But the alleged plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln was more definite. He had been spending the winter quietly in Springfield, where he had been overrun by visitors, who wished to look at him, to advise him, and to secure promises of office; fortunately the tedious procession had lost part of its offensiveness by touching his sense of humor. Anxious people made well-meaning but useless efforts to induce him to say something for effect upon the popular mind; but he resolutely and wisely maintained silence. His position and opinions, he said, had already been declared in his speeches with all the clearness he could give to them, and the people had appeared to understand and approve them. He could not improve and did not desire to change these utterances. Occasionally he privately expressed his dislike to the conceding and compromising temper which threatened to undo, for an indefinite future, all which the long and weary struggle of anti-slavery men had accomplished. In this line he wrote a letter of protest to Greeley, which inspired that gentleman to a singular expression of sympathy; let the Union go to pieces, exclaimed the emotional editor, let presidents be assassinated, let the Republican party suffer crushing defeat, but let there not be "another nasty compromise." To Mr. Kellogg, the Illinoisian on the House Committee of Thirty-three, Lincoln wrote: "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over again." He repeated almost the same words to E.B. Washburne, a member of the House. Duff Green tried hard to get something out of him for the comfort of Mr. Buchanan, but failed to extort more than commonplace generalities. To Seward he wrote that he did not wish to interfere with the present status, or to meddle with slavery as it now lawfully existed. To like purport he wrote to Alexander H. Stephens, induced thereto by the famous Union speech of that gentleman. He eschewed hostile feeling, saying: "I never have been, am not now, and probably never shall be, in a mood of harassing the people, either North or South." Nevertheless, while he said that all were "brothers of a common country," he was perfectly resolved that the country should remain "common," even if the bond of brotherhood had to be riveted by force. He admitted that this necessity would be "an ugly point;" but he was perfectly clear that "the right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question." He desired that General Scott should be prepared either to "hold or retake" the Southern forts, if need should be, at or after the inauguration; but on his journey to Washington he said to many audiences that he wished no war and no bloodshed, and that these evils could be avoided if people would only "keep cool" and "keep their temper, on both sides of the line."