Colonel McKaye told me that Mr. Lincoln seemed much affected by this account. He did not smile, as another man might have done, but got up from his chair, and walked in silence two or three times across the floor. As he resumed his seat, he said, very impressively: “It is a momentous thing to be the instrument, under Providence, of the liberation of a race.” LX. The famous “peace” conference, on board the _River Queen_, in Hampton Roads, between President Lincoln and Secretary Seward, and the Rebel commissioners Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, took place the 3d of February, 1865. A few days afterward[9] I asked the President if it was true, as reported by the New York “Herald,” that he told a “little story” on that occasion?--“Why,” said he, “has it leaked out? I was in hopes nothing would be said about _that_, lest some over-sensitive people should imagine there was a degree of levity in the intercourse between us.” He then went on to relate the circumstances which called it out. “You see,” said he, “we had reached and were discussing the _slavery_ question. Mr. Hunter said, substantially, that the slaves, always accustomed to an overseer, and to work upon compulsion, suddenly freed, as they would be if the South should consent to peace on the basis of the ‘Emancipation Proclamation,’ would precipitate not only themselves but the entire Southern society into irremediable ruin. No work would be done, nothing would be cultivated, and both blacks and whites would _starve_!” Said the President, “I waited for Seward to answer that argument, but as he was silent, I at length said: ‘Mr. Hunter, _you_ ought to know a great deal better about this matter than _I_, for you have always lived under the slave system. I can only say, in reply to your statement of the case, that it reminds me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook, a few years ago, to raise a very large herd of hogs. It was a great trouble to _feed_ them, and how to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit on the plan of planting an immense field of potatoes, and, when they were sufficiently grown, he turned the whole herd into the field, and let them have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but also that of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came along. ‘Well, well,’ said he, ‘Mr. Case, this is all very fine. Your hogs are doing very well just now, but you know out here in Illinois the frost comes early, and the ground freezes a foot deep. Then what are they going to do.?’ This was a view of the matter Mr. Case had not taken into account. Butchering-time for hogs was ’way on in December or January. He scratched his head, and at length stammered, ‘Well, it may come pretty hard on their _snouts_, but I don’t see but that it will be “root, hog, or die!”’