Carl Schurz
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi is elected president of Confederacy. Former Lincoln friend Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia is named vice president.
Wisconsin Republican leader Carl Schurz was in Springfield for a speaking engagement. Schurz, who would become an ambassador and general under Lincoln, wrote his wife: “I had a conversation with Lincoln before my lecture and he said he would visit me at my room tomorrow, when we would discuss everything. He is a whole man, firm as a stone wall and clear as crystal. He told me that Seward made all his speeches without consulting him. He himself will not hear of concessions and compromises, and says so openly to everyone who asks.”
Orville H. Browning also visited the President-Elect and found him unwilling to compromise on slavery with the secessionists: “At night I called at the Chenery House and had an interview of an hour with Mr Lincoln. We discussed the state of the Country expressing our opinions fully and freely. He agreed entirely with me in believing that no good results would follow the border State Convention now in session in Washington, but evil rather, as increased excitement would follow when it broke up without having accomplished any thing. He agreed it broke up without having accomplished any thing. He agreed with me no concession by the free States short of a surrender of every thing worth preserving, and contending for would satisfy the South, and that Crittendens proposed amendment to the Constitution in the form proposed ought not to be made, and he agreed with me that far less evil & bloodshed would result from an effort to maintain the Union and the Constitution, than from disruption and the formation of two confederacies. I expressed my views very freely, and there was no point upon which we differed. This is the first interview I have had with him since the election, and though brief it was satisfactory. I found him firmer than I expected.”
