GDG- ``respectable scoundrels''

[Dennis Lawrence]

To Truman Smith [1]
Private & confidential. Hon. Truman Smith Springfield Ill
Nov 10th 1860.

My dear Sir This is intended as a strictly private letter to you, and not 
as an answer to yours brought me by Mr. Sanford. [2] It is with the most 
profound appreciation of your motive, and highest respect for your judgment 
too, that I feel constrained, for the present, at least, to make no 
declaration for the public.

First, I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in 
print, and open for the inspection of all. To press a repetition of this 
upon those who have listened, is useless; to press it upon those who have 
refused to listen, and still refuse, would be wanting in self-respect, and 
would have an appearance of sycophancy and timidity, which would excite the 
contempt of good men, and encourage bad ones to clamor the more loudly.

I am not insensible to any commercial or financial depression that may 
exist; but nothing is to be gained by fawning around the ``respectable 
scoundrels'' who got it up. Let them go to work and repair the mischief of 
their own making; and then perhaps they will be less greedy to do the like 
again. Yours very truly

A. LINCOLN.
Annotation

[1]   Copy, DLC-RTL. Ex-representative (1839-1843, 1845-1849) and Senator 
(1849-1854) Truman Smith of Stamford, 
Connecticut, 
http://www.infoplease.com/biography/us/congress/smith-truman.html  wrote on 
November 7, urging Lincoln to make a public statement `` . . . to disarm 
mischief makers, to allay causeless anxiety, to compose the public mind and 
to induce all good citizens to . . . `judge the tree by it's fruit'. . . . 
'' (DLC-RTL). See also Lincoln to George T. M. Davis, October 27, 
supra.http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln4;node=lincoln4%3A193

[2]   Henry S. Sanford of Derby, Connecticut, charge d'affaires at Paris 
during President Taylor's administration, had carried a letter of 
introduction dated October 30, 1860 (DLC-RTL), but there is no other letter 
from Smith prior to that of November 7. Probably Sanford's mission was 
concerned with the same subject as Smith's letter of November

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"None of us knew then -- how could we have known? -- how deeply God's 
wisdom had touched and inspired that devout and patient soul. At the moment 
few people praised or trusted him."
--Julia Ward Howe in "Reminiscences 1819-1899"7.