It was at this celebrated interview that Lincoln took up a blank sheet of writing-paper and said to the Confederates, let me write _Emancipation_ here at the top and you can fill the rest of the page with your conditions.
Lincoln seized the key of a political position as Napoleon did of a military one, and never relaxed his grasp. He would tell stories all night and make his auditors shout with laughter, but whenever the real business was touched upon, he made his opponents feel that the natural division was that the buzzard should fall to them while his long bony fingers were already fast upon the turkey. He could afford to joke and be patient, for he saw the end from the beginning, and had faith in the Republic.
See what the whirligig of time brings round. Near Preston, in the valley of the Ribble, was fought in 1648 the battle of Preston or Ribblesdale, in which Cromwell defeated the Scotch army under the Duke of Hamilton, and the English army under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. The Royalists were driven at the point of the bayonet through the streets of Preston, and, though they made a stand at Uttoxeter, were finally overthrown and both generals and many thousand men made prisoners. It was a notable struggle, for the Royalists had more than twice as many men as the Parliamentarians; but then the latter had the great Oliver, who knew how and when to strike a blow.
Booth may not be great in anything, as some think, but I do not know his equal in "Richelieu;" and in one scene in particular he has always seemed to me at his very best. The king sits with his new minister, Baradas, in attendance at his side. Richelieu reclines upon a sofa exhausted while his secretaries "deliver up the papers of a realm." A secretary is on his knee presenting papers. He says:
"The affairs of England, Sire, most urgent. Charles The First has lost a battle that decides One half his realm--craves moneys, Sire, and succor.
RICHELIEU. (_Feebly, but with great distinctness._) My liege-- Forgive me--Charles's cause is lost. A man, Named Cromwell, risen--_a great man_--"
That is enough, a great man _settles_ things; a small one nibbles away at petty reforms, although he knows nothing is settled thereby, and that the question is only pushed ahead for the time to break out again directly. English politicians are mostly nibblers, though Gladstone can take a good bite when put to it.