Chapter II: Part 2

The boy who jumped out of the dark shadow of the bushes slapped his rifle hard, brought it to port sharply.

“Mr. President,” he gasped, “if I had been an assassin you’d be dead by now!”

Abraham Lincoln stopped, shifted his high hat. A few thin flakes of snow lay white against the silk.

“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a corpse out of me?” he asked amiably.

“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier.

“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said. “Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?”

“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an hour.”

Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad for Christmas. You boys keeping warm in those tents?”

“Well, the way I figure, sir, we’re just as warm as those men of General Meade’s over across the river. And there ain’t nobody shooting at us, sir—I mean, Mr. President. The lieutenant ain’t going to like it, Mr. President, you walking out here alone. You want to walk, you need a couple of us boys along.”

“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” Joe trotted a little to keep up with the long stride of Lincoln.

“Better anchor it tight or the goat will eat his headgear,” remarked Lincoln. “Mrs. Lincoln sent Tad to bed so she could fix up his Christmas presents. Tad always sleeps with me but when I went to my room he wasn’t there, so I decided he’d slipped down here.”

“That goat sure means a lot to Tad, Mr. President. Tad treats him like he was folks. Nobody ever has found out what happened to the she-goat, sir. Last pass you give me I went all over that skinny town back yonder where the trash and niggers live but I never seen a sign of any goat—hide neither.”

“Tad misses his brother. Christmas will be a sad time for all of us, but we’ll try to make it happy for Tad.”

“Just about a year ago you lost your boy, wasn’t it, Mr. President?”

“Last February. Lung fever. He got wet and took a cold. Mrs. Lincoln hasn’t gotten over it at all. She idolized her sons. We lost another one, you know, in Springfield. Little Eddie. But we have company, Joe. A great sorrowful company of people who have lost their sons.”

Lincoln sighed heavily as he strode up to the lighted tent where a group of men hunkered down around Tad and his goat.

The corporal dropped his awl and leather and jumped up, eyes bulging.

“Attention!” he barked.

Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.”

“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt. You, Joe—you’re on post!”

“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early train.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly. “Lieutenant detailed me and three of the boys to meet that train. We was just helping the boy here to pretty up his goat, sir, asking your pardon and meaning no offense.”

“No offense taken, Corporal. I appreciate your taking care of my boys.”

“Look, Papa,” shrilled Tad, “lookit Billy’s horns.” The animal’s rough pointed horns had been painted a bright scarlet and tipped with circles of brass. He shook them impatiently while Tad clung to his neck.

“Mighty pretty,” approved his father, “but you’re getting paint on your uniform jacket. Your mama will have something to say about that.”

“She’ll have a duck fit,” stated Tad disrespectfully; then his voice sank to a whimper. “Billy’s pretty but he’s not as pretty as a nanny goat, Papa. I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the corporal looked anxious.

“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr. Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!”

Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with undried paint. Behind them the goat blatted forlornly.

“He wants me,” mourned Tad. “I feed him biscuits and all the boys have got is hardtack.”

“Maybe we can find some biscuits,” suggested Lincoln. “Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Gibson can carry them back to him. Come along in, boys, and report back to your corporal that I’m much obliged for everything.”

He had never set foot in the White House kitchen. Now Abraham Lincoln walked timidly there as though he were an intruder who might be ordered out indignantly at any moment.

The long room, still odorous with baking bread and roasting meat, was warm, the huge ranges clinking as they cooled, water dripping from the spout of a pump. The cooks’ white aprons and caps hung from pegs on the wall and one long table was covered with trays spread over with white cloths. Lincoln lifted a corner of a covering. Beneath was a great array of small colored cakes obviously baked for the Christmas party.

“Have one, boys.” He took a pink dainty himself and bit into it. “Pretty good.”

Tad wolfed down two and the privates nervously accepted one each.

“Wonder where they keep the biscuits?” Tad began to explore.

“You ought to know,” said his father. “You snoop everywhere.”

Tad scurried about, opening ovens and cupboards, lifting lids of boxes and the great copper pots.

“Bread,” he uncovered a stack of loaves, “but no biscuits.”

“Your billy will eat bread, sir,” suggested Private Bullitt. “He eats hardtack. He’ll eat anything, Mr. President. He ate Sergeant Whipple’s box from home. Had a cake in it. Et box and all, sir.”

“Well have to see to it that Sergeant Whipple gets another cake.” Lincoln took down a long knife from a rack on the wall and whacked off the end of a loaf of fresh bread. “Good bread.” He tasted a crumb. “Go good if we had some jam to put on it.”

“There’s jampots up there, Papa.” Tad pointed to a high shelf.

“So there are.” Lincoln reached a long arm, slit the paper that covered the top of a jar, dipped in a knife. “Blackberry.” He sliced off a hunk of bread, spread it thickly with jam, handed it to Private Bullitt. “Have some, boys.” He spread another slice for Gibson and one for Tad and himself. Perched on the edge of a table he ate, wiped his beard and fingers on a handy towel, passed the towel around. “Some drizzled on your jacket, Tad. Wipe it off. Now, I reckon somebody will get blamed for this piece of larceny, so I’d better take care of that.”

The cooks’ pad and pencil lay on a shelf and Lincoln tore off a sheet and wrote rapidly: _All provisions missing from this kitchen requisitioned by order of the undersigned. A. Lincoln._

“That will fix it. You boys take this bread back to that billy goat and tell your sergeant I’ll see that he’s recompensed for his lost cake,” he said. “Now Tad, you come along to bed.”

The wreaths of greenery were in place in the hall and up the stairs, and in the East Room a tall spruce tree awaited the lighting of the candles. Festival! And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires, slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all.

The great bed in his room with its huge, soft bolster and tufted counterpane, its enormous headboard shutting off drafts and elaborately carved and scrolled, suddenly wore the aspect of sinful luxury. He would gladly have taken a blanket and gone out to join his men, but he knew sadly that that would not do. He had known the ground for a bed many times—in the Black Hawk War and on expeditions into the wilds—but now he was growing old and he had to uphold the dignity of high office.

He pulled off Tad’s clothes, buttoned him into a long nightshirt, and tucked him into the big bed. Almost instantly the boy was asleep. Lincoln was struggling with his own boots when the door opened and Mary came in, buttoned into a vast blue wrapper, a ruffled cap on her head.

“Forevermore!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I looked for you to help me with the Christmas things and couldn’t find a hair of you or Tad either. Has that child been out in this cold wind?”

“We were having a little Christmas party with some of the boys, Mary. Tad’s all right. Don’t start scolding tonight; it’s already Christmas morning now.”

“You know how delicate he is. It will be just like Willie all over again and I can’t bear any more sorrow, Abraham. I’ll lose my mind if I have another grief to live through,” she cried.

“Tad’s tough, Mama. Not frail like Willie. We were in the kitchen anyway,” he evaded. “It was warm down there.”

“You didn’t eat up my cakes?” she demanded. “I had trouble enough getting them baked. The cook says the blockade is to blame for making sugar so scarce and high. They ought to know we have to have sugar. There’s no coconut either, nor nutmegs nor cinnamon.”

“It’s war, Mary. Some good people haven’t even got bread,” he reminded her.

She began to whimper, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Maybe I won’t need any cakes for my party. I’ve had at least a dozen regrets already. An invitation from the wife of the President should be like a command from the queen,” she declared, grimly. “I’m saving all those insulting notes and I think the people who wrote them should be properly dealt with.”

Lincoln sighed as he hung up his coat and untied his lumpy satin cravat. The starched collar rasped his neck. He was glad to be rid of it. “Don’t you cry now for Christmas, Mary,” he pleaded. “We have to keep things happy for the boys. Bob will be here in the morning.”

She dried her eyes on the ruffle of her sleeve. “I can’t help remembering that I’ve lost my son.”

“You’re one of a vast company, Mary. If all the tears that will be shed by bereaved mothers tomorrow were drained into one river we could float a gunboat on it. If only I could see a way so there would be no more—no more killing, no more graves, no more sorrowing women!” he cried, desolately.

It was a cry of anguish and Mary Lincoln felt a surge of terrible compassion for this gaunt, lonely man who was her love. She put her arms around him, standing on tiptoe, her cheek pressing the buttons of his shirt.

“You didn’t make this war. You’re doing all any man could do to end it!” she cried. “We could have ignored the country—we could have stayed in Springfield where nobody hated us. Here they all hate us. The ones who come to our party tomorrow will smirk and fawn to our faces and then sneer at our backs.”

“Not all, Mary. There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe I’m doing right. Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of them voted for me, remember.”

“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.”

“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.”

“Slink home like beaten dogs!” she exclaimed, her mercurial mood shifting again. “Well, we’ll not do it. They’re not going to get us down, Abraham Lincoln! Democrats nor Black Republicans either. And they’d better show up at my party if they want any more favors from you!”

“You tear up those regrets, Mary,” he said soberly. “Tear up every single one of ’em. And forget the names of the people who wrote them. That,” he added very solemnly, “is an order from the President.”

6

Robert Todd Lincoln was a young man trying sincerely not to be a snob, not to be blasé or obviously aware that his father was President of the United States. A medium tall, erect lad, Robert’s dark hair was sleeked down over a head rounded like his mother’s, but his long arms and still growing legs and feet he had from his father.

That long-tailed coat with braided collar was too old for Bob, Abraham Lincoln was thinking. So was his manner too old, a boyish kind of gravity that obviously he strove to keep from being condescending. His mother fluttered about him adoringly as they sat at the family breakfast table. She was continually straightening his cravat, feeling his brow anxiously, smoothing his hair. Lincoln, shrewdly sensitive, could see that his older son was a trifle annoyed by his mother’s solicitous attentions.

“Bob hasn’t got a fever, Mama,” he interposed cheerfully. “He’s the healthiest human being I’ve seen in a long time. Why don’t we all go and see what Tad got for Christmas?” He pushed back his chair.

“Robert must get some sleep,” argued his mother. “He says he didn’t get a wink on that train.”

“The cars were cold and smelly and they were jammed with soldiers, all of them cold and miserable,” stated Robert. “Most of them coming South to join Pope’s army and all sulky because they had to be away from home for Christmas. One chap sat with me—couldn’t have been any older than I am and he had been home to Rhode Island to bury his wife. They all talked and they were plenty bitter against the bounty boys—those fellows who bought their way out of the draft for three hundred dollars.”

“That was a compromise and an evil one, I fear,” said his father. “Everything about war is evil. You can only contrive and pray for ways to make it a little less evil.”

Robert stood up. His face was very white. “Pa—and Mama—I told lies coming down on that train. I told them I was coming home to enlist. I’ve got to get into the Army—I’ve got to! Those men on that train, they were dirty and shabby and some hadn’t shaved or washed in a long time, and most of them were rough and some ignorant but every one of them was a better man than I was! I could feel them looking at me—with contempt at first. It was in every man’s mind that I was a bounty boy. A shirker. Hiding behind a screen of cash! I was thankful nobody knew my name.”

“You could have told them your name,” insisted his mother. “You could have made them respect you as the son of the President.”

“No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect, Abraham Lincoln!”

“You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a prince!”

“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—”

“I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.”

Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have pride and perhaps a mind of his own.

Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension, gain a postponement of a crisis.

“Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?”

“No, he didn’t.” Mary got her control back with a gusty breath. “He wouldn’t even take time to drink his milk. He took it with him and likely he’s upset the glass all over the carpet by this time.”

“Well, let’s go and see what he found under the Christmas tree.”

Robert followed them, silently, up the stairs to the sitting room, strewn now with paper wrappings and a confusion of toys. Tad was standing in the middle of the floor buckling on a wide military belt trimmed with metal. Hanging from it was a small sword. Tad worked awkwardly because his hands were lost in great white gauntlet gloves that reached almost to his elbows.

“From Mr. Stanton,” he grinned, patting the belt. “I thought he didn’t like me. I thought he didn’t like boys.”

“He likes being Secretary of War,” said Robert dryly. He reached for a small package. “This is for you, Mama. The man said these things were real jade from China.”

Mary took the parcel eagerly, kissed Robert, undid the wrapping, exclaimed over the necklace, pin, and earbobs.

“Oh, Bob, they’re so pretty! I can wear them with my green taffeta.”

She was a child for trinkets, Lincoln was thinking indulgently. He was glad that he had given her the big white muff. She would love carrying it to parties and on their carriage drives, nestling her two little round chins into the delicate fur. He thanked Robert for a pair of gold cuff links and there was laughter when they discovered that his gift to Robert had been an almost identical pair.

“At least,” said Robert, “I shall have the distinction of imitating the President of the United States.”

“Well, they’ll fasten your shirt sleeves anyway,” drawled Lincoln. “That’s all a man can ask of them.”

Tad strutted around the room flourishing his sword. He gulped the last of his milk hastily at his mother’s command, put on his uniform cap, and swished a shine on the toes of his boots with his cuff.

“Now I have to show these to the boys,” he announced.

“But son,” protested his mother, “aren’t you going to play with all your pretty toys? Look—this little cannon. It shoots!”

“Yeh—shoots a cork!” Tad dismissed the weapon indifferently, “A ole Rebel would sure laugh if you shot him with that. Papa, I want a real gun. One with bullets in it.”

“My Heaven, Tad, you’re too little to have a gun,” declared Mary.

“If I had a gun I could ride with Papa and perteck him,” argued Tad. “Then nobody would dare shoot holes in his hat.”

Lincoln caught the startled look on Mary’s face, got his son hastily by the elbow. “Come along, Tad. Go show off your finery. And I’ve got work to do.” He hustled the boy down the hall. “Who told you somebody shot a hole in my hat?” he demanded, when they were out of earshot.

Tad grinned. “Oh, I get information,” he said blandly, “but if I had been along with a good ole gun nobody would have dared do it.”

“Don’t mention it again in front of your mother, you hear?” Lincoln seldom spoke sharply to the boy and Tad looked scared briefly.

“No, sir—no, sir, I won’t,” he stammered, his palate tripping him again.

“Mind now! And get along with you!” His father gave him a little shove, as he entered the office door.

Even on a holiday he was not free from intrusion, of being faced with the woeful problems of the people. A lad of about seventeen, in the faded uniform of a private, was standing, twisting thin hands together, his face scared and anxious.

“Sit down, son,” ordered Lincoln, closing the door. “How did you get in here and what did you want to see me about?”

The boy dropped on the edge of a chair, twisted his legs about each other nervously.

“Nobody let me in, sir,” he stammered. “I just told the man downstairs that I had to see the President and he searched me, and I didn’t have no gun or nothing so he told me to come on up here and wait. And what I wanted to see you about, Mr. President—I want to be a captain.”

Lincoln’s long lips drew back and quirked up a little at one corner. “I see. And what military organization did you want to be captain of?”

“No organization, Mr. President, but I been a private in the Sixty-third Ohio a long time, sir—”

“How long a time?”

“Four months, Mr. President.”

“And you have a company organized, maybe, that you want me to make you captain of?”

“No, sir—I haven’t got any company organized. But I just want to be a captain. My mother says I should be a captain. She told me to see you about it.”

Lincoln clasped his bony hands around a knee. “What’s your name, soldier?”

“Milo, sir. Milo Potter.”

“Milo, did you ever hear the story about the farmer out in Illinois, where I was raised? Well, this fellow he was a good farmer and a dutiful son to his mother but he got up towards forty years old and he’d never married a wife. So his mother fretted at him, said she was getting too old to churn and milk and he ought to fetch a wife home to take some of the work off of her. So this farmer, call him Jim, he goes down to the church and hunts up the preacher. ‘Preacher’, says Jim ‘I got to get married. Mammy says so.’ ‘All right, Jim,’ agrees the preacher, ‘I’ll be proud to marry you. You go get your license and bring the woman here with you and I’ll give you a real good marrying.’ ‘But I haven’t got any woman, Preacher,’ Jim argues kind of dashed. ‘Well, you can’t get married without a woman, Jim’, the preacher tells him. That’s your problem, Milo. You want to be a captain and you haven’t got any organization to captain. What made you think you could be a captain, anyway?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the boy flushed unhappily, “it was that captain we got in B Company. That last battle—he made us retreat. And right there in front of us there was a hole in that Rebel line I could have drove four wagons through. There wasn’t no sense in that retreat, Mr. President. All of us boys said so. All of us was mad. So I thought I can be a better captain than that.”

“Maybe you can, Milo. You go on back to B Company and be a good soldier and likely you’ll make captain before this war is over.”

“Mr. President, I can’t do it! I run off. They’ll put me in the guardhouse!”

Lincoln scratched his chin. “That was very unwise of you, soldier. But you can’t dodge your military responsibility. I reckon you’ll just have to go to the guardhouse. If you should try to hedge out of it you’d be as poor a soldier as that captain of B Company you complain about. It won’t be too bad. Good luck to you, son.”

The boy said, “Thank you, sir,” and backed out, twisting his cap in his hands.

“Stand up straight, look the captain in the eye, and admit you ran off, son,” advised Lincoln. “You needn’t tell him you came here to get his job away from him.”

“No, sir, I sure won’t.”

John Hay came in when the young trooper had gone. “I shouldn’t have let him in perhaps, Mr. President,” he explained, “but he said he had an important message for you.”

“It was important. To Milo Potter,” smiled Lincoln. “No harm done, Johnny.”

“Your son is waiting, sir. Shall I send him in?”

“Must be Bob. Tad would have already been in.”

Robert came in, took a chair, and folded his hands, his young mouth sober. “I had to know, sir,” he began, “have they been making attempts to kill you?”

“Bob, there are several million people who think that the man who kills me should wear a hero’s crown. And there are a lot of people who yearn to be heroes,” Lincoln said calmly.

“You should be better protected. You shouldn’t take risks!”

“They’re trying to protect me now, Bob, till I can’t hardly draw my own breath.”

“That fellow who just went out. Did you even know him?” persisted the boy.

“He was harmless. I reckon Johnny even took his jackknife away from him. I have to see ’em, son. I have to hear their story. That’s why they put me here,” declared his father.

“About the Army, Papa—I’m deadly serious.”

“The trouble is, Bob, that your mother is deadly serious, too. She’s lost two boys,” Lincoln reminded him.

“So have other women.”

“I know. Give her a little more time, Bob. Till the end of this year anyway. The war isn’t going to end before New Years’ Day.”

“I shan’t wait much longer, I promise you,” threatened Robert, standing tall.

“Just promise me to the end of this school year. Then we’ll talk about it again.”

“And you’ll talk to Mama? Make her see that it’s something I have to do?”

“I’ll talk to Mama,” agreed Abraham Lincoln. “I’ll do my best, son.”

But when, he was thinking wearily after the boy had gone, had his best ever been good enough to prevail against Mary’s ready tears?

7

“Bob,” Abraham Lincoln said, when he went back to the family rooms, “I need some help. Your mother has very graciously provided some little Christmas cheer for those boys out there of Company K. The things are all here in this big box. I’ll need you to help pass ’em out.”

He bent and shouldered the heavy box that Mary had packed with small, paper-wrapped bundles.

“Oh, Papa, let me call somebody! You shouldn’t carry that,” protested Robert.

“Little enough to do for those boys.” Lincoln bent under the burden. “It will mean more to them if I fetch it to them personally.”

“Ridiculous!” fumed Mary. “It’s beneath your dignity to lug that heavy box.”

“Put my hat on, Mary, and put it on tight so I won’t knock it off.” He ignored her protest calmly.

She jammed the high hat down over his rough hair, the bony knobs of his head. “You—the President of the United States!” she exploded. “With a house full of help and you lug that heavy thing!”

“He who would be greatest among you, let him seek out the lowest place,” quoted Lincoln, solemnly and a bit inaccurately. “Not near so heavy as a good stout oak rail and I’ve shouldered many of them in my day. Come along, Bob.”

“At least let me help carry, sir,” argued Robert as they went down the stairs.

“Don’t touch it or you’ll get it unbalanced and spill all Company K’s Christmas. Little enough, but I had John Hay fetch me a roll of greenbacks. I’ll give every man a dollar. A dollar is a right substantial present, Bob, when you’re marching and fighting for thirteen dollars a month and what you can eat, when you get a chance to eat.”

“I would do it gladly,” insisted Robert. “All I ask is a chance.”

“I know, son. Maybe we can talk your mother around by spring. I did some better in the Black Hawk War.” Lincoln went on, stepping heavily down the outer steps and across the rutted yard. “They paid me eighty-five dollars for ninety days fighting in that war but part of the time I ranked a captain. We had to shoot hogs to eat, though, and then fight the farmers that owned ’em. Swampy country, too. Like Grant’s army fought over around Vicksburg.”

“But you captured Black Hawk.”

“The regular Army said they did that. I got put in the guardhouse for two days for firing a pistol in camp and they made me carry a wooden sword after that. Discipline. You couldn’t make any worse record in the army, Bob, than your father did before you.”

“You couldn’t call that a real war, Papa,” Robert said.

“It was real enough to the men who got their scalps peeled off. I helped bury twelve of them. Now, look at that lieutenant! Sending an escort up here on the double and putting all those boys in line at attention, when I just came out here on a friendly visit.”

“Even Tad!” laughed Robert. “Even the confounded goat!”

The goat wore his military hat and Tad was holding him grimly into line by his horns. Lincoln let the two soldiers who came trotting up help him ease the box down to the ground.

“At ease, men,” he ordered. “This is old Father Christmas, not the commander in chief. File by, one at a time, and get your Christmas cheer.”

Robert passed out the packages one by one while Lincoln stood thumbing bills off a roll of money, stopping to wet his thumb occasionally, saying, “Here, son, spend this on some foolishness next time you get a pass into town.”

There were yells of thanks and a lined-up cheer for the President, the goat blatting an obligato. But Tad, who had straggled at the end of the line and received nothing, glared down into the empty box, whimpering.

“I’m a soldier. I didn’t get any present,” he complained.

“You got plenty of presents at the house, Tad,” said his father. “You’ve got candy there, too. Don’t you go bumming off these boys now. You have more Christmas than any of them.”

“But I want a soldier Christmas,” persisted Tad, “and I want my nanny goat back!”

“You’ve got a goat,” scolded Robert, “a blamed nuisance of a goat. You’re getting so you even smell like him.”

“He’s clean,” fumed Tad. “Joe washed him and curried him and the corporal even put hair oil on his whiskers. Can I take Billy in the house, Papa? Can I? I want him to have some candy.”

“No, Tad, no more goats in the house. That’s your mother’s order. Last time,” Lincoln explained to Robert, “Tad drove two of them, hitched to a chair, right through the middle of one of your mother’s social shindigs. Upset a couple of ladies and spilled claret punch on their dresses. Disgraced the whole Lincoln family and busted some good crockery too.”

“It’s cold out here! Billy’s cold.” Tad hung to his father’s coattail but refused to let go the goat. “Billy will catch cold.”

“Private Bullitt,” ordered Lincoln, “will you tie up this goat in a sheltered place? Tad, you come along inside. You’ll get the sniffles and your mother will scold all of us. Corporal, if you must provide escort for this family to their door, line ’em up. We’re ready to march.” Lincoln took a military stance, between two privates, who were very rigid with importance. Tad pulled back till Robert gave him a gentle, brotherly cuff.

“You act more like a baby than a colonel,” he said. “If you want to cry, hand over that sword. You’ll disgrace the army, bawling on the march.”

“Let loose of me!” shrilled Tad, jerking away. Turning he ran pelting back to the circle of tents, dove into one and vanished.

“You’d better go after him, Bob,” worried the President. “Your Mama will worry if he’s out in this cold too long.”

“Yes, sir,” said Robert, unenthusiastically, “but If I may make a suggestion, sir, that boy needs discipline. He’s getting out of hand.”

“Yes, sir, I stand reproved, sir,” said Lincoln meekly. “Just fetch him along in. I’ll wait here,” he told the escorting privates. “Stand at ease.”

“Mr. President, I hope Tad don’t run off again,” worried one soldier. “We try not to take our eyes off him when he’s out here with us. Could be some Rebel sympathizers hangin’ round that would think it was a smart move to catch up Tad and hold him. Know you’d be mighty near be willing to surrender Washington to get that boy back, your pardon, sir, for speaking so bold.”

Panic stiffened Abraham Lincoln’s long body. He broke into a long-legged trot back toward the tents, the escort panting after him. Robert emerged, pale-faced, from one tent and, with a dozen soldiers charging after him, hurried into another. He came out again, his hands outspread, helplessly.

“He’s hiding somewhere, Papa,” he said. “We can’t find him.”

“Spread out, men!” shouted the lieutenant. “Comb the area. Six of you guard the President. Corporal Barnes, form a guard detail.”

The corporal hustled Robert into the middle of the protecting group, who faced outward bayonets alerted. Robert was angry and full of expostulations.

“I don’t have to be guarded like a prisoner,” he protested. “I want to go and help search for Tad.”

“Private Bullitt, here, has just made a rather startling suggestion, Bob,” said Lincoln worriedly. “He thinks that if some Rebel sympathizer should catch up Tad and hold him I might be pressured into surrendering Washington to get the boy back. And it might be,” he added sadly, “that I would be weak enough to do it!”

“You never would! You couldn’t—with honor!” explained Robert. “But it would be a mighty tough decision, sir. Is that,” he asked sharply, “why you won’t let me go into the Army? For fear I might be captured and held as a hostage to force some concessions out of you? I want to tell you, sir, that if I can get into the Army—and no matter how I’m treated there or what happens to me, I’ll be a United States soldier, Mr. Lincoln—you can forget that I ever was your son.”

“Very nobly said, son,” Lincoln patted his shoulder. “I’ll try to abide by your decision if the occasion ever arises. But Tad is my son. A little helpless boy. A boy I’m mighty fond of, and they know it!”

“If I may speak plainly again, sir,” said Robert, “he needs his breeches tanned. And you are the one who ought to do it.”

“He couldn’t have gone far,” fretted Lincoln. “It’s beginning to snow again.” He moved across the yard, his escort keeping rigidly in formation on either side. “Tad!” he shouted. “You, Tad—come back here!”

“He wanted to be a soldier, Mr. President,” put in one of the soldiers. “Tad was bound he was a soldier.”

“All my boys,” said Lincoln, “wanting to be soldiers!”

There was a shout presently from beyond the fenced in confines of the yard. Men started running.

“They’ve seen him,” cried Robert relieved. “The ornery little devil!” He began to run himself, and Lincoln trotted too, almost outstripping his guards.

“There he is!” exclaimed a soldier. “Up on that scaffolding again!”

“They’re going after him. They’ll get him down.” Lincoln almost forgot to breathe. The little figure looked so small against the loom of that great half-finished monument—a tiny, struggling shape swarmed over by half a dozen men in blue who clung precariously to the spidery trestles, caught him and passed him down slowly, kicking and fighting, from one to another.

They brought him up in a few minutes, a pathetic, disheveled sight, tear-stained, dragging his feet, still kicking at the shins of the men who restrained him. His military cap was over one eye, his belt half off, the toy sword dragging.

“Fetch him here!” sternly ordered the President of the United States.

Tad stumbled close, held tight by the elbows by two privates. His chin was shaking, sobs shook him.

“Oh, Papa—Oh, Papa—” he gasped, trying to fling himself at the tall man with the suddenly grim and forbidding face.

But Lincoln was unrelenting. “Thomas Lincoln! Give me that sword!” he ordered in a terrible voice.

Trembling Tad jerked the sword loose, handed it over.

“Present the hilt, in proper military order!” snapped his father.

Tad reversed the sword, his hand shaking so that almost it fell to the ground.

“Yes, sir!” His voice was very thin and small.

Solemnly Lincoln broke the sword over his knee, tossed it to one side.

“You are now reduced to the rank of private, Thomas Lincoln,” he stated, “until such time as you can conduct yourself in the proper manner and discipline of an officer of the Army of the United States. Strip off his epaulets, Corporal.”

The corporal obeyed, looking unhappy and ill at ease, handing the gold-fringed boards into the hands of the commander in chief.

“Private Thomas Lincoln, you will now escort the President of the United States back to the White House,” ordered Abraham Lincoln. “Forward march!”

Every man of Company K fell in, marched in grave formation, eyes straight ahead, chins set, weapons held ready, to the side door of the house. Lincoln entered first, turned on the doorstep, and soberly saluted the ranks.

“My deepest gratitude, men of Company K,” he said, “for labor beyond the call of duty.”

Tad marched in stiffly; then, with a frightened look backward at this stranger who had been his adored and indulgent father, flew through the hall and up the stairs. His mother came hurrying out of the sitting room but he ignored her, flying past her to the room with the great high-topped bed. There Private Thomas Lincoln dived under the bed.

When the dinner gong sounded, he refused to come out, even at his father’s stern order.

“All right,” dismissed Abraham Lincoln. “Since you’re such a craven and a coward, Private Lincoln, you may remain in durance there. I can eat two drumsticks.”

Tad rolled out, swiftly, covered with dust and lint.

“I am not a coward!” he sobbed. “I climbed most to the top of that silly ole monument!”

“You are still a disgrace to the uniform,” declared his father. “A soldier who ran away. Now go and wash yourself before your mother comes in here and scolds both of us.”

“Yes, Papa dear!” whimpered Tad, hugging the long legs and snuffling. “And you can have both drumsticks.”

8

The Christmas party was in full swing. Abraham Lincoln had shaken hands till his knuckles ached. Mary Todd Lincoln’s coral-colored satin and turbaned headdress with jaunty flowers and feathers had swished and bowed and rustled, and her round face was all aglow with pleasure and excitement. She was always vivacious at parties, and, if at times she was a bit too garrulous, Lincoln overlooked that indulgently. He had not given Mary much of happiness, and she had had her share of frustration and sorrow. Now, if she could find pleasure in the dull round of an official affair, he was content.

Some of the senators and other officials had had a few too many parties already. One judge was already asleep on a padded sofa in the hall, his gaited ankles sprawling, his mouth open. The musicians from the Marine Band played on doggedly and quietly in the screened corner of the East Room. Here and there stood men of Company K and White House guards, stony-faced, rigidly alerted. Abraham Lincoln felt his legs begin to sag a bit under him, found himself wishing wearily that this company would all go home. But at least Mary was enjoying herself.

It was nearly midnight when an aide came through the crowd, and touched the arm of the President.

“Some men of Company K at the rear door, Mr. President,” he said in a low voice. “They insist on seeing you. An officer is with them. They say they have brought a Christmas present for your son, Thomas.”

Lincoln looked about him. Mary was the animated center of a group. Servants were collecting empty glasses and picking up shattered remnants of flowers from the carpet. Secretary Seward stood in the midst of a dozen men who were arguing a trifle too loudly the question of amnesty for North Carolina. The band was playing slowly, with a few sour notes indicating that the musicians were wearying after five hours of patient tootling.

“Dismiss those Marine players,” ordered Lincoln. “They’re tired. I’ll see what those boys at the back door want.”

“Not alone, Mr. President!” protested the aide.

“Company K won’t let anything happen to me,” argued Lincoln. “How many are out there?”

“Quite a number, sir. A lieutenant is with them.”

“I’ll fetch Tad. If they’ve brought something for him it will sort of make up for this sorry Christmas he had.” Lincoln strode off up the stairs. All day since disciplining Tad his heart had ached in dull, heavy fashion. It was not easy, he was thinking, to be the son of a president. It was not even easy to be a president. He thought again wistfully of that white house in Springfield, of turkey wishbones hung to dry there above the kitchen stove when Tad and Willie were small. Honors came dear. Almost, he decided, a man could pay too much for them.

Tad was still awake, lying hunched down in the middle of the huge, high bed. A candle burned on a stand, and the flickering light made his eyes enormous and somehow lost in the round paleness of his face.

“I couldn’t get to sleep, Papa,” he explained, scrabbling into his father’s lap when Lincoln sat on the edge of the bed. “It was the drum. I could hear it all the time—bum, bum. When it stopped I waited for it to start again.”

“It’s stopped now, Tad. For good. And the boys are downstairs. Our boys. They brought you something. Come on, I’ll carry you down. Put this wrapper around you so you won’t take cold.”

“Maybe a new sword. Would you let me wear it, Papa?” asked Tad eagerly.

“I’ll see—we’ll see how you behave.”

They went down the rear stairway stealthily, through a chilly hall to the back door. But even here was an aide who sprang to open the door and two soldiers appeared out of nowhere, one desperately swallowing some thing he had been chewing on.

On the steps outside huddled a crowd of blue-clad men. Snow sifted thinly over their bent shoulders, their drawn-down caps. Every face came up, but to a man they seemed to be holding something, holding tight to a bulk that struggled a little, something that was hairy and odorous and staccato of feet and alive.

“Mr. President,” the lieutenant jerked erect, saluted anxiously, “we brought this—for Private Thomas Lincoln—for his Christmas, sir. It’s not the same one. Some of the boys chipped in and bought it off a Negro, sir—but we thought might be it would do—for the boy for his Christmas.”

Like a fish Tad was out of his father’s arms, nightshirt flying, bare feet oblivious of the cold stone step.

“A nanny goat!” he shrieked in delight. “Papa, it’s a nanny goat! My very own nanny goat!”

“Mr. President, your pardon sir, it’s kind of dirty, sir, but we’ll wash it good in the morning. And though it ain’t the same one,” pleaded the corporal, “we thought maybe it would do—for Christmas.”

“She licked my hand. She likes me!” Tad squirmed in ecstasy. “Most of anything I wanted me a nanny goat!”

“It appears,” stated Abraham Lincoln, “to be a very superior goat. Thank the boys, Tad, and let them take your nanny down to the stables and feed her. She looks a bit gaunt to me. See that she gets a good feed, Corporal, if you please. Now, back to bed, Private Lincoln. Your nanny will still be here, all cleaned up and beautiful for you, in the morning.”

Very reluctantly, with many farewell pats and hand lickings, Tad was at last persuaded to mount the stairs again in his father’s arms.

Down below, the drums had ceased but Abraham Lincoln thought wearily of all the hands he must shake again before he could lie down to rest in this wide bed.

He tucked the covers tenderly over the happy child. Tad’s eyes were starry. No more tears. All sadness forgotten. Wonderful, to be a child. Abraham Lincoln sighed as he closed the door.

“Papa!” called Tad.

Lincoln opened the door again. “Yes, son.”

“It’s the nicest Christmas I ever had!” stated young Thomas Lincoln.

Transcriber’s Notes

—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.