"NEW YORK, _Dec. 17, 1860_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--As you leave in the morning to return to Chicago, I
seize a few moments this evening to submit to you some suggestions as
to the present crisis in the affairs of our country. I know you have
no personal aspirations; that you are exempt from the blinding and
misleading influence of active partisanship; that your disposition is
equitable; that you have no motive but the public good--no interest
except in common with all patriotic citizens; and that, far better
than most men, you understand that there is usually another side to a
controversy than 'our side.'
"Your situation may enable you to be of great service to your country
and to mankind, and of not less service to a gentleman who to-day
occupies a more important and responsible position than has been the
fortune of any other of his generation. Of course I allude to Mr.
Lincoln. His patriotism I do not doubt. The impression he made on
me, upon two occasions when I casually met him, was that of a frank,
genial, warm-hearted man. In the actual duties of the Presidency he
cannot but take conservative views. No man can have a motive so strong
and yet so noble to prevent his own name from closing, amid public
sorrow and shame, the illustrious roll of American Presidents which
began with Washington.
"It must be his renown or his calamity to decide whether he shall
be the Chief Magistrate of a whole country or of half a country.
Providence has cast upon him that immense responsibility. In saying
this I do not touch the question, What has caused the mischief? I speak
only as to the question, _Who has the power to save the country?_
"1. The reality of the _danger_ of disunion, I think, cannot be
doubted. The cotton States are far more unanimous for secession than
our fathers were when they made our revolution despite of the royalist
majority. Practically, their people are unanimous. We can only hope for
an effective minority forming itself in some qualified position within
the current of popular opinion. A statesmanlike policy would be to aid
the formation of that minority--to strengthen it that it may become a
majority, to create, to hasten, to swell the reaction for which we hope.
"2. Our first necessity is to comprehend the crisis. That is difficult.
A man on one side of a question cannot easily turn out the set of ideas
which fill his mind and admit the opposite set, even for an experiment.
Nothing is so difficult in ordinary experience as to see both sides
of a question. For us who have been educated with Northern ideas or
in party controversies, we must be almost more than mortal to be able
to take a perfectly candid and impartial view of the position of our
adversaries. It is necessary to do more--to imagine ourselves in their
position, in order to form a policy adapted to their case."