At a dinner party shortly after the crisis ended, Lincoln indicated that (in Sumner’s paraphrase) he “covets kindly relations with all the world, especially with England.” Early in the crisis, he had assured a member of Canada’s cabinet, Alexander T. Galt, that the United States would not attack her. On December 5, the president told Galt that he “had implicit faith in the steady conduct of the American people even under the trying circumstances of the war, and though the existence of large armies had in other countries placed successful generals in positions of arbitrary power, he did not fear this result, but believed the people would quietly resume their peaceful avocations and submit to the rule of the government.” Lincoln went on to pledge “himself as a man of honor, that neither he nor his cabinet entertained the slightest aggressive designs upon Canada, nor had any desire to disturb the rights of Great Britain on this continent.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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