Mr. John Bigelow, who was appointed consul to Paris in 1861, and was afterwards minister to France, describes in his "Retrospections of an Active Life" his first visit to Lincoln and the impressions gained by him at that early period in Lincoln's official career. "The day following my arrival in Washington Preston King, Senator from New York, invited me to go with him to be presented to President Lincoln, an invitation which of course I embraced with alacrity; for as yet I had not met him, and knew him only by his famous senatorial campaign against Douglas in Illinois and the masterly address which he delivered at the Cooper Institute shortly before his nomination in New York.... The new President received us in his private room at an early hour of the morning; another gentleman was with him at the time, a member of the Senate, I believe. We were with him from a half to three-quarters of an hour. The conversation, in which I took little or no part, turned upon the operations in the field. I observed no sign of weakness in anything the President said; neither did I hear anything that particularly impressed me, which, under the circumstances, was not surprising. What did impress me, however, was what I can only describe as a certain lack of sovereignty. He seemed to me, nor was it in the least strange that he did, like a man utterly unconscious of the space which the President of the United States occupied that day in the history of the human race, and of the vast power for the exercise of which he had become personally responsible. This impression was strengthened by Mr. Lincoln's modest habit of disclaiming knowledge of affairs and familiarity with duties, and frequent avowals of ignorance, which, even where it exists, it is as well for a captain as far as possible to conceal from the public. The authority of an executive officer largely consists in what his constituents think it is. Up to that time Mr. Lincoln had had few opportunities of showing the nation the qualities which won all hearts and made him one of the most conspicuous and enduring historic characters of the century."