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Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

"Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy"


_Washington, Sept. 8, 9, &c., 1865_.--The arrivals, swarms, &c., of
the $20,000 men seeking pardons, still continue with increas'd numbers
and pertinacity. I yesterday (I am a clerk in the U. S. Attorney
General's office here) made out a long list from Alabama, nearly 200,
recommended for pardon by the Provisional Governor. This list, in the
shape of a requisition from the Attorney General, goes to the State
Department. There the Pardon Warrants are made out, brought back here,
and then sent to the President, where they await his signature. He is
signing them very freely of late.
The President, indeed, as at present appears, has fix'd his mind on a
very generous and forgiving course toward the return'd secessionists.
He will not countenance at all the demand of the extreme Philo-African
element of the North, to make the right of negro voting at elections a
condition and sine qua non of the reconstruction of the United States
south, and of their resumption of co-equality in the Union.

A GLINT INSIDE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CABINET APPOINTMENTS. ONE ITEM OF
MANY
While it was hanging in suspense who should be appointed Secretary of
the Interior, (to take the place of Caleb Smith,) the choice was very
close between Mr. Harlan and Col. Jesse K. Dubois, of Illinois. The
latter had many friends. He was competent, he was honest, and he was a
man. Mr. Harlan, in the race, finally gain'd the Methodist interest,
and got himself to be consider'd as identified with it; and his
appointment was apparently ask'd for by that powerful body.


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