Chapter XXVI

He hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in
his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels,
trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking
off.--MACBETH.

[Sidenote: REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.]

The assassination of President Lincoln, while these chapters are in press, attaches a sad interest to everything connected with his memory.

During the great canvass for the United States Senate, between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas, the right of Congress to exclude Slavery from the Territories was the chief point in dispute. Kansas was the only region to which it had any practical application; and we, who were residing there, read the debates with peculiar interest.

No such war of intellects, on the rostrum, was ever witnessed in America. Entirely without general culture, more ignorant of books than any other public man of his day, Douglas was christened "the Little Giant" by the unerring popular instinct. He who, without the learning of the schools, and without preparation, could cope with Webster, Seward, and Sumner, surely deserved that appellation. He despised study. Rising after one of Mr. Sumner's most scholarly and elaborate speeches, he said: "Mr. President, this is very elegant and able, but we all know perfectly well that the Massachusetts Senator has been rehearsing it every night for a month, before a looking-glass, with a negro holding a candle!"

[Sidenote: HIS GREAT CANVASS WITH DOUGLAS.]

Douglas was, beyond all cotemporaries, a man of the people. Lincoln, too, was distinctively of the masses; but he represented their sober, second thought, their higher aspirations, their better possibilities. Douglas embodied their average impulses, both good and bad. Upon the stump, his fluency, his hard common sense, and his wonderful voice, which could thunder like the cataract, or whisper with the breeze, enabled him to sway them at his will.

Hitherto invincible at home, he now found a foeman worthy of his steel. All over the country people began to ask about this "Honest Abe Lincoln," whose inexhaustible anecdotes were so droll, yet so exactly to the point; whose logic was so irresistible; whose modesty, fairness, and personal integrity, won golden opinions from his political enemies; who, without "trimming," enjoyed the support of the many-headed Opposition in Illinois, from the Abolition Owen Lovejoys of the northern counties, down to the "conservative" old Whigs of the Egyptian districts, who still believed in the divinity of Slavery.

Those who did not witness it will never comprehend the universal and intense horror at every thing looking toward "negro equality" which then prevailed in southern Illinois. Republican politicians succumbed to it. In their journals and platforms they sometimes said distinctly: "We care nothing for the negro. We advocate his exclusion from our State. We oppose Slavery in the Territories only because it is a curse to the white man." Mr. Lincoln never descended to this level. In his plain, moderate, conciliatory way, he would urge upon his simple auditors that this matter had a Right and a Wrong--that the great Declaration of their fathers meant something. And--always his strong point--he would put this so clearly to the common apprehension, and so touch the people's moral sense, that his opponents found their old cries of "Abolitionist" and "Negro-worshiper" hollow and powerless.

His defeat, by a very slight majority, proved victory in disguise. The debates gave him a National reputation. Republican executive committees in other States issued verbatim reports of the speeches of both Douglas and Lincoln, bound up together in the order of their delivery. They printed them just as they stood, without one word of comment, as the most convincing plea for their cause. Rarely, if ever, has any man received so high a compliment as was thus paid to Mr. Lincoln.

[Sidenote: HIS VISIT TO KANSAS.]

In Kansas his stories began to stick like chestnut-burrs in the popular ear--to pass from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The young lawyers, physicians, and other politicians who swarm in the new country, began to quote from his arguments in their public speeches, and to regard him as the special champion of their political faith.

Late in the Autumn of 1859 he visited the Territory for the first and last time. With Marcus J. Parrott, Delegate in Congress, A. Carter Wilder, afterward Representative, and Henry Villard, a Journalist, I went to Troy, in Doniphan County, to hear him. In the imaginative language of the frontier, Troy was a "town"--possibly a city. But, save a shabby frame court-house, a tavern, and a few shanties, its urban glories were visible only to the eye of faith. It was intensely cold. The sweeping prairie wind rocked the crazy buildings, and cut the faces of travelers like a knife. Mr. Wilder froze his hand during our ride, and Mr. Lincoln's party arrived wrapped in buffalo-robes.

[Sidenote: HIS MANNER OF PUBLIC SPEAKING.]

Not more than forty people assembled in that little, bare-walled court-house. There was none of the magnetism of a multitude to inspire the long, angular, ungainly orator, who rose up behind a rough table. With little gesticulation, and that little ungraceful, he began, not to declaim, but to talk. In a conversational tone, he argued the question of Slavery in the Territories, in the language of an average Ohio or New York farmer. I thought, "If the Illinoisans consider this a great man, their ideas must be very peculiar."

But in ten or fifteen minutes I was unconsciously and irresistibly drawn by the clearness and closeness of his argument. Link after link it was forged and welded like a blacksmith's chain. He made few assertions, but merely asked questions: "Is not this true? If you admit that fact, is not this induction correct?" Give him his premises, and his conclusions were inevitable as death.

His fairness and candor were very noticeable. He ridiculed nothing, burlesqued nothing, misrepresented nothing. So far from distorting the views held by Mr. Douglas and his adherents, he stated them with more strength probably than any one of their advocates could have done. Then, very modestly and courteously, he inquired into their soundness. He was too kind for bitterness, and too great for vituperation.

His anecdotes, of course, were felicitous and illustrative. He delineated the tortuous windings of the Democracy upon the Slavery question, from Thomas Jefferson down to Franklin Pierce. Whenever he heard a man avow his determination to adhere unswervingly to the principles of the Democratic party, it reminded him, he said, of a "little incident" in Illinois. A lad, plowing upon the prairie, asked his father in what direction he should strike a new furrow. The parent replied, "Steer for that yoke of oxen standing at the further end of the field." The father went away, and the lad obeyed. But just as he started, the oxen started also. He kept steering for them; and they continued to walk. He followed them entirely around the field, and came back to the starting-point, having furrowed a circle instead of a line!

[Sidenote: HIGH PRAISE FROM AN OPPONENT.]

The address lasted for an hour and three-quarters. Neither rhetorical, graceful, nor eloquent, it was still very fascinating. The people of the frontier believe profoundly in fair play, and in hearing both sides. So they now called for an aged ex-Kentuckian, who was the heaviest slaveholder in the Territory. Responding, he thus prefaced his remarks:--

"I have heard, during my life, all the ablest public speakers--all the eminent statesmen of the past and the present generation. And while I dissent utterly from the doctrines of this address, and shall endeavor to refute some of them, candor compels me to say that it is the most able and the most logical speech I ever listened to."

I have alluded in earlier pages, to remarks touching the reports that Mr. Lincoln would be assassinated, which I heard in the South, on the day of his first inauguration. Afterward, in my presence, several persons of the wealthy, slaveholding class, alluded to the subject, some having laid wagers upon the event. I heard but one man condemn the proposed assassination, and he was a Unionist. Again and again, leading journals, which were called reputable, asked: "Is there no Brutus to rid the world of this tyrant?" Rewards were openly proposed for the President's head. If Mr. Lincoln had then been murdered in Baltimore, every thorough Secession journal in the South would have expressed its approval, directly or indirectly. Of course, I do not believe that the masses, or all Secessionists, would have desired such a stain upon the American name; but even then, as afterward, when they murdered our captured soldiers, and starved, froze, and shot our prisoners, the men who led and controlled the Rebels appeared deaf to humanity and to decency. Charity would fain call them insane; but there was too much method in their madness.

[Sidenote: A DEED WITHOUT A NAME.]

Their last, great crime of all was, perhaps, needed for an eternal monument of the influence of Slavery. It was fitting that they who murdered Lovejoy, who crimsoned the robes of young Kansas, who aimed their gigantic Treason at the heart of the Republic, before the curtain went down, should crown their infamy by this deed without a name. It was fitting that they should seek the lives of President Lincoln, General Grant, and Secretary Seward, the three officers most conspicuous of all for their mildness and clemency. It was fitting they should assassinate a Chief Magistrate, so conscientious, that his heavy responsibility weighed him down like a millstone; so pure, that partisan rancor found no stain upon the hem of his garment; so gentle, that e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side; so merciful, that he stood like an averting angel between them and the Nation's vengeance.

The Rebel newspapers represented him--a man who used neither spirits nor tobacco--as in a state of constant intoxication. They ransacked the language for epithets. Their chief hatred was called out by his origin. He illustrated the Democratic Idea, which was inconceivably repugnant to them. That a man who sprang from the people, worked with his hands, actually split rails in boyhood, should rise to the head of a Government which included Southern gentlemen, was bitter beyond description!

[Sidenote: SHERMAN'S QUARREL WITH THE PRESS.]

On the 28th of December, 1862, Sherman fought the battle of Chickasaw Bayou, one of our first fruitless attempts to capture Vicksburg. Grant designed to co-operate by an attack from the rear, but his long supply-line extended to Columbus, Kentucky, though he might have established a nearer base at Memphis. Van Dorn cut his communications at Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Grant was compelled to fall back.

Sherman's attack proved a serious disaster. Our forces were flung upon an almost impregnable bluff, where we lost about two thousand five hundred men, and were then compelled to retreat.

In the old quarrel between Sherman and the Press, as usual, there was blame upon both sides. Some of the correspondents had treated him unjustly; and he had not learned the quiet patience and faith in the future which Grant exhibited under similar circumstances. At times he manifested much irritation and morbid sensitiveness.

[Sidenote: AN ARMY CORRESPONDENT COURT-MARTIALED.]

A well-known correspondent, Mr. Thomas W. Knox, was present at the battle, and placed his report of it, duly sealed, and addressed to a private citizen, in the military mail at Sherman's head-quarters. One "Colonel" A. H. Markland, of Kentucky, United States Postal Agent, on mere surmise about its contents, took the letter from the mail and permitted it to be opened. He insisted afterward that he did this by Sherman's express command. Sherman denied giving any such order, but said he was satisfied with Markland's course.

Markland should have been arrested for robbing the Government mails, which he was sworn to protect. There was no reasonable pretext for asserting that the letter would give information to the enemy; therefore it did not imperil the public interest. If General Sherman deemed it unjust to himself individually, he had his remedy, like any other citizen or soldier, in the courts of the country and the justice of the people.

The purloined dispatch was left for four or five days lying about Sherman's head-quarters, open to the inspection of officers. Finally, upon Knox's written request, it was returned to him, though a map which it contained was kept--as he rather pungently suggested, probably for the information of the military authorities!

Knox's letter had treated the generalship of the battle very tenderly. But after this proceeding he immediately forwarded a second account, which expressed his views on the subject in very plain English. Its return in print caused great excitement at head-quarters. Knox was arrested, and tried before a military tribunal on these charges:--

I. Giving information to the enemy.

II. Being a spy.

III. Violating the fifty-seventh Article of War, which forbids the writing of letters for publication from any United States army without submitting them to the commanding general for approval.

The court-martial sat for fifteen days. It acquitted Knox upon the first and second charges. Of course, he was found guilty of the third. After some hesitation between sentencing him to receive a written censure, or to leave Grant's department, the latter was decided upon, and he was banished from the army lines.

When information of this proceeding reached Washington, the members of the press at once united in a memorial to the President, asking him to set aside the sentence, inasmuch as the violated Article of War was altogether obsolete, and the practice of sending newspaper letters, without any official scrutiny, had been universal, with the full sanction of the Government, from the outset of the Rebellion. It was further represented that Mr. Knox was thoroughly loyal, and the most scrupulously careful of all the army correspondents to write nothing which, by any possibility, could give information to the enemy. Colonel John W. Forney headed the memorial, and all the journalists in Washington signed it.

[Sidenote: A VISIT TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]

One evening, with Mr. James M. Winchell, of _The New York Times,_ and Mr. H. P. Bennett, Congressional Delegate from Colorado, I called upon the President to present the paper.

After General Sigel and Representative John B. Steele had left, he chanced to be quite at liberty. Upon my introduction, he remarked:--

"Oh, yes, I remember you perfectly well: you were out on the prairies with me on that winter day when we almost froze to death; you were then correspondent of _The Boston Journal_. That German from Leavenworth was also with us--what was his name?"

[Sidenote: TWO "LITTLE STORIES."]

"Hatterscheit?" I suggested. "Yes, Hatterscheit! By-the-way" (motioning us to seats, and settling down into his chair, with one leg thrown over the arm), "that reminds me of a little story, which Hatterscheit told me during the trip. He bought a pony of an Indian, who could not speak much English, but who, when the bargain was completed, said: 'Oats--no! Hay--no! Corn--no! Cottonwood--yes! very much!' Hatterscheit thought this was mere drunken maundering; but a few nights after, he tied his horse in a stable built of cottonwood logs, fed him with hay and corn, and went quietly to bed. The next morning he found the grain and fodder untouched, but the barn was quite empty, with a great hole on one side, which the pony had gnawed his way through! Then he comprehended the old Indian's fragmentary English."

This suggested another reminiscence of the same Western trip. Somewhere in Nebraska the party came to a little creek, the Indian name of which signified weeping water. Mr. Lincoln remarked, with a good deal of aptness, that, as laughing water, according to Longfellow, was "Minne-haha," the name of this rivulet should evidently be "Minne-boohoo."

These inevitable preliminaries ended, we presented the memorial asking the President to interpose in behalf of Mr. Knox. He promptly answered he would do so if Grant coincided. We reminded him that this was improbable, as Sherman and Grant were close personal friends. After a moment's hesitancy he replied, with courtesy, but with emphasis:--

"I should be glad to serve you or Mr. Knox, or any other loyal journalist. But, just at present, our generals in the field are more important to the country than any of the rest of us, or all the rest of us. It is my fixed determination to do nothing whatever which can possibly embarrass any one of them. Therefore, I will do cheerfully what I have said, but it is all I can do."

There was too much irresistible good sense in this to permit any further discussion. The President took up his pen and wrote, reflecting a moment from time to time, the following:--

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, _March 20, 1863_.

_Whom it may concern_:

_Whereas_, It appears to my satisfaction that Thomas W.
Knox, a correspondent of _The New York Herald_, has been,
by the sentence of a court-martial, excluded from the
military department under command of Major-General Grant,
and also that General Thayer, president of the court-martial
which rendered the sentence, and Major-General McClernand,
in command of a corps of the department, and many other
respectable persons, are of the opinion that Mr. Knox's
offense was technical, rather than wilfully wrong, and that
the sentence should be revoked; Now, therefore, said sentence
is hereby so far revoked as to allow Mr. Knox to return to
General Grant's head-quarters, and to remain if General
Grant shall give his express assent, and to again leave the
department, if General Grant shall refuse such assent.

A. LINCOLN.

Reading it over carefully, he handed it to me, and gave a little sigh of relief. General conversation ensued. Despondent and weighed down with his load of care, he sought relief in frank speaking. He said, with great earnestness: "God knows that I want to do what is wise and right, but sometimes it is very difficult to determine."

[Sidenote: MR. LINCOLN'S FAMILIAR CONVERSATION.]

He conversed freely of military affairs, but suddenly remarked: "I am talking again! Of course, you will remember that I speak to you only as friends; that none of this must be put in print."

Touching an attack upon Charleston which had long been contemplated, he said that Du Pont had promised, some weeks before, if certain supplies were furnished, to make the assault upon a given day. The supplies were promptly forwarded; the day came and went without any intelligence. Some time after, he sent an officer to Washington, asking for three more iron-clads and a large quantity of deck-plating as indispensable to the preparations.

"I told the officer to say to Commodore Du Pont," observed Mr. Lincoln, "that I fear he does not appreciate at all the value of time."

[Sidenote: OPINIONS ABOUT MCCLELLAN AND VICKSBURG.]

The Army of the Potomac was next spoken of. The great Fredericksburg disaster was recent, and the public heart was heavy. In regard to General McClellan, the President spoke with discriminating justice:--

"I do not, as some do, regard McClellan either as a traitor or an officer without capacity. He sometimes has bad counselors, but he is loyal, and he has some fine military qualities. I adhered to him after nearly all my Constitutional advisers lost faith in him. But do you want to know when I gave him up? It was after the battle of Antietam. The Blue Ridge was then between our army and Lee's. We enjoyed the great advantage over them which they usually had over us: we had the short line, and they the long one, to the Rebel Capital. I directed McClellan peremptorily to move on Richmond. It was eleven days before he crossed his first man over the Potomac; it was eleven days after that before he crossed the last man. Thus he was twenty-two days in passing the river at a much easier and more practicable ford than that where Lee crossed his entire army between dark one night and daylight the next morning. That was the last grain of sand which broke the camel's back. I relieved McClellan at once. As for Hooker, I have told _him_ forty times that I fear he may err just as much one way as McClellan does the other--may be as over-daring as McClellan is over-cautious."

We inquired about the progress of the Vicksburg campaign. Our armies were on a long expedition up the Yazoo River, designing, by digging canals and threading bayous, to get in the rear of the city and cut off its supplies. Mr. Lincoln said:--

"Of course, men who are in command and on the spot, know a great deal more than I do. But immediately in front of Vicksburg, where the river is a mile wide, the Rebels plant batteries, which absolutely stop our entire fleets. Therefore it does seem to me that upon narrow streams like the Yazoo, Yallabusha, and Tallahatchie, not wide enough for a long boat to turn around in, if any of our steamers which go there ever come back, there must be some mistake about it. If the enemy permits them to survive, it must be either through lack of enterprise or lack of sense."

A few months later, Mr. Lincoln was able to announce to the nation: "The Father of Waters again flows unvexed to the sea."

Our interview left no grotesque recollections of the President's lounging, his huge hands and feet, great mouth, or angular features. We remembered rather the ineffable tenderness which shone through his gentle eyes, his childlike ingenuousness, his utter integrity, and his absorbing love of country.

[Sidenote: OUR BEST CONTRIBUTION TO HISTORY.]

Ignorant of etiquette and conventionalities, without the graces of form or of manner, his great reluctance to give pain, his beautiful regard for the feelings of others, made him

"Worthy to bear without reproach The grand old name of
Gentleman."

Strong without symmetry, humorous without levity, religious without cant--tender, merciful, forgiving, a profound believer in Divine love, an earnest worker for human brotherhood--Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the best contribution which America has made to History.

His origin among humble laborers, his native judgment, better than the wisdom of the schools, his perfect integrity, his very ruggedness and angularities, made him fit representative of the young Nation which loved and honored him.

[Sidenote: A NOBLE LIFE AND HAPPY DEATH.]

No more shall sound above our tumultuous rejoicing his wise caution, "Let us be very sober." No more shall breathe through the passions of the hour his tender pleading that judgment may be tempered with mercy. His work is done. Nothing could have assured and enlarged his posthumous fame like this tragic ending. He goes to a place in History where his peers will be very few. The poor wretch who struck the blow has gone to be judged by infinite Justice, and also by infinite Mercy. So have many others indirectly responsible for the murder, and directly responsible for the war. Let us remember them in no Pharisaic spirit, thanking God that we are not as other men--but as warnings of what a race with many generous and manly traits may become by being guilty of injustice and oppression.

Some of the President's last expressions were words of mercy for his enemies. A few hours before his death, in a long interview with his trusted and honored friend Schuyler Colfax, he stated that he wished to give the Rebel leaders an opportunity to leave the country and escape the vengeance which seemed to await them here.

America is never likely to feel again the profound, universal grief which followed the death of Abraham Lincoln. Even the streets of her great Metropolis "forgot to roar." Hung were the heavens in black. For miles, every house was draped in mourning. The least feeling was manifested by that sham aristocracy, which had the least sympathy with the Union cause and with the Democratic Idea. The deepest was displayed by the "plain people" and the poor.

What death is happier than thus to be wept by the lowly and oppressed, as a friend and protector! What life is nobler than thus to be filled, in his own golden words, "with charity for all, with malice toward none!"