I, for my part, am prepared for the worst. With
Lee's surrender there will soon be an end to our regular
organized armies and I can see no possible good to result
from a protracted guerilla warfare. We are crushed and must
submit to the yoke. Our children must bide their time for
vengeance, but you and I will never revisit our homes under
our glorious flag. For myself I shall never put my foot on a
soil from which flaunts the hated Stars and Stripes.... I am
sick, sick at heart[1289]."
The news of Lee's surrender arrived at the same moment with that of a
serious injury to Seward in a runaway accident, and in its editorial on
the end of the war the _Times_ took occasion to pay a tribute to the
statesman whom it had been accustomed to berate.
"There seems to be on the part of President Lincoln a desire
to conciliate vanquished fellow-citizens. Under the guidance
of Mr. Seward, who has creditably distinguished himself in
the Cabinet by his moderate counsels, and whose life will, we
trust, be spared at this crisis to the Union, he may by
gentle measures restore tranquillity, and perhaps, before his
term of office expires, calm in some degree the animosities
which have been raised by these years of war[1290].
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