... I mean to have a talk with
'Father Abraham' himself, among others."
Mrs. Stowe lost no time, but proceeded to carry out her plan as soon
as practicable. Of this visit to Washington she says little in her
letters beyond the following meagre words: "It seems to be the opinion
here, not only that the President will stand up to his proclamation,
but that the Border States will accede to his proposition for
emancipation. I have noted the thing as a glorious expectancy!... To-
day to the home of the contrabands, seeing about five hundred poor
fugitives eating a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner, and singing, 'Oh,
let my people go!' It was a strange and moving sight."
It was left for others to speak of her interview with President
Lincoln. Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name
he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made this
great war?" He then led her apart to a seat in the window, where they
were withdrawn from other guests, and undisturbed. No one but those
two souls will ever know what waves of thought and feeling swept over
them in that brief hour.
Afterwards she heard these words pronounced in the Senate Chamber in
the Message of President Lincoln; it was in the darkest hour of the
war, Mrs. Stowe wrote, when defeat and discouragement had followed the
Union armies and all hearts were trembling with fear: "If this
struggle is to be prolonged till there be not a home in the land where
there is not one dead, till all the treasure amassed by the unpaid
labor of the slave shall be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by
the lash shall be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, we can only bow
and say, 'Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints'!"
During her Boston visits Mrs.
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