Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/418

380 Crawford and Forsyth in the same manner that he said he himself had once dealt with Jefferson Davis. Mr. Usher, formerly secretary of the interior, tells the following story (in &quot;Reminiscences of Lincoln,&quot; p. 80) about a speech made by Mr. Seward: &quot; Referring to a speech that Mr. Oakley Hall had then lately made in the city of New York, Seward said, Oakley Hall says that I said in the winter before the war in a speech at the Astor House that the trouble would all be over and everything settled in sixty days. I would have Mr. Oakley Hall to know that when I made that speech the electoral vote was not counted and I knew it never would be if Jeff Davis believed there would be war. We both knew that he was to be president of the Southern Confederacy and that I was to be secretary of state under Mr. Lincoln. I had to deceive Davis, and I did it. That s why I said it would be all settled in sixty days.

It is presumable that the wily secretary of state reasoned again in the same manner only three months later, &quot;I had to deceive these confiding Southern gentlemen, and I did it.&quot;