He impressed him with the danger of delay to the Republic and with the discredit which would attach to himself if he should leave to another President the grateful task of reconciliation.

He pictured to him the National Constellation no longer obscured but with every star in its orbit, all revolving in harmony, and once more shining with a brilliancy undimmed by the smallest cloud in the political heavens.
By his arguments and his eloquence Mr.Seward completely captivated the President.

He effectually persuaded him that a policy of anger and hate and vengeance could lead only to evil results; that the one supreme demand of the country was confidence and repose; that the ends of justice could be reached by methods and measures altogether consistent with mercy.

The President was gradually influenced by Mr.
Seward's arguments, though their whole tenor was against his strongest predilections and against his pronounced and public committals to a policy directly the reverse of that to which he was now, almost imperceptibly to himself, yielding assent.

The man who had in April avowed himself in favor of "the halter for intelligent, influential traitors," who passionately declared during the interval between the fall of Richmond and the death of Mr.Lincoln that "traitors should be arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged," was now about to proclaim a policy of reconstruction without attempting the indictment of even one traitor, or issuing a warrant for the arrest of a single participant in the Rebellion aside from those suspected of personal crime in connection with the noted conspiracy of assassination.
In this serious struggle with the President, Mr.Seward's influence was supplemented and enhanced by the timely and artful interposition of clever men from the South.