“You have Mr. Lincoln’s ear, as I have not, and can exert influence on every side where it is needed. Do urge and inspire him to make peace among our friends any how, and with our foes so soon as may be.” On the same day, unbeknownst to Greeley, the brilliant Alabamian John A. Campbell, a former justice of the United States Supreme Court, now Assistant Secretary of War in Richmond, sent a letter to a friend, Justice Samuel Nelson of New York, a friend of Seward’s as well, a good-hearted man with a judge’s scowl. In 1861, Campbell and Nelson had worked with Seward to try to avert the war. Now Campbell would try to stop it, and no one was better qualified to achieve the unachievable. John Campbell may have been the smartest man in America. He was surely the most diligent. The grandson of a Revolutionary War officer, he enrolled in the future University of Georgia at the tender age of eleven, graduated first in his class in three years, won a place at West Point at fourteen, and resigned to support his family when his father died.
What do You think about Our One Common Country (2013)?
