Nor will I permit
the absorption of this black blood into our racial stock to degrade our
National character. When free, the negro must return to his own."
With fierce, sullen determination the Radical wing of his party
organized a secret powerful conspiracy to drive Abraham Lincoln from
public life.
Behind this first line of attack stood the Democratic party with its
millions of loyal voters now united under George B. McClellan. The
Radicals and the Democrats hated each other with a passion second only
to their hatred of the President. They agreed to remove him first and
then settle their own differences.
CHAPTER XXV
THE TUG OF WAR
Betty Winter, having made up her mind to put John Vaughan out of her
life for all time, volunteered for field service as a nurse and by
permission of the President joined Burnside's army before
Fredericksburg.
The General had brought its effective fighting force to a hundred and
thirteen thousand. Lee's army confronted him on the other side of the
Rappahannock with seventy-five thousand men. A great battle was
impending.
Burnside had reluctantly assumed command. He was a gallant, genial,
cultured soldier, a gentleman of the highest type, a pure, unselfish
patriot with not a trace of vulgar ambition or self-seeking. He saw the
President hounded and badgered by his own party, assaulted and denounced
in the bitterest terms by the opposition, and he knew that the remedy
could be found only in a fighting, victorious army.
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