Chancellor said, "Nonsense," Lincoln would not have stalked out. He would have told a story and the Lord Chancellor would have wished to do the stalking. When Davis said a sharp thing, Lincoln would have said a gentle one, and got the best of it. Read in the *' Con- gressional Globe " the debate on secession and see how Baker of Oregon simply demolishes Benjamin, not by argument, but by pure Lincolnian quizzing, which Ben- jamin cannot meet because he cannot understand it.
Benjamin smiled perpetually, Lincoln, I imagine, rarely. But how much more Lincoln's smile meant ! Benjamin's cheerful countenance gave no weight at all to the trag- edies of existence.
And now, I think, we are in a position to consider what was Benjamin's real attitude towards the Confederacy. First, was he an able, selfish, scheming, unscrupulous adventurer, who played the game simply for his own personal ambition and aggrandizement, a sort of Talley- rand ? This may be excluded at once. It would be diffi- cult to imagine Talleyrand writing confidentially, as Benjamin did in regard to the release of Brownlow : " Better that any, the most dangerous enemy, however criminal, should escape, than that the honor and good faith of the Government should be impugned or even suspected." ^^ If there were no other evidence that the sec- retary did not belong to the type above indicated, little more would be needed than his own clearly genuine com- parison of Gladstone and Disraeli, all in favor of the
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