Stories from the First Cathedral 56

September 15, 1862 was a key date in the career of Bishop Henry Whipple. This was the day he had an audience with President Lincoln in Washington, DC at the White House. The Bishop had come to be the advocate for the Dakota prisoners from the August conflict and to report the mistreatment by the Indian agents of the Dakota people in Minnesota. The Bishop was able to get in to see President Lincoln with the help of General Henry Halleck.

"Anyone passing by Whipple that day, September 15, would have noticed two striking facts about the man. First was the military eminence of his escort. The bishop came accompanied by General Henry Halleck, a West Point graduate and scholar of arms whom Lincoln had appointed seven weeks earlier as general in chief of all Union forces. The bishop and the general were cousins and had corresponded for years. But Whipple, even though he was a stranger in Washington, would have drawn attention in his own right. At six feet two inches tall - nearly as tall as Lincoln - he had half a foots' height on the average man of the time. He could nearly  look Lincoln in the eye." (Lincoln's Bishop by Gustav Niebuhr, 2014, page 4)

What did Bishop Whipple say to President Lincoln as her stood eye to eye with the Civil War president, who held the fate of the "united" states of America?