Who Said This?

[RJNorton]

Bingo! Kudos, Gene. Yes, it was indeed the former Vice-President of the Confederacy who said this of Lincoln. The two men knew each other from their Congressional years (30th Congress), and then met again at the Hampton Roads Conference.

Stephens' quote is from 1878.

To be fair, Stephens continued:

"So much for him personally. From my attachment to him, so much the deeper was the pang in my own breast as well as of millions at the horrible manner of his 'taking off.' That was the climax of our troubles and the spring from which came afterward 'unnumbered woes.' But of those events no more now. Widely as we differed on public questions and policies, yet as a friend I may say:

'No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode;
There they alike in trembling hope repose,
The bosom of his Father and his God.'