The President lifted his big hand in a gesture of despair: "God save us from that!" "I came here to tell you just this," the Governor gravely concluded. "If the crisis comes and I must use force I expect you to back me----" Two big rugged hands grasped the one outstretched: "God bless you, Governor Morton,--we've got to save the Union, and we're going to do it! Since the day I came into this office I have fought to uphold the supremacy of the civil law. My enemies may force me to use despotic powers to crush it for larger ends!----But I hope not. I hope not. God knows I have no vain ambitions. I have no desire to use such power----" The Governor left him gazing dreamily over the river toward Virginia a great new sorrow clouding his soul. CHAPTER XXIV THE CONSPIRACY Lord Lyons, the British Minister, was using smooth words to the Secretary of State. Mr. Seward, our wily snuff dipper, was fully his equal in expressions of polite friendship. What he meant to say, of course, was that he could plunge a poisoned dagger into the British Lion with the utmost pleasure. What he said was: "I am pleased to hear from your lordship the expressions of good will from her Gracious Majesty's Government." "I am sorry to say, however," the Minister hastened to add, "that the Proclamation of Emancipation was not received by the best people of England as favorably as we had hoped." "And why not?" Seward politely asked. "Seeing that it could have no effect in really freeing the slaves until the South is conquered it appeared to be merely an attempt to excite a servile insurrection." The Secretary lifted his eyebrows, took another dip of snuff, and softly inquired: "And may I ask of your lordship whether this would not have been even more true in the earlier days of the war than now?" "Undoubtedly." "And yet I understand that her Gracious Majesty's Government was cold toward us because we had failed to take such high moral grounds at once in the beginning of the war?" His lordship lifted his hands in polite admission of the facts. "The trouble you see is," he went on softly, "Europe begins to feel that the division of sentiment in the North will prove a fatal weakness to the administration in so grave a crisis. Unfortunately, from our point of view, of course, your Government is a democracy, the sport of every whim of the demagogue of the hour----" Seward lifted his eyes with a quick look at his lordship and smiled: "Allow me to reassure her Gracious Majesty's Government on that point immediately. The administration will find means of preserving the sovereign power the people have entrusted to it. For example, my lord, I can touch the little bell on my right hand and order the arrest without warrant of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the little bell on my left hand and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen of Great Britain do as much?"