174 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
one which was taken on that occasion, as well as on all the other occasions on which I did not agree, was the very best that could have been taken." ^^ How refreshing that is in all the jar and clash of positive assertions and violent opinions and dogmatic assurance of a world of might-have-beens. One should read also the admirable letter in which Stephens discusses the possibilities, if the whole burden of the Government, in the event of Davis's death, should fall upon his own shoulders.^^ The clear appreciation of the abstract end to be attained is no finer than the full recognition of the immense difficulties and his own unfitness to encounter them.
Yet if Stephens was modest where he admitted the possibility of error, and anxious for confirmation when he mistrusted his own judgment — " I did not wish to be coarser in my language than the occasion required. Was I enough so or not? Was I too short or not?"^o — he was rocklike when he had deduced his conclusions, knew his ground, and felt that he was right. " I cannot be mis- taken — I never was deceived a second time by any man," ^^ he writes as to human character ; and an inter- ruption during his celebrated answer to Campbell, of Ohio, brought out one of those tremendous sentences in which a man strips his whole soul bare all at once. *' You are wrong in that," interjects Campbell. "No, sir," re- plies Stephens. "I am never wrong upon a matter I have given as close attention to as I have given to this." So a god might answer. -^^
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