Chapter V: Part 5

The first troops arriving by way of the Potomac River were the volunteers of the first call, ninety-day men; the steamship _Daylight_--name of good omen! It was torrential rain, but the President and Secretary Seward came out to welcome them on the wharf. As he would give a reception then and there, four sailors held a tarpaulin over his head like a canopy, and he shook hands all around, including the firemen and stokers out of the coal-hole. Grasping their smutty hands, he declared that they were as brave as any one! --(By General Viele, present.)

* * * * *

TRY AND GO AS FAR AS YOU CAN!

On the President, indefatigable in visiting the soldiers anywhere to see "how the boys are getting on," telling the head surgeon at City Point Hospital that he had come to shake hands with _all_ the inmates, the medical authority demurred. There were several thousands in the wards, and any man would be tired before he had gone the grand rounds.

"I think," protested Lincoln, with his set smile and dogged determination to have his own way, "I am quite equal to the task. At any rate, I can try, and go as far as I can!"

It was on this, at another time--there were many of them, alas!--that it being found that the patients in one ward were clamoring because they had been passed over, he insisted on shaking off the fag and going to pay them respect also.

"The brave boys must not be disappointed in their 'Father Abraham!'"

* * * * *

ARGUMENT OF "THE STUB-TAILED COW."

The President had the knack of illustrating a false syllogism by a story from the front. Soldiers stole a cow from a farmyard. It had but the stump of a tail, and foreseeing that there might be a requisition by the owner, who passed for a Union sympathizer, they disguised the creature by attaching a long switch from a dead bovine. Sure enough the man came to headquarters, and from his patriotic plea of having lost much by adhering to the old cause, his demand was accorded. If he could find his lost animal, he was entitled to it and the offenders would be punished. It had not been obtained by the regular forage, that he swore. Well, he was brought by the officer seeing him round to the pen where the beeves were secured which the commissariat duly furnished. Here the rival suppliers had stabled the creature, and she was lashing off the flies with the substitute for the detached tail with supreme felicity in the lost enjoyment. The farmer scanned her with more than a merely suspicious eye, so that the lookers-on grew anxious, and the sub-officer with him, and who thought of his own plate of beef, hastened to say:

"Well, you don't see anything here anywheres like your beastie, do you, old father?"

"I dunno. Thar suttinly is one cow the pictur' of mine--but my Lilywhite was a stump--had a stub-tail, you know!"

"Hum!" said the corporal firmly, "but this here cow has a long tail!--ain't it?"

"True--and mine were a stub--let us seek farther, officer!"

* * * * *

PEGGED OR SEWED?

Shoemaking machinery not having attained the present development which pastes imitation-leather uppers upon paper soles, the soldiers of the first Union Army had to trudge in the boots made with wooden pegs to hold the portions together; in wet weather the pegs swelled and held tolerably, but in dryness the assimilation failed and the upper crust yawned off the base like a crab-shell divided. As for the supposed sewed ones, they went to the sub-officers, but the thread was so poor that parting was as thorough as sudden. Mr. Lincoln _wonted_, as Walt Whitman says, to repeat this tale when the army contractors were swarming in his room for a bidding:

"A soldier of the Army of the Potomac was being carried to the rear among the other wounded, when he spied one of the women following the army to vend delicacies. In her basket, no doubt, were the cookies to his fancy--the tarts and pies--open or covered. So he hailed her: 'Old lady, are them pies sewed or pegged?'"

* * * * *

SOLDIERING APART FROM POLITICS.

In 1864, a soldier at work on the Baltimore defenses, an outbreak of Southern sympathizers being apprehended, attended a Democratic meeting and made a speech there in favor of its principles and General McClellan as the standard-bearer. Secretary of War Stanton, fierce like all apostates, turned on this Democrat, and his disgrace as to the army was threatened. Captain Andrews went to the fountain-head with his remonstrance. He was right, for Lincoln said:

"Andrews has as good a right to hold onto his Democracy, if he chooses, as Stanton had to throw his overboard. No; when the military duties of a soldier are fully and faithfully performed, he can manage his politics his own way!"

* * * * *

A TIME THAT TRIED THE SOUL.

It was the Pennsylvania governor, Curtin, who brought the bad news from Fredericksburg battle-field, where Burnside was repulsed in December, 1862.

"It was a terrible slaughter--the scene a veritable slaughter-pen."

This blunt trope stirred up Lincoln, who had been a pig-slaughterer in his day, remember. He groaned, wrung his hands, and "took on" with terrible agony of spirit.

"I remember his saying over and over again," says the governor: "'What has God put me in this place for?'"

* * * * *

"CABINET" TALK.

Like all persons whose early life was passed in seclusion from the exhibitions common in society eager for anything to animate jaded nerves, Mr. Lincoln at Washington sought distractions in his brief intervals for them. One of the _shows_ he tolerated--he called all sights so--was the séances of Charles E. Shockle--"Phoebus! what a name!" This medium came to the capital in 1863, under eminent auspices, and the President and his wife, members of the Cabinet, and other first citizens were induced to patronize the illusions. The spirits were irreverent, "pinching Stanton's and plucking Welles' beard." As for the President, a rapping at his feet announced an Indian eager "to communicate."

"Well, sir," said the President, "happy to hear what his Indian majesty has to say. We have recently had a deputation of the red Indians, and it was the only deputation, black, white, or red, which did not volunteer advice about the conduct of the war!"

The writing-under-cover trick was played. A paper covered with Mr. Stanton's handkerchief was found before the President, scrawled with marks interpreted as advice for action, by Henry Knox--no one knew him--but the lecturer said he was the first secretary of war in the Revolution. The recipient said it was not Indian talk!

He transferred it to Mr. Stanton as concerning his province. He asked for General Knox's forecast as to when the rebellion would be put down. The reply was a jumble of wild truisms purporting to be from great spirits, from Washington to Wilberforce.

"Well," exclaimed the President, "opinions differ as much among the saints as among the--ahem--sinners!" He glanced at the _cabinet_ whence the materialized specters were to emerge if called upon, and added: "The celestials' talk and advice sound very much like the talk of _my_ Cabinet!"

He called for Stephen A. Douglas, as his dearest friend, [Footnote: Stephen Arnold Douglas was so patriotic at the Rebellion's outbreak that Lincoln forgave him all the politically, hostile past. Douglas held his new silk hat--Lincoln's abhorrence--at the first inauguration. Douglas left the field for home, where he assisted in raising the first volunteer levy by his eloquence.] to speak, if not appear. The reporter affirms that a voice like the lamented "Little Giant's" was heard and if others thought they recognized it the President must have been more affected than he allowed. But the eloquent statesman also breathed platitudes in which the illustrious auditor said he believed, "whether it comes from spirit or human."

Here Mr. Shockle became prostrated, and Mrs. Lincoln compassionately suggested an adjournment. The Spiritualists did not see the sarcasm in Mr. Lincoln's remarks, and claim that he was not only a convert, but that he was himself a medium. [Footnote: There is serious evidence for this fact; he was, at all events, a Spiritualist. See _Was Lincoln a Spiritualist?_ By Mrs. Nettie Colburn Maynard (1891).]

* * * * *

ON THE BLISTER-BENCH.

At the taking of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1862, the steamer _Valley City_ was saved from blowing up by a gunner's-mate. This John Davis coolly sat on a powder-keg from which the top had been shot off, and was so found by an officer, who hastily censured him for his loafing--"bumming" during recess. But, on the reason for his taking his seat being pointed out, Davis was recommended for promotion. In countersigning the papers entitling him to the rank of gunner, at a thousand a year for life, the President mock-solemnly observed:

"Metaphorically, we occupy the same position; _we_ are sitting on the powder under fire!"

* * * * *

"ABE, A THUNDERING OLD GLORY!"

Ex-Registrar Chittenden tells the following incident. It was the 14th of April, 1865. Captain Robert Lincoln, on General Grant's staff, had brought the details of the victory of Appomattox, and the gratified chief had passed the day with the Cabinet revolving those plans of reconstruction which amazed all the world by their exclusion of all bitterness and retaliation. He was coming down the White House stairway to take his accustomed ride in the carriage when he heard a soldier in the waiting crowd say:

"I would almost give my other hand (he was one-armed) if I could shake Abe Lincoln's hand!"

Lincoln confronted him. "You shall do that, and it shall cost you nothing!" interrupted the revivified President, grasping the lone hand, and, while he held it, he asked the man's name, regiment, etc.

The happy soldier, in telling of this meeting, would end: "I tell you, boys, Abe Lincoln is a thundering Old Glory!"

* * * * *

PERFECT RETALIATION.

The more apparent it was that inconsistency reigned ins the Lincolnian Cabinet, the more earnestly the marplots strove to incite them individually against one another and their head. A speculator who had induced the latter to oblige him with a permit to trade in cotton reported with zest how Secretary Stanton had no sooner seen the paper than, instead of countersigning, he tore up the leaf without respect even for the august signature. Stanton was famous for irascibility. And he did not forbear to manifest it toward all, even to the President. But, as the latter observed, hot or cold, Stanton is generally right. This time he was not sorry at heart for the reproof as to his allowing a signal favor which might work harm. But, affecting rage, he blurted out:

"Oh, he tore my paper, did he? Go and tell Stanton that I will tear up a dozen of _his_ papers before Saturday night!"

* * * * *

LET DOWN THE BARS A LEETLE.

One of the mischief-makers abounding in Washington, and doing more harm than all the rebel calumniators, hastened to repeat to the President that the secretary of war had plainly called him a "d---d fool!"

"You don't say so? This wants looking into. For, if Stanton called me that, it must be true!--for he is nearly every time right!" He took his seat, and excused himself, jerking out as he stalked forth, glad to be quit of the pest:

"I will step over and see him!"

He was going to have the bars let down "a leetle."

* * * * *

"THE ADMINISTRATION CAN STAND IT IF THE TIMES CAN."

Mrs. Hugh McCulloch and Mrs. Dole (Indian Commissioner) went to Mrs. Lincoln's reception. The host expressed constant gladness to see the ladies, as "they asked no offices."

Mrs. McCulloch protested that she did want something.

"I want you to suppress the Chicago _Times_ because it does nothing but abuse the Administration."

McCulloch was in the treasury.

"Oh, tut, tut! We must not abridge the liberties of: the press or the people! [Footnote: The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 1863, was sorely against the President's sentiments, fond of liberty himself and fixed on constitutional rule--but he bowed to the inevitable. Nevertheless, he softened the rod, and many imprisoned under the edict were never brought to trial.] But never mind the Chicago _Times_! The Administration can stand it, if the _Times_ can."

* * * * *

BOTTLING THAT WASP.

It was confidently forethought by the numerous admirers of Governor Seward--who escaped being the President by a political combination and not want of supreme merit--that he would in the Cabinet, whatever nominally his post, be the ruling spirit. Not a man suspected that the plain man of the prairie could develop into the lord of the manor, and put and keep not only the able and cultured Seward, but the turbulent Stanton and the obstreperous Chase, in their places. The pettifogger of the West simply expanded, like its sunflower, in the fierce white light around the chair, and was the lion, among the lesser creatures.

Seward raised his hand early. Within a month he had the impertinent fatuity to lay before his superior a paper suggesting the policy, and moving that the President might commit to him, the secretary, the carrying out of that policy! With gentle courtesy--says General Viele--Lincoln took the paper from the author and popped it into his portfolio. He had no policy, and did not want another's. He had bottled his wasp. Seward was obedient as the spaniel. His powers were recognized by the villains who comprised him in the detestable plot.

* * * * *

THAT KING LOST HIS HEAD.

In 1865 the President and his state secretary received as peace commissioners Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell. They wanted recognition of their President, Davis, as head of the Confederated States--an entity. Without stultification, this was impossible. In the course of the discussion, reference was made to King Charles I. of England and his Parliament negotiating--so might the established Washington government treat with the rebel Davis. On Lincoln's features stole that grim smile foretelling his shaft ready to shoot, and he interjected:

"Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted on such things, and I do not profess to be; but my only distinct recollection of that matter is that Charles I. lost his head!"

* * * * *

SWEARING LIKE A CHURCHWARDEN.

To convey the President from General Hooker's camp to the review of General Reynolds' corps, a ride had to be taken in a six-mule ambulance. Either not knowing the rank of his passenger, or being a teamster, which in our army replaces the French sapper for rudeness, the driver showered as many oaths of the largest caliber--fire and fury signifying nothing--as snaps of the long cowhide. Lincoln, who had known the genus in the clay of the West, kept his eye on him while leaning out of the window. In an interval when the vociferator had to take breath, he asked quietly:

"Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?"

"N-no, Mr. President," stammered the astonished jehu, "I am a Methodist."

"Well, I thought you must be an Episcopalian, for you swear like Secretary Seward, a warden of that church."

(Seward was the great man of the Republican party, next to Lincoln only in some essentials for political success. While a church member, he was man of the world enough to give a backing to this jest of the President.)

* * * * *

"MY SPEECHES HAVE ORIGINALITY AS THEIR MERIT."

Instead of believing that Lincoln's extraordinary experiences in the multifarious West produced a factotum, his revilers asserted that he looked to one minister for financial instructions, to another for military guidance, etc. But it is true that by tradition, as the premier in fact, the secretary of state is supposed to write the first drafts at least of the presidential speeches to foreign ministers, and, as the secretary was Seward, a man of letters preeminently, he had Lincoln's addresses, even to home delegations, fathered upon him.

The President was chatting in his own study when a messenger ran in with a paper, explaining his haste with the words:

"Compliments of the secretary with the speech your excellency is to make to the Swiss minister."

Anybody else would have been abashed by the seeming exposure, but the executive merely cried aloud as if to publish the facts to the auditory:

"Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me. I guess I will try it before these gentlemen, and see how it goes." He read it in the burlesque manner with which he parodied circuit preachers in his boyhood and public speakers in his prime, and added at the close:

"There, I like that. It has the merit of originality!"

* * * * *

RIGHTING WRONG HURTS, BUT DOES GOOD.

In May, 1861, all looked with anxiety to the letter by which the United States of America should reply to Great Britain furnishing the Confederated States with its first encouragement, the rights of belligerents. Without them their privateers were useless, as they could have gone into no ports and sold their prizes nowhere. Mr. Seward was in touch with the New England school. It clamored for war with any friend to the revolting States. But Lincoln corrected what was provocative in the original advice to our minister, Adams, at St. James'. The English were no longer held to have issued a proclamation without due grounds in usage or the law of nations. It became by the modification no more a proceeding about which we could warrantably go to war. For instance, the President changed the words "wrongful" into "hurtful." According to Webster, wrongful means unjust, injurious, dishonest; while hurtful implies that the course will cause injury. The original has vanished in that odd but certain way in which state documents disappear when casting odium on public men; they are mayhap "filed away"--in the stove!

* * * * *

STANTON'S SERVICE WAS WORTH HIS SAUCE.

Among the President's minor worries was the assiduity with which his generosity was cultivated by his relatives--not only those by his marriage, but by his father's second marriage. He was like the eldest son of the family to whom all looked for sustenance. There came to the seat of government that Dennis Hanks, his cousin, who stood to reach for boons on the platform of rails which they had cut long ago in cohort. Dennis was seeking the pardon of some "Copperheads"--that is, Southern sympathizers of the North, veiled in their enmity, but dangerous. The secretary of war had pronounced against any leniency toward what were dubbed glaring traitors. All the chief could do--for he bared his head like _Lear_ to let the Stanton tempest blow upon him and so spare others--was to say he would look at the cases the next day. Hanks was muttering.

"Why, Dennis, what would you do were you President?" he asked the raw backwoodsman, turning badly into suppliant.

"Do? Why, Abe, if I were as big and 'ugly'--aggressively combative--as you are, I would take your Mr. Stanton over my knee and spank him!"

This caused a laugh, but the other replied severely:

"No. Stanton is an able and valuable man for this nation in his station, and I am glad to have his _service_ in spite of his _sauce_."

* * * * *

A SECRET OF THE INTERIOR.

Lincoln, the junior, "Tad," had the run of the Executive Mansion, and, like all spoiled children, abused the license. He burst into the heart of a company listening to his father's talk with the exclamation:

"Ma says, come to supper!"

It was impossible for the most diplomatic to pretend that he had not heard, and all looked from the intruder to the host. Never at a loss, Mr. Lincoln rose from the sofa, and blandly said as to "married folks together":

"You have heard, gentlemen, the announcement concerning the seductive state of things in the dining-room. I had intended to train up this young man in his father's footsteps, but, if I am elected, I must forego any intention of making him a member of my Cabinet, as he manifestly cannot be trusted with secrets of the interior!"

* * * * *

ALL STAFF AND NO ARMY.

Many of the volunteer officers developed a liking for the new profession, and to secure a permanency obtained entrance into the established army. Among these was one Lieutenant Ben Tappan. Secretary Stanton being his uncle, no difficulty offered but this autocrat ought to remove, but unfortunately Stanton was a stickler for forms, and the relationship looked like nepotism to the world. Tappan particularly wished to stay on the staff on account of the privileges. His stepfather, Frank Wright, induced their congressman, Judge Shellabarger, to accompany him to the presidential mansion to obtain the boon. Lincoln was lukewarm, and told a story about the army being all staff and no strength, saying that, if one rolled a stone in front of Willard's Hotel, the military rendezvous for those officers off duty and on (dress) parade, it must knock over a brigadier or two, but suddenly wrote a paper to this novel effect:

"Lieutenant Ben Tappan, of ---, etc., desires transfer to --- Regiment, regular service, and is assigned to staff duty with present rank. If the only objection to this transfer is Lieutenant Tappan's relationship to the secretary of war, that objection is hereby overruled.

"A. LINCOLN."

This threw the responsibility upon the secretary.

* * * * *

NO MAN IS INDISPENSABLE.

One of the Cabinet ministers disagreed with the majority on a vital question, and rose with a threat to resign. One of his friends advised the chairman to do anything to recover his aid, whereupon he sagely said:

"Our secretary a national necessity?--how mistaken you are! Yet it is not strange--I used to have similar notions. No, if we should all be turned out to-morrow, and could come back here in a week, we should find our places filled by a lot of fellows doing just as well as we did, and in many instances better! It was truth that the Irishman uttered when he answered the speaker: 'Is not one man as good as another?' with 'He is, sure, and a deal betther!' No, sir, this government does not depend on the life of any man!"

* * * * *

SLEEPING ON POST CANCELS A COMMISSION.

Nobody who met Secretary Stanton--the Carnot of the war--would give him credit for joking, but Mr. Lincoln's example that way was infectious. The eldest son, Robert, was at college, but a captaincy was awaiting him when he could enter the army. So the war secretary for a pleasantry issued a mock commission to Tad, ranking him as a regular lieutenant. As long as he confined his supposed duties to arming the under servants and drilling the more or less fantastically, as well as he remembered, evolutions on the parade-grounds, where he accompanied his father, all was amusing. But he terminated his first steps in the school of "Hardee's Tactics," the standard text-book of the period, by bringing his awkward squad from the servants' hall, and, relieving the sentries, replaced the genuine with these tyros. For the sake of the vacation they, the regulars, bowed to the commission with its potent Stanton and Lincoln, and United States Army seal. His brother, startled, intervened, but the cadet vowed he would put him in "the black hole," presumably the coal-shed. The President laughed, and when he went to check the usurpation he found the little lieutenant, overpowered by his brief authority, asleep. So he removed him from the service, put aside his commission, and, when he woke to the situation, made it plain that, being a real soldier and officer, he had forfeited his title by falling asleep on post! He went then and formally discharged the sham sentinels placed by the boy's orders and replaced them by the "simon pures."

* * * * *

MY QUESTION!

A recent volume has undertaken the superfluous vindication of President Lincoln from being the mere ornamental figurehead of the republic during the Civil War. In fact, there are many instances of his incurring the reproach of interfering with the chiefs of departments, but it is testified to by a leading minister that he paid much less attention to details than was popularly supposed and invidiously asserted in the capital. He "brought up with a round turn," to use river language, both General Fremont and other military commanders who tried to steal the finishing weapon he kept in store: to wit, the emancipation of the Southern slaves. Senator Cameron, as war secretary, advised in a report that the slaves should be armed to enable them successfully to rise against their masters. The President scratched out this recommendation, which would have spiked his gun, and perverted a great statesmanlike act into a fostered insurrection, saying:

"This will never do! _Secretary_ Cameron must take no such responsibility. This question belongs exclusively to me!"

* * * * *

"IF GOOD, HE'S GOT IT! IF T'AINT GOOD, HE AIN'T GOT IT!"

A revenue cutter conveyed a presidential party from Washington to Fortress Monroe, consisting of the chief, his secretaries of war and of the treasury, and General Egbert L. Viele--who preserved this tale. On the way Secretary Stanton stated that he had telegraphed to General Mitchell in Alabama "All right--go ahead!" though he did not know what emergency was thus to meet. He wished the executive to take the responsibility in case his ignorance erred.

"I will have to get you to countermand the order." So he hinted.

"Well," exclaimed the good-humored superior, "that is very much like a certain horse-sale in Kentucky when I was a boy (Lincoln was only eight when leaving Kentucky for Indiana). A particularly fine horse was to be sold, and the people gathered together. They had a small boy to ride the horse up and down while the spectators examined it for points. At last, one man whispered to the boy as he went by:

"'Look here, boy, ain't that hoss got the splints?'

"The boy replied: 'Master, I don't know what the splints is; but, if it is good for him, he has got it! If it ain't good for him, he ain't got it!' Now," finished the adviser, "if this was good for Mitchell, it was all right; but, if it was not, I have to countermand, eh?"--(Noted by General Viele.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN GUESSED THE FIRST TIME.

Postmaster-General James reflects a dialogue between Lincoln and one of his Cabinet officers, evincing how the iron hand in the velvet glove squeezed persons into his own mold.

"Mr. President"--Secretary Stanton speaking--"I cannot carry out that order! It is improper, and I don't believe it is right."

"Well, I reckon, Mr. Secretary"--very gently--"that you will _hev_ to carry it out."

"But I won't do it--it's all wrong!"

"I guess you will hev to do it!"

He guessed right, the first time.

* * * * *

A PHANTOM CHASE.

Despite Chase's political enmity to him, President Lincoln said of Salmon Portland Chase: "I consider him one of the best, ablest, and most reliable men in the country." But he had to "let him slide" off upon the Supreme Court bench to have "knee-room" at the council-table. He explained: "He wants to be President, and, if he does not give that up, it will be a great injury to him and a great injury to me. He can never be President."--(Ex-Secretary Boutwell, the authority.)

* * * * *

THE WORD FLIES, BUT THE WRIT REMAINS.

Mr. Chase bemoaning that in leaving home he had in the hurry forgot to write a letter, Lincoln sagely consoled:

"Chase, never regret what you don't write--it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for!"--(Heard by General Viele.)

* * * * *

THE WAR-LORD.

Lincoln states that the community among whom he was brought up would have hailed him as a wizard who spoke the dead tongues; and, granting his legal studies made him familiar with Latin as lawyers use it, he carefully avoided those hurdles of the classic orator, Latin quotations. Nevertheless, we have an exception to what would have pleased Lord Byron--the poet thought we have had enough of the classics. The President, spying Secretary Stanton, of the War Department, inadvertently striking an imposing attitude in the doorway of the telegraph-office in the Executive House, without knowing the President was here, at the desk, suddenly was aroused by hearing the jocose hail:

"Good evening, _Mars_!"--(Certified by Mr. A. B. Chandler, manager of the postal telegraph, War Department.)

* * * * *

FILE IT AWAY!

Stanton, as secretary of war, was bombarded with complaints and bickerings of the officers under him; they seemed to revel in annoying one famed for being of the irritable genus. Once he showed his principal a letter written in answer to a general who had abused him and accused him of favoritism. Lincoln listened with his quizzing air, and exclaimed rapturously:

"That's first-rate, Stanton! You've scored him well! Just right!"

As the pleased writer folded up the paper for its envelope, he quickly inquired:

"Why, what are you going to do with it now?"

It was to be despatched.

"No, no, that would spoil all. File it away! that is the kind of filing which keeps it sharp--and don't wound the other fellow! File it away."

* * * * *

"WHAT WE HAVE, WE WILL GIVE YOU."

It being rumored that the paper notes, "the greenbacks," should bear a motto as the coin had, "In God We Trust," it was suggested to quote from the apostles:

"Silver and gold we have not, but what we have we will give."

It was ascribed to Mr. Lincoln from his familiarity with the Scriptures and prevalent quoting from them.

* * * * *

MORE "SHINPLASTERS" TO HEAL THE SORE.

In 1863 President Lincoln went out to condole with the beaten Unionists, whom General Hooker had led fatally against Lee at Chancellorsville. Lincoln took his little son "Tad" with him. Amid the cheering one of the soldiers plainly voiced a terrible grievance--just when the sufferers were mostly in need of necessaries, the pay was behindhand. So one cried: "Send along more 'greenbacks,' Father Abraham!"

The boy was puzzled, but his companion explained that the soldiers wanted their money due. The hearer thought this over for a moment, and then pertly said: "Why don't 'Governor' Chase print some more?"

* * * * *

"THERE IS MUCH IN AN 'IF' AND A 'BUT.'"

Mr. Tinkler, telegraph-operator of the cipher telegrams at Washington, in the Executive residence, took the despatch announcing the nomination of Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, to the vice-presidency with Lincoln for the second term. The latter read it carefully, and _thought aloud:_

"Well, I thought possibly that he might be the man; but--"

He passed out of the office, leaving the hearer impressed. Indeed, it was a prophecy of the future--poor, inebriate Andy--not the Handy Andy, but the Merry Andrew of the fag-end of the lamentably sundered second term. Charles A. Dana, editing the New York _Sun_, printed this drop-line, and said it was a proof that Lincoln had no hand in his Vice being proposed or nominated.

* * * * *

DON'T WASTE THE PLUG, BUT USE IT!

Treasurer Chase conducted the financial course of the war on the principle of each day taking care of itself; but still he resisted plans for relief not of his own conception. So he threw cold water on the Walker suggestion that the currency should bear interest with a view that holders would hoard it. Walker's aid, Taylor, of Ohio, ran to the President for a higher hearing. But, though the President now espoused the scheme, the secretary still was counter on the ground that the Constitution was against it.

"Taylor," said Lincoln, with his frankness, which resembled impiety now, "go back and tell Chase not to bother about the Constitution--I have that sacred instrument here, and am guarding it with great care!" But a personal discussion with Chase was compulsory, during which the granite man stood on the Constitution.

"Chase," finally said the decisive factor, "this reminds me of a little sea yarn.

"A little coaster on the Mediterranean was in stress of storm. The Italian seamen have their own ideas of behavior under disaster, and fell on their knees to invoke the interposition of the usual stronghold--the Madonna--of which there was a statue in wood. But, many and genuine as were the invocations, all were unanswered. The gale continued, and more and more damage was done the upper works. Whereupon in a rage the skipper ordered the image to be hurled overboard. Strange to say, almost instanter the tempest lulled, and in a short time the bark rode steadily on the pacific waters. Come to examine the leak in the side, they found the wooden effigy thrown over, sucked into it, and so plugged up the cavity. The ship was saved by the castaway notion.

"Now, we are all aboard to save the ship, by any plug [Footnote: Plug, in Western speech: any substitute, worthless otherwise; an old horse; a leaden counter, a makeshift; the plug hat, however, comes from the shape--a cylinder of tobacco being so called.] that is offered, since prayers don't seem to do it. Let us try friend Amasa Walker's proposition."

* * * * *

THE RUNNING FEVER.

"There is a malady of vulnerable heels--a species of running fever--which operates on sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the song did on its owner. When he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. A witty Irish soldier always boasting of his bravery when no danger was nigh, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied:

"'Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my _cowardly_ legs will run away with me.'"--(Debate, Lincoln: Springfield, Illinois, December, 1839.)

* * * * *

"ONE AND A HALF TIMES BIGGER THAN OTHER MEN!"

Most conspicuous among the host of seeming friends consistently and constantly plotting against their chief to replace him if not actually displace him, was Salmon P. Chase. His whole career was that of the office-seeker incarnate. School-teacher, lawyer, governor of his State of adoption, Ohio--for he was a New Hampshire man--he tried from 1856 all parties to nominate him for the Presidency, at all openings. His inability to inspire trust forbade his having a personal following of any strength. Lincoln easily saw through him, but he had a fellow-feeling for an indubitably honest treasurer. To think of the countless opportunities he had to enrich himself out of the public coffers! Like another incorruptible statesman, he might have said: "I wonder at my qualms when I had but to stretch out my hand to pocket thousands!" But he truthfully said, when a hack impudently hinted that he could have the nomination dearest to his heart if he would but use to his private ends the vast patronage at his command:

"I should despise myself if capable of appointing or removing a man for the sake of the Presidency."

In February, 1861, the Peace Congress (Massachusetts) delegation called on the President to recommend Salmon P. Chase for the Treasury Department. Lincoln was already favorable, for he said:

"From what I know and hear, I think Mr. Chase is about a hundred and fifty to any other man's hundred for that place."

This is why Lincoln, when compelled to remove the underminer, solaced him with the bed to fall upon of the Supreme Court judgeship. He said of him: "Chase is about one and a half times bigger than any one I ever knew."

* * * * *

SO SLOW, A HEARSE RAN OVER HIM!

By treachery of those in charge of our navy-yards, arsenals, and treasury, the South began the bloody strife better provided than the simple North. But adverse fate seemed bent on keeping the disparity for long in favor of the weaker contestant. By one of those wicked dispensations tripping up our early march, the secretary of the navy was selected in Gideon Welles, an estimable gentleman in person, but wofully unsuited to the berth, if from age alone. Patriarchal in appearance, with a long face and longer beard, white and sere, it became proverbial without appearing much of a far-fetched joke that he was the naval constructor to Noah of Ark-aic fame. Unfortunately his "set" were antiques as well. Yet Lincoln clung to him--or he clung to the President like the Old Man of the Sea--under which aspect he was presented by the caricaturists. One day, however, said the gossips of the White House, Mr. Lincoln dropped the newspaper in reading, and exclaimed:

"Listen!" said he to his secretary, "a man has been _run over by a hearse_! As I saw Welles not so long ago, it must be one of _Gideon's_ Band!"

A song entitled "Gideon's Band," introduced by the negro minstrels in New York, was popular on the streets and in the camps.

* * * * *

BLOOD-SHEDDING REMITS SINS.

Judge Kellogg, having an application for condoning a death sentence against a soldier, urged that he had served well hitherto, having been badly wounded under fire.

"Kellogg," remarked Lincoln quickly, "is there not something in the Bible about the shedding of blood for the remission of sins?"

As the judge was not familiar with ecclesiastical law, he merely bowed. In fact, the blood-offerings of the ancients was of animals, and it was deemed profane to offer one's own. Still, the offering of blood is dedication to a friend or the country. Lincoln had _the idea_ correctly.

"That's a good point," he brightly said, "and there is no going behind it!"

So saying, he wrote the pardon, which Kellogg transmitted to the gladdened father of the culprit.

Mr. Lincoln had no need to go back to Scripture for his defense. It is martial law, unwritten but valid, that if a delinquent soldier, fugitive from justice, or breaking prison, reaches the battle-field and takes his place gallantly, no more would be said about the hanging charge, even though it were literally a hanging one.

* * * * *

HIS "LEG CASES."

The judge advocate-general, Holt, as well as the military chiefs, were in despair at their superior trifling with the laws of war by suspending mortal decrees, and, in short, in hunting up excuses for delaying the blow of justice. Once the judge brought to the President a case so flagrant that he did not doubt that, for a rarity, the chief would sign without any cavil and hesitation. A soldier had demoralized his regiment in the nick of a battle by dashing down his rifle and hiding behind a tree. He had not a friend or relative to sue for him. Despite all this, the Executive laid down the pen quivering between his long fingers, and said:

"Holt, I think I must, after all, file this away with my 'Leg Cases.'" And thrust the paper in one of a series of pigeonholes already crammed with the like.

The judge was taken off his guard by the inconsistent levity, and demanded the meaning of the term with acerbity.

"Holt, were you ever in battle?" he counter queried.

The man of law was a man of peace; he had seen lead, but in seals, not bullets.

Secretary of War Stanton was spurring the military justice on, as often before.

"Did Stanton ever march in the first line, to be shot at like this man?"

Holt answered for his colleague in the negative.

"Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk War!" proceeded the Illinoisian, "and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the legs when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I should sink to the ground. I am opposed to having soldiers shot for not facing danger when it is not known that their legs would carry them into danger! Well, judge, you see the papers crowded in there? You call them cases of 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy,' a long title, but I call them my 'Leg Cases,' for short!--and I put it to you, Holt, and leave it to you to decide for yourself, if Almighty God gives a man a _cowardly pair of legs,_ how can he help them running away with him?"

* * * * *

HOW THE DELINQUENT SOLDIER PAID HIS DEBT.

There is a great similarity in the many stories of Lincoln's leniency to soldiers incurring the death-penalty according to the code of war, and no wonder, when they were so numerous that he often had four-and-twenty sentences to sign or ignore in a day.

A member of a Vermont regiment was so sentenced for sleeping at his post. The more than usual intercession made for him induced Lincoln to visit the culprit in his cell. He found him a simple country lad, impressing him as a reminder of himself at that age. In the like plain and rustic vein he discoursed with him.

"I have been put to a deal of bother on your account, Scott," he said paternally. "What I want to know is how are you going to pay _my_ bill?"

From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so the young man responded:

"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up--if it isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?"

With the same gravity, the intermediator reckoned the cost would be more.

"My son," said he, "the bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay it--nor your comrades, nor the farm, nor the pay! If from this day William Scott does his duty so that, if I were there when he came to die, he could look me in the face as now and say: 'I have kept my promise and have done my duty as a soldier,' then _my_ debt will be paid."

The boy made the promise, and was immediately restored to the regiment. He earned promotion, but refused it. At Lee's Mills, on the Warwick River, he was wounded while distinguishing himself in a grand assault. Mortally wounded in saving three lives, he was enabled with his dying breath to send a message to the President to the effect that he had redeemed his pledge. On his breast was found one of the likenesses of Lincoln with the motto, "God bless our President!" which the Grand Army men were given. He thanked the benefactor for having let him fall like a soldier, in battle, and not like a coward, by his comrades' rifles.

* * * * *

"THE SWEARING HAD TO BE DONE THEN, OR NOT AT ALL!"

An old man came from Tennessee to beg the life of his son, death-doomed under the military code. General Fiske procured him admittance to the President, who took the petition and promised to attend to the matter. But the applicant, in anguish, insisted that a life was at stake--that to-morrow would not do, and that the decision must be made on the instant.

Lincoln assumed his mollifying air, and in a soothing tone brought out his universal soothing-sirup, the little story:

"It was General Fiske, who introduced you, who told me this. The general began his career as a colonel, and raised his regiment in Missouri. Having good principles, he made the boys promise then not to be profane, but let him do all the swearing for the regiment. For months no violation of the agreement was reported. But one day a teamster, with the foul tongue associated with their calling and mule-driving, as he drove his team through a longer and deeper series of mud-puddles than ever before, unable to restrain himself, turned himself inside out as a vocal Vesuvius. It happened, too, that this torrent was heard surging by the colonel, who called him to account.

"'Well, yes, colonel,' he acknowledged, 'I did vow to let you do all the swearing of the regiment; but the cold fact is, that the swearing _had_ to be done thar and then, or not at all, to do the 'casion justice--and you were not thar!'

"Now," summed up Mr. Lincoln to the engrossed and semiconsoled parent, "I may not be there, so do you take this and do the swearing him off!"

He furnished him with the release autograph, and sent another mourner on his way rejoicing.

* * * * *

DISPLACE THE THISTLES BY FLOWERS.

Two ladies called upon the President at the end of 1864, one the wife, the other the mother of western Pennsylvanians imprisoned for resisting the military draft. A number of other men were fellows in their durance on precisely the same grounds. Finding it meet to grant this dual relief sought, Lincoln directed the whole to be liberated, and signed the paper with one signature to cover the entire act of humanity. His old friend, Speed, was witness of this scene, and, knowing only too well the sensitive nature of the President, he spoke his wonder that such ordeals were not killing.

Lincoln mused, and agreed that such scenes were not to be wantonly undergone.

"But they do not hurt me. That is the only thing today to make me forget my condition, or give me any pleasure"--he was unwell, then; his feet and hands were always cold, and often when about he ought to have been abed. "I have in that order made two persons happy, and alleviated the distress of many a poor soul whom I never expect to see. It is more than one can often say that, in doing right, one has made two happy in one day. Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow."--(Vouched for by Joshua R. Speed, the first to be friend to Lincoln when he set out to become a lawyer, at Springfield, in 1837.)

* * * * *

"YOU HAVE ONE, AND I HAVE ONE--THAT IS RIGHT!"

An elderly woman was among the suitors of the President, when the commander-in-chief by virtue of office was besought to release her eldest son of three, her husband and two younger sons having been slain in action.

"Certainly," returned the chief, "if you have given us all, and your prop has been taken away, you are justly entitled to one of your boys."

The woman took the discharge, and gratefully went away. But she was compelled to return more grieved than before, as she had found the son she sought dying in a hospital at the front. The surgeon made a note of the fatality, with which, unable to speak, she presented herself to the President. He knew what she wished this time, and proceeded to write out the release of the second son. On handing her the paper, he said--a new judgment of a kinder judge than Solomon:

"Now, you have one, and I the other of the two left; that is no more than right!"

* * * * *

"SHOOTING A MAN DOES HIM NO GOOD!"

Judge Kellogg, of New York, begged off the son of a voter in his district, condemned for military infraction; in fact, the judge did not know much of the case, but his insistence prevailed over the rectifier of the law and articles of war. Lincoln dryly remarked, as he appended his signature to the pardon:

"I do not believe that shooting a man does him any good!"

* * * * *

BENEVOLENCE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Thaddeus Stevens accompanied a lady of his constituents to beg a pardon of the President, her son being under death sentence of a court-martial. The senator backing up the petition, it was granted. The grateful woman was choking, and was led away by her escort, without speaking in thankfulness. But at the exit she found her voice, and burst forth feelingly:

"Mr. Stevens, they told me that the President was homely looking! It is a lie! He is the handsomest man I ever saw!"

* * * * *

"IT WAS THE BABY THAT DID IT."

A young mother came to Washington to sue for the life of her husband, a deserter, condemned to die. Such was the crowd of besiegers for grace, offices, and simple greeting by the host of the White House that she was kept out in the hall. But one day, the master passing through the corridor "to hold the show," heard a baby's pitiful wail. He halted, listened again to make sure, and on entering his reception-parlor asked his favorite usher if he had not heard that odd thing--there--an infant's cry.

The attendant promptly related that a woman with a babe was without, who had been losing her time three days.

"Go at once, and send her to me," he ordered, expressing regret that she should have been overlooked.

As there were several extenuating points in her plea, or the benign official leaned that way, he wrote his pardon and gave it to the woman, whose still plaintive smile shone through tears of gratitude.

"Take that, my poor woman, and it will bring you back your husband," he said, going so far as to direct her to what authority to apply for the action.

In showing her forth, the old usher, who knew his employer's tender heart where children were concerned, whispered:

"It was the baby that did it!"--(Told by "Old Dan'el," the good-natured Irish usher.)

* * * * *

"IT RESTS ME TO SAVE A LIFE!"

Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House, pleaded with Lincoln for the life of an elector's son, sentenced to be shot. Though he intruded on the arbiter very late after a long spell of official duties, Lincoln accorded the boon.

"Colfax," explained he, "it makes me rested after a hard day's work, if I can find some good excuse for saving a man's life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him, and his family, and his friends."

* * * * *

"A FAMILY MAN WANTS TO SEE HIS FAMILY."

Superintendent Tinker, of the Western Union Telegraph Company, vouches for the following:

A woman came to the Honorable Francis Kernan, member of Congress, with a pitiful tale, with which he went to the President. Her husband was a soldier who had been away from home a year. He deserted in order to have a glance at the family, and was captured on his way back to the front. But the rules of war are imperative, and without compassion. The President was interested, as in all such cases where a deserving life and a sorrowing woman were at stake. He said:

"Of course, this man wanted to see his family! They ought not to shoot him for that!" He telegraphed for action in the matter to cease, and finally pardoned the deserter.

"A fellow-feeling"--for all his thoughts reverted to _his_ family life at Springfield.

* * * * *

A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation, issued in December, 1863, exemplifies the perpetual attempt to infuse mercy into that intestine warfare, which always grows more fierce by oil thrown on the flames, and only once, in our case, terminated in the brothers becoming brothers again. He replied thus to a public criticizer of the document:

"When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there is no exception to the rule."

* * * * *

EVEN REBELS MIGHT BE SAVED.

A Mr. Shrigley, of Philadelphia, having been appointed hospital chaplain, the President sent in his name to the Senate, and his confirmation was imminent. A deputation came on to protest on the grounds that he was a Universalist, a large-minded man, who did not believe in endless punishment. Logically, he believed that "even the rebels will be saved," concluded the opposition, horrified.

"Well, gentlemen," determined the President gravely, "if that be so, and there is any way under heaven whereby the rebels can be saved, then, for God's sake and for their sakes, let the man be appointed."

* * * * *

WHIPPING AROUND THE STUMP.