain the
Constitution and to restore the Union----"
"And so it is!" the President interrupted.
"Until you issued your Proclamation, freeing the slaves----"
"But only as a war measure to weaken the South, give us the victory and
restore the Constitution!"
"They refuse to hear your interpretation; they make their own.
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