Chapter II: Part 2

He hitched on another idee to this one about our becomin’ all slave or all free, which bothered me considerable--that was, that Douglas and Buchanan and the rest of the big Democrats was in a conspiracy to spread slavery all over the Union. He’d been sayin’ right along that they didn’t mind slavery spreadin’, but now he came out flat-footed and said the things they’d been doin’ in Congress and in the Supreme Court for a few years back showed that they was tryin’ to legalize slavery in all the states, north and south, old and new. He said that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and Judge Taney’s decision that Congress couldn’t keep slaves out of a territory--and the way Pierce and Buchanan had worked, fitted together like timbers for a house. “If you see a lot of timbers,” he says, “all gotten out at different times and different places by Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James”--them was the names of Douglas, Pierce, Taney and Buchanan, you know--“and you find they fit into a frame for a house, you can’t help believing them men have been workin’ on the same plan.”

I tell you that speech riled his party. They said he oughtn’t said it, if he did think it. It was too radical. They talked to him so much, tryin’ to tone him down and to keep him from doin’ it ag’in, that he flared up one day in here and he says, “Boys, if I had to take a pen and scratch out every speech I ever made except one, this speech you don’t like’s the one I’d leave.” And he says it with his head up, lookin’ as proud as if he was a Senator.

Well, somehow, as time went on, just watchin’ Mr. Lincoln so dead in earnest begun to make me feel queer. And I got serious. Never’d been so but twict before in my life--once at a revival and next time when I thought I wasn’t goin’ to git Ma. But I joined the church and Ma and me got married, and after that there didn’t seem to be anything left to worry about.

And then this comes along, and I’ll be blamed if it didn’t git so I couldn’t hear enough of it. Night after night, when they was in here discussin’, every minute I wa’n’t puttin’ up something, I was listenin’ to ’em.

And then I took to runnin’ around to hear the speeches. I was up to Bloomington in ’56 the time Lincoln went over to the Republicans. The old Whigs down here had been considerable worried for fear he would quit ’em, and I must say it worried. I never’d had any use for a man who left his party. Couldn’t understand it. Seemed to me then that ’twa’n’t no better than gittin’ a divorce from your wife. I’ve changed my views since about several things. Had to jump the party myself two or three times, and I’ve seen women-- Well, all I’ve got to say is, that I ain’t judgin’ the man that gits a divorce from ’em.

As I was sayin’, I was up to Bloomington that night. Nobody that didn’t hear that speech ever knows what Abraham Lincoln could do. Lots of ’em will tell you he was homely. Seems to me sometimes that’s about all some folks around here has to tell about Abraham Lincoln. “Yes, I knowed him,” they say. “He was the homeliest man in Sangamon County.” Well, now, don’t you make no mistake. The folks that don’t tell you nuthin’ but that never knowed Mr. Lincoln. Mebbe they’d seen him, but they never knowed him. He wa’n’t homely. There’s no denyin’ he was long and lean, and he didn’t always stand straight and he wasn’t pertikeler about his clothes, but that night up to Bloomington in ten minutes after he struck that platform, I tell you he was the handsomest man I ever see.

He knew what he was doin’ that night. He knew he was cuttin’ loose. He knew them old Whigs was goin’ to have it in for him for doin’ it, and he meant to show ’em he didn’t care a red cent what they thought. He knew there was a lot of fools in that new party he was joinin’--the kind that’s always takin’ up with every new thing comes along to git something to orate about. He saw clear as day that if they got started right that night, he’d got to fire ’em up; and so he threw back his shoulders and lit in.

Good Lord! I never see anything like it. In ten minutes he was about eight feet tall; his face was white, his eyes was blazin’ fire, and he was thunderin’, “Kansas shall be free!” “Ballots, not bullets!” “We won’t go out of the Union and you sha’n’t!” Generally when he was speakin’, he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm--but your head was workin’; but that time up to Bloomington he was like--what’s that the Bible calls it?--“avengin’ fire”--yes, sir, that’s it, he was like “avengin’ fire.” I never knew exactly what did happen there. All I recollect is that at the beginnin’ of that speech I was settin’ in the back of the room, and when I come to I was hangin’ on to the front of the platform. I recollect I looked up and seen Jo Medill standin’ on the reporter’s table lookin’ foolish-like and heard him say: “Good Lord, boys, I ain’t took a note!”

Fact was he’d stampeded that audience, reporters and all. I’ve always thought that speech made the Republican party in Illinois. It melted ’em together. ’Twa’n’t arguments they needed just then, it was meltin’ together of what they’d heard.

Well, he went right on speakin’ after that, must ’a’ made forty or fifty speeches all over the State, for Fremont, and he got no end of invitations from Indiana and Iowa and Kansas and all around to come over and speak. Old Billy Herndon used to come in here and brag about it. You’d thought ’twas him was gittin’ ’em. Always seemed to think he owned Lincoln anyway.

By the time the Republicans wanted a man for United States Senate Lincoln was first choice, easy enough, and the first thing anybody knew if he didn’t up and challenge Douglas, who the Democrats was runnin’, to seven debates--seven joint debates, they called ’em. You could ’a’ knocked me over with a feather when I heard that. I couldn’t think of anybody I knew challengin’ Mr. Douglas. It seemed impertinent, him bein’ what I thought him. But I was glad they was goin’ to thresh it out. You see I was feelin’ mighty uncertain in my mind by this time. Somehow I couldn’t seem to git around the p’ints I’d been hearin’ Mr. Lincoln make so much. However, I didn’t have no idee but what Mr. Douglas would show clear enough where he was wrong. So when I heard about the debates, I says to Ma, “Johnnie can take care of the store, I’m goin’ to hear ’em.”

You ain’t no idee how people was stirred up by the news. Seemed as if everybody in the State felt about as I did. Most everybody was pretty sober about it, too. There ain’t no denyin’ that there was a lot of Democrats just like me. What Mr. Lincoln had been sayin’ for four years back had struck in and they was worried. Still I reckon the most of the Republicans was a blamed sight more uneasy than we was. They’d got so used to seein’ Douglas git everything he went after, that they thought he’d be sure to lick Lincoln now. I heard ’em talkin’ about it among themselves every now and then and sayin’, “I wisht Lincoln hadn’t done it. He ain’t had experience like Douglas. Why, Douglas’s been debatin’ fer twelve years in the United States Senate with the biggest men in the country, and he’s always come out ahead. Lincoln ain’t got a show.”

You needn’t think Mr. Lincoln didn’t know how they was talkin’. He never made no mistake about himself, Mr. Lincoln didn’t. He knew he wa’n’t a big gun like Douglas. I could see he was blue as a whetstone sometimes, thinkin’ of the difference between ’em. “What’s ag’in us in this campaign, boys,” I heard him say one day, “is me. There ain’t no use denyin’ that Douglas has always been a big success and I’ve always been a flat failure. Everybody expects him to be President and always has and is actin’ accordin’. Nobody’s ever expected anything from me. I tell you we’ve got to run this campaign on principle. There ain’t nuthin’ in your candidate.” And he looked so cast down I felt plum sorry for him.

But you needn’t think by that that he was shirkin’ it--no, sir, not a mite. Spite of all his blues, he’d set his teeth for a fight. One day over to the Chenery House I recollect standin’ with two or three Republicans when Mr. Lincoln come along and stopped to shake hands with a chap from up to Danville. “How’s things lookin’ up your way, Judge?” he says.

“Well, Mr. Lincoln,” the Judge says, “we’re feelin’ mighty anxious about this debate of yourn with Douglas,” and the way he said it I could ’a’ kicked him.

Mr. Lincoln looked at him mighty sober for a minute. “Judge,” he says, “didn’t you ever see two men gittin’ ready for a fight? Ain’t you seen one of ’em swell up his muscle and pat it and brag how he’s goin’ to knock the stuffin’ out of the other, and that other man clinchin’ his fist and settin’ his teeth and savin’ his wind. Well, sir, the other is goin’ to win the fight or die tryin’,” and with that he turns and goes off.

Didn’t I know that’s the way he felt. I hadn’t been watchin’ him sweatin’ his brains on that darned question for four years without knowin’. I tell you nobody that didn’t see him often them days, and didn’t care enough about him to feel bad when he felt bad, can ever understand what Abraham Lincoln went through before his debates with Douglas. He worked his head day and night tryin’ to git that slavery question figured out so nobody could stump him. Greatest man to think things out so nobody could git around him I ever see. Hadn’t any patience with what wa’n’t clear. What worried him most, I can see now, was makin’ the rest of us understand it like he did.

Well, as I was sayin’, it seemed as if all Illinois turned out to hear ’em speak. A country fair wa’n’t nuthin’ to the crowds. There wa’n’t any too many railroads in Illinois in ’58, and they didn’t select the places fur the debates accordin’ to connections. I reckon I traveled about all the ways there be gettin’ to the places: foot, horseback, canal-boat, stage, side-wheeler, just got around any way that come handy; et and slept the same. Up to Quincy I recollect I put up on the bluff, and over to Charlestown me and seven of the boys had two beds. Nobody seemed to mind. We was all too took up with the speeches, seemed as if the more you heard the more you wanted to hear. I tell you they don’t have no such speeches nowadays. There ain’t two men in the United States today could git the crowds them two men had or hold ’em if they got ’em.

I sort of expected some new line of argument from Douglas when they started out, but ’twa’n’t long before we all saw he wa’n’t goin’ to talk about anything but popular sovereignty--that is, if he could help himself. As it turned out he didn’t git his way. Mr. Lincoln had made up his mind that the Judge had got to say whether he thought slavery was right or wrong. Accordin’ to him, that was the issue of the campaign. He argued that Douglas’ notion of popular sovereignty was all right if slavery was as good as freedom, but that if it wa’n’t, his arguments wa’n’t worth a rush. He said the difference between him and the Judge was that one thought slavery was wrong and ought to be kept where it was till it died out of itself, and the other thought it was right and ought to be spread all over the country.

It made Little Dug awful mad to face that line of argument. He said such talk proved Lincoln was an abolitionist, and as for his bein’ in a conspiracy to spread slavery it was a lie, “an infamous lie.” Well, I always did think conspiracy was a pretty strong word for Lincoln to use. Strictly speakin’, I reckon ’twa’n’t one, but all the same it didn’t look right. Douglas couldn’t deny that when he got the Missouri Compromise repealed he let slavery into territory that the government had set aside to be free. He couldn’t deny that Judge Taney had decided that Congress couldn’t prevent people takin’ slaves into this territory. There was some other things which fitted in with these which Douglas couldn’t deny.

Mr. Lincoln argued from what they’d done that there wa’n’t any reason why they shouldn’t go on and apply the same legislation to all the other free parts of the country, said he believed they would in time if they thought it would pay better.

The more I heard ’em argue the more I felt Lincoln was right. Suppose, I says to myself, that they take it into their heads to open Illinois? What’s to stop ’em? If slaves can be took into Nebraska by the divine right of self-government, what’s to prevent the divine right of self-government lettin’ ’em in here? Of course, there was an old law settin’ aside the Northwest to freedom, but if the Missouri Compromise could be repealed, why couldn’t that? Then, again, what’s to prevent the Supreme Court decidin’ that Congress couldn’t keep slaves out of a state just as it had decided that Congress couldn’t keep ’em out of a territory. The more I thought of it the more I see there wa’n’t anything to prevent men like Douglas and Buchanan tryin’ some day to apply the same line of argument to Illinois or Pennsylvania or New York or any other free state that they was usin’ now.

I wa’n’t goin’ to stand for that. I don’t pretend I ever felt like Mr. Lincoln did about niggers. No, sir, I was a Democrat, and I wanted the South let alone. I didn’t want to hear no abolition talk. But I was dead agin’ havin’ any more slaves than we could help, and what’s more I wa’n’t myself willin’ to live in a state where they was. I’d seen enough for that. Back in the ’40’s, when I first started up this store, I used to go to New Orleans for my goods and, bein’ young, of course I had to see the sights. A man don’t go to a slave market many times without gittin’ to feel that as far as he is concerned he don’t want nuthin’ to do with buyin’ and sellin’ humans, black or white. Ma, too, she was dead set agin’ it, and she’d said many a time when I was talkin’, “William, if Mr. Douglas don’t really care whether we git to be all slave or not, you oughten to vote for him,” and I’d always said I wouldn’t. Still I couldn’t believe at first but what he did care. By the time the debates was half through I seen it clear enough, though. He didn’t care a red cent--said he didn’t. There was lots of others seen it same as me. I heard more’n one old Democrat say, “Douglas don’t care. Lincoln’s got it right, we’ve got to keep slavery back now or it’s going to spread all over the country.”

You never would believe how I felt when I seen that, for that meant goin’ back on Little Dug, leavin’ the party and votin’ for a Black Republican, as we used to call ’em. I tell you when I begun to see where I was goin’ there wa’n’t many nights I didn’t lie awake tryin’ to figure out how I could git around it. ’Twa’n’t long, though, before I got over feelin’ bad. Fact was every time I heard Mr. Lincoln--I used to go to all the speeches between debates, and there must have been twenty or thirty of them--he made it clearer. ’Twas amazin’ how every time he always had some new way of puttin’ it. Seemed as if his head was so full he couldn’t say the same thing twice alike.

One thing that made it easier was that I begun to see that Douglas wa’n’t thinkin’ much of anything but gittin elected and that Lincoln wa’n’t thinkin’ about that at all. He was dead set on makin’ us understand. Lots of people seen that the first thing. I recollect how up to Quincy that funny fellow, what do you call him? “Nasby-Petroleum V. Nasby.” Young chap then. Well, he’d come out there for some paper. Wanted to write Lincoln up. It was in the evening after the debate and Mr. Lincoln was settin’ up in his room, at the hotel with his boots off and his feet on a chair--lettin’ ’em breathe, he said. Had his coat and vest off. Nuthin’ on to speak of but his pants and one suspender--settin’ there restin’ and gassin’ with the boys when, as I started to say, Mr. Nasby come up. They had a long talk and I walked down street with him when he left.

“That Lincoln of yourn is a great man,” he says after a spell. “He ain’t botherin’ about the Senate--not a mite. He’s tryin’ to make the people of Illinois understand the danger there is in slavery spreadin’ all over the country. He’s a big man, the biggest man I’ve seen in a long time.”

Well, that sounded good to me, for that was just about what I’d figured out by that time, that Lincoln was a big man, a bigger man than Stephen A. Douglas. Didn’t seem possible to me it could be so, but the more I went over it in my mind the more certain I felt about it. Yes, sir, I’d figured it out at last what bein’ big was, that it was bein’ right thinkin’ things out straight and then hangin’ on to ’em because they was right. That was bein’ big and that was Abraham Lincoln all through--the whole of him.

That wa’n’t Douglas at all. He didn’t care whether he thought right or not, if he got what he was after. There wa’n’t no real truth in him. See what he did in the very first debate up to Ottawa. He started out up there by callin’ Lincoln an abolitionist and sayin’ he wanted a nigger wife, and to prove it read a lot of abolition resolutions which, he said Lincoln had helped git up as far back as ’54. The very next day after that debate, the Chicago _Tribune_ came out and showed that Mr. Lincoln hadn’t ever had anything to do with the resolutions Douglas had read. Yes, sir, them resolutions had come from some measely abolition meetin’ where Mr. Lincoln had never been. Douglas had been tryin’ to play a trick on us. I tell you when that news got out you could ’a’ heard a pin drop among Illinois Democrats. It seemed as if he couldn’t realize how serious we was feelin’ or he wouldn’t try a trick like that.

Then he was always draggin’ in things which didn’t have no bearin’ on the case, and takin’ up Lincoln’s time makin’ him answer ’em. One was a-tellin’ how Lincoln had voted against givin’ money to carry on the Mexican War. Now, I know that wa’n’t so, and more’n that it didn’t have anything to do with the question. It made me feel plumb bad to have him goin’ on that way.

And that’s the way he kept it up. Always digressin’, never takin’ up a p’int till Lincoln had drove him into a corner, always insistin’ Lincoln wanted a nigger wife. Why, he made so much of that fool lie that there was a lot of people got to thinkin’ mebbe that’s what Lincoln’s idees did mean. There’s a man livin’ here in this town now that’s got a little book Lincoln made for him to show around and to prove he didn’t mean nuthin’ of the kind.

Fact was, Douglas never meant to argue it out fair and square. He meant to dodge, to mix us up and keep our minds off Kansas-Nebraska and old Judge Taney, and all the things Lincoln made so much of. I recollect Lincoln said one day that the way Douglas acted reminded him of a cuttle-fish throwin’ out a black ink to color up the water so he could git away from something that was chasin’ him.

Of course what made Douglas seem worse was Lincoln bein’ so fair and so dead in earnest. Sometimes it seemed as if he was givin’ the whole case away, he was so honest with Douglas. But he knew what he was doin’ every time. Lincoln was the kind that breaks to win. And serious, why he wouldn’t take time to tell a story. I recollect sayin’ to him one day, “Mr. Lincoln, why don’t you make us laugh sometimes?” “This ain’t no time for stories, Billy,” he says, “it’s too serious.”

Felt bad because he wa’n’t elected? Nope. Didn’t expect him to be. Somehow I’d got to feelin’ by the time election come that it didn’t make no real difference whether he went to the Senate or not. His goin’ there wa’n’t goin’ to settle the question. What was goin’ to settle it was gettin’ more people to feel as he did about it. If he got beat tryin’ to make people understand, it was worth a sight more to the country than his gettin’ elected dodgin’ the truth. I didn’t figure that out alone, though, it was Mr. Lincoln helped me to see that.

You see, after I’d made up my mind I’d vote the Republican ticket, one day when I was walkin’ down the street with him here in town and there wa’n’t nobody around I told him. He looks at me sharp-like and then he says, mighty solemn: “Billy, are you sure you know what you’re doin’? What’s the reason you’re leavin’ the party? ’Cause you want to see me git in?”

“No, sir,” I says, “that ain’t it at all. I’m a Democrat. Besides, I hate like all possessed to go back on Little Doug, you know what store I’ve always set by him. The reason I’m votin’ for you, Mr. Lincoln, is because you’ve got it right and nobody can git around it. Douglas is wrong. There ain’t nuthin’ else to do but vote for your side, much as I hate to.”

Well, sir, you never seen how he straightened up and how his eyes lit up like I’d seen ’em do when he was speakin’.

“Billy,” he says, “I’d ruther hear you say that than anything anybody could say. That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to do--to make people see it as I do. I believe I’ve got it figured out right, Billy. I’ve been at it night and day for four years, and I can’t find no mistake in my line of argument. What I want is to make people understand.”

“What bothers me, Mr. Lincoln,” I says, “is that I don’t believe you’ll git elected, even if you are right,” and then, sir, he throws back his head and just laffs right out loud. “Don’t worry, Billy, about that,” he says, “that don’t make no difference. I ain’t sayin’ I don’t want to go to the United States Senate--I do! Always have. When I quit politics in ’49 and made up my mind I wa’n’t goin’ to have another chanct to go to Congress or be anybody, I was miserable. But that’s all over. What’s important now in this country is makin’ people feel that slavery is wrong, that the South is bent on spreadin’ it and that we’ve got to stop ’em. Slavery is wrong, Billy, if it ain’t wrong nuthin’ is. We’ve got to fight against its spreadin’, and it’s goin’ to be a durable struggle. It don’t make no difference who gits office or who don’t. All that’s important is keepin’ on fightin’. Don’t you worry if I ain’t elected. The fight’s goin’ on.”

Well, I thought that over a lot, and it was queer how calm I came to feel--calm and sure, just as you be about God and all that. And when he was defeated I didn’t seem to mind--any more’n he did. There wa’n’t hardly anybody could understand why he took it so easy, and he had to go around consolin’ ’em an’ stiffenin’ ’em up and tellin’ ’em as he had me, how it was a durable struggle--that’s the word he always used--“durable.” Always seemed to me it was exactly the word for it--something that wa’n’t going to wear out.

Ever see Douglas after that? Yes, onct. One day after election he come in here, and after talkin’ around a spell he says suddint:

“Billy, you supported Mr. Lincoln, didn’t you?” And he looked me straight in the eye, kind, but meanin’ to know from me. Well, you bet I’d liked to have lied, but that ain’t the kind of a thing a man lies about.

“Yes, Mr. Douglas,” I says, “I did, I had to. He had it right.”

Well, sir, you never see the way he smiled at me. “That’s right, Billy,” he says, “I understand,” and then he grips my hand and turns on his heel and goes off with his head down.

Seemed to me I couldn’t stand it. You see I’d always loved Little Dug, and I’d been proud of him. Lordy, sometimes when he’d come back from Washington in them old days and come in here, all dressed up and lookin’ so handsome and great, and come up and put his arm around me and ask about Ma and Johnnie and how business was, I’ll be blamed if I didn’t git red as a girl, I was so pleased. I’d hurrahed for him and voted for him for years, and here I had gone back on him. It just made me sick.

I couldn’t stand it to stay in the store, so I put on my hat and went home and told Ma. “I almost wisht I hadn’t done it,” I says, groanin’.

“William,” Ma says, “you know well enough you couldn’t have done nuthin’ else. I don’t understand these things none too well. ’Tain’t a woman’s business; but you done what you thought was right and you ain’t no call to worry about doin’ what you think is right.” That’s the way Ma always talks. You ought to know Ma.

Still there ain’t no use denyin’ it. I don’t ever think about the last time I seen Little Dug without feelin’ bad. I never could be hard on him like some was for that Kansas-Nebraska bill. You see, fact was he thought he was doin’ a fine thing when he got up that bill. He seen the South wa’n’t satisfied, and he thought he’d fix up something to please ’em and keep ’em still a while--a kind of Daniel Webster he was tryin’ to be, makin’ a new compromise.

Douglas got so busy tryin’ to please the South he clean lost sight of what the people was thinkin’ back home. I reckon he wan’t countin’ on us thinkin’ at all--just took it for granted we’d believe what he told us, like we’d always done. Surprisin’ how long you can fool people with the talk they was brought up on. Seems sometimes as if they hated to break in a new set of idees as bad as they do new boots. I reckon that was what Douglas was countin’ on back there in ’58. But he got it wrong that time. He hadn’t reckoned on what Abraham Lincoln had been doin’. Before he got through them debates, Douglas suspected it in my judgment. He knew that even if he did git to the Senate, Lincoln was the one that had come out ahead.

Queer how every day after that election, it showed up more and more that Lincoln was ahead. Seemed sometimes that as if everybody in the whole North was bent on hearin’ him speak. Why, they sent for him to come to New York and Boston, and all the big men East got to writin’ to him, and the first thing I knowed the boys was talkin’ about his bein’ President.

Well, I thought that was goin’ a leetle far. Just as I told you t’other day, it seemed to me almost as if somebody was pokin’ fun at him. He didn’t seem to me to look like a President. Queer how long it takes a man to find out that there ain’t anything in the world so important as honest thinkin’ and actin’, and that when you’ve found a man that never lets up ’til he sees clear and right, and then hangs on to what he sees like a dog to a root, you can’t make a mistake in tyin’ to him. You can trust him anywhere. Queer how long we are all taken in by high-soundin’ talk and fashionable ways and fine promises. But don’t you make no mistake, they ain’t no show in the long run with honest thinkin’.

FATHER ABRAHAM

Kind-hearted? Mr. Lincoln _kind-hearted_?

I don’t believe a man ever lived who’d rather seen everybody happy and peaceable than Abraham Lincoln. He never could stand it to have people sufferin’ or not gettin’ what they wanted. Time and time again I’ve seen him go taggin’ up street here in this town after some youngster that was blubberin’ because he couldn’t have what wa’n’t good for him. Seemed as if he couldn’t rest till that child was smilin’ again. You can go all over Springfield and talk to the people who was boys and girls when he lived here and every blamed one will tell you something he did for ’em. Everybody’s friend, that’s what _he_ was. Jest as natural for him to be that way as ’twas for him to eat or drink.

Yes, I suppose bein’ like that _did_ make the war harder on him. But he had horse sense as well as a big heart, Mr. Lincoln had. He knew you couldn’t have war without somebody gettin’ hurt. He _expected_ sufferin’, but he knew ’twas his business not to have any more than was necessary and to take care of what come. And them was two things that wa’n’t done like they ought to ’a’ been. That was what worried him.

Seemed as if hardly anybody at the start had any idea of how important ’twas to take good care of the boys and keep ’em from gettin’ sick or if they did get sick to cure ’em. I remember Leonard Swett was in here one day ’long back in ’61 and he says; “Billy, Mr. Lincoln knows more about how the soldiers in the Army of the Potomac cook flapjacks than you do about puttin’ up quinine. There ain’t a blamed thing they do in that army that he ain’t interested in. I went down to camp with him one day and I never see an old hunter in the woods quicker to spot a rabbit’s track than he was every little kink about the housekeepin’. When we got back to town he just sat and talked and talked about the way the soldiers was livin’, seemed to know all about ’em everyways: where they was short of shoes, where the rations were poor, where they had camp-fever worst; told me how hardtack was made, what a good thing quinine and onions are to have handy,--best cure for diarrhea, sore feet, homesickness, everything. I never heard anything like it.”

Seemed to bother Swett a little that Mr. Lincoln took so much interest in all them little things, but I said: “Don’t you worry, Mr. Swett, Mr. Lincoln’s got the right idee. An army that don’t have its belly and feet taken care of ain’t goin’ to do much fightin’, and Mr. Lincoln’s got sense enough to know it. He knows diarrhea’s a blamed sight more dangerous to the Army of the Potomac than Stonewall Jackson. Trouble so far has been, in _my_ judgment, that the people that ought to have been seein’ to what the soldiers was eatin’ and drinkin’ and whether their beds was dry and their bowels movin’, was spendin’ their time polishin’ their buttons and shinin’ their boots for parade.”

“What I don’t see,” says Swett, “is how he learned all the things he knows. They ain’t the kind of things you’d naturally think a president of the United States would be interestin’ himself in.”

There ’twas,--same old fool notion that a president ought to sit inside somewhere and think about the Constitution. I used to be that way--always saw a president lookin’ like that old picture of Thomas Jefferson up there settin’ beside a parlor table holdin’ a roll of parchment in his hand, and Leonard Swett was like me a little in spite of his bein’ educated.

Learned it! Think of Leonard Swett askin’ that with all _his_ chances of bein’ with Mr. Lincoln! Learned it just as he had everything by bein’ so dead interested. He’d learned it if he hadn’t been president at all, if he’d just been loafin’ around Washington doin’ nuthin’. Greatest hand to take notice of things. I tell you he’d made a great war correspondent. Things he’d ’a’ seen! And the way he’d ’a’ told ’em! I can just see him now pumpin’ everybody that had been to the front. Great man to make you talk, Mr. Lincoln was. I’ve heard him say himself that most of the education he had he’d got from people who thought they was learnin’ from him.

I reckon he learned a lot more from soldiers about how the armies was bein’ taken care of than he did from generals. My brother Isaac, who had a place down there addin’ up figgers or something used to tell me of seein’ Mr. Lincoln stoppin’ ’em on the street and out around the White House and talkin’ to ’em. Isaac said ’twa’n’t becomin’ in the President of the United States to be so familiar with common soldiers, he ought to keep among the generals and members of the administration. Isaac always reckoned _himself_ a member of the administration.

“More than that,” says Isaac, “it ain’t dignified for a president to be always runnin’ out after things himself instead of sendin’ somebody. He’s always goin’ over to the telegraph office with messages, and settin’ down by the operators talkin’ and readin’ dispatches and waitin’ for answers. One day he came right up to my office to ask me to look up the record of Johnnie Banks, old Aunt Sally Banks’ boy, that was goin’ to be shot for desertion. Seemed to think I’d be interested because he came from Illinois--came right up there instead of sendin’ for me to go to the White House like he ought to, and when I took what I found over to him and he found out Johnnie wa’n’t but eighteen, he put on his hat and went over himself to the telegraph office, took me along, and sent a message that I saw, sayin’, ‘_I don’t want anybody as young as eighteen to be shot_.’ And that night he went back and sent another message askin’ if they’d received the first--wasn’t satisfied till he knew it couldn’t happen. There wa’n’t any reason why he should spend his time that way. He ought to give orders and let other folks see they’re carried out. That’s what I’d do if I was president.”

That riled me. “I reckon there ain’t any need to worry about _that_, Isaac,” I says. “You won’t never be president. Mr. Lincoln’s got too many folks around him now that don’t do nuthin’ but give orders. That’s one reason he has to do his own executin’.”

But ’twas just like him to go and do it himself. So interested he _had_ to see to it. I’ve heard different ones tell time and time again that whenever he’d pardoned a soldier he couldn’t rest till he’d get word back that ’twas all right. Did you ever hear about that Vermont boy in McClellan’s army, sentenced to be shot along at the start for sleepin’ on his post. ’Twas when they was camped over in Virginia right near Washington. Mr. Lincoln didn’t know about it till late and when he heard the story he telegraphed down not to do it. Then he telegraphed askin’ if they’d got his orders and when he didn’t get an answer what does he do but get in his carriage and drive himself ten miles to camp to see that they didn’t do it. Now that’s what I call bein’ a real president. _That’s_ executin’.

Well, as I was sayin’, _he_ understood the importance of a lot of things them young officers and some of the old ones didn’t see at all, and he knew where to get the truth about ’em--went right to the soldiers for it. They was just like the folks he was used to, and Mr. Lincoln was the greatest hand for folks--just plain common folks--you ever see. He liked ’em, never forgot ’em, just natural nice to ’em.

It used to rile old Judge Davis a lot when they was travelin’ the circuit, the way Mr. Lincoln never made no difference between lawyers and common folks. I heard Judge Logan tellin’ in here one day about their all bein’ in the tavern up to Bloomington one day. In those times there was just one big table for everybody. The lawyers and big bugs always set at one end and the teamsters and farmers at the other. Mr. Lincoln used to like to get down among the workin’ folks and get the news. Reckon he got kinda tired hearin’ discussin’ goin’ on all the time. Liked to hear about the crops and politics and folks he knew.

This time he was down among ’em, and Judge Davis, who always wanted Lincoln right under his nose, calls out: “Come up here, Mr. Lincoln; here’s where you belong.” And Mr. Lincoln, he looked kinda funny at the Judge and he says:

“Got anything better to eat up there, Judge?” And everybody tee-heed.

Feelin’ as he did about folks I could see how it would go ag’in the grain for the boys in the army to have a harder time than was necessary. He’d argue that they was doin’ the fightin’ and ought to have the care. He’d feel a good deal worse about their bein’ neglected than he would about the things he knew beforehand he had to stand, like woundin’ and killin’. And ’twas just that way so I found out the time I was down to Washington visitin’ him.

I told you, didn’t I, how I went up to the Soldiers’ Home and how we walked out that night and sat and talked till almost mornin’? ’Twas a clear night with lots of stars and Washington looked mighty pretty lyin’ there still and white. Mr. Lincoln pointed out the Capitol and the White House and Arlington and the Long Bridge, showin’ me the lay of the land.

“And it’s nuthin’ but one big hospital, Billy,” he said after a while. “You wouldn’t think, would you, lookin’ down on it so peaceful and quiet, that there’s 50,000 sick and wounded soldiers there? Only Almighty God knows how many of ’em are dyin’ this minute; only Almighty God knows how many are sufferin’ so they’re prayin’ to die. They are comin’ to us every day now--have been ever since the Wilderness, 50,000 here and 150,000 scattered over the country. There’s a crawlin’ line of sick and wounded all the way from here to Petersburg to-night. There’s a line, from Georgia to Chattanooga--Sherman’s men. You can’t put your finger on a spot in the whole North that ain’t got a crippled or fever-struck soldier in it. There were days in May, just after the Wilderness, when Mary and I used to drive the carriage along lines of ambulances which stretched from the docks to the hospitals, one, two miles. It was a thing to tear your heart out to see them. They brought them from the field just as they picked them up, with horrible, gaping, undressed wounds, blood and dust and powder caked over them--eaten by flies and mosquitoes. They’d been piled like cord wood on flat cars and transports. Sometimes they didn’t get a drink until they were distributed here. Often when it was cold they had no blanket, when it was hot they had no shade. That was nearly four months ago, and still they come. Night after night as I drive up here from the White House I pass twenty, thirty, forty ambulances in a row distributin’ the wounded and sick from Grant’s army.

“Think what it means! It means that boys like you and me were, not so long ago, have stood up and shot each other down--have trampled over each other and have left each other wounded and bleeding on the ground, in the rain or the heat, nobody to give ’em a drink or to say a kind word. Nothing but darkness and blood and groans and torture. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s true. Boys from Illinois where I live, shootin’ boys from Kentucky where I was born! It’s only when I see them comin’ in I realize it--boat load after boat load, wagon load after wagon load. It seemed sometimes after Bull Run and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville if they didn’t stop unloadin’ ’em I’d go plumb crazy. But still they come, and only God knows when they’ll stop. They say hell’s like war, Billy. If ’tis,--I’m glad I ain’t Satan.”

Of course I tried to cheer him up. I’d been around visitin’ the Illinois boys in the hospitals that day and I just lit in and told him how comfortable I’d found ’em and how chipper most of them seemed. “You’d think ’twas fun to be in the hospital to see some of ’em, Mr. Lincoln,” I said. “What do you suppose old Tom Blodgett was doin’? Settin’ up darnin’ his socks. Yes, sir, insisted on doin’ it himself. Said them socks had fit all the way from Washington to Richmond. They’d stood by him and he was goin’ to stand by them. Goin’ to dress their wounds as good as the doctor had his. Never saw anything so funny as that big feller propped up there tryin’ to darn like he’d seen his mother do and all the time makin’ fun. All the boys around were laffin’ at him--called him the sock doctor.

“And things were so clean and white and pretty and the women were runnin’ around just like home.”

“God bless ’em,” he said. “I don’t know what we’d ’a’ done if it hadn’t been for the way the women have taken hold. Come down here willin’ to do anything; women that never saw a cut finger before, will stand over a wound so terrible men will faint at the sight of it. I’ve known of women spendin’ whole nights on a battlefield huntin’ for somebody they’d lost and stoppin’ as they went to give water and take messages. I’ve known ’em to work steady for three days and nights without a wink of sleep down at the front after a battle, takin’ care of the wounded. Here in Washington you can’t stop ’em as long as they can see a thing to be done. At home they’re supportin’ the families and workin’ day and night to help us. They give their husbands and their boys and then themselves. God bless the women, Billy. We can’t save the Union without ’em.

“It makes a difference to the boys in a hospital havin’ ’em. People don’t realize how young this army is. Half the wounded here in Washington to-day are _children_--not twenty yet--lots of ’em under eighteen. Children who never went to sleep in their lives before they went into the army without kissin’ their mothers good-night. You take such a boy as that and let him lie in camp a few months gettin’ more and more tired of it and he gets homesick--plain homesick--he wants his mother. Perhaps he don’t know what’s the matter and he wouldn’t admit it if he did. First thing you know he’s in the hospital with camp fever, or he gets wounded. I tell you a woman looks good to him.

“It’s a queer thing to say, Billy, but I get real comfort out of the hospitals. When you know what the wounded have been through--how they have laid on the battlefields for hours and hours uncared for, how they’ve suffered bein’ hauled up here, there ain’t nuthin’ consoles you like knowin’ that their wounds have been dressed and that they are clean and fed, and looked after. Then they are so thankful to be here--to have some one to see to ’em. I remember one day a boy who had been all shot up but was gettin’ better sayin’ to me: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I can’t sleep nights thinkin’ how comfortable I am.’ It’s so good to find ’em realizin’ that everybody cares--the whole country. People come and read to ’em and write letters for ’em and bring ’em things. Why, they have real good times at some of the places. Down to Armory Square Bliss has got a melodeon and they have concerts sometimes, and there are flags up and flowers in the windows. I got some flower seeds last summer for Bliss to plant outside, but they turned out to be lettuce and onions. The boys ate ’em and you ought to heard ’em laugh about my flowers. I tell you it makes me happy when I go around and find the poor fellows smilin’ up at me and sayin’: ‘You’re takin’ good care of us, Mr. Lincoln,’ and maybe crack a joke.

“They take it all so natural, trampin’ and fightin’ and dyin’. It’s a wonderful army--wonderful! You couldn’t believe that boys that back home didn’t ever have a serious thought in their heads could ever be so dead set as they be about an idee. Think of it! A million men are lookin’ up at these stars to-night, a million men ready to die for the Union to-morrow if it’s got to be done to save it! I tell you, it shows what’s in ’em. They’re all the same, young or old--the Union’s got to be saved! Of course you’d expect it more of the old ones, and we’ve got some old ones, older than the law allows, too. ’Tain’t only the youngsters who have lied themselves into the service. Only to-day a Congressman was in tellin’ me about one of his constituents, said he was over sixty-five and white-haired when he first enlisted. They refused him of course, and I’ll be blamed if the old fellow didn’t dye his hair black and change his name, and when they asked him his age, said: ‘Rising thirty-five,’ and he’s been fightin’ good for two years and now they’d found him out. The Congressman asked me what he ought to do. I told him if ’twas me I’d keep him in hair dye.”

* * * * *

We was still a while and then Mr. Lincoln began talkin’, more to himself than to me.

“A million men, a mighty host--and one word of mine would bring the million sleeping boys to their feet--send them without a word to their guns--they would fall in rank--regiment on regiment, brigade on brigade, corps on corps, a word more and they would march steady, quiet, a million men in step straight ahead, over fields, through forests, across rivers. Nothing could stop them--cannons might tear holes in their ranks, and they would fill them up, a half million might be bled out of them, and a word of mine would bring a half million more to fill their place. Oh, God, my God,” he groaned, under his breath, “what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me! What am I that Thou shouldst trust me so!”

Well, I just dropped my head in my hands--seemed as if I oughten to look at him--and the next thing I knew Mr. Lincoln’s arm was over my shoulder and he was saying in that smilin’ kind of voice he had: “Don’t mind me, Billy. The Lord generally knows what He’s about and He can get rid of me quick enough if He sees I ain’t doin’ the job--quicker than the Copperheads can.”

Just like him to change so. Didn’t want anybody to feel bad. But I never forgot that, and many a time in my sleep I’ve heard Abraham Lincoln’s voice crying out: “Oh, God, my God, what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me!” and I’ve groaned to think how often through them four awful years he must have lifted up his face with that look on it and asked the Lord what in the world he was doing that thing for.

“After all, Billy,” he went on, “it’s surprisin’ what a happy army it is. In spite of bein’ so dead in earnest and havin’ so much trouble of one kind and another, seems sometimes as if you couldn’t put ’em anywhere that they wouldn’t scare up some fun. Greatest chaps to sing on the march, to cut up capers and play tricks you ever saw. I reckon the army’s a little like me, it couldn’t do its job if it didn’t get a good laugh now and then--sort o’ clears up the air when things are lookin’ blue. Anyhow the boys are always gettin’ themselves into trouble by their pranks. Jokin’ fills the guard-house as often as drunkenness or laziness. That and their bein’ so sassy. A lot of ’em think they know just as much as the officers do, and I reckon they’re right pretty often. It takes some time to learn that it ain’t good for the service for them to be speakin’ their minds too free. At the start they did it pretty often--do now sometimes. Why, only just this week Stanton told me about a sergeant, who one day when the commanding officer was relieving his mind by swearing at his men, stepped right out of the ranks and reproved him and said he was breaking the law of God. Well, they clapped him in the guard-house and now they want to punish him harder--say he ain’t penitent--keeps disturbin’ the guard-house by prayin’ at the top of his voice for that officer. I told Stanton we better not interfere, that there wasn’t nothing in the regulations against a man’s prayin’ for his officers.

“Yes, it’s a funny army. There don’t seem to be but one thing that discourages it, and that’s not fightin’. Keep ’em still in camp where you’d think they’d be comfortable and they go to pieces every time. It’s when they’re lyin’ still we have the worst camp fever and the most deserters. Keep ’em on the move, let ’em think they’re goin’ to have a fight and they perk up right off.

“We can’t fail with men like that. Make all the mistakes we can, they’ll make up for ’em. The hope of this war is in the common soldiers, not in the generals--not in the War Department, not in me. It’s in the boys. Sometimes it seems to me that nobody sees it quite right. It’s in war as it is in life--a whole raft of men work day and night and sweat and die to get in the crops and mine the ore and build the towns and sail the seas. They make the wealth but they get mighty little of it. We ain’t got our values of men’s work figured out right yet--the value of the man that gives orders and of the man that takes ’em. I hear people talkin’ as if the history of a battle was what the generals did. I can’t help thinkin’ that the history of this war is in the knapsack of the common soldier. He’s makin’ that history just like the farmers are makin’ the wealth. We fellows at the top are only usin’ what they make.

“At any rate that’s the way I see it, and I’ve tried hard ever since I’ve been down here to do all I could for the boys. I know lots of officers think I peek around camp too much, think ’tain’t good for discipline. But I’ve always felt I ought to know how they was livin’ and there didn’t seem to be no other sure way of findin’ out. Officers ain’t always good housekeepers, and I kinda felt I’d got to keep my eye on the cupboard.