Note 200 — Chapter XXVII · the beginnings of the civil war.

Senator Clingman relates an interview with Secretary Thompson, in which the Secretary described his mission (while still the Secretary of the Interior) to North Carolina to induce that state to join the other states in seceding. Thompson described, according to this authority, an interview with Buchanan, held just before he set out on this mission, and used the following language: “I told Mr. Buchanan all you said, and he told me he wished me to go, and hoped I might succeed.” The whole passage is given in Clingman’s Writings and Speeches, pp. 526, 527, and in Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, Vol. II., p. 325.