In Lincoln's first message to Congress, special session, July 4, 1861,
is seen this passage:
"With rebellion thus _sugar-coated_, they have been drugging the public
mind," etc.
Mr. Defrees, public printer, with the proofreader's sublime spurning of
plain speech, objected to this sweet word, and said: "Mr. President,
you are using an undignified expression! I would alter the construction
if I were you!"
"Defrees," was the crushing reply, "that word expresses precisely _my_
idea, and I am not going to change it. The time will never come in this
country when the people won't know exactly what 'sugar-coated' means!"
"'I JINKS! I CAN BEAT YOU BOTH!"
One day the public printer wanted to correct a Lincolnism in one of the
presidential documents.
"Go home, Defrees, and see if you can better it." The next day, Defrees
took him his amendment. It happened that Secretary Seward had spied the
same fault as the printer, and Lincoln confronted the two improvements.
"'I jinks! (by Jingo!) Seward has been rewriting the same paragraph. I
believe you have beat Seward, but I think I can beat you both!"
And he wrote with his firm hand "_Stet!_ so let it stand!" on the
proof-sheet.
* * * * *
"LET THE GRASS GROW WHERE IT MAY!"
Up to the dread day when the news of the flag of our Union being fired
upon, in Charleston harbor, the country resembled the sea in one of
those calms preceding a storm. When the placidity betrays hidden and
mighty currents, and overhead, in the clear sky, one divines the
coursers of the tempest gathering to race in strife like that beneath.
Up to Lincoln's arrival in Washington, the nest of sedition, the
pro-slavery, peace-at-any-price party slackened in no efforts to retain
the _statu quo_, or worse, a new State of the Southern States branching
off as suckers strike from the main stem. William E. Dodge had the
courage to face the wrought-up Chief Magistrate, chafed with his narrow
escape from the assassins of the railroad journey from Baltimore. Said
Mr. Dodge:
"It is for you, Mr. President, to say whether the whole nation shall be
plunged into bankruptcy (the slaves were valued as property at two
thousand million dollars!); whether the grass shall grow in the streets
of our commercial cities." (The balance of trade against the South to
the manufacturing and supplying North was stupendous.)
"Then, I say, it shall not," replied Lincoln; "if it depends upon me,
the grass will not grow anywhere, save in the fields and meadows."
Mr. Dodge persisted in his sordid and businesslike errand.
"Then you will not go to war on account of slavery?"
"I do not know what my acts may be in the future, beyond this: The
Constitution will not be preserved and defended until it is enforced
and obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be
so respected, obeyed, enforced, and defended--let the grass grow where
it will!"
* * * * *