Perhaps his most ardent desire, after peace itself, was to lead what he often called a “converted army.”28 His efforts were rooted in his own reluctance to make his feelings and beliefs public, though he felt considerable pressure to do so. “You suggest that I give my views and wishes in such form and extent as I am willing should be made public,” he wrote Reverend White in Lexington. “This I shrink from doing, because it looks like presumption in me, to come before the public and even intimate what course I think should be pursued by the people of God.”29 He preferred to push privately, and
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