own 
 stories 
 
 The best stories told 
 by and about Lincoln 
 by ANTHONY GROSS
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
 1
 
 ANTHONY GROSS 
 
 LINCOLN'S 
 OWN STORIES 
 
 *ER|65 
 
 
 trO ^"^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC. 
 GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIGHT, I9I2, BY HARPER & BROTHERS. ALL 
 RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
 
 'i iJ. I Lie J LifOCOLM 
 
 V AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 O TO MY BROTHER 
 
 51 SYDNEY 
 
 ft
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PABX PAGE 
 
 Introduction v 
 
 I. Earlier Years I 
 
 IL The Lawyer 13 
 
 III. Local Politics and the Douglas De- 
 
 bates ...... 45 
 
 IV. At the White House 67 
 
 V. At the Front 135 
 
 VI. The Commander-in-Chief 159
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 FOR many years the editor has collected and 
 studied the literature relating to Abraham 
 Lincoln, and his interest has led to the prepara- 
 tion of a book which he has endeavored to make 
 both authentic and significant. His purpose has 
 been to select stories which embody truth and 
 point, and to arrange them, as far as possible, 
 consecutively, so that they may furnish con- 
 tinuous illustrations of the various stages of 
 Lincoln's wonderful career. Various dubious and 
 often maudlin tales which have been attributed 
 to Lincoln have been omitted. While it would 
 be impossible to claim that any collection is ab- 
 solutely comprehensive, yet it is believed that 
 the best and the essential Lincoln stories are 
 assembled here in a manner which will serve as 
 an outline biography in story form. 
 
 In connection with this plan the bare facts of 
 Lincoln's life may be restated helpfully. His 
 parents, born in Virginia, followed the westward 
 
 V
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 movement across the Alleghanies to Kentucky, 
 where Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin 
 County on February 12, 1809. Afterward the 
 family continued westward to Indiana. His 
 education, acquired almost entirely by himself, 
 included hardly more than a year at a regular 
 school. His was the working boyhood of the 
 frontier. At nineteen he helped to take a flat- 
 boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and 
 the fidelity of his service caused his employer to 
 make him a clerk and to give him charge of a 
 store at New Salem, lUinois. In 1832 the force 
 of Lincoln's personality led to his election as 
 captain of a company raised for the Black Hawk 
 War. Next came his appointment as post- 
 master at New Salem, his study of law, and his 
 admission, in 1836, to the practice of law, which 
 he began at Springfield, IHinois. Law almost 
 inevitably involved politics, and Lincoln's grow- 
 ing success as a lawyer was accompanied by 
 recognition as a locally conspicuous figure in the 
 Whig party. There followed, naturall}^, various 
 elections to the Legislature, and finally, in 1847, 
 his election to Congress, where he emphasized 
 his antagonism to slavery. His selection as a 
 candidate for the Senate of the United States, 
 in 1858, led to the historic debates with Stephen 
 A. Douglas. Lincoln obtained the popular vote, 
 
 vi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 but the Legislature elected Douglas. Yet the 
 real outcome was a national prominence which 
 brought him the Republican nomination for the 
 Presidency over William H. Seward, in i860, 
 and his election. So far as possible Lincoln's 
 great career as President has been divided into 
 three parts which afford stories of the civil side 
 of his administration, stories of his visits to the 
 front, and stories relating peculiarly to the events 
 of the war. Obviously the line cannot be drawn 
 sharply; but the general plan will, it is believed, 
 be found convenient as affording illuminating 
 suggestions regarding the various phases of the 
 momentous period from Lincoln's first election 
 to his death, April 15, 1865. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a man of steel nerves, 
 clear mental grasp, stanch convictions, and 
 adamantine will, though withal a man of the 
 gentlest and kindliest character; and his for- 
 bearance and patience were almost infinite. He 
 was the genius of common sense. His steps 
 forward were always well timed, and some one 
 said that he was never oppressed with that curse 
 of genius, the self-consciousness of petty things. 
 He had the faculty of picking out the essentials 
 of a question and allowing the non-essentials 
 to take care of themselves. 
 
 His stories illustrate these characteristics to a 
 
 vli
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 marked degree. They were told for a purpose. 
 He was not a professional story-teller. That is, 
 he did not tell stories for the sake of exploiting 
 his humor. He told them as they were called 
 into being by events; sometimes to illumine an 
 argument or to controvert one; very often to 
 conceal his purposes or to throw some persistent 
 inquirer off the trail; at times to let down an 
 ardent office-seeker gently. But he was a man 
 of infinite jest in the most human sense, and if 
 this modest compilation serves to accentuate 
 his kindliness and patience, his tactfulness and 
 sagacity, his great patriotism and wisdom, his 
 unselfish devotion to the highest ideals, it will 
 help to a closer understanding of one of the 
 great characters of the world's unfolding drama. 
 My thanks are due to the many lovers and 
 biographers of Lincoln, to authors of standard 
 books, and to various chroniclers, from whom 
 these stories have been gathered.
 
 Part I 
 
 EARLIER YEARS
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 WHEN the Lincoln family moved from Indi- 
 ana to Illinois in the spring of 1830 they 
 had, among their few possessions, a small pet dog. 
 The little animal fell behind one day and was not 
 missed until the party had crossed a swollen, 
 ice-filled stream, when he made his presence on 
 the opposite bank known by whines and yelps. 
 Lincoln's father, anxious to go forward, decided 
 not to recross the river with oxen and wagons, 
 but the boy Abraham could not endure the idea 
 of abandoning even a dog. Pulling off shoes and 
 socks, he waded across the stream and tri- 
 umphantly returned with the shivering animal 
 under his arm. Said Lincoln afterward, "His 
 frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a 
 dog's gratitude amply repaid me for all the ex- 
 posure I had undergone.'* 
 
 3
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 In his youth Lincoln ran a ferry in the Ohio 
 River at the mouth of Anderson Creek. The only 
 passenger for a whole day was being ferried over, 
 and to enhven the journey he told the story of 
 Washington throwing a silver dollar across the 
 Rappahannock at Fredericksburg. 
 
 *'Well," remarked young Abraham, sadly, 
 **he couldn't throw one across the Ohio at the 
 mouth of Anderson unless he was doing more 
 business than I am, or unless he stole it.' 
 
 >> 
 
 When Lincoln came on a visit to his father's 
 home in Coles County, Illinois, in 183 1, his repu- 
 tation as a great wrestler had preceded him. 
 The local champion, one Daniel Needham, 
 promptly challenged him, and Lincoln promptly 
 accepted. In the public contest which followed 
 Lincoln threw his opponent twice with compara- 
 tive ease and thus aroused the anger of Needham. 
 
 "Lincoln," he shouted, "you have thrown me 
 twice, but you can't whip me!" 
 
 "Needham," he answered, "are you satisfied 
 that I can throw you? If you are not, and must 
 be convinced by a thrashing, I will do that, 
 too, for your sake." 
 
 In 1832, at the time of the Black Hawk War, 
 Lincoln was drilling his men, and they were
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 marching with twenty men fronting in line across 
 a field when he wished to pass through a gate into 
 the next field. "I could not for the life of me,** 
 said Lincoln, "remember the proper word of 
 command for getting my company 'endwise,' 
 so that it could get through the gate, so, as.-we 
 came near the gate, I shouted: 'This company 
 is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in 
 again on the other side of the gate.' '* 
 
 Lincoln had great moral courage, which is 
 shown in the following letter, certainly an excel- 
 lent one for a twenty-seven-year-old backwoods- 
 man: 
 
 "New Salem, June 21, 18^6. 
 
 "Dear Colonel, — I am told that during my 
 absence last week you passed through the place 
 and stated publicly that you were in possession 
 of a fact or facts which, if known to the public, 
 would entirely destroy the prospects of N. W. 
 Edwards and mj^self at the coming election, but 
 that through favor to us you would forbear to 
 divulge them. No one has needed favors more 
 than I, and few, generally, have been less un- 
 willing to accept them; but in this case favor to 
 me would be injustice to the public, and there- 
 fore I must beg your pardon for declining it. 
 
 That I once had the confidence of the people 
 
 5
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 of Sangamon County is sufficiently evident; and 
 if I have done anything, either by design or mis- 
 adventure, which if known would subject me to 
 a forfeiture of that confidence, he that knows of 
 that thing and conceals it is a traitor to his 
 country's interest. 
 
 "I find myself wholly unable to form any con- 
 jecture of what fact or facts, real or supposed, 
 you spoke; but my opinion of your veracity will 
 not permit me for a moment to doubt that you 
 at least beheved what you said. I am flattered 
 with the personal regard you manifested for me; 
 but I do hope that, on mature reflection, you 
 will view the public interest as a paramount con- 
 sideration and therefore determine to let the 
 worst come. 
 
 "I assure you that the candid statement of facts 
 on your part, however low it may sink me, shall 
 never break the ties of personal friendship be- 
 tween us. 
 
 "I wish an answer to this, and you are at 
 liberty to publish both if you choose. 
 "Very respectfully, 
 
 "A. Lincoln. 
 
 "Col. Robert Allen." 
 
 His retort to a Democratic demagogue, one 
 Col. Dick Taylor, is famous. Taylor charged 
 
 6
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 Lincoln and his friends with being "rag-barons 
 and manufacturing lords." "To take the wind 
 out of his sails," as Lincoln aptly put it, he 
 slipped up to the speaker's side and gave his 
 vest a sharp pull. "It displayed to the as- 
 tonished audience a mass of ruffled shirt, gold 
 watch, chains, seals, and glittering jewels," says 
 a narrator. Lincoln in his rough clothes and 
 coarse linen was quick to take advantage of this 
 unusual display of finery. 
 
 "Behold the hard-fisted Democrat! Look, 
 gentlemen, at this specimen of the bone and 
 sinew. And here, gentlemen," laying his coarse 
 hand on his heart and bowing, "here at your 
 service, here is your aristocrat! Here is one of 
 your silk-stockinged gentry. Here is your rag- 
 baron with his lily-white hands. Yes, I suppose 
 I, according to my friend Taylor, am a bloated 
 aristocrat. 
 
 "While Colonel Taylor was making his charges 
 against the Whigs over the country, riding in 
 fine carriages, wearing ruffled shirts, kid gloves, 
 massive gold watch-chains with large gold seals, 
 and flourishing a gold-headed cane, I was a poor 
 boy, hired on a flatboat at eight dollars a month, 
 and had only one pair of breeches to my back, 
 and they buckskin. Now, if you know the nature 
 of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun it 
 
 7
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 will shrink, and my breeches kept shrinking 
 until they left several inches of my legs bare, be- 
 tween the tops of my socks and the lower part of 
 my breeches; and while I was growing taller they 
 were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that 
 they left a blue streak around my legs that can 
 be seen to this day. If you call this aristocracy, 
 I plead guilty to the charge." 
 Thus did he pillory this demagogue. 
 
 Lincoln had great physical courage, also. Once 
 his friend Edward Baker, famous for his im- 
 petuous eloquence, attacked a local newspaper 
 before an audience of voters. It took place im- 
 mediately beneath the office of Stuart & Lincoln, 
 Lincoln lay listening through a trap door that 
 separated the two floors. 
 
 "Pull him down," shouted the brother of the 
 newspaper editor^ and for a moment it looked, 
 rather ominous for Baker. The crowd advanced, 
 when to his astonishment the lank form of Lin- 
 coln dangled to the platform below. Gesticu- 
 lating in vain for silence, he seized the stone 
 water-jug and shouted: 
 
 "I'll break it over the head of the first man 
 who lays a hand on Baker!" And then he con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "Hold on, gentlemen, let us not disgrace the 
 
 8
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 age and country in which we live. This is a land 
 where freedom of speech is guaranteed. Mr. 
 Baker has a right to speak and ought to be per- 
 mitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and 
 no man shall take him from this stand if I can 
 prevent him.'* And order was restored. 
 
 Another instance may be here recited. Gen- 
 eral Usher F. Linder delivered a rather spirited 
 address amid threats of violence from the gal- 
 leries. Lincoln and Baker got on the platform 
 and stationed themselves beside the speaker. 
 When he had finished Lincoln said: 
 
 "Linder, Baker and I are apprehensive that 
 you may be attacked by some of those ruffians 
 who insulted you from the galleries, and we have 
 come to escort you to your hotel. We both think 
 we can do a little fighting, so we want you to 
 walk between us until we get you to your hotel. 
 Your quarrel is our quarrel and that of the great 
 Whig party of this nation; and your speech upon 
 this occasion is the greatest one that has been 
 made by any of us, for which we wish to honor, 
 love, and defend you." And they walked ofF 
 unmolested, amid the cheers of the audience. 
 
 These were rough days and violence often 
 extended to the polls. A railroad contractor 
 
 9
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 named Radford had takenpossessionof a polling- 
 place during the *' hard-cider campaign" and 
 prevented the Whigs from voting. Lincoln seized 
 an ax-handle and made for the place. 
 
 "Radford," he said, "you'll spoil and blow if 
 you live much longer." 
 
 Knowing the character of Lincoln, Radford 
 discreetly retired, to the disappointment of the 
 candidate, who told Speed that he wanted Rad- 
 ford to show fight, as he "intended just to knock 
 him down and leave him kicking." 
 
 His power of invective and ridicule is exempli- 
 fied in the remarkable " Rebecca " letters. Speak- 
 ing of Shields, then the Auditor of the State and 
 a very prominent Democratic politician, Lincoln 
 wrote in the local paper, in a humorous bur- 
 lesque style: 
 
 "I seed him when I was down in Springfield 
 last winter. They had a sort of gatherin' there 
 one night among the grandees; they called it a 
 fair. All the gals about town was there, and 
 all the handsome widows and married women, 
 finickin' about trying to look like gals. ... I 
 looked in at the window, and there this same 
 fellow Shields floatin' about on the air, without 
 heft or earthly substances, just like a lock of cat 
 fur where cats had been fighring. He was paying 
 
 10
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 his money to this one and that one and t'other 
 one, and sufferin' great loss because it wasn't 
 silver instead of State paper; and the sweet dis- 
 tress he seemed to be in — his very features, in 
 the ecstatic agony of his soul, spoke audibly and 
 distinctly: 'Dear girls, it is most distressing, but 
 I cannot marry you all. Too well I know how 
 much you suffer; but do, do remember, it is not 
 my fault that I am so handsome and interesting/ 
 As this last was expressed by a most exquisite 
 contortion of his face, he seized hold of one of 
 their hands and squeezed and held on to it about 
 a quarter of an hour. *0h, my good fellow!' says 
 I to myself, ' if that was one of our Democratic gals 
 in the Lost Townships, the way you'd get a brass 
 pin let into you would be about up to the head.' ** 
 
 This is very witty, but Lincoln could be very 
 severe and at times, or rather at that time, 
 abusive, as his answer to a circular issued by 
 Auditor Shields shows: 
 
 "I say it's a lie, and not a well-told one at 
 that. It grins out like a copper dollar. Shields 
 is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth is out of 
 the question, and as for getting a good, bright, 
 passable lie out of him, you might as well try to 
 strike fire from a cake of tallow." 
 
 Strong words these, which very nearly led to 
 a duel. 
 
 II
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Something was once said about the wild-cat 
 Western currency of seventy years ago, a species 
 of paper money then worth about as much as 
 Confederate bills were worth after Lee's surren- 
 der (at the latter time a parcel containing over 
 a thousand dollars was offered for five dollars). 
 Mr. Lincoln's story was that he was going down 
 the Mississippi. Fuel was getting low and the 
 captain directed the pilot to steer in to the first 
 woodpile that he saw on the river-bank. When 
 the captain reached one he said to the owner on 
 shore, "Is that your wood.!*" "Certainly.'* 
 "You want to sell it.?" "Yes." "Will you 
 accept currency?" "Certainly." "How will 
 you take it?" said the captain; to which the 
 owner promptly replied: "Cord for cord." 
 
 His great tenderness in love and sorrow is 
 shown when Anne Rutledge, his first love, was 
 laid in the grave. Grieving till his friends feared 
 his loss of reason, he was found on a dark and 
 stormy night beside the new-made grave crying, 
 "I cannot bear to have the rain fall upon her." 
 
 Speaking of his ancestry, Lincoln once humor- 
 ously remarked, "I don't know who my grand- 
 father was, and I am much more concerned to 
 know what his grandson will be."
 
 Part II 
 
 THE LAWYER
 
 II 
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 LINCOLN'S family devotion was unbounded 
 -> and he loved his children to the verge of 
 folly. He delighted to carry his boys on his back 
 and to take one of them by the hand when he 
 went to town. Their furmoil never disturbed 
 him. 1 heir mischief only amused him ; he 
 never viewed it with alarm. "Since I began 
 this letter," he wrote to a friend, *'a messenger 
 came to tell me that Bob was lost; but by the 
 time I reached the house his mother had found 
 him and had him whipped, and by now, very 
 likely, he is run away again." 
 
 When this same Bob was bitten by a dog, his 
 anxious and always superstitious father dropped 
 everything and took him to Indiana, that a won- 
 derful madstone in that State might be applied 
 to the wound. 
 
 The boys could go to Lincoln's law office and 
 pull down the law-books, scatter legal docu- 
 ments over the floor, and bend the points of 
 
 IS
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 the pens without ruffling his temper, however 
 much they annoyed his partner. 
 
 Here is a rather curious illustration of Lin- 
 coln's humor, and likewise his exalted and un- 
 usual honesty. In a letter to the proprietors 
 of a wholesale store in Louisville, for whom suit 
 had been brought, after notifying his chent of 
 the sale of certain real estate in satisfaction 
 of their judgment, he adds; "As to the real 
 estate, we cannot attend to it. We are not 
 real estate agents, we are lawyers. We recom- 
 mend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac 
 S. Britton, a trustworthy man, and one whom the 
 Lord made on purpose for such business." 
 
 Returning at one time from the circuit he said 
 to his law-partner, Mr. Herndon: "Billy, I heard 
 a good story while I was up in the country. 
 
 Judge D was complimenting the landlord on 
 
 the excellency of his beef. 'I am surprised,' he 
 said, *that you have such good beef; you must 
 have to kill a whole critter when you want any.* 
 *Yes,* said the landlord, *we never kill less than 
 a whole critter.' " 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was once engaged in the trial of 
 a suit involving the infringement of a patent 
 
 i6
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 water-wheel. In his earlier days he had aided 
 in running a sawmill, and he explained in his 
 argument, in a very clear and masterly manner, 
 all the intricate points involved in the action 
 of the water. After the jury retired he became 
 quite anxious and uneasy. The jury were in 
 another building, the windows of which opened 
 on the street, and they had been out about two 
 hours. As Lincoln was passing along the street 
 one of the jurors, on whom he very much relied, 
 as he was a very intelligent man and firm in his 
 convictions, looked out of the window and held 
 up one finger. Mr. Lincoln became very much 
 excited, fearing that it indicated eleven of the 
 jury against him. He knew that if this man 
 was for him he never would yield his opinion, 
 and added that it reminded him very much of an- 
 other case in which he was involved, and if the 
 two jurors were alike in their action his client 
 was safe. He said that he had been employed 
 to prosecute a suit for divorce. His client was 
 a pretty, refined, and interesting little woman 
 who was in court. The defendant, her husband, 
 was a gross, morose, and uncomfortable man; 
 but although Lincoln was able to prove the 
 use of very offensive and vulgar epithets ap- 
 plied by the husband to his wife, and all 
 sorts of annoyances, yet there were no such acts 
 2 17
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 o/ personal violence as were required by the 
 statutes to justify divorce. Lincoln did the 
 best he could and appealed to the jury to have 
 compassion for the woman and not to bind her 
 to such a man and such a life as awaited her if 
 required to live longer with him. The jury took 
 about the same view of it in their deliberations. 
 They were anxious to find for the woman, but 
 there was no evidence to justify such a verdict. 
 At last they drew up a verdict for the defendant 
 and all signed but one fellow, who, on being ap- 
 proached, coolly said, "Gentlemen, I am going 
 to lie down to sleep, and when you get ready to 
 give a verdict for that little woman then wake 
 me up and not until then; for before I will give 
 a verdict against her I will lie here till I rot and 
 the pismires carry me out through the keyhole." 
 "Now," observed Mr. Lincoln, "if that juryman 
 would stick like the other fellow, we are safe." 
 Strange to relate, the jury did come in and bring 
 a verdict for the defendant. 
 
 Here's a rather homely way in which Lin- 
 coln once described the manner in which his mem- 
 ory worked. It was once said to him that his 
 mind was a wonderful one; that impressions were 
 easily made upon it and never effaced. "No," 
 said he, "you are mistaken; I am slow to learn 
 
 i8
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 and slow to forget that which I have learned. 
 My mind is hke a piece of steel — very hard to 
 scratch anything on it, and almost impossible, 
 after you get it there, to rub it out." 
 
 George W. Miner tells the following story of 
 the manner in which Mr. Lincoln handled a jury: 
 "In the spring term of theTazewell County Court, 
 in 1847, I was detained as a witness. Lincoln 
 was employed in several suits, and among them 
 was one of Case vs. Snow Brothers. The Snow 
 Brothers (who were both minors) had purchased 
 from a Mr. Case what was then called a 'prairie 
 team,' consisting of two or three yoke of oxen and 
 a prairie plow, giving therefor their joint note 
 for some two hundred dollars; but when pay-day 
 came they refused to pay, pleading the minor act. 
 The note was placed in Lincoln's hands for collec- 
 tion. The suit was called and a jury impaneled. 
 The Snow Brothers did not deny the note, but 
 pleaded through their counsel that they were 
 minors, and that Mr. Case knew they were at 
 the time of the contract and conveyance. All 
 this was admitted by Mr. Lincoln, with his pe- 
 culiar phrase, 'Yes, gentlemen, I reckon that's 
 so.* The minor act was read and its validity 
 admitted in the same manner. The counsel for 
 the defendants were permitted without question 
 
 19
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 to state all these things to the jury, and to show 
 by the statute that these minors could not be 
 held responsible for their contract. By this time 
 you may well suppose that his client became 
 quite uneasy. *What!' thought I, 'this good old 
 man who confided in these boys to be wronged 
 in this way, and even his counsel, Mr. Lincoln, 
 to submit in silence.' I looked at Judge Treat, 
 but could read nothing in his calm and digni- 
 fied demeanor. Just then Mr. Lincoln slowly 
 rose to his strange, half-erect attitude and in 
 clear, quiet accents began: 'Gentlemen of the 
 jury, are you willing to allow these boys to begin 
 life with this shame and disgrace attached to 
 their character? If you are, I am not. The 
 best judge of human character that ever wrote 
 has left these immortal words for us to ponder: 
 
 "Good name in man or woman, dear my lord. 
 Is the immediate jewel of their souls: 
 "Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, 
 
 nothing; 
 *Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thou- 
 sands; 
 But he that filches from me my good name 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him 
 And makes me poor indeed. 
 
 "Then rising to his full height, and looking upon 
 the defendants with the compassion of a brother, 
 
 20
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 his long arm extended toward the opposing coun- 
 sel, he continued: 'Gentlemen of the jury, these 
 poor innocent boys would never have attempted 
 this low villainy had it not been for the advice 
 of these lawyers.' Then for a few minutes he 
 showed how even the noble science of law may 
 be prostituted. With a scathing rebuke to those 
 who thus belittle their profession, he concluded: 
 *And now, gentlemen, you have it in your power 
 to set these boys right before the world.' He 
 pleaded for the young men only; I think he did 
 not mention his client's name. The jury, with- 
 out leaving their seats, decided that the de- 
 fendants must pay the debt; and the latter, after 
 hearing Lincoln, were as willing to pay it as the 
 jury were determined they should. I think the 
 entire argument lasted not above five minutes." 
 
 To a man who once offered him a case the 
 merits of which he did not appreciate he made, 
 according to his partner, Mr. Herndon, the fol- 
 lowing response: 
 
 "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt that I can 
 gain your case for you. I can set a whole neigh- 
 borhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed 
 mother and her six fatherless children, and 
 thereby get for you six hundred dollars which 
 rightly belong, it appears to me, as much to 
 
 21
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 them as It does to you. I shall not take your 
 case, but I will give you a little advice for noth- 
 ing. You seem a sprightly, energetic man. I 
 would advise 3^ou to try your hand at making 
 six hundred dollars in some other way." 
 
 Once he was prosecuting a civil suit, in the 
 course of which evidence was introduced show- 
 ing that his client was attempting a fraud. 
 Lincoln rose and went to his hotel in deep dis- 
 gust. The judge sent for him; he refused to 
 come. "Tell the judge," he said, "my hands 
 are dirty; I came over to wash them." 
 
 At another time, when he was engaged with 
 Judge S. C. Parks in defending a man accused 
 of larceny, he said, "If you can say anything 
 for the man, do it — I can't; if I attempt it, the 
 jury will see I think he is guilty, and convict 
 him." 
 
 This Is from Chauncey M. Depew: "President 
 Lincoln told me once that, in his judgment, one of 
 the two best things he ever originated was this. He 
 was trying a case in Illinois where he appeared for 
 a prisoner charged with aggravated assault and 
 battery. The complainant had toid a horrible 
 story of the attack, which his appearance fully 
 
 22
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 justified, when the district-attorney handed the 
 witness over to Mr. Lincoln for cross-examination. 
 Mr. Lincoln said he had no testimony, and unless 
 he could break down the complainant's story 
 he saw no way out. He had come to the con- 
 clusion that the witness was a bumptious man, 
 who rather prided himself upon his smartness in 
 repartee, and so, after looking at him for some 
 minutes, he inquired, 'Well, my friend, what 
 ground did you and my client here fight over?' 
 The fellow answered, 'About six acres.' 'Well, 
 said Mr. Lincoln, 'don't you think this is an 
 almighty small crop of fight to gather from 
 such a big piece of ground?' The jury laughed, 
 the court and district-attorney and complainant 
 all joined in, and the case was laughed out of 
 court." 
 
 Leonard Swett, of Chicago, for years an inti- 
 mate associate, and himself one of the most fa- 
 mous of American lawyers, says that "some- 
 times, after Lincoln entered upon a criminal 
 case, the conviction that his client was guilty 
 would affect him with a sort of panic. On one 
 occasion he turned suddenly to his associate and 
 said, 'Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him, 
 I can't,' and so gave up his share of a large 
 fee." 
 
 23
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 It was a common thing for Lincoln to dis- 
 courage unnecessary lawsuits, and consequently 
 he was continually sacrificing opportunities to 
 make money. One man who asked him to bring 
 suit for two dollars and a half against a debtor 
 who had not a cent with which to pay, would not 
 be put off in his passion for revenge. His coun- 
 sel therefore gravely demanded ten dollars as a 
 retainer. Half of this he gave to the poor de- 
 fendant, who thereupon confessed judgment and 
 paid the ^2.50. Thus the suit was ended, to the 
 entire satisfaction of the angry creditor. 
 
 The son of Jack Armstrong, the champion of 
 Clary's Grove, whose loyal friendship Lincoln 
 had won by whipping him in open battle at New 
 Salem, was on trial for killing a man. Jack was 
 in his grave, but his widow turned to Lincoln 
 to save her boy. He gratefully remembered 
 that the poor woman had been almost a mother 
 to him in his friendless days and that her cabin 
 had been his home when he had no other. He 
 laid aside everything else and went to her aid. 
 The defendant's guilt was extremely doubtful. 
 
 The chief witness testified that he saw the 
 boy strike the fatal blow and that the affair 
 occurred about eleven o'clock at night. Lincoln 
 inquired how he could have seen so clearly at 
 
 24
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 that late hour. By the moonlight, the witness 
 answered. Was there Hght enough to see every- 
 thing that happened? Lincoln asked. The moon 
 was about where the sun would be at ten 
 o'clock in the morning and nearly full, the 
 man on the stand replied. Almost instantly 
 Lincoln held out a calendar. By this he showed 
 that on the night in question the moon was 
 only shghtly past its first quarter, that it set 
 within an hour after the fatal occurrence, and 
 that it could therefore have shed little or no light 
 on the scene of the alleged murder. The crowded 
 court was electrified by the disclosure. 
 
 ** Hannah," whispered Lincoln, as he turned 
 to the mother, "Bill will be cleared before sun- 
 down." And he was. 
 
 An anecdote is related in connection with a 
 case involving a bodily attack. Mr. Lincoln 
 defended, and told the jury that his client was 
 in the plight of a man who, in going along 
 the highway with a pitchfork over his shoulder, 
 was attacked by a fierce dog that ran out at 
 him from a farmer's door-yard. In warding off 
 the brute with the fork its prongs pierced and 
 killed him. 
 
 "What made you kill my dog?" said the 
 farmer. 
 
 25
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "What made him bite me?'* 
 
 "But why did you not go after him with the 
 other end of the pitchfork?" 
 
 "Why did be not come at me with his other 
 end?" 
 
 At this Mr. Lincoln whirled about, in his long 
 arms an imaginary dog, and pushed his tail toward 
 the jury. This was the defensive plea of "Son 
 assaut demesne^* — loosely, that "The other 
 fellow brought on the fight" quickly told in a 
 way the dullest mind would grasp and retain. 
 
 Gen. John H. Littlefield, who studied law 
 with Abraham Lincoln, tells this anecdote in his 
 recollections of this great figure: "All chents 
 knew that, with 'Old Abe' as their lawyer, they 
 would win their case — if it was fair; if not, 
 that it was a waste of time to take it to him. 
 After listening some time one day to a would- 
 be cHent's statement, with his eyes on the 
 ceiling, he swung around in his chair and 
 exclaimed: 'Well, you have a pretty good case 
 in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity 
 and justice. You'll have to get some other 
 fellow to win this case for you. I couldn't do it. 
 All the time while standing talking to that jury 
 I'd be thinking, "Lincoln, you're a liar," and I be- 
 lieve I should forget myself and say it out loud.' " 
 
 26
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 This document, signed by Lincoln's old friend, 
 Judge Davis, recalls a very interesting period of 
 his early career while he was practising law on the 
 old Eighth Circuit in Central Illinois. Lincoln and 
 the Judge were fast friends from the beginning, 
 the Judge having always evinced a particular 
 appreciation of Lincoln's stories. 
 
 **I was never fined but once for contempt of 
 court," says one of the clerks of the court in 
 Lincoln's day. ** Davis fined me five dollars. 
 Mr. Lincoln had just come in, and leaning over 
 my desk had told me a story so irresistibly funny 
 that I broke out into a loud laugh. The Judge 
 called me to order, saying, 'This must be stopped. 
 Mr. Lincoln, you are constantly disturbing this 
 court with your stories.' Then to me: 'You may 
 fine yourself five dollars.' I apologized, but told 
 the Judge the story was worth the money. In 
 a few minutes the Judge called me to him. 
 *What was that story Lincoln told you?' he 
 asked. I told him, and he laughed aloud in spite 
 of himself. 'Remit your fine,' he ordered." 
 
 In the early days of Illinois, when Lincoln was 
 a young lawyer, it was the custom of the pro- 
 fession to go from one county-seat to another for 
 the trial of cases. These journeys were made 
 on horseback, and on one occasion a party of 
 
 27
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 lawyers, among them Mr. Lincoln, were riding 
 across the country in the central part of the State. 
 
 The road took them through a grove, and as 
 they passed along, a little bird which had fallen 
 from the nest lay fluttering on the ground and 
 was noticed by several of the horsemen, including 
 Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 After riding a short distance he said to his 
 companions, "Wait a moment, I want to go 
 back," and as they stopped for him he was seen 
 to ride back, dismount, and pick up the little 
 fledgling and carefully put it in the nest. 
 
 When he rejoined the party they said: "Why, 
 Lincoln, you need not have stopped for such a 
 trifle as that," but, pausing a little while, he an- 
 swered, quietly, "Well, I feel better for doing it, 
 anyhow."' 
 
 At the time of the first Republican Conven- 
 tion in Philadelphia, in i856, Lincoln was follow- 
 ing Judge Davis around the circuit in Illinois and 
 attending a special term of the court in Urbana. 
 
 Mr. Whitney relates that Judge Davis and the 
 non-resident lawyers were quartered at the lead- 
 ing hostelry of the place. Their slumbers in the 
 early dawn having too often been disturbed by 
 the tones of a vibrant gong summoning them to 
 breakfast, they decided one morning that the 
 
 28
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 offending instrument must be removed or in some 
 way forever silenced. By a majority vote Mr. 
 Lincoln was chosen to carry out the decree. 
 Accordingly, a little earlier than usual before 
 noon that day, he was seen to leave the court- 
 room and hasten to the hotel. Slipping un- 
 observed into the dining-room, he managed to 
 secure the gong, secreted it under his coat, and 
 was in the act of making off with it when Whitney 
 and Judge Davis suddenly appeared on the scene. 
 The former held in his hand a copy of the 
 Chicago Tribuney which had just reached town. 
 It contained the surprising and gratifying an- 
 nouncement that Mr. Lincoln had received one 
 hundred and ten votes for Vice-President at the 
 Philadelphia Convention the day before. 
 
 ''Great business, this," chuckled Davis, "for 
 a man who aspires to be Vice-President of the 
 United States!" 
 
 Lincoln only smiled. "Davis and I," declared 
 Whitney, "were greatly excited, but Lincoln was 
 listless and indifferent. His onlj^ response was: 
 
 " 'Surely it ain't me; there's another great 
 man named Lincoln down in Massachusetts. I 
 reckon it's him.' " 
 
 Lincoln was once arguing a case against an 
 opponent who tried to convince the jury that 
 
 29
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 precedent is superior to law, and that custom 
 makes things legal in all cases. Lincoln's reply 
 was one of his many effective analogies in the 
 form of a story. 
 
 Lincoln told the jury that he would argue the 
 case in the same way as his opponent, and began: 
 
 *'01d Squire Bagley, from Menard, came into 
 my office one day and said: 
 
 " 'Lincoln, I want your advice as a lawyer. 
 Has a man what's been elected justice of the 
 peace a right to issue a marriage license?' 
 
 "I told him no ; whereupon the old squire 
 threw himself back in his chair very indignantly 
 and said: 
 
 " * Lincoln, I thought you was a lawyer. Now, 
 Bob Thomas and me had a bet on this thing, 
 and we agreed to let you decide; but if this is 
 your opinion I don't want it, for I know a 
 thunderin' sight better. I've been a squire 
 eight years, and I've issued marriage Hcenses all 
 the time.' " 
 
 One day Lincoln and a certain judge who was 
 an intimate friend of his were bantering each 
 other about horses, a favorite topic. Finally 
 Lincoln said: 
 
 "Well, look here. Judge ! I'll tell you what FU 
 do. I'll make a horse-trade with you, only it 
 
 30
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 must be upon these stipulations: Neither party 
 shall see the other's horse until it is produced 
 here in the courtyard of the hotel and both 
 parties must trade horses. If either party backs 
 out of the agreement, he does so under a for- 
 feiture of twenty-five dollars.'* 
 
 "Agreed," cried the judge, and both he and 
 Lincoln went in quest of their respective animals. 
 
 A crowd gathered, anticipating some fun, and 
 when the judge returned first the laugh was 
 uproarious. He led, or rather dragged, at the 
 end of a halter the meanest, boniest, rib-staring 
 quadruped — blind in both eyes — that ever pressed 
 turf. But presently Lincoln came along carry- 
 ing over his shoulder a carpenter's sawhorse. 
 Then the mirth of the crowd was furious. 
 Lincoln solemnly set his horse down, and silently 
 surveyed the judge's animal with a comical look 
 of infinite disgust. 
 
 "Well, Judge," he finally said, "this is the 
 first time I ever got the worst of it in a horse- 
 trade." 
 
 Lincoln, who was one of the most generous 
 and kind-hearted of men, often said that there 
 was no act which was not prompted by some 
 selfish motive. He was riding in a stage from 
 Springfield, Illinois, to a neighboring town and
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 was discussing this philosophy with a fellow- 
 passenger. 
 
 As the stage rumbled past a ditch which was~ 
 filled with mud and mire the passengers could 
 see a small pig, caught fast in the muck, squealing 
 and struggling to free himself. Many persons 
 in the stage laughed heartily, but Mr. Lincoln, 
 then a lawyer, asked the driver to stop for a few 
 moments. 
 
 Leaping from the stage, he walked to the ditch 
 over his shoetops in mud and picked the little 
 animal up, setting it on the solid road. 
 
 "Now, look here," said the passenger with 
 whom he had been talking, "you cannot say 
 that was a selfish act." 
 
 "Extremely selfish," said Mr. Lincoln. "If I 
 had left that little fellow in there the memory of 
 his squealing would have made me uncomfortable 
 aH day. That is why I freed him." 
 
 He was a poor money-maker. Daniel Webster, 
 who sent him a case, was amazed at the smallness 
 of his bill, and his fellow-lawyers looked upon 
 his charges as very low. This was his only fault, 
 in their eyes. Once, when another attorney had 
 collected $250 for their joint services, he refused 
 to accept his share until the fee had been reduced 
 to what he considered fair proportions and the 
 
 32
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 overcharge had been returned to the client. 
 When David Davis, the presiding judge of the 
 circuit, heard of this, he indignantly exclaimed, 
 "Lincoln, your picayune charges will impoverish 
 the bar." 
 
 He was equally ready to take up a just case 
 without hope of pay as he was to refuse an unjust 
 one even at the loss of a good fee. He once 
 dragged into court a pension agent who insisted 
 on keeping for himself half of a ^400 claim which 
 he had collected for a poor widow. There, in 
 his own expressive phrase, he "skinned" him, 
 moved the jury to tears by his stirring appeal for 
 justice to the old woman, and won the verdict, 
 all without charge to his client. 
 
 In another interesting and important case he 
 laid down the rule that people had as much right 
 to cross rivers as they had to go up and down 
 them. This trial arose from the building of the 
 first bridge over the Mississippi and from the 
 fight which the boatmen made against it as an 
 obstruction to their business. 
 
 Lincoln was once opposed to his former pre- 
 ceptor. Judge Logan, in the trial of a suit. 
 Logan was a very dignified gentleman, but some- 
 3 33
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 what careless in matters of dress, often appearing 
 with neither collar nor necktie. Lincoln, knowing 
 his man, proceeded to undo him before the jury 
 in the following manner: 
 
 "Gentlemen," began Lincoln, "you must be 
 careful and not permit yourselves to be over- 
 borne by the eloquence of the counsel for defense. 
 Judge Logan, I know, is an effective lawyer; I 
 have met him too often to doubt that. But 
 shrewd and careful though he be, still he is some- 
 times wrong. Since this trial began I have dis- 
 covered that, with all his caution and fastidi- 
 ousness, he hasn't knowledge enough to put his 
 shirt on right." 
 
 It then transpired that Logan was wearing his 
 shirt with the plaited bosom behind, and his 
 embarrassment was so great and the laughter of 
 the jury so uproarious, that he completely lost 
 his balance and effectiveness during the remainder 
 of the trial. 
 
 The terms of his partnership with Judge Logan 
 are not known, but it is fair to assume that his 
 share was a very small one, for the Judge was 
 a very thrifty man and not given to generosity. 
 And even after his marriage to Mary Todd, in 
 1842, Lincoln declined an invitation to Ken- 
 tucky, saying "that he was so poor and made so 
 
 34
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 little headway that he dropped back in a month 
 of idleness as much as he gained in a year's 
 sowing." 
 
 No man had a greater respect for real learn- 
 ing, but for the display article he had naught 
 but contempt. Once a lawyer arrayed against 
 him made use of a Latin maxim for the evident 
 purpose of impressing his hearers or to per- 
 plex Mr. Lincoln, to whom he said, "Is not 
 that so.?" 
 
 "If that is Latin," dryly said Lincoln, "I think 
 you had better call another witness." 
 
 A young lawyer once asked Mr. Lincoln if the 
 county-seat of Logan County was named after 
 him. "Well, it was named after I was," he 
 gravely replied. 
 
 Once opposing counsel objected to a juror on 
 the ground that he knew Mr. Lincoln, and as 
 this was a reflection upon the honor of a lawyer. 
 Judge Davis promptly overruled the objection. 
 But when Mr. Lincoln, following the example of 
 his adversary, examined two or three of the jury 
 and found that they knew his opponent, the 
 Judge interfered. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Lincoln," he observed, severely, 
 
 35
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "you are wasting time. The mere fact that a 
 juror knows your opponent does not disqualify 
 him." 
 
 "No, your Honor," responded Mr. Lincoln, 
 dryly, "but I am afraid some of the gentlemen 
 may not know him, which would place me at a 
 disadvantage." 
 
 His advice to lawyers was sound and clear. 
 Hemdon quotes him as saying: "Don't shoot 
 too high. Aim lower, and the common people 
 will understand you. They are the ones you 
 want to reach — at least they are the ones you 
 ought to reach. The educated and refined people 
 will understand you, any^vay. If you aim too 
 high, your ideas will go over the heads of the 
 masses and only hit those who need no hitting." 
 
 Speaking of some lawyer whose name is un- 
 known he said, "He can compress the most words 
 into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." 
 
 Herndon relates, as an instance of Lincoln's 
 moral honesty and his horror of a lie, that he 
 (Herndon) once drew up a dilatory plea for the 
 purpose of delaying a case for another term. 
 But when it came to Lincoln's attention he 
 promptly repudiated it. 
 
 36
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 "Is this founded on fact?" Lincoln inquired, 
 and when Herndon admitted it was done merely 
 to save their client's interests, which might 
 otherwise be endangered, Lincoln instantly re- 
 plied : 
 
 "You know it is a sham, and a sham is very 
 often but another name for a lie. Don't let 
 it go on record. The cursed thing may come 
 staring us in the face long after this suit is for- 
 gotten." And the plea was withdrawn. 
 
 This is a sample of the way business was con- 
 ducted in the Illinois courts. "The first term of 
 Davis's court that I attended," relates Major 
 Whitney, "the Judge was calHng through the 
 docket for the first time, in order to dispose of 
 such cases as could be handled summarily, and 
 Ukewise to sort the chaff from the wheat, when he 
 came across a long bill in chancery, drawn by an 
 excellent but somewhat indolent lawyer. On 
 glancing at it he exclaimed: *Why, Brother 
 Snap, how did you rake up energy enough to get 
 up such a long bill?' 
 
 "'Dunno, Jedge,' replied the party addressed, 
 squirming in his seat and uneasily scratching his 
 head. The Judge unfolded and held up the bill. 
 * Astonishing, ain't it? Brother Snap did it. 
 Wonderful — eh, Lincoln?' 
 
 37
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "This amounted to an order on Lincoln for a 
 joke at this point, and he was ready, of course 
 — he had to be; he never failed. 'It's like the 
 lazy preacher,* drawled he, 'that used to write 
 long sermons, and the explanation was, he got 
 to writin' and was too lazy to stop.' " 
 
 Here is a scene from the circuit graphically 
 described by Whitney: "In the evening all as- 
 sembled in the Judge's room, where the blazing 
 fagots were piled high and the yule-log was in 
 place, and there were no strays there, although 
 the door was not locked. Davis's methods were 
 known, and his companions well-defined, and if 
 a novice came he soon found out both. For in- 
 stance, an unsophisticated person might become 
 attracted to the Judge's room by our noise, sup- 
 posing it to be 'free for all.' If Davis wanted 
 him he was warmly welcomed, the fatted calf 
 was killed, and the ring put on his finger; but if 
 he was really not desired he was frozen out by 
 the Judge thus: 'Ah, stop a minute, Lincoln! 
 Have you some business, Mr. Dusenberry?* 
 If Mr. Dusenberry should venture, 'Well, no! 
 I came designin' — " Davis would interrupt him: 
 *Swett, take Mr. Dusenberry out into the hall 
 and see what he wants, and come right back 
 yourself, Swett. Shut the door. Now, go 
 
 38
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 ahead, Lincoln! You got as far as — ha! ha! ha! 
 **She slid down the hill, and — " But wait for 
 Swett. Swett! Swett!' called he. 'Hill' (to 
 Lamon), 'call Swett in. Now, Lincoln, go ahead 
 (and so forth). ' She shd down the hill, you know. 
 Ho! ho! ho!' Any one who knew Davis would 
 recognize this. This was a characteristic scene 
 with Lincoln as the headpiece, though we often 
 discussed philosophy, politics, and other human 
 interests." 
 
 Lincoln's guileless exterior concealed a great 
 fund of shrewdness and common sense about 
 ordinary matters, as well as genius in the higher 
 realms. 
 
 "I remember once," writes Whitney, "that 
 while several of us lawyers were together, includ- 
 ing Judge Davis, Lincoln suddenly asked a novel 
 question regarding court practice, addressed to 
 no one particularly, to which the Judge, who was 
 in the habit certainly of appropriating his full 
 share of any conversation, replied, stating what 
 he understood the practice should be. Lincoln 
 thereat laughed and said: "I asked that question, 
 hoping that you would answer. I have that very 
 question to present to the court in the morning, 
 and I am very glad to find out that the court 
 is on my side." 
 
 39
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 A long letter about a law case, containing a 
 desire to retain him, he returned with the in- 
 dorsement: "Count me in. A. Lincoln." 
 
 His first pair of spectacles, which he purchased 
 in a small shop in Bloomington, with the remark 
 that he "had got to be forty-seven years old and 
 kinder needed them,'* cost him thirty-seven and 
 a half cents. 
 
 At one o'clock, on a night after Lincoln had 
 been away for a week, his Springfield neighbor 
 heard the sound of an ax. Looking out of his 
 window, he saw Lincoln in the moonlight chop- 
 ping wood for his solitary supper. 
 
 "We had concluded a murder case," writes 
 Whitney, "once in Champaign at noon, in which 
 we had no chance of acquittal, and hoped the 
 jury would disagree. In the afternoon a young 
 lawyer from another county was making a 
 rousing speech in a whisky-selling case, although 
 there was nothing to talk about; but the chap 
 was 'wound up' for a big speech and he couldn't 
 stop till he had run down. We were in one 
 corner of the court-room, anxiously hoping that 
 our jury, which still remained out, would stay 
 so, and finally disagree. Meanwhile, we were 
 
 40
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 bored and amused at the Demosthenean effort 
 going on in a plain case of selling whisky. *I 
 wish that fellow would stop,' said Lincoln. *I 
 am afraid our jury will agree for the sake ot 
 getting in to hear his speech.' 
 
 "At the White House once I was regahng him 
 with local news from Champaign (which he was 
 always ready to hear), and I said, 'Blank is dead; 
 his extremely disloyal sentiments so provoked 
 his neighbors that there was serious talk of in- 
 flicting vengeance on him, and he was found dead 
 in bed — caused largely by fright.' This man 
 was an old Whig friend of Lincoln, but the 
 reason of his exit from Hfe's trials amused him. 
 His comment was, 'He died, then, to save his 
 life, it seems.' " 
 
 Whitney says that one of the most obvious 
 of Mr. Lincoln's peculiarities was his dissimili- 
 tude of qualities, or inequality of conduct, his 
 dignity of deportment and action, interspersed 
 with freaks of frivolity and inanity; his high 
 inspiration and achievement, and his descent 
 into the most primitive vales of listlessness and 
 the most ridiculous buffoonery. 
 
 Lincoln once told this story: A balloon ascen- 
 sion occurred in New Orleans "befo' da wa'," and 
 
 41
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 after sailing in the air for several hours the 
 aeronaut^ who was arrayed in silks and spangles 
 like a circus-performer, descended in a cotton- 
 field, where a gang of slaves were at work. The 
 frightened negroes took to the woods — all but 
 one venerable dark}^, who was rheumatic and 
 could not run, and who, as the resplendent 
 aeronaut approached, having apparently just 
 dropped from heaven, said, "Good mornin', 
 Massa Jesus; how's yo' pa?" 
 
 A New York firm applied to Lincoln some years 
 before he became President for information as to 
 the financial standing of one of his neighbors. 
 This was the answer: 
 
 "Yours of the loth received. First of all, he 
 has a wife and baby; together they ought to be 
 worth $500,000 to any man. Secondly, he has 
 an office in which there is a table worth $1.50 and 
 three chairs worth, say, $1. Last of all, there is 
 in one corner a lurge rat-hole, which will bear 
 
 looking into. 
 
 " Respectfully, 
 
 "A. Lincoln." 
 
 While walking along a dusty road in Illinois 
 in his circuit days Lincoln was overtaken by a 
 stranger driving to town. "Will you have the 
 
 42
 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 goodness to take my overcoat to town for me?*' 
 asked Lincoln. **With pleasure; but how will 
 you get it again?" **0h, very readily. I intend 
 to remain in it," was Lincoln's prompt reply. 
 
 "Billy," he said to his partner Herndon, "over 
 sixteen 3'^ears together, and we have not had a 
 cross word during all that time, have we?" 
 
 "Not one." 
 
 "Don't take the sign down, Billy; let it swing, 
 that our cHents may understand that the election 
 of a President makes no change in the firm of 
 Lincoln & Herndon. If I live, I'm coming back, 
 and we will go right on practising law as if noth- 
 ing had ever happened." Then the two went 
 down the stairs and across the town to the rail- 
 road station, Lincoln never to return alive.
 
 Part HI 
 
 LOCAL POLITICS AND THE 
 DOUGLAS DEBATES
 
 Ill 
 
 LOCAL POLITICS AND THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 IT is said that Lincoln's first speech was as fol- 
 lows. His friends thought he would be a good 
 candidate for the Legislature, and they put him 
 into nomination. He came from his retreat in 
 the woodlands to a country town where he was 
 to meet his opponent. As he approached the 
 town he passed the house in which his antago- 
 nist dwelt. He saw rising from the roof a thin 
 spire of iron, and said, "What's that?'* "Oh," 
 said his friend, "that is a lightning-rod," and 
 he explained the use of the lightning-rod. Mr. 
 Lincoln had never before seen such an appen- 
 dage to a dwelling, and he thought over it a 
 good deal until his time came to speak. The 
 man against whom he was running was the first 
 to occupy the platform, and he addressed his 
 fellow-citizens by saying that he hoped they 
 would not throw him overboard for this un- 
 known man, whose life they didn't know and 
 with whom they were not acquainted, who 
 
 47
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 had come up here from the unexplored tracts 
 of the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln arose and said, 
 "Friends, you don't know very much about 
 me. I haven't had all the advantages that 
 some of you have had; but, if you did know 
 everything about me that you might know, you 
 would be sure that there was nothing in my 
 character that made it necessary to put on my 
 house a lightning-rod to save me from the just 
 vengeance of Almighty God." 
 
 On another occasion, when Mr. Lincoln was 
 going to a political convention, one of his rivals, 
 a liveryman, provided him with a slow horse, 
 hoping that he would not reach his destination 
 in time. Mr. Lincoln got there, however, and 
 when he returned with the horse he said, "You 
 keep this horse for funerals, don't you?" "Oh 
 no," replied the liveryman. "Well, I'm glad of 
 that, for if you did you'd never get a corpse to 
 the grave in time for the Resurrection." 
 
 When he went to the Legislature in 1854, after 
 an absence of twelve years from that body, he 
 got the indorsement of the Whigs and the Know- 
 Nothings, and the latter sent a committee to 
 him to acquaint him of their action. He rejected 
 their support in the following whimsical fashion; 
 
 48
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 (C 
 
 'Who are the native Americans?" he asked, 
 rather pointedly. *'Do the)'' not wear the breech 
 clout and carry the tomahawk? We pushed 
 them from their homes, and now turn upon 
 others not fortunate enough to come over so 
 early as we or our forefathers. Gentlemen of 
 the committee, your party is wrong in principle.** 
 Then he told this story: 
 
 "I had some time ago an Irishman named 
 Patrick cultivating my garden. One morning I 
 went out to see how he was getting along. 
 *Mr. Lincoln, what do yez think of these Know- 
 Nothings?' he inquired. I explained what they 
 were trying to do, and asked Pat why he had 
 not been born in America. * Faith,* he replied, 
 *I wanted to, but me mother wouldn't let me.* ** 
 
 To Speed he wrote, in 1855, trying to define 
 his political faith, as follows: 
 
 "You inquire where I now stand. This is a 
 disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others 
 say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Aboli- 
 tionist. W^hen I was at Washington I voted for 
 the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and 
 I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig 
 me for that. I now do no more than oppose the 
 extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing, 
 that is certain. How could I be? How can any 
 
 4 49
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in 
 favor of degrading classes of white people? Our 
 progress in degeneracy appears to me to be 
 pretty rapid. As a nation we began by de- 
 claring that 'All men are created equal.* We 
 now practically read it, *A11 men are created 
 equal negroes.* When the Know-Nothing^ get 
 control it will read, *A11 men are created equal 
 except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.* 
 When it comes to this I shall prefer emigrating 
 to some country where they make no pretense of 
 loving liberty.'* 
 
 A good instance of the execution which Mr. 
 Lincoln sometimes effected with a story occurred 
 in the Legislature. There was a troublesome 
 member from Wabash County who gloried par- 
 ticularly in being a "strict constructionist." He 
 found something "unconstitutional" in every 
 measure that was brought forward for discussion. 
 He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, 
 and was very apt, after giving every measure a 
 heavy pounding, to advocate its reference to this 
 committee. No amount of sober argument could 
 floor the member from Wabash. At last he came 
 to be considered a man to be silenced, and Mr. 
 Lincoln was resorted to for an expedient by 
 which this object might be accomplished. He 
 
 SO
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 soon afterward honored the draft made upon 
 him. 
 
 A measure was brought forward in which Mr. 
 Lincoln's constituents were interested, when the 
 member from Wabash arose and discharged all 
 his batteries upon its unconstitutional points. 
 Mr. Lincoln then took the floor, and with the 
 quizzical expression of features which he could 
 assume at will, and a mirthful twinkle in his gray 
 eyes, said: "Mr. Speaker, the attack of the mem- 
 ber from Wabash on the constitutionality of this 
 measure reminds me of an old friend of mine. 
 He's a peculiar-looking old fellow, with shaggy, 
 overhanging eyebrows and a pair of spectacles 
 under them. [Everybody turned to the member 
 from Wabash, and recognized a personal descrip- 
 tion.] One morning, just after the old man got 
 up, he imagined, on looking out of his door, that 
 he saw rather a lively squirrel on a tree near his 
 house. So he took down his rifle and fired at the 
 squirrel, but the squirrel paid no attention to 
 the shot. He loaded and fired again and again, 
 until, at the thirteenth shot, he set down his gun 
 impatiently, and said to his boy, who was looking 
 on: 
 
 " *Boy, there's something wrong with this rifle.* 
 " 'Rifle's all right, I know 'tis,' responded the 
 boy, *but where's your squirrel .f" 
 
 51 
 
 mmn —
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 (( f 
 
 Don't you see him, humped up about half- 
 way up the tree?' inquired the old man, peering 
 over his spectacles and getting mystified. 
 
 " 'No, I don't,' responded the boy; and then, 
 turning and looking into his father's face, he 
 exclaimed: *I see your squirrel! You have been 
 firing at a gnat on your eyebrow!' " 
 
 Ex-Senator Cullom tells this story: "When 
 Mr. Lincoln was nominated for Congress, Taze- 
 well County, in which we resided, was a county 
 in Lincoln's district. When Mr. Lincoln came to 
 Tazewell County, father took him in his carriage 
 to his several appointments and generally pre- 
 sided at his meetings. I attended one of the 
 meetings. When Mr. Lincoln was introduced, 
 he spoke as follows: 
 
 "'Fellow-citizens, ever since I have been in 
 Tazewell County my old friend, Major Cullom, 
 has been taking me around. He has heard all 
 my speeches, and the only way I can fool tlie old 
 Major, and make him believe I am not making 
 the same speech all the time, is to turn it "ind 
 for ind" once in a while.' 
 
 "This was the beginning of the first political 
 speech I ever heard Mr. Lincoln deliver. I dis- 
 tinctly remember his pronunciation, 'ind for ind.' 
 You can imagine how that caught the crowd." 
 
 52
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 The wonderful simplicity of his similes made 
 Emerson compare him with iEsop. In one of 
 his speeches in the Douglas debates, speak- 
 ing of the suppression of political debate, he 
 says: "These popular sovereigns are at their 
 work, blowing out the moral lights around 
 us. 
 
 And when he was in Congress he spoke of 
 Polk's message with regard to the Mexican War 
 as "the half-insane mumbling of a fever-dream.'* 
 He also describes military glory as "the attrac- 
 tive rainbow that rises in showers of blood; 
 the serpent's eye that charms to destroy.'* 
 Speaking of the helplessness of the American 
 slave, he says: "They have him in his prison- 
 house. They have searched his person and have 
 left no prying instrument with him. One after 
 another they have closed the heavy iron doors 
 upon him, and now they have him, as it were, 
 bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which 
 can never be unlocked without the concurrence 
 of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred 
 different men, and they scattered to a hundred 
 different and distant places; and they stand 
 musing as to what invention, in all the domino 
 ions of mind and matter, can be produced to 
 make the impossibility of his escape more com- 
 plete than it is." 
 
 S3
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Here is his modest autobiography as contained 
 in the Congressional Directory: 
 
 "Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, 
 Kentucky. 
 
 Education, defective. 
 
 Profession, lawyer. 
 
 Have been a captain of volunteers in Black 
 Hawk War. 
 
 Postmaster in a very small office. 
 
 Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature 
 and a member of the Lower House of Congress.'* 
 
 He opposed the Mexican War while he was in 
 Congress, though he consistently voted for all 
 the supplies needful for the army. To the argu- 
 ment that the war was not one of aggression he 
 replied that it reminded him of the Illinois farmer 
 who insisted: "I ain't greedy 'bout land. I only 
 want what jines mine." 
 
 And later on, though he accepted the results 
 of the war with patriotic satisfaction, he was 
 much pleased at the failure of the Administration 
 to take advantage of its political opportunity and 
 by the Whig nomination of General Taylor, and 
 declared that that nomination "took the Demo- 
 crats on their blind side." 
 
 The Congressional Library and the Library 
 of the Supreme Court, with their great stores of 
 
 54
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 books, were like a gold mine in his eyes. And 
 in his Congressional term the attendants more 
 than once were amused to see him tie up a lot 
 of books in his bandanna handkerchief, stick 
 his cane through the knot, and go forth to his 
 boarding-house with the bundle over his shoul- 
 der, just as in other days he had carried his 
 wardrobe while tramping from job to job. 
 
 Lincoln was much amused at this story, which 
 he used to tell: In 1858 he had an appointment 
 in Cumberland County, and after he had spoken 
 a Dr. Hamburgher (a bitter Democrat) im- 
 pudently jumped up and said he would reply. 
 So Lincoln took a seat on the outer edge of the 
 plank seat and listened. 
 
 Hamburgher presently got violent and insult- 
 ing, when a little, insignificant-looking lame man 
 jumped up to Lincoln and said: "Don't mind 
 him; I know him; I live here; I'll take care of 
 him; watch me." And two or three times he 
 came to Lincoln and repeated the admonition. 
 When Hamburgher concluded, the little lame 
 man was on the platform and at once com- 
 menced a reply, and had proceeded but a short 
 time when Hamburgher roared out: "That's 
 a lie." "Never mind," retorted the lame man, 
 patronizingly, "I'll take that from you — in fact, 
 
 55
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 I'll take anything from you except your pills." 
 This cut the doctor to the raw. "You scoun- 
 drel!" exclaimed he, "you know I've quit prac- 
 tising medicine." The little lame man instantly 
 dropped down on his sound knee and, raising his 
 hands in mock worship, exclaimed: "Then, thank 
 God, the country is safe!'^ 
 
 In the famous Douglas debates Judge Douglas 
 called the Republican party the "alhed army," 
 and declared that he would deal with it "just 
 as the Russians dealt with the allies at Sebas- 
 topol; that is, the Russians did not stop to in- 
 quire, when they fired a broadside, whether it 
 hit an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Turk." 
 It was something more than a witticism when 
 Lincoln rejoined, "In that case, I beg he will 
 Indulge us while we suggest to him that those 
 allies took Sebastopol." 
 
 "Judge Douglas," said Mr. Lincoln in the same 
 debate, "is of world-wide renown. All the anx- 
 ious politicians of his party . . . have been look- 
 ing upon as certainly ... to be President of 
 the United States. They have seen in his round, 
 jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, mar- 
 shalships, and cabinet appointments, charge- 
 iships, and foreign missions bursting and spread- 
 
 S6
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 ing out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be 
 laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they 
 have been gazing upon this attractive picture so 
 long they cannot, in the little distraction that 
 has taken place in the party, bring themselves to 
 give up the charming hope, but with greedier 
 anxiety they rush about him, sustain him and 
 give him marches, triumphal entries and recep- 
 tions, beyond what in the days of his highest pros- 
 perity they could have brought about in his favor. 
 On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to 
 be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody 
 has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting." 
 
 In one of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas 
 during that Senatorial campaign, Judge Douglas 
 tried to dismiss from the people's mind Lin- 
 coln's apprehensions for the Union b}'' urging 
 the people to trust in Providence. To this 
 Lincoln replied by saying that if the country 
 acted upon this advice it might find itself in the 
 fix of the old woman whose horse ran away with 
 her in the buggy. She said that "she trusted in 
 Providence till the britchin' broke and then she 
 didn't know what on airth to do!" 
 
 His clear vision and cogent and earnest argu- 
 mentation often led him to coin impressive 
 
 57
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 axioms. At Peoria, in the Douglas debate, he 
 said: "When the white man governs himself, 
 that is self-government; but when he governs 
 himself and also governs another man, that is 
 more than self-government — that is despotism." 
 "No man is good enough to govern another man 
 without that other's consent." 
 
 "Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all 
 compromise; repeal the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, repeal all past history, still you can't re- 
 peal human nature." "Our Repubhcan robe is 
 soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us purify it. 
 Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not 
 in the blood of the Revolution." 
 
 In the Douglas debates only once did he 
 descend to personalities, and then so whim- 
 sically that the sting was taken out of the re- 
 crimination. He was, however, hard-driven and 
 his patience sorely tried. 
 
 "I don't want to quarrel with him," he said, 
 referring to Douglas; "I don't want to call him a 
 liar, but when I come to square up to him, I 
 don't know what else to call him." 
 
 In one of the Douglas debates he said that the 
 judge ascribed some things to him by "mere 
 burlesques on the art and name of argument-— 
 
 58 
 
 WP
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 by such fantastic arrangements of words as 
 prove horse-chestnuts to be chestnut horses." 
 
 On another occasion Douglas, in one of his 
 speeches, made a strong point against Lincoln by 
 telling the crowd that when he first knew Mr. 
 Lincoln he was a "grocery-keeper," and sold 
 whisky, cigars, etc. "Mr. L.," he said, "was a 
 very good bartender!" This brought the laugh 
 on Lincoln, whose reply, however, soon came, 
 and then the laugh was on the other side. 
 
 "What Mr. Douglas has said, gentlemen," re- 
 plied Lincoln, "is true enough; I did keep a 
 grocery, and I did sell cotton, candles and cigars, 
 and sometimes whisky; but I remember in those 
 days that Mr. Douglas was one of my best 
 customers. Many a time have I stood on one 
 side of the counter and sold whisky to Mr. 
 Douglas on the other side, but the difference 
 between us now is this: I have left my side 
 of the counter, but Mr. Douglas still sticks to 
 his as tenaciously as ever." 
 
 On one occasion, when Lincoln and Douglas 
 were "stumping" the State of Ilhnois together 
 as political opponents, Douglas, who had the 
 first speech, remarked that in early hfe his father, 
 who he said was an excellent cooper by trade, 
 
 59
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 apprenticed him out to learn the cabinet busi- 
 ness. 
 
 This was too good for Lincoln to let pass, so 
 when his turn came to reply he said: 
 
 "I had understood before that Mr. Douglas 
 had been bound out to learn the cabinet-making 
 business, which is all well enough, but I was not 
 aware until now that his father was a cooper. I 
 have no doubt, however, that he was one, and 
 I am certain, also, that he was a very good one, 
 for [here Lincoln gently bowed toward Douglas] 
 he has made one of the best whisky casks I have 
 ever seen." 
 
 As Douglas was a short, heavy-set man, and 
 occasionally imbibed, the pith of the joke was 
 all at once apparent, and most heartily enjoyed 
 by all. 
 
 He did not believe in making voters of negroes 
 — probably not at that stage of public opinion, 
 for he said, "There is a physical difference be- 
 tween the white and black races which I believe 
 will forever forbid the two races living together 
 on social and political equality. However," he 
 continued, "in the right to put into his mouth 
 the bread that his own hands have earned, the 
 negro is the peer of Judge Douglas or any other 
 
 man." 
 
 60
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Colonel Lamon describes Douglas as always 
 traveling in a special train decorated with 
 banners and flags and accompanied by a brass 
 band and an army of retainers. Lincoln, on the 
 other hand, went by the ordinary train and oft- 
 times by freight, though the railroad company 
 issued special orders that no passengers be per- 
 mitted to travel by freight, and Lincoln had to 
 use his great powers of persuasion. Much de- 
 pended on the politics of the conductor. "Mr, 
 Lincoln and I," Lamon writes in his Life of Lin- 
 coln, "with other friends, were traveling in the 
 caboose of a freight train, when we were switched 
 ofF the main track to allow a special train to pass 
 in which Mr. Lincoln's more aristocratic rival was 
 being conveyed. The passing train was decora- 
 ted with banners and flags and carried a band 
 of music which was playing, 'Hail to the Chief!' 
 As the train whistled past, Mr. Lincoln broke 
 out into a fit of laughter, and said, 'Boys, the 
 gentleman in that car evidently smelt no royalty 
 in our carriage.' " 
 
 Major Whitney tells an interesting incident 
 of the debate: 
 
 "Lincoln and I were at the Centralia Agri- 
 cultural Fair the day after the debate at Jones- 
 
 6i
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 boro. Night came on and we were tired, having 
 been on the fair grounds all day. We were to go 
 North on the lUinois Central Railroad. The 
 train was due at midnight, and the depot was 
 full of people. I managed to get a chair for 
 Lincoln in the office of the superintendent of the 
 railroad, but small politicians would intrude so 
 that he could scarcely get a moment's sleep. The 
 train came and was instantly filled. I got a seat 
 near the door for Lincoln and myself. He was 
 worn out and he had to meet Douglas the next day 
 at Charleston. An empty car, called the saloon 
 car, was hitched to the rear of the train and 
 locked up. I asked the conductor, who knew 
 Lincoln and myself well — ^we were both attorneys 
 of the road — ^if Lincoln could not ride in that car; 
 that he was exhausted and needed rest; but the 
 conductor refused. I afterward got him in by 
 stratagem. At the same time, George B. Mc- 
 Clellan In person (then vice-president of the 
 road) was taking Douglas around in a special 
 car and a special train; and that was the unjust 
 treatment Lincoln got from the lUinois Central 
 Railroad." 
 
 On one occasion some of Lincoln's friends were 
 talking of the diminutive stature of Stephen A. 
 Douglas, and an argument as to the proper length 
 
 6a
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 of a man's legs. During the discussion Lincoln 
 came in, and it was agreed that the question 
 should be referred to him for decision. 
 
 "Well," said he, reflectively, "I should think 
 a man's legs ought to be long enough to reach 
 from his body to the ground." 
 
 Lincoln once commented on Douglases posi- 
 tion with regard to the extension of slavery into 
 the Territories as follows: 
 
 "The Judge holds that a thing may be lawfully 
 driven away from a place where it has a lawful 
 right to be.' 
 
 j> 
 
 Another epigram, this speaking of Douglas's 
 joint debates: 
 " Explanations explanatory of things explained.** 
 
 His wonderful grasp of the political situation 
 and of the slavery question is excellently illus- 
 trated in the following, from one of his speeches 
 in the Douglas debate: 
 
 "The sum of pro-slavery theology seems to be 
 this: 'Slavery is not universally right, nor yet 
 universally wrong; it Is better for some people 
 to be slaves; and, in such cases, it is the will of 
 God that they be such.' Certainly there is no 
 contending against the will of God; but still there 
 
 63
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 is some difficulty in ascertaining and applying 
 it to particular cases. For instance, we will 
 suppose the Rev. Dr. Ross has a slave named 
 Sambo, and the question is, 'Is it the will of 
 God that Sambo shall remain a slave, or be set 
 free?' The Almighty gives no audible answer 
 to the question, and His revelation, the Bible, 
 gives none — or at most none but such that ad- 
 mits a squabble as to His meaning; no one thinks 
 of asking Sambo's opinion on it. So at last it 
 comes to this, that Dr. Ross is to decide the 
 question; and while he considers it he sits in 
 the shade, with gloves on his hands, and subsists 
 on the bread that Sambo is earning in the burn- 
 ing sun. If he decides that God wills Sambo to 
 continue a slave, he thereby retains his own 
 comfortable position; but if he decides that God 
 willed Sambo to be free, he thereby has to walk 
 out of the shade, throw off his gloves, and delve 
 for his own bread. Will Dr. Ross be actuated 
 by the perfect impartiality which has ever been 
 considered most favorable to correct decisions.?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, being asked b}'' a friend how he felt 
 when the returns came in that insured his defeat 
 for the Senate, replied that he felt, he supposed, 
 very much like the stripling who had stumped his 
 toe — too hadly to laugh and too hig to cry. 
 
 64 
 
 Ml
 
 THE DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Speaking of the success of Judge Douglas and 
 his own failure, he gave utterance to this noble 
 sentiment: "I affect no contempt for the high 
 eminence he has reached. So reached that the 
 oppressed of my species might have shared with 
 me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that 
 eminence than wear the richest crown that ever 
 pressed a monarch's brow/'
 
 Part IV 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE
 
 IV 
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 THE President once related an incident that 
 had occurred at Decatur when the IHinois 
 Republicans named him as their choice for the 
 Presidency. An old Democrat from "Egypt," 
 as southern Illinois was called, approached Mr, 
 Lincoln and said, "So you're Abe Lincoln?" 
 "Yes, that is my name." 
 "They say you're a self-made man." 
 "Well, yes; what there is of me is self-made." 
 "Well, all I've got to say," observed the old 
 man, after a careful survey of the Republican 
 candidate, "is that it was a d — d bad job. 
 
 »> 
 
 When the Republican Convention of i860 was 
 about to be held in Chicago, Seward stayed at 
 home in Auburn. When Lincoln was asked 
 whether he would go to the Chicago Convention, 
 he replied, quaintly, "I am a little too much of 
 a candidate to go, and not quite enough of a 
 candidate to stay away; but upon the whole I 
 believe I will not go." 
 
 69
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 During the sitring of the Chicago Convention 
 Lincoln had been trying, in one way or another, 
 to keep down the excitement which was pent 
 up within him by amusing himself and telling 
 stories. When the news actually reached him he 
 was in the editorial office of the Journal. He 
 got up at once and allowed a little crowd to 
 shake hands with him mechanically, then said: 
 
 "I reckon there's a little woman down at 
 our house that would like to hear the news," 
 and he started with rapid strides for home. 
 
 Wlien it became an assured fact that he was 
 elected, the President-elect got ready for his 
 eastward journey, and he and Mrs. Lincoln paid 
 a brief visit to Chicago, where his wife bought 
 a silk dress for the inaugural ceremonies. 
 When they got home, and were unpacking their 
 purchases, Mr. Lincoln said: "Well, wife, there 
 is one thing very likely to come out of this 
 scrape, anyhow. We are going to have some 
 new clothes." 
 
 It cannot be charged that Mr. Lincoln was a 
 husband to grace fashionable society. He hated 
 clothing of all sorts, and it was his habit, on reach- 
 ing his office or his home, to take off his boots, as 
 he naively expressed it, "to allow his feet to 
 
 70
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 breathe," and very often he would receive the 
 friends of his wife at the door in his shirt- 
 sleeves. He was a thoroughly informal man. 
 At the time of the Chicago visit just referred to, 
 a prominent lady called by appointment to see 
 Mrs. Lincoln. He received the caller and, 
 apologizing for his wife's tardiness, explained 
 that she would be down "as soon as she got all 
 her trotting harness on." 
 
 Soon after Lincoln's election he held a re- 
 ception in the principal hotel in Chicago. For 
 several hours a continuous procession of his 
 friends and admirers passed before him, many 
 of them old and intimate acquaintances. It was 
 amusing to observe Lincoln's unfeigned enjoy- 
 ment, and to hear his hearty greeting in answer 
 to famihar friends who exclaimed, "How are 
 you, Abe?" he, responding in like manner with 
 "Hello, Bill!" or "Jack!" or "Tom!" alternately 
 pulling or pushing them along with his powerful 
 hand and arm, saying, "There's no time to talk 
 now, boys; we must not stop this big procession, 
 so move on." 
 
 One day after his election, while a group of 
 distinguished politicians from a distance were 
 sitting in the Governor's room at Springfield, 
 
 71
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 III, chatting with Lincoln, the door opened and 
 an old lady in a big sunbonnet and the garb 
 of a farmer's wife came in. 
 
 "I wanted to give you something to take 
 to Washington, Mr. Lincoln," she said, "and 
 these are all I had. I spun the yarn and knit 
 them socks myself." And with an air of pride 
 she handed him a pair of blue woolen stock- 
 ings. 
 
 Lincoln thanked her cordially for her thought- 
 fulness, inquired after the folks at home, and 
 escorted her to the door as politely as if she had 
 been the Queen of England. Then, when he re- 
 turned to the room, he picked up the stockings, 
 held them by the toes, one in each hand, and 
 with a queer smile upon his face remarked to the 
 statesmen around him: 
 
 "The old lady got my latitude and longitude 
 about right, didn't she?" 
 
 When the election was over and his friends 
 begged him to assure the South that he contem- 
 plated no adverse action, he resisted the tempta- 
 tion and said that it reminded him ©f one of his 
 experiences on the circuit when he saw a lawyer 
 making frantic signals to an associate who was 
 making blundering admissions to the jury, utterly 
 oblivious of the wreck he was making of the case. 
 
 72
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 ''"Now, that's the way with Buchanan and me. 
 He is giving the case away, and I can't stop 
 him." 
 
 One of the most affecting and tenderest exam- 
 ples of Lincoln's oratory is his farewell speech to 
 his Springfield friends and neighbors on the eve 
 of his departure for Washington, February II, 
 1861: 
 
 "My friends, no one not in my position can 
 realize the sadness I feel at this parting. To this 
 people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived 
 more than a quarter of a century. Here my chil- 
 dren were born, and here one of them hes buried. 
 I know not how soon I shall see you again. I go 
 to assume a task more difficult than that which 
 has devolved upon any other man since the days 
 of Washington. He never would have succeeded 
 except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon 
 which he at all times relied. I feel that I can- 
 not succeed without the same Divine blessing 
 which sustained him; and on the same Almighty 
 Being I place my reliance for support. And I 
 hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may 
 receive that Divine assistance without which 
 I cannot succeed, but with which success is 
 certain. Again I bid you an affectionate fare- 
 well." 
 
 73
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Upon Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington he 
 immediately handed a copy of his inaugural ad- 
 dress to his future Secretary of State, and the 
 latter revised it in a vigorous and arrogant man- 
 ner. Mr. Seward was always ready to offer 
 advice and give directions upon every subject. 
 Lincoln listened with respectful attention, but 
 continued to exercise his own judgment, and the 
 spirit of independence he showed concerning sev- 
 eral matters which Mr. Seward undertook to 
 decide for him so alarmed the latter that two 
 days before the inauguration he wrote a polite 
 note asking leave to withdraw his acceptance of 
 the office of Secretary of State. The note was 
 received on Saturday. Any other man but Lin- 
 coln would have been disconcerted at least, and 
 would have immediately sought advice and as- 
 sistance; but he did not mention the matter to 
 any one, nor did he make any reply until Mon- 
 day morning. Then, while waiting at Willard's 
 Hotel for President Buchanan to escort him to 
 the Capitol, he dictated a brief note, saying; 
 *'I feel constrained to beg that you will counter- 
 mand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, 
 demands that you should, and my personal feel- 
 ings are deeply enlisted in the same direction." 
 
 He handed the note to Mr. Nicolay, saying, 
 "I can't afford to let Seward take the first trick." 
 
 74
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 While Mr. Lincoln was a man of great evenness 
 of temper and kindness of disposition, he was at 
 the same time a masterful man. He permitted 
 no man to meddle with his official responsibili- 
 ties. This is illustrated in the following story: 
 Soon after the outbreak of the war, it is said that 
 Secretary Seward advised the President to con- 
 fine his energies solely to military and internal 
 affairs, and to leave him (Seward) as prime min- 
 ister, to deal with our foreign affairs. Mr. Seward 
 proposed to submit his views on the subject in 
 writing. The President assented. The story 
 goes, that one day Seward called on the President 
 with a voluminous paper which he had prepared, 
 folded and indorsed. The President took it. 
 In front of him, on his table, was a row of trays. 
 They were labeled "Secretary of State," "Sec- 
 retary of War," and so on, and the last tray was 
 marked "Unimportant." Glancing along down 
 the hst to the last, the President plumped into 
 it Mr. Seward's suggestions in writing, saying 
 that if the things suggested by Mr. Seward must 
 be done, he (the President) must do them. In 
 that modest way he gave Mr. Seward to under- 
 stand that the President was not delegating the 
 responsibilities of his administration to any one 
 else. Two months afterward Secretary Seward 
 had become better acquainted with Mr. Lincoln, 
 
 75
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 and in a letter to his wife he said, "The President 
 is the best of us all." 
 
 Men rushed to the White House in offended 
 dignity to complain of the high-handed measures 
 of the new Secretary, Stanton. To smooth the 
 ruffled feelings of one of them, Lincoln told a 
 story. "We may," he said, "have to treat 
 Stanton as they are sometimes obliged to treat 
 a Methodist minister I know out West. He gets 
 wrought up to so high a pitch of excitement in 
 his prayers and exhortations that they put bricks 
 in his pockets to keep him down. But I guess,'* 
 the President concluded, with a twinkle, "we'lj 
 let him jump a while first 
 
 >t 
 
 The following story Is told of the Hon. Peter 
 Harvey, the friend and biographer of Daniel 
 Webster: 
 
 Mr. Harvey was a very large man with a small 
 voice and that pomposity of manner that very 
 many diffident men possess. Above everything 
 he valued and prized himself upon his friendship 
 with the "Great Expounder." 
 
 The first year of the war he went to Washing- 
 ton, and on his return was asked how he liked 
 President Lincoln. 
 
 "Well," he said, "Mr. Lincoln is a very sin- 
 
 76
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 gular man. I went on to see him, and told him 
 that I'd been an intimate personal friend of 
 Daniel Webster; that I had talked with him so 
 much on the affairs of the country that I felt 
 perfectly competent to tell him what Mr. Webster 
 would advise in the present crisis; and thereupon 
 I talked to Mr. Lincoln for two solid hours, tell- 
 ing him just what he should do and what he 
 should not do; and would you believe it, sir, when 
 I got through, all Mr. Lincoln said was, as he 
 clapped his hand on my leg, *Mr. Harvey, what 
 tremendous great calves you have got!'" 
 
 At the opening of the administration he was 
 overwhelmed with persistent office-seekers, and 
 so much of his time was occupied in listening to 
 their demands and trying to gratify them that 
 he felt he was not attending to military affairs 
 and matters of public policy as closely as he 
 should. He compared himself to a man who 
 was so busy letting rooms at one end of his 
 house that he had no time to put out a fire that 
 was destroying the other end. And when he 
 was attacked with the varioloid in 1861 he said 
 to his usher: 
 
 "Tell all the office-seekers to come and see 
 me, for now I have something that I can give 
 them." 
 
 n
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 The political problems alone would have been 
 as great a load as mortal man might have been 
 expected to carry, but his perplexities were in- 
 creased, his time occupied, and his patience 
 sorely tested by such an undignified and un- 
 patriotic clamor for offices as has never been 
 exceeded in the history of our government. The 
 Democratic party had been in power for many 
 years. Every position in the gift of President 
 Buchanan had been filled with a Democrat, 
 many of them Southern sympathizers, and now 
 hordes of hungry Republicans besieged the 
 White House demanding appointments. The 
 situation was described by the President in a 
 single ejaculation. A Senator who noticed an 
 expression of anxiety and dejection upon his 
 face inquired: 
 
 "Has anything gone wrong, Mr. President? 
 Have you heard bad news from Fort Sumter?" 
 
 "No," answered the President, solemnly, "it*s 
 the post-office at Jonesville, Missouri." 
 
 There was an ignorant man who once applied 
 to Lincoln for the post of doorkeeper to the 
 House. This man had no right to ask Lincoln 
 for anything. It was necessary to repulse him. 
 But Lincoln repulsed him gently and whim- 
 sically, without hurting his feelings, in this way: 
 
 78
 
 «1 
 
 
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 "So you want to be doorkeeper of the House, 
 eh?" 
 
 Tes, Mr. President/' 
 
 'Well, have you ever been a doorkeeper? 
 Have you ever had any experience of door- 
 keeping?" 
 
 'Well, no — no actual experience, sir.'* 
 'Any theoretical experience? Any instruc- 
 tions in the duties and ethics of doorkeeping? 
 'Umph— no." 
 
 Have you ever attended lectures on door- 
 keeping?" 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Have you read any text on the subject?" 
 "No." 
 
 "Have you conversed with any one who has 
 read such a book?" 
 "No, sir; Fm afraid not, sir." 
 "Well, then, my friend, don't you see that 
 you haven't a single qualification for this im- 
 portant post?" said Lincoln, in a reproachful 
 tone. ' 
 
 "Yes, I do," said the applicant, and he took 
 leave humbly, almost gratefully. 
 
 A delegation once waited upon Mr. Lincoln to 
 ask the appointment of a gentleman as Com- 
 missioner to the Sandwich Islands. 
 
 79
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Besides his fitness for the place they urged 
 his bad health. The President said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that there are 
 eight other appHcants for that place and they 
 are all sicker than your man." 
 
 To a member of Congress who applied to him 
 for a mess of patronage he said: "Your demand 
 illustrates the difference between the abstract 
 and the concrete. When a bill is pending to 
 create more army officers you take the floor and 
 denounce it (although you dodge a vote on it) 
 as a needless scheme to increase the power and 
 tyranny of the Executive; but as soon as the 
 bill becomes a law you come here and demand 
 that all your brothers-in-law and cousins and 
 nephews be appointed under it: your action in 
 Congress is abstract, but in the Executive Cham- 
 ber is concrete.'* 
 
 Thurlow Weed relates that he was one day 
 opposing the claims of Montgomery Blair, who 
 aspired to a Cabinet appointment, when Mr. 
 Lincoln inquired of him whom he would recom- 
 mend. "Henry Winter Davis," was the re- 
 sponse. "David Davis, I see, has been post- 
 ing you up on this question," retorted Lin- 
 coln. "He has Davis on the brain. I think 
 
 80
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 Maryland must be a good State to move 
 from." 
 
 The President then told a story of a witness 
 in court in a neighboring county, who, on being 
 asked his age repHed, "Sixty." Being satisfied 
 he was much older, the question was repeat- 
 ed, "The court knows you to be much older 
 than sixty." "Oh, I understand now," was 
 the rejoinder, "you're thinking of those ten 
 years I spent on the eastern shore of Mary- 
 land; that was so much time lost, and don't 
 count." 
 
 "The Democrats must vote to hold the Union 
 now," he once said, referring to the political 
 situation, "without bothering whether we or 
 the Southern men got things where they are. 
 And we must make it easy for them to do this, 
 for we cannot live through the case without 
 them." 
 
 He then told about the Illinois man who was 
 chased by a fierce bull in a pasture, and, dodging 
 around a tree, caught the tail of the pursuing 
 beast. After pawing the earth for a time the 
 bull broke away on a run, snorting at every 
 jump, while the man clinging to its tail cried 
 out, "Darn you, who commenced this fuss?" A 
 remarkably clear view of the case. 
 
 6 8t
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Could any (even a professional) wag take off 
 the swagger of a certain New Jersey Congress- 
 man better than this ? He called on the President 
 with two of his constituents, in order to see Lin- 
 coln as they would a show. "Mr. President," 
 said he, "this is Mr. X and Mr. Y, and they are 
 among the weightiest men in Southern New 
 Jersey." After they had gone Lincoln said, "I 
 wonder that end of the State didn't tip up 
 when they got off it." 
 
 Once, as Lincoln was passing along Pennsyl-^ 
 vania Avenue, a man came running after him, 
 hailed him, and thrust a bundle of papers into 
 his hand, requesting consideration for some petty 
 office. It angered him not a little, and he pitched 
 the papers back, saying, "I'm not going to open 
 shop here." 
 
 A Western Senator who had failed of a re- 
 election brought his successor, one day, and in- 
 troduced him to the President. Lincoln, in 
 reply, expressed his gratification at making the 
 acquaintance of a new Senator. "Yet," he added, 
 
 "I hate to have old friends like Senator W • 
 
 go away. And — another thing — I usually find 
 that a Senator or Representative out of business 
 is a sort of lame duck. He has to be provided 
 
 82
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 for." When the two gentlemen had withdrawn I 
 
 took the hberty of saying that Mr. W did not 
 
 seem to rehsh that remark. Weeks after, when I 
 had forgotten the circumstance, the President 
 said, "You thought I was almost rude to Senator 
 
 W the other day. Well, now he wants 
 
 Commissioner Dole's place!" Mr. Dole was 
 then Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 
 
 It is said that Lincoln very seldom invented a 
 story. Once he said: "You speak of Lincoln 
 stories. I don't think that is a correct phrase. 
 I don't make the stories mine by telling them. 
 I'm only a retail dealer.' 
 
 it 
 
 Scripture stories and incidents were also used 
 by Lincoln to illustrate his argument or to en- 
 force a point. Judge E had been concerned 
 
 in a certain secret organization of "radical" 
 Republicans, whose design was to defeat Lin- 
 coln's renomination. When this futile opposi- 
 tion had died out the Judge was pressed by his 
 friends for a profitable office. Lincoln appointed 
 him, and to one who remonstrated against such 
 a display of magnanimity he replied: "Well, I 
 
 suppose Judge E , having been disappointed 
 
 before, did behave pretty ugly; but that wouldn't 
 make him any less fit for this place, and I have 
 
 83
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Scriptural authority for appointing him. You 
 remember that when Moses was on Mount Sinai, 
 getting a commission for Aaron, that same Aaron 
 was at the foot of the mountain making a false 
 god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron got 
 his commission, you know." 
 
 The late Chief-Justice Carter, of the District 
 of Columbia, once called upon Lincoln with a 
 party of politicians to secure the appointment 
 of a gentleman who was opposed by the Senators 
 from his State. Lincoln suggested that they 
 ought to get the Senators on their side. They 
 replied that, owing to local complications, such 
 a thing was Impossible. Lincoln retorted that 
 nothing was Impossible In politics; that the pe- 
 culiarities of the Senator referred to were well 
 known, and that by the use of a little tact and 
 diplomacy he might be brought around. In which 
 case there would be no doubt about the appoint- 
 ment. To clinch his argument, Lincoln told a 
 story of James Quarles, a distinguished lawyer 
 of Tennessee. Quarles, he said, was trying a 
 case, and after producing his evidence rested; 
 whereupon the defense produced a witness who 
 swore Quarles completely out of court, and a 
 verdict was rendered accordingly. After the 
 trial one of his friends came to him and said : 
 
 84
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 tc 
 
 'Why didn't you get that feller to swar on 
 your side?" 
 
 "I didn't know anything about him," replied 
 Quarles. 
 
 "I might have told you about him," said the 
 friend, "for he would swar for you jest as hard 
 as he'd swar for the other side. That's his 
 business. Judge, that feller takes in swarin' for 
 a livin'." 
 
 Anthony J. Bleecker tells his experience m ap- 
 plying for a position under Mr. Lincoln. The 
 President requested him to read his vouchers. 
 Before Bleecker got half through the President 
 cried out, "Oh, stop! You are like the man who 
 killed the dog." *'In what respect?" said 
 Bleecker, not feeling particularly flattered by the 
 comparison. Mr. Lincoln replied: "He had a 
 vicious animal which he determined to de- 
 spatch, and accordingly knocked out its brains 
 with a club. He continued striking the dog 
 until a friend stayed his hand, exclaiming, 'You 
 needn't strike him any more — the dog is dead; 
 you killed him at the first blow.* *0h yes,* 
 said he, 'I know that; but I believe in punish- 
 ment after death.' So, I see, do you." 
 
 Mr. Bleecker acknowledged that it was pos- 
 sible to do too much soTiCcimes, and he in his 
 
 85
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 cum told an anecdote of a good priest who con- 
 verted an Indian from heathenism to Christian- 
 ity; the only difficulty he had with him was to 
 get him to pray for his enemies. "The Indian 
 had been taught by his father to overcome and 
 destro)^ them. *That/ said the priest, 'may be 
 the Indian's creed, but it is not the doctrine 
 of Christianity or the Bible. St. Paul distinctly 
 says, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he 
 thirst, give him drink." ' The Indian shook his 
 head at this and seemed dejected; but when the 
 priest added, 'For in so doing thou shalt heap 
 coals of fire upon his head,' the poor convert 
 was overcome with emotion, fell on his knees, 
 and with outstretched hands and uplifted eyes 
 invoked all sorts of blessings on his adversary's 
 head, supplicating for pleasant hunting-grounds, 
 a large supply of squaws, lots of papooses, and 
 all other Indian comforts, till the good priest 
 interrupted him (as you did me), exclaiming, 
 * Stop, my son ! You have discharged your Chris- 
 tian duty, and have done more than enough.' 
 *0h no, Father,' says the Indian, 'let me pray! 
 I want to burn him down to the stump!' " 
 Mr. Bleecker got the job. 
 
 "On arriving at the White House," relates 
 General Wilson, "I found a Congressman in 
 
 86
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 earnest conversation with the President. Look- 
 ing at me as if I were an intruder, the poHtician 
 stopped, and Mr. Lincoln said, 'It is all right — 
 we are going out together; so turn on your ora- 
 tory.' So the member resumed talking vigor- 
 ously for five minutes or more, in behalf of his 
 constituent, an applicant for some office. The 
 President, looking critically at the right side of 
 his face and then on the left, remarked, in an 
 interested manner, *Why, how close you do 
 shave, John!' That was the way in which he 
 baffled the office-seekers; and, although the Con- 
 gressman was disappointed, of course, he could 
 not avoid laughing. After his departure I said, 
 *Mr. President, is that the way you manage 
 the pohticians?' And he answered, *Well, you 
 must not suppose you have all the strategy in 
 the army.' " 
 
 H. C. Whitney relates the following story: "I 
 was in Washington in regard to the Indian service 
 for a few days in 1861, and I said to Mr. Lincoln 
 one day, 'Everything is drifting into the war, 
 and I guess you'll have to put me in the army.* 
 He looked up from his work and said, good- 
 humoredly : 'I'm making generals now. In 
 a few days I'll be making quartermasters, and 
 then I'll fix you.' " 
 
 87
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Certain officials in the government employ 
 were very anxious to get absolute control of 
 certain moneys to be disbursed by them. These 
 moneys were formerly controlled by the district 
 attorneys of certain districts, and the control of 
 these district attorneys they were anxious to set 
 aside, and they came to the President with this 
 plea. He knew what they wanted, and told 
 them the following story: 
 
 "You are very much like a man in IHinois 
 whose cabin was burned down, and, according 
 to the kindly custom of early days in the West, 
 his neighbors all contributed something to start 
 him again. In his case they had been so Hberal 
 that he soon found himself better off than before 
 the fire, and got proud. One day a neighbor 
 brought him a bag of oats, but the fellow refused 
 it with scorn, and said, ' I am not taking oats now; 
 I take nothing but money. 
 
 J )j 
 
 While Lincoln was alwaj^s very patient, he 
 often adopted droll methods of getting rid of 
 bores. The late Justice Carter of the Supreme 
 Court of the District of Columbia used to relate 
 an incident of a Philadelphia man who called at 
 the White House so frequently, and took up so 
 much of the President's time, that the latter 
 finally lost his patience. One day when the 
 
 88
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 gentleman was particularly verbose and per- 
 sistent, and refused to leave, although he knew 
 that important delegations were waiting, Lincoln 
 arose, walked over to a wardrobe in the corner 
 of the Cabinet chamber, and took a bottle from 
 a shelf. Looking gravely at his visitor, whose 
 head was very bald, he remarked: 
 
 *'Did you ever try this stuff for your hair?" 
 
 *'No, sir, I never did." 
 
 "Well," remarked Lincoln, "I advise you to 
 try it, and I will give you this bottle. If at first 
 you don't succeed, try, try again. Keep it up. 
 They say it will make hair grow on a pumpkin. 
 Now take it and come back in eight or ten months 
 and tell me how it works." 
 
 The astonished Philadelphian left the room 
 instantly without a word, carrying the bottle in 
 his hand, and Judge Carter, coming in with 
 the next delegation, found the President doubled 
 up with laughter at the success of his strategy. 
 Before he could proceed to business the story 
 had to be told. 
 
 He had a soft spot in his heart for the wounded 
 soldiers who were incapacitated for duty, or, for 
 that matter, for any kind of usefulness, as this 
 message to the Senate will prove: 
 
 "Yesterday little indorsements of mine went 
 
 89
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 to you In two cases of postmasterships sought 
 for widows whose husbands have fallen in the 
 battles of this war. These cases occurring on 
 the same day brought me to reflect more atten- 
 tively than I had before done as to what is 
 fairly due from us here in the dispensing of 
 patronage to the men who, by fighting our bat- 
 tles, bear the chief burden of saving our coun- 
 try. My conclusion is that, other claims and 
 quahfications being equal, they have the bet- 
 ter right; and this is especially applicable to 
 the disabled soldier and the deceased soldier's 
 family.'* 
 
 "Soon after the opening of Congress, the Hon. 
 Mr. Shannon made the customary call," writes 
 Carpenter, the artist, "at the White House. In 
 the conversation that ensued Mr. Shannon said, 
 *Mr. President, I met an old friend of yours in 
 California last summer, a Mr. Campbell, who 
 had a good deal to say about your Springfield 
 life.' *Ah!' returned Mr. Lincoln, 'I am glad 
 to hear of him. Campbell used to be a dry 
 fellow in those days,* he continued. 'For a time 
 he was Secretary of State. One day during the 
 legislative vacation a meek, cadaverous-looking 
 man, with a white neck-cloth, introduced himself 
 to him at his office, and, stating that he had 
 
 90
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 been informed that Mr. C. had the letting of the 
 Hall of Representatives, he wished to secure ft, 
 if possible, for a course of lectures he desired to 
 deliver in Springfield. "May I ask," said the 
 Secretary, "what is to be the subject of your 
 lecture?" "Certainly," was the reply, with a 
 very solemn expression of countenance. "The 
 course I wish to deliver is on the second coming 
 of our Lord." "It is of no use," said C; "if you 
 will take my advice, you will not waste your 
 time in this city. It is my private opinion, if 
 the Lord has been in Springfield once, he will 
 never come the second time!" ' " 
 
 "One evening the President brought a couple 
 of friends Into the * state dining-room* to see my 
 picture," relates Carpenter. "Something was 
 said, in the conversation that ensued, that 're- 
 minded' him of the following circumstance: 
 
 * Judge ,' said he, 'held the strongest Ideas 
 
 of rigid government and close construction that 
 I ever met. It was said of him, on one occasion, 
 that he would hang a man for blowing his nose 
 in the street, but he would quash the indictment 
 if it failed to specify which hand he blew it with ! ' " 
 
 Lord Lyons, the British minister in Washing- 
 ton, once presented the President with an auto- 
 
 91
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 graph letter from Queen Victoria announcing, as 
 is the custom of European monarchs, the mar- 
 riage of the Prince of Wales, and added that 
 whatever response the President would make he 
 would immediately transmit. Mr. Lincoln re- 
 sponded by shaking the marriage announcement 
 at the bachelor minister before him, saying, 
 "Lyons, go thou and do likewise." 
 
 For some men Lincoln had special uses, and his 
 relations with them were limited to that narrow 
 utiHty; for others his affinity was catholic. To 
 an intimate who had mistakenly supposed that 
 he placed much reliance on the counsels of 
 David Davis, Judge of the Circuit Court, he ex- 
 plained away the error by this illustration. 
 "They had side judges down in New Hampshire, 
 and to show the folly of the system one who 
 had been a side judge for twenty years said the 
 only time the chief judge ever consulted him 
 was at the close of a long day's session, when he 
 turned to the side judge and whispered, 'Don't 
 your back ache?'" And Davis himself relates 
 that Lincoln never consulted him but once or 
 twice. 
 
 Noah Brooks relates that when he had been 
 at some pains, one day, to show the President 
 
 92
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 how a California politician had been coerced in,to 
 telling the truth without knowing it, Lincoln 
 said it reminded him of a black barber in Illi- 
 nois, notorious for lying, who, hearing some of 
 his customers admiring the planet Jupiter, then 
 shining in the evening sky, said: "Sho, I've seen 
 that star afore. I seen him 'way down in Georgy." 
 The President continued: "Like your Cahfornia 
 friend, he told the truth, but thought he was 
 lying." 
 
 A New-Yorker at the White House said to 
 the President that it seemed strange that the 
 President of the United States and the President 
 of the Confederate States should have been born 
 in the same State. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know about that," laughed Mr. 
 Lincoln. "Those Kentucky people will tell you 
 that they raise 'most anything in their State, 
 and I reckon they're mighty near right." 
 
 There was very little social life in the White 
 House during the Lincoln administration. The 
 President gave a few state dinners each year, 
 such as were required by his official position, held 
 a few public receptions to gratify the curiosity 
 of the Washington people and strangers in the 
 city, and gave one ball, which excited much criti- 
 
 93
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 cism from the religious press and from unfriendly 
 sources. It v/as represented as a heartless ex- 
 hibition of frivolity in the midst of dying soldiers 
 and a grief-stricken country, and some people 
 even went so far as to declare the death of Willie 
 Lincoln, about two weeks later, to be a judgment 
 of God upon the President and Mrs. Lincoln for in- 
 dulging in worldly amusements. These thought- 
 less writers did not know that during the recep- 
 tion, which was in honor of the diplomatic corps, 
 the President and Mrs. Lincoln both slipped away 
 from their guests to spend a moment at the bed- 
 side of their child, who was so ill that the post- 
 ponement of the entertainment was proposed, 
 but vetoed by the President. The death of this 
 lad was the greatest sorrow that ever fell upon 
 the President's heart. 
 
 The great public receptions, with their vast, 
 rushing multitudes pouring past him to shake 
 hands, he rather enjoyed; they were not a dis- 
 agreeable task to him, and he seemed surprised 
 when people commiserated him upon them. He 
 would shake hands with thousands of people, 
 seemingly unconscious of what he was doing, 
 murmuring some monotonous salutation as they 
 went by, his eye dim, his thoughts far with- 
 drawn; then suddenly he would see some familiar 
 
 94
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 face — his memory for faces was very good — and 
 his eye would brighten and his whole form grow 
 attentive; he would greet the visitor with a 
 hearty grasp and a ringing word and dismiss 
 him with a cheery laugh that filled the Blue 
 Room with infectious good-nature. Many people 
 armed themselves with an appropriate speech to 
 be delivered on these occasions, but unless it 
 was compressed into the smallest possible space 
 it never was uttered; the crowd would jostle the 
 peroration out of shape. If it were brief enough 
 and hit the President's fancy, it generally re- 
 ceived a swift answer. One night an elderly 
 gentleman from Buffalo said, "Up our way we 
 believe in God and Abraham Lincoln," to 
 which the President replied, shoving him along 
 the line, "My friend, you are more than half 
 right. 
 
 »» 
 
 He had a rule for evading difficulties which 
 was expressed in a homely remark to Mr. 
 Seward, who jokingly remarked at a Cabinet 
 meeting one day: 
 
 "Mr. President, I hear that you turned out 
 for a colored woman on a muddy crossing the 
 other day.*' 
 
 "I don't remember," answered Lincoln, mu- 
 singly, "but I think it very likely, for I have 
 
 95
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 always made it a rule that if people won't turn 
 out for me I will for them. If I didn't, there 
 would be a collision." 
 
 Robert Dale Owen, the spiritualist, once read 
 the President a long manuscript on an abstruse 
 subject with which that rather erratic person 
 loved to deal. Lincoln listened patiently until 
 the author asked for his opinion, when he replied 
 with a yawn: 
 
 *'Well, for those who like that sort of thing 
 I should think it is just about the sort of thing 
 they would like.'* 
 
 Colonel Lamon in his Recollections tells this: 
 A certain Washington police officer, who it seems 
 was on intimate terms with the President, had 
 accidentally killed a rough while making his 
 arrest, and, though it was two o'clock in the 
 morning, repaired at once to the White House, 
 and requested Lincoln to come into his office. 
 Mr. Lincoln heard his story, and observed that 
 he had only done his duty. "It isn't that,"' 
 answered the officer; "I know I did my duty, 
 but I felt so badly over the affair that I wanted 
 to talk to you about it." "Well," answered Lin^ 
 coin, "go home now and get some sleep, but 
 the next time you hit a man, don't hit him with 
 
 96
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 your fist. Hit him with a club or a crowbar, 
 or something that won't kill him." 
 
 When he came to New York early in the 
 sixties he went to hear Henry Ward Beecher, 
 and afterward visited Five Points, then a most 
 notorious slum. He was called upon to address 
 the children, and his homely and kindly talk so 
 pleased them that when he stopped they cried, 
 "Go on," "Oh, do go on." As he was leaving 
 the room the teacher asked him his name. 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois," he answered 
 simply, and added nothing more. 
 
 After his great triumph in New York he spoke 
 In many New England towns. Probably the 
 greatest tribute to his powers as a speaker was 
 paid by a professor at Yale College who ob- 
 served with much admiration the fine structure 
 of his speech. The professor took notes of the 
 speech, and held it up before his class the next 
 day as a model of English composition. He fol- 
 lowed Lincoln to a neighboring city, that he 
 might again sit at the feet of this master, self- 
 taught in the mother-tongue. 
 
 Toward the end of 1862 the Cabinet crisis 
 reached a climax, and a Senate committee urged 
 7 97
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 the President to reconstruct his Cabinet. How- 
 ever, he valued Seward and Chase too highly to 
 part with them, and he met the situation in his 
 own shrewd way. After it was all over, he said, 
 referring to the interview: ** While they seemed 
 to believe in my honesty, they appeared to chink 
 that when I had in me any good purpose or in- 
 tention Seward contrived to suck it out of me 
 unperceived." 
 
 Without going into details, it is familiar his- 
 tory that the final result of the complaint was 
 that both Seward and Chase resigned. Thus 
 armed, Lincoln was in a position to satisfy both 
 wings of the party. "Now I can ride, for I have 
 a pumpkin in each bag," he shrewdly expressed 
 it. Later he said wisely, in summing up the situ- 
 ation: "If I had yielded to that storm and dis- 
 missed Seward, the thing would all have slumped 
 over one way, and we should have been left with 
 a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase 
 gave in his resignation, I saw that the game was 
 in my hands, and I put it through." 
 
 To a deputation who urged that his Cabinet 
 should be reconstructed after the retirement of 
 Secretary Cameron the President told this story: 
 ''Gentlemen, when I was a young man I used to 
 know very well one Joe Wilson, who built him- 
 
 98
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 self a log cabin not far from where I lived. Joe 
 was very fond of eggs and chickens, and he took 
 a very great deal of pains in fitting up a poultry- 
 shed. Having at length got together a choice 
 lot of young fowls — of which he was very proud — - 
 he began to be much annoyed by the depreda- 
 tions of certain little black and white spotted 
 animals which it is not necessary to name. One 
 night Joe was awakened by an unusual cackling 
 and fluttering among his chickens. Getting up, 
 he crept out to see what was going on. It was 
 a bright moonlight night, and he soon caught 
 sight of half a dozen of the little pests, which, 
 with their dam, were running in and out of the 
 shadow of the shed. Very wrathy, Joe put a 
 double charge into his old musket and thought he 
 would * clean out* the whole tribe at one shot. 
 Somehow he only killed one, and the balance 
 scampered off across the field. In telling the 
 story Joe would always pause here and hold his 
 nose. *Why didn't you follow them up and kill 
 the rest?' inquired his neighbors. * Blast it,' 
 said Joe, *it was eleven weeks before I got over 
 kilHn' one. If you want any more skirmishing 
 in that line you can do it yourselves!' " 
 
 Once a friend complained to the President 
 that a certain Cabinet officer was administering 
 
 99
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 his office with unusual energy, in the hope of 
 securing the Presidential nomination. 
 
 "That reminds me," said Mr. Lincoln, "that 
 my brother and I were once plowing a field with 
 a lazy horse, but at times he rushed across the 
 field so fast that I could hardly keep up with him. 
 At last I found an enormous chin-fly on him, and 
 knocked it off. Now I am not going to make 
 that mistake a second time. If the Secretary 
 has a chin-fly on him I am not going to knock 
 it off, if it will only make his department go." 
 
 This is related by Gen. James Grant Wilson: 
 "Among several good things, the President told 
 of a southern Illinois preacher who, in the course 
 of his sermon, asserted that the Saviour was the 
 only perfect man who had ever appeared in this 
 world; also that there was no record, in the Bible 
 or elsewhere, of any perfect woman having lived 
 on the earth. Whereupon there arose in the rear 
 of the church a persecuted-looking personage 
 who, the parson having stopped speaking, said, 
 *I know a perfect woman, and I've heard of her 
 every day for the last six 3^ears.' 'Who was 
 she?' asked the minister. *My husband's first 
 wife,' replied the afflicted female." 
 
 "I once knew," said Lincoln, "a sound church- 
 man by the name of Brown, who was a member 
 
 100
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 of a very sober and pious committee having in 
 charge the erection of a bridge over a dangerous 
 and rapid river. Several architects failed, and 
 at last Brown said he had a friend named Jones 
 who had built several bridges and undoubtedly 
 could build that one. So Mr. Jones was called 
 in. 
 
 " *Can you build this bridge?' inquired the 
 committee. 
 
 " 'Yes,' replied Jones, *or any other. I could 
 build a bridge to the infernal regions, if neces- 
 sary.' V 
 
 "The committee were shocked, and Brown felt 
 •called upon to defend his friend. 'I know Jones 
 so well,' said he, *and he is so honest a man and 
 so good an architect that if he states soberly 
 and positively that he can build a bridge to — 
 to — why, I believe it; but I feel bound to say 
 that I have my doubts about the abutment on 
 the infernal side.' 
 
 "So," said Mr. Lincoln, "when politicians told 
 me that the Northern and Southern wings of 
 the Democracy could be harmonized, why, I 
 beheved them, of course; but I always had my 
 doubts about the 'abutment' on the other side." 
 
 James Morgan tells, in his excellent Life, of 
 Lincoln's freedom from the usual official vanity. 
 
 lOI
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 He rather shrank from than courted the official 
 title of Mr. President, and generally referred to 
 his office as "this place," "since I have been in 
 this place," or, "since I came here." Referring 
 at one time to the apartment reserved in the 
 Capitol for the Chief Magistrate, he called it 
 "the room, you know, that they call the Presi- 
 dent's room." Once he pleaded with some old 
 Illinois friends who addressed him as Mr. Presi- 
 dent, "Now call me Lincoln, and I'll promise 
 not to tell of the breach of etiquette." 
 
 Another story told by Morgan illustrates his 
 inherent democracy. He dreamed he was in some 
 great assembly, and the people drew back to let 
 him pass, whereupon he heard some one say, "He 
 is a common-looking fellow." In his dream 
 Lincoln turned to the man and said, "Friend, the 
 Lord prefers common-looking people; that is the 
 reason why He made so many of them." 
 
 His receptions he called his "public-opinion 
 baths." He said he came out of them with a 
 renewed sense of his official obligations. "No 
 hours of my day are better employed than those 
 which bring me again within the direct contact 
 and the atmosphere of the average of our whole 
 people," he said, and added that they helped 
 
 zca
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 "to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image 
 of that great popular assemblage out of which I 
 sprang and to which I must return." This is 
 pure democracy, and certainly a patriotic inter- 
 pretation of pubhc duty. 
 
 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts 
 called at the White House early one morning. 
 He was told that the President was down-stairs, 
 that he could go right down. He found the Presi- 
 dent polishing his boots. Somewhat amazed, 
 Senator Sumner said, *'Why, Mr. President, do 
 you black your own boots?" With a vigorous 
 rub of the brush, the President replied, "Whose 
 boots did you think I blacked?" 
 
 But he knew how to be correct in deportment 
 when he deemed that occasion required it. A man 
 who was present once when Charles Sumner called, 
 has described the manner in which Lincoln re- 
 ceived that self-conscious statesman. He dropped 
 his long legs from the arm of the chair in which 
 he was slouching at ease, rose and saluted with 
 studied dignity his imposing caller, who carried 
 a cane and was arrayed in a brown coat and 
 fancy waistcoat, checked lavender trousers, and 
 a striking pair of spats. After the Senator had 
 gone Lincoln again relaxed, with the remark, 
 
 103
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "When with the Romans we must do as the 
 Romans do." 
 
 War maps hung on the walls of his office, and 
 his table was covered so deep with papers that 
 it was not always possible for him to find room 
 to rest his hand while signing his name to a 
 document. "I am hke the Patagonians," he 
 said with a laugh, once, as he hunted for a place 
 where he could write. "You know they live off 
 oysters, and throw the shells out of the window. 
 When the pile of shells grows so high as to shut 
 in the window, they simply move and build a 
 new house." 
 
 Some gentlemen, fresh from a Western tour, 
 calling at the White House to see President Lin- 
 coln, referred to a body of water in Nebraska 
 bearing an Indian name which they could not 
 recall, but which signified Weeping Water. In- 
 stantly Mr. Lincoln rephed, "As Laughing Water, 
 according to Mr. Longfellow, is Minnehaha, this 
 must be Minneboohoo." 
 
 A friend discovered the President one day 
 counting greenbacks. "The President of the 
 United States has a multiplicity of duties not 
 specified in the Constitution or the laws," said 
 
 104
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 Mr. Lincoln. *'This is one of them. This money 
 belongs to a negro porter in the Treasury De- 
 partment who is now in the hospital so sick that 
 he cannot sign his name. According to his wish, 
 I am putting a part of it aside in an envelop, 
 labeled, to save it for him." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln once received a letter asking 
 for a "sentiment" and his autograph. He re- 
 plied: "Dear Madam, — When you ask a stranger 
 for that which is of interest only to yourself, al- 
 ways inclose a stamp. Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 He laughed at Senator Mason, who, on account 
 of this sectional warfare, wore homespun to avoid 
 buying goods of Northern manufacture. Mr. 
 Lincoln said: "To carry out this idea he ought 
 to go barefoot. It that's the plan, they should 
 begin at the foundation and adopt the well-known 
 'Georgia costume' of a shirt-collar and a pair 
 of spurs." 
 
 In 1864 five six-footers, accompanied by two 
 representatives, called on the President and were 
 introduced to him. These six-footers seemed to 
 astonish Lincoln, who, after a careful survey^ 
 exclaimed, "Are they all from your State?" 
 
 "All." 
 
 105
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 (C 
 
 'Why, it seems to me," said the President, 
 glancing at the short Representatives, "that your 
 State always sends her little men to Congress.'* 
 
 Lincoln once told the telegraph-operators in 
 the War Department that the concise phrase- 
 ology of the official despatches reminded him of 
 the story of a Scotch girl who, on her way to 
 market one morning, while fording a stream, 
 was accosted by a countryman on the bank. 
 "Good morning, my lassie," said he. "How 
 deep's the brook, and what's the price of eggs?'* 
 "Knee-deep and a sixpence!" answered the little 
 maid without looking up. 
 
 "The Wade and Davis matter troubles me 
 little," said Lincoln to a friend. "Indeed, I feel 
 a good deal about it as the old man did about 
 his cheese when his very smart boy found, by 
 the aid of a microscope, that it was full of mag- 
 gots. *0h, father!' exclaimed the boy, *how can 
 you eat such stuff.? Just look in here and see 
 'em wriggle.' The old man took another mouth- 
 ful, and putting his teeth into it, replied grimly, 
 *Let 'em wriggle.' " 
 
 From a reply to an invitation to attend a festival 
 in honor of the anniversary of Jefferson's birthday: 
 
 1 06
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 **I remember once being much amused at 
 seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged in 
 a fight with their coats on, which fight, after a 
 long and harmless contest, resulted in each having 
 fought himself out of his coat and into that of 
 the other. If the two leading parties of this 
 day are really identical with the two of the 
 days of Jefferson and Adams, they have per- 
 formed the same feat as the two drunken 
 men." 
 
 Gen. O. O. Howard is responsible for this: 
 "In the first speech I ever saw of Mr. Lincoln's 
 he said, *Many free countries have lost their 
 liberties, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, 
 be it my proudest boast not that I was the last 
 to desert, but that I never, never deserted her.' 
 That was valor." 
 
 A well-known literary man was praising Lin- 
 coln at a dinner in New York. "Lincoln," said 
 he, "could not stand tedious writing In others. 
 He once condemned for its tediousness a Greek 
 history, whereupon a diplomat took him to task. 
 *The author of that history, Mr. President,' he 
 said, *is one of the profoundest scholars of the 
 age. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any 
 man of our generation has plunged more deeply 
 
 107
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 in the sacred fount of learning.' 'Yes, or come 
 up drier,' said Lincoln." 
 
 Lincoln had a genius for terseness. Never a 
 wasted word and every word packed with mean- 
 ing. Here is his definition of wealth. To him it 
 was, as he once said, "simply a superfluity of 
 things we don't need.'* 
 
 His moral honesty was like unto one of the 
 prophets of old. When his friends urged him 
 not to make his famous "house divided against 
 itself" speech, he said: "Friends, the time has 
 come when these sentiments should be uttered, 
 and if it is decreed that I should go down because 
 of this speech, then let me go down linked with 
 the truth." 
 
 To the repHes of his critics that he had over- 
 thrown his chances of victory and had ruined 
 the opportunities of his party he said, "If I had 
 to draw a pen across my record and erase my 
 whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or 
 choice left as to what I should save from the 
 wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it 
 to the world unerased." 
 
 Riding at one time through a Virginia wood, 
 he made the following observation about a lux- 
 
 io8
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 uriant vine which wrapped itself about a tree: 
 "Yes, that is very beautiful; but that vine is 
 like certain habits of men; it decorates the ruin 
 it makes." Speaking of the difference between 
 character and reputation, he said: ''Character 
 was like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. 
 The shadow is what we think of it; the tree was 
 the real thing." 
 
 "Friday, Feb. ig^ 1864. — As I went into the 
 Cabinet meeting, a fair, plump lady came for- 
 ward and insisted she must see the President 
 only for a moment — ^wanted nothing. I made 
 her request known to the President, who directed 
 that she be admitted. She said her name was 
 Holmes, that she belonged in Dubuque, Iowa, was 
 passing East, and came from Baltimore expressly 
 to have a look at President Lincoln. 'Well, in 
 the matter of looking at one another,' said the 
 President, laughing, 'I have altogether the ad- 
 vantage.' " — Diary of Gideon Welles. 
 
 Here is an incident told by Arnold that illus- 
 trates the kindly disposition of Lincoln, One 
 summer's day, walking along the shaded path 
 leading from the Executive Mansion to the W^ar 
 Office, I saw the tall, awkward form of the Presi- 
 dent seated on the grass under a tree. A wounded 
 
 109
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 soldier, seeking back-pay and a pension, had met 
 the President, and, having recognized him, asked 
 his counsel. Lincoln sat down, examined the 
 papers of the soldier, and told him what to do — 
 sent him to the proper bureau with a note which 
 secured prompt attention. 
 
 The simplicity and democracy of the lives of 
 the President and Mrs. Lincoln may be well 
 illustrated b}^ the following anecdotes: 
 
 They lived their lives simply, and their ser- 
 vants followed the free and easy examples set 
 before them. One of them once interrupted an 
 important conference by opening the President's 
 door and saying, "She wants you." "Yes, yes," 
 Lincoln replied, without showing the least sign 
 of annoyance. But as the President did not 
 appear, the servant again broke in, and with 
 greater emphasis repeated, "I say, she wants 
 you." 
 
 Another Instance indicating their freedom 
 from ritual of all kinds is the following. A 
 man once called on Sunday morning by appoint- 
 ment, and, after repeatedly ringing the door-bell 
 and receiving no response, entered the White 
 House unannounced and walked up-stairs, looking 
 vainly for a servant, until he finally came to the 
 door of the President's room, at which he knocked. 
 
 no
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed Mr. Lincoln, "the boys are all 
 out this morning." 
 
 Early in Hfe he had formed the habit of rising 
 with the sun. One morning at six o'clock a 
 passer-by saw him at the White House gateway. 
 **Good morning," the President said. "I am 
 looking for a newsbo}-. When you get to the 
 corner I wish you would send one this way." 
 
 A telegram from Philadelphia was once re- 
 ceived, setting forth that some one had been 
 arrested there for obtaining fifteen hundred dol- 
 lars on Mr. Lincoln's name. 
 
 "What," said Mr. Lincoln, "fifteen hundred 
 dollars on my name! I have given no one au- 
 thority for such a draft, and if I had," he added, 
 half humorously, "it is surprising that any man 
 could get the money." 
 
 "Do you remember, Mr. President, a request 
 from a stranger a few days ago for your auto- 
 graph, and that you gave it to him on a half- 
 sheet of note-paper?" said Mr. Nicolay. "The 
 scoundrel doubtless forged an order above your 
 signature and has attempted to swindle som.e- 
 body." 
 
 "Oh, that's the trick, is it?" said the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 Ill
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "What shall be done with him? Have you 
 any orders to give?" inquired the Secretary. 
 
 "Well," said the President, slowly, "I don't 
 see but that he will have to sit on the blister 
 bench." 
 
 Some women called upon him and urged him 
 to aboHsh slavery at once. This course of ac- 
 tion was contrary to his views of political ex- 
 pediency, and when the speaker proceeded to 
 tell him that he (Lincoln) had been appointed 
 minister of the Lord and should follow the ex- 
 ample of Deborah, he made the following 
 reply, "Madam, have you finished?" Having 
 received an affirmative reply, he said, "I have 
 neither time nor disposition to enter into argu- 
 ment with you, and would end this discussion 
 by suggesting for your consideration the ques- 
 tion whether, if it be true that the Lord has ap- 
 pointed me to do the work you have indicated, 
 it is not probable He would have communicated 
 knowledge of that fact to me as well as to you." 
 
 When, in 1863, Maryland was carried by the 
 Emancipationists, and the legislature adopted a 
 resolution creating a convention that should 
 embody a law providing for a policy of emancipa- 
 tion, and the convention was elected by a major- 
 
 112
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 ity of thirteen, there was great jubilation in 
 Washington, and a body of Marylanders called 
 on the President to congratulate him and the 
 country upon the enlistment of Maryland among 
 the free States. Lincoln made a short speech, 
 and later on said in private: "I would rather 
 have Maryland upon that issue than have a 
 State twice its size upon the Presidential issue. 
 It cleans up a piece of ground." Any one who 
 has had any experience with cleaning up a piece 
 of ground, digging up the roots and stumps as 
 Lincoln had, will appreciate the simile. 
 
 What is believed to be a new story of President 
 Lincoln is told by Adlai E. Stevenson: 
 
 "Several months before President Lincoln issued 
 the great Proclamation of Emancipation which 
 gave freedom to the whole race of negro slaves 
 in America, my friend, Senator Henderson of 
 Missouri, came to the White House one day 
 and found Mr. Lincoln in a mood of deepest de- 
 pression. Finally the great President said to his 
 caller and friend that the most constant and 
 acute pressure was being brought upon him by 
 the leaders of the radical element of his party 
 to free the slaves. 
 
 "* Sumner and Stevens and Wilson simply 
 haunt me,' declared Mr. Lincoln, Svith their im- 
 
 8 113
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 portunities for a proclamation of emancipation. 
 Wherever I go and \Yhatever way I turn, they are 
 on my trail. And still, in my heart, I have the 
 deep conviction that the hour has not yet come.' 
 
 "Just as he said this he walked to the window 
 looking out upon Pennsjlvania Avenue and stood 
 there in silence, his tall figure silhouetted against 
 the light of the window-pane, every line of it and 
 of his gracious face expressive of unutterable 
 sadness. Suddenl}^ his Hps began to twitch into 
 a smile and his somber eyes lighted with a twinkle 
 of something like mirth. 
 
 "'The only schooling I ever had, Henderson,* 
 he remarked, *was in a log school-house when 
 reading-books and grammars were unknown. 
 All our reading was done from the Scriptures, and 
 we stood up in a long line and read in turn from 
 the Bible. Our lesson one day was the story of 
 the faithful Israelites who were thrown into the 
 fiery furnace and delivered by the hand of the 
 Lord without so much as the smell of fire upon 
 their garments. It fell to one little fellow to 
 read the verse in which occurred, for the first 
 time in the chapter, the names of Shadrach, 
 Meshach, and Abed-nego. Little Bud stumbled 
 on Shadrach, floundered on Meshach, and went 
 all to pieces on Abed-nego. Instantly the hand 
 of the master dealt him a cufF on the side of the 
 
 114
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 head and left him waiHng and blubbering as the 
 next boy in line took up the reading. But before 
 the girl at the end of the line had done reading 
 he had subsided into sniffles, and finally became 
 quiet. His blunder and disgrace were forgotten 
 by the others of the class until his turn was ap- 
 proaching to read again. Then, like a thunder- 
 clap out of a clear sky, he set up a wail which even 
 alarmed the master, who with rather unusual 
 gentleness inquired: 
 
 "'"What's the matter now?" 
 
 "'Pointing with a shaking finger at the verse 
 which a few moments later would fall to him to 
 read, Bud managed to quaver out the answer: 
 
 "'"Look there, marster — there comes them 
 same damn three fellers again." ' 
 
 " Then his whole face lighted with such a smile 
 as only Lincoln could give, and he beckoned 
 Senator Henderson to his side, silently pointing 
 his long, bony finger to three men who were at 
 that moment crossing Pennsylvania Avenue 
 toward the door of the White House. They were 
 Sumner, Wilson, and Thaddeus Stevens." 
 
 Once when a deputation visited him and urged 
 emancipation before he was ready, he argued that 
 he could not enforce it, and, to illustrate, asked 
 them:
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 tc 
 
 How many legs will a sheep have if you call 
 the tail a leg?" They answered, "Five." "You 
 are mistaken," said Lincoln, "for calling a tail 
 a leg don't make it so"; and that exhibited the 
 fallacy of their position more than twenty 
 syllogisms. 
 
 "I would save the Union," he wrote to Horace 
 Greeley. "I would save it in the shortest way 
 under the Constitution. If there be those who 
 would not save the Union unless they could at 
 the same time save slavery, I do not agree with 
 them. If there be those who would not save the 
 Union unless they could, at the same time, de- 
 stro}^ slavery, I do not agree with them. My 
 paramount object in this struggle is to save the 
 Union, and is not either to save or destroy 
 slavery. If I could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do 
 it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if 
 I could save it by freeing some and leaving others 
 alone, I would also do that. What I do about 
 slavery and the colored race, I do because I be- 
 lieve it helps to save the Union; and what I for- 
 bear, I forbear because I do not believe it would 
 help to save the Union, I shall do less whenever 
 I believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I 
 shall do more whenever I believe doing more will 
 
 ii6
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when 
 shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views 
 as fast as they shall appear to be true views." 
 
 It may not be amiss, in a collection of this 
 character, in order to show the marvelous fer- 
 tility of this wonderful genius, to include an 
 excerpt from his second inaugural address. This 
 has been justly placed among the masterpieces 
 of the world's greatest oratory. It has been 
 compared most favorably with the loftiest 
 portions of the Old Testament and properly 
 classed among the most famous of all the written 
 and spoken compositions in the English tongue. 
 Like all of Lincoln's compositions, it had great 
 brevity, but much pith and meat. 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
 that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
 pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
 until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two 
 hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
 be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
 with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
 with the sword, as was said three thousand years 
 ago, so still it must be said, *The judgments of 
 the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 
 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for 
 all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us 
 
 117
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work 
 we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to 
 care for him who shall have borne the battle, 
 and for his widow and his orphan — to do all 
 which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 
 
 That Lincoln's philosophy was too shrewd 
 and sane for him to countenance the effect rising 
 up against the cause is proved anew by the fol- 
 lowing story from the Boston Post. The Hon. 
 Alexander H. Rice once paid a visit to President 
 Lincoln on behalf of a Boston boy who had been 
 imprisoned for robbing his employer's letters. 
 
 After reading the petition, signed by many 
 citizens of Boston, the President stretched him- 
 self in his chair, and asked Mr. Rice if he had 
 met a man going down-stairs. 
 
 "Yes, Mr, President," replied Mr. Rice. 
 
 "His errand," said the President, "was to get 
 a man pardoned out of the penitentiary; and now 
 you have come to get a boy out of jail." 
 
 Then, with characteristic humor, Mr. Lincoln 
 continued: "FU tell you what it is, we must 
 abolish these courts, or they will be the death of 
 us. I thought it bad enough that they put so 
 many men in the penitentiary for me to get out; 
 but if they have now begun on the boys and the 
 
 ii8
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 jails, and have roped 3"ou into the delivery, let's 
 after them! 
 
 **They deserve the worst fate," he went on, 
 "because, according to the evidence that comes 
 to me, they pick out the very best men and send 
 them to the penitentiary; and this present peti- 
 tion shows they are playing the same game on 
 the boys and sending them all to jail. 
 
 **The man that you met on the stairs affirmed 
 that his friend in the penitentiary is a most ex- 
 emplary citizen, and Massachusetts must be a 
 happy State if her boys out of jail are as virtuous 
 as this one appears to be who is in. 
 
 "Yes, down with the courts and deliverance 
 to their victims, and then we can have some 
 peace!" 
 
 This entry appears in Welles's Diary under 
 date of May 26, 1863 : 
 
 "There was a sharp controversy between Chase 
 and Blair on the subject of the fugitive-slave 
 law, as attempted to be executed on one Hall 
 here, in the district. Both were earnest: Blair 
 for executing the law. Chase for permitting the 
 man to enter the service of the Unites States 
 instead of being remanded into slavery. The 
 President said that this was one of the questions 
 that always embarrassed him. It reminded him 
 
 119
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 of a man In Illinois who was in debt and terribly 
 annoyed by a pressing creditor, until finally the 
 debtor assumed to be crazy whenever the cred- 
 itor broached the subject. *I,' said the Presi- 
 dent, 'have on more than one occasion in this 
 room, when beset by extremists on this ques- 
 tion, been compelled to appear to be very 
 mad. I think,' he continued, *none of you 
 will ever dispose of this subject without getting 
 mad.'" 
 
 There was something more than humor in 
 this — unless wisdom itself is to be regarded as a 
 department of humor. Probably Lincoln in- 
 tended to use the word "mad" here in both its 
 dictionary sense — as meaning insane — and the 
 American colloquial sense — as meaning angry. 
 Slavery was legal, and the return of fugitive 
 slaves was called for under a decision of the 
 Supreme Court. It took a certain amount of 
 frenzy, joined with much righteous wrath, to 
 cut the knot. If the American nation, typified 
 in the great war President, had not got "mad"' 
 in both ways, slavery would certainly not have 
 been done away with when it was. 
 
 The Hon. Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the 
 Treasury in Lincoln's second term, was once an- 
 nounced with a delegation of New York bankers. 
 
 1 20
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 As the party filed into the room he preceded 
 them, and said to the President, in a low voice: 
 
 "These gentlemen from New York have come 
 on to see the Secretary of the Treasury about 
 our new loan. As bankers they are obliged to 
 hold our national securities. I can vouch for 
 their patriotism and loyalty, for, as the good 
 Book says, 'Where the treasure is, there will 
 the heart be also.' " 
 
 To which Mr. Lincoln quickly replied: "There 
 is another text, Mr. McCulloch, I remember, 
 that might equally apply: 'Where the carcass is, 
 there will the eagles be gathered together.' " 
 
 When Attorney -General Bates resigned in 
 1864, after the resignation of Postmaster-General 
 Blair in that year, the Cabinet was left without 
 a Southern member. A few days before the 
 meeting of the Supreme Court, which then met 
 in December, Mr. Lincoln sent for Titian G. 
 Coffey, and said: "My Cabinet has shrunk up 
 North, and I must find a Southern man. I sup- 
 pose if the twelve apostles were to be chosen 
 nowadays, the shrieks of locaUty would have to 
 be heeded." 
 
 Montgomery Blair was not popular with the 
 Union people of the North. The public distrust 
 
 X2I
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 is strikingly illustrated by the following anecdote 
 from the reminiscences of Henry Ward Beecher: 
 *' There was some talk, early in 1864, of a sort 
 of compromise with the South. Blair told the 
 President he was satisfied that, if he could be 
 put in communication with some of the leading 
 men of the South in some way or other, some 
 benefit would accrue. Lincoln had sent a dele- 
 gation to meet Alexander H. Stephens, and that 
 was all the North knew. We were all very much 
 excited over that. The war lasted so long, and I 
 was afraid Lincoln would be so anxious for peace, 
 and I was afraid he would accept something that 
 would be of advantage to the South so 1 went to 
 Washington and called upon him. 'Mr. Lincoln, 
 I come to you to know whether the public in- 
 terest will permit you to explain to me what this 
 Southern commission means? I am in an em- 
 barrassing position as editor and do not want 
 to step in the dark.' Well, he listened very pa- 
 tiently, and looked up to the ceiling for a few 
 moments, and said, *Well, I am almost of a 
 mind to show you all the documents.' 
 
 " 'Well, Mr. Lincoln, I should like to see them 
 if it is proper.' He went to his little secretary 
 and came out and handed me a little card as 
 long as my finger and an inch wide, and on that 
 was written: 
 
 122
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 " *You will pass the bearer through the lines* 
 (or something to that effect). 
 
 " *A. Lincoln.' 
 
 " 'There/ he said, *is all there is of it. Now, 
 Blair thinks something can be done, but I don't; 
 but I have no objection to have him try his hand. 
 He has no authority whatever but to go and see 
 what he can do.' " 
 
 An editorial in the New York Tribune, op- 
 posing Lincoln's renomination, is said to have 
 called out from him the following story: 
 
 "A traveler on the frontier found himself out 
 of his reckoning one night in a most inhospitable 
 region. A terrific thunder-storm came up to add 
 to his trouble. He floundered along until his 
 horse at length gave out. The lightning afforded 
 him the only clue to his way, but the peals of 
 thunder were frightful. One bolt, which seemed 
 to crash the earth beneath him, brought him to 
 his knees. By no means a praying man, his 
 petition was short and to the point: *0 Lord, 
 if it is all the same to you, give us a little more 
 light and a little less noised" 
 
 When the time came along in the spring of 
 1864 for nominations to be made for the Presi-* 
 dential office by the Republican party, Fremont 
 was prominently mentioned by a few of the maU 
 
 123
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 contents, and vociferousness gave color to a sup- 
 port that subsequent events proved he did not 
 have. John T. Morse, Jr., in his Life of Abraham 
 Lincoln^ tells the following story: 
 
 "At Cleveland on the appointed day the 'mass 
 convention' assembled, only the mass was want- 
 ing. It nominated Fremont for the Presidency 
 and Gen. John Cochrane for the Vice-Presidency; 
 and thus again the Constitution was ignored by 
 these malcontents, for both these gentlemen were 
 citizens of New York, and therefore the im- 
 portant delegation from that State could law- 
 fully vote for only one of them. Really the best 
 result which the convention achieved was that 
 it called forth a bit of wit from the President. 
 Some one remarked to him that, instead of the 
 expected thousands, onl}^ about four hundred 
 persons had assembled. He turned to the Bible 
 which, say Nicolay and Hay, 'commonly lay on 
 his desk,' and read the verse: 'And every one 
 that was in distress, and every one that was in 
 debt, and every one that was discontented, gath- 
 ered themselves unto him; and he became a cap- 
 tain over them; and there were with him about 
 four hundred men.' " 
 
 "There is but one contingency that can cause 
 your defeat for a second term," one of Lincoln's 
 
 124
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 friends said to him in 1863, "and that is Grant's 
 capture of Richmond and his nomination as an 
 opposing candidate." 
 
 "Well," replied Air. Lincoln, shrewdly, "I feel 
 very much about that as the man felt who said 
 he didn't want to die particularly, but if he had 
 got to die, that was precisely the disease he would 
 like to die of." 
 
 Colonel McClure, the Pennsylvania journalist, 
 tells this regarding his attitude toward the can- 
 didacy of Mr. Chase for the Presidency: 
 
 "By the way," said Mr. Lincoln, "how would 
 ft do if I were to decline Chase?** 
 
 The Colonel inquired how it could be done. 
 
 "Well," replied Lincoln, "I don't know exactly 
 how it might be done, but that reminds me of a 
 story of two Democratic candidates for senator 
 in * Egypt,' Illinois, in its early political times. 
 That section of Illinois was almost solidly 
 Democratic, as you know, and nobody but Dem- 
 ocrats were candidates for ojBice. Two Demo- 
 cratic candidates for senator met each other 
 in joint debate, from day to day, and gradually 
 became more and more exasperated at each 
 other, until their discussions were simply dis- 
 graceful wrangles, and they both became ashamed 
 of them. They finally agreed that either should 
 
 125
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 say anything he pleased about the other, and it 
 should not be resented as an offense; and from 
 that time on die campaign progressed without 
 any special display of ill-temper. On election 
 night the two candidates, who lived in the same 
 town, were receiving their returns together; and 
 the contest was uncomfortably close. A distant 
 precinct in which one of the candidates confi- 
 dently expected a large majority was finally 
 reported w4th a majority against him. The 
 disappointed candidate expressed a great sur- 
 prise, to which the other candidate answered 
 that he should not be surprised, as he had 
 taken the liberty of declining him in that dis- 
 trict, the evening before the eiecrion. He re- 
 minded the defeated candidate that he had 
 agreed that either was free to say anything about 
 the other, without offense; and added that, under 
 that authority, he had gone up into that district 
 and taken the liberty of saying that his opponent 
 had retired from the contest; and therefore the 
 vote of the district was changed, and the de- 
 clined candidate was thus defeated. 
 
 "I think," concluded Lincoln, with one of his 
 hearty laughs, "I had better decline Chase." 
 
 About a fortnight before the convention in 
 ^64 Colonel McClure, to relieve Lincoln's anx- 
 
 126
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 iety, showed him that a majority of the delegates 
 were for him: 
 
 "'Well, McClure,' he replied, 'what you say 
 seems unanswerable, but I don't quite forget 
 that I was nominated for President in a conven- 
 tion that was two-thirds for the other fellow/ 
 
 "The convention came on; he was unanimously 
 renominated. A short time after the convention, 
 I returned to Washington. When I called to see 
 the President, and was shown in, I saw at once 
 a twinkle in his eye, and as I approached him 
 he said, 'Colonel, do you remember that you 
 told me, when here before, that everybody about 
 Congress seemed to be against me.''* I replied 
 that I did. He said that that situation reminded 
 him of two Irishmen who came to America and 
 started out through the country on foot to secure 
 work. They came to some woods, and as they 
 passed along they heard a strange noise. They 
 did not know what it was. So they hunted about, 
 but could find nothing. Finally, one said to the 
 other, 'Pat! Pat! Let's go on; this thing is 
 nothing but a damned noise.' Lincoln said that 
 the opposition to him was nothing but a noise." 
 
 He displayed no spirit of malice toward those 
 who opposed his re-election. "I am in favor of 
 short statutes of limitations in politics." 
 
 127
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 A caller upon the President on New Year's 
 Day, 1864 said: 
 
 "I hope^ Mr. President, one year from to-day 
 I may have the pleasure of congratulating you 
 on three events which now seem probable." 
 'What are they.?" inquired he. 
 'First, that the RebeUion may be entirely 
 crushed; secondj that the constitutional amend- 
 ment abolishing and prohibiting slavery may 
 have been adopted; third, and that Abraham 
 Lincoln may have been elected President." 
 
 '"I think," replied he, with a smile, "I would 
 be glad to accept the first two as a compromise." 
 
 
 When he heard that a general who was support- 
 ing McClellan had been relieved of his command 
 'Jie President countermanded the order, saying, 
 " Supporting General McClellan for the Presidency 
 is no' violation of army regulations, and as a ques- 
 tion of taste in choosing between him and me — 
 well, I'm the longest, but he's better-looking." 
 
 Upon being congratulated on his renomination, 
 he said, "I do not allow mj^self to suppose that 
 euher the Convention or the League has con- 
 cluded that I am either the greatest or the best 
 iivan in America, but rather they have concluded 
 Jt is not best to swap horses while crossing the 
 
 128
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 nver, and have further concluded that I am not 
 so poor a horse that they might not make a botck 
 of it in trying to swap." Thus arose a maxim 
 that has since become a part of the common 
 speech. 
 
 After a week at the Democratic Convention of 
 1864 a gentleman from New York called upon 
 the President, in company with the Assistant 
 Secretary of War, Mr. Dana. In course of con- 
 versation the gentleman said, "What do yott 
 think, Mr. President, is the reason General Mc- 
 Clellan does not reply to the letter from the Chi- 
 cago Convention?" "Oh!" replied Mr. Lincoln, 
 with a characteristic twinkle of his eye, "he 
 is intrenching!" 
 
 Another gentle and sympathetic speech is th« 
 one he made as he was leaving the War Depart- 
 ment at midnight of November 10, 1864, on his 
 re-election: 
 
 "So long as I have been here I have not will- 
 ingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. 
 While I am deeply sensible of the high compli- 
 ment of re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, 
 to Almighty God for having directed my country- 
 men to a right conclusion, as I think for their 
 own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction 
 9 129
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 that any other man may be disappointed or 
 pained by the result. May I ask those who have 
 not differed from me to join with me in this 
 same spirit toward those that have?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was fond of riding on horseback 
 in the early evening to the Soldiers' Home. 
 One night, during the latter part of 1863, he 
 rode out with an orderly. When part way he 
 sent the orderly back for something which he had 
 left at the White House and rode on alone. 
 After dusk he galloped up to the Home stables, 
 and the hostler noticed that he was without 
 his hat. Mr. Lincoln, answering the hostler's 
 question, said, "Run back a few hundred yards 
 and pick it up." The man had heard a shot, 
 but thought little of it till Mr. Lincoln came 
 galloping in. He found the hat and brought it 
 to the President, who was still waiting at the 
 stable. There was a bullet-hole near the top. 
 Mr. Lincoln made the man promise not to speak 
 of it. "It was probably an accident, and might 
 worry my family." And he went to the Soldiers' 
 Home as usual, but probably never again alone. 
 A man had really undertaken to shoot him. 
 
 You see in this incident, and in a great many 
 others that can be recalled, the simple, straight- 
 forward courage of the man. It never failed him. 
 
 130
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 The President's letters and telegrams to his 
 wife when she and Tad were absent from Wash-r 
 ington were almost always laden with some piece 
 of information for Tad's special benefit. In one 
 such communication he noted that Nanny was 
 found resting herself and chewing her little cud 
 on the middle of Tad's bed, and again he sent 
 this message by telegraph, "Tell Tad the goats 
 and father are very well, especially the goats." 
 Perhaps the strangest document in all the vol- 
 umes of the complete works of Abraham Lincoln 
 is a telegram in reference to Tad, and sent to 
 his wife: "Think you had better put Tad's 
 pistol away. I had an ugly dream about him. 
 A. L." 
 
 A few days before the President's death Sec- 
 retary Stanton tendered his resignation of the 
 War Department. He accompanied the act with 
 a most heartfelt tribute to Mr. Lincoln's constant 
 friendship and faithful devotion to the country, 
 saying, also, that he, as Secretary, had accepted 
 the position to hold it only until the war should 
 end, and now he felt his work was done, and his 
 duty was to resign. Mr. Lincoln was greatly 
 moved by the Secretary's words, and, tearing In 
 pieces the paper containing the resignation and 
 throwing his arms about the Secretary, he said, 
 
 131
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "Stanton, you have been a good friend and a 
 faithful public servant, and it is not for you to 
 say when you will no longer be needed here." 
 Several friends of both parties were present on 
 the occasion, and there was not a dry eye that 
 witnessed the scene. 
 
 **The last time I saw Mr. Lincoln to speak 
 with him," said Mr. Dana, **was in the afternoon 
 of the day of his murder. I had received a re- 
 port from the provost-marshal of Portland, 
 Maine, saying that Jacob Thompson [a Confed- 
 erate agent] was to be in that town that night 
 for the purpose of taking the steamer for Liver- 
 pool, and what orders had the Department to 
 give? I carried the telegram to Mr. Stanton. 
 He said promptly, * Arrest him'; but as I was 
 leaving his room he called me back, adding, 
 *You had better take it over to the President.' 
 It was now between four and jfive o'clock in 
 the afternoon, and business at the White 
 House was completed for the day. I found 
 Mr. Lincoln with his coat off, in a closet at- 
 tached to his office, washing his hands. * Hello, 
 Dana,' said he, as I opened the door, *what is 
 it now?' *Well, sir,' I said, *here is the provost- 
 marshal of Portland, who reports that Jacob 
 Thompson is to be in that town to-night, and 
 
 132
 
 AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 inquires what orders we have to give.' *What 
 does Stanton say?' he asked. * Arrest him,' I 
 replied. 'Well,' he continued, drawling his 
 words, *I rather guess not. When you have an 
 elephant by the hind foot, and he wants to rur» 
 away, better let him run.' " 
 
 When the Civil War was practically over Mr. 
 Lincoln responded at once by an improvement 
 in health and spirits, but he did not want to go 
 to the theater on that fatal night, and not from 
 any presentiment of evil. The play was "Our 
 American Cousin," and he had seen it once. 
 It was funny enough, and Mr. Lincoln loved 
 funny things, but not twice in the same place, 
 even for company's sake. He tried to get out 
 of going, but Mrs. Lincoln would not permit it. 
 She had had troubles of he^ own with that thea- 
 ter party from outside — General and Mrs. Grant 
 having been called away at the last minute — 
 and she did not propose to have her own husband 
 desert her. She insisted on his going. 
 
 "All right," he said, in his meek, submissive 
 way, when he found resistance was useless, "all 
 right, Mary, I'll go; but if I don't go down to 
 history as the martyr President 1 miss my guess.'* 
 
 He didn't miss his guess, but his little joke 
 became a world tragedy.
 
 ^
 
 Part V 
 
 4T THE FRONT
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN once said to a regi- 
 ment which he was reviewing: "I happen 
 temporarily to occupy this big White House. I 
 am a living witness that any one of your 
 children may look to come here as my father's 
 child has. It is in order that each one of you 
 may have through this free government which 
 we have enjoyed an open field and a fair 
 chance . . . that the struggle should be main- 
 tained, that we may not lose our birthright." 
 
 General Horace Porter is the authority for 
 this story: 
 
 There was an officer cleaning his sword at the 
 camp-fire when the President was visiting the 
 camp. Mr. Lincoln came up, looked at It, 
 took it in his hand, and said: "That is a for- 
 midable weapon, but it don't look half as dan- 
 gerous to me as once did a Kentucky bowie-knife. 
 One night I passed through the outskirts of Louis- 
 
 137
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 ville, when suddenly a man sprang from a dark 
 alley and drew out a bowie-knife. It looked 
 three times as long as that sword, though I don't 
 suppose it really was. He flourished it in front 
 of me. It glistened in the moonlight, and for 
 several seconds he seemed to try to see how near 
 he could come to cutting off my nose without 
 doing it. Finally he said, *Can you lend me 
 five dollars on that.f** I never reached in my 
 pockets for money so quick in the whole 
 course of my life. Handing him a bill, I said: 
 'There's ten dollars, neighbor. Now put up 
 your scythe.* 
 
 » »» 
 
 Speaking to General Butler about the his- 
 torical fact that every place that General Grant 
 had ever taken had been held, never yielded up, 
 Mr. Lincoln said, "When General Grant once 
 gets possessed of a place he seems to hang on to 
 it as if he had inherited it." 
 
 After the colored troops had been successful 
 in making an assault, Lincoln once remarked: 
 "I am glad the black boys have done well. I 
 must go out and see them." He rode out with 
 General Grant and staff, and the word was passed 
 along the colored troops that the President was 
 coming; then the cry arose everywhere, "That's 
 
 138
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 Massa Linkum," and "Ole Fader Abraham is a- 
 comin'," and they shouted, cheered, laughed, 
 got down on their knees and prayed, fondled his 
 horse, and some rushed off to tell their comrades 
 that they had even kissed the hem of his gar- 
 ment. Mr. Lincoln was very much affected; he 
 had his hat off, the tears were in his eyes, and 
 his voice was so choked with emotion that he 
 could scarcely respond to the salutations. It 
 was a memorable sight to see the liberated paying 
 their homage to the Liberator. He remarked 
 on the way back to the cam^p: "When we were 
 enlisting the colored troops there was great oppo- 
 sition to it, but I said to some of my critics one 
 day, *Well, as long as we are trying to send every 
 able-bodied man to the front to save this coun- 
 try, I guess we had all better be a little color- 
 blind. I can express my satisfaction with whaC 
 they have accomplished down here something 
 as an old-time abolitionist did upon another 
 occasion in Illinois. He went to Chicago, and 
 his friends took him to see Forrest play Othello. 
 He didn't know it was a white man blacked up 
 for the purpose, and after the play was over said, 
 *Well, all sectional prejudice aside, and making 
 due allowance for my partiality for the race, 
 darn me if I don't think the nigger held his own 
 with any on 'em.' " 
 
 139
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Meeting General Sheridan for the first time, 
 he said, "General Sheridan, when this peculiar 
 war began I thought a cavalryman should be 
 at least six feet four inches high." But still hold- 
 ing Sheridan's hand in his earnest grasp and 
 looking down on the little General, he added, 
 "I have changed my mind — five feet four will 
 do in a pinch.' Sheridan measured five feet 
 (bur and a half. 
 
 One day the President and the Secretary of 
 State, accompanied by a young stafi'-officer, at- 
 tended a review near Arlington, on the opposite 
 side of the Potomac. An ambulance drawn by 
 four mules was provided. When the party ar- 
 rived on the Virginia side of the river, where the 
 roads were rough and badly cut by artillery and 
 army trains, the driver had so much difficulty 
 with the team in his efforts to prevent the wheels 
 from dropping into the ruts that he lost his 
 temper and began to swear; the worse the road 
 became, the greater became his profanity. At 
 last the President said, in his pleasant manner. 
 
 Driver, my friend, are you an EpiscopaHan?" 
 Greatly astonished, the man made answer: 
 
 No, Mr. President, I ain't much of anything. 
 But if I go to church at all I go to the Methodist 
 church." 
 
 140 
 
 ft 
 
 t(
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 tt, 
 
 'Oh, excuse me," replied Lincoln, with a smile 
 and a twinkle in his eye; "I thought you must 
 be an Episcopalian, for you swear just Hke Sec- 
 retary Seward, and he is a churchwarden." 
 
 President Lincoln described Sheridan as "a 
 little chap with round head, red face, legs longer 
 than his body, and not enough neck to hang him 
 by." And Colonel Ellsworth he described as 
 "the greatest little man I ever met." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was an unusually tall man, six 
 feet four. Meeting a soldier considerably taller 
 than himself, he looked him over with wondering 
 admiration. "Say, friend," he said, "does your 
 head know when your feet are cold?" 
 
 Upon one occasion Lincoln and Seward called 
 at the headquarters of General McClellan and 
 were informed that the General was out. After 
 waiting for nearly an hour McClellan returned. 
 Regardless of the orderly who informed him that 
 the President and Secretary Seward were waiting 
 he went directl}^ up-stairs. Mr. Lincoln, thinking 
 that he had not been informed of his presence, 
 sent word to him, but the information was re- 
 turned that the General had retired. This dis- 
 courteous act made no alteration in the Presi- 
 
 141
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 dent's attitude, but thereafter all conferences 
 were held at the White House. At another time 
 it was arranged that McClellan, Ormsby M. 
 Mitchell, and Governor Dennison should meet 
 at the Executive Mansion. All were on hand 
 save the inflated General. After a long wait the 
 gentlemen showed considerable irritation, but 
 Mr. Lincoln said very generously: 
 
 "Never mind; I will hold McClellan's horse, 
 if he will only bring us success." 
 
 Shortly after Antietam, owing to McClellan's 
 inaction, the President visited the camp with his 
 friend, O. M. Hatch, of Illinois. As they stood 
 on the summit of a near-by hill overlooking the 
 encampment, Mr. Lincoln said: 
 
 "Hatch, Hatch, what is all this?" 
 
 "Why," answered Mr. Hatch, "that is the 
 Army of the Potomac." 
 
 "No, Hatch, no," said the President; "that 
 is General McClellan's body-guard." 
 
 Usually after a defeat the President would visit 
 the soldiers and address to them words of com- 
 fort and cheer. Sherman, upon one of these occa- 
 sions, asked him to discourage cheering and all 
 other noisy demonstrations, to which suggestion 
 the President cheerfully assented. Sherman says 
 
 142
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 that he made "one of the neatest, best, and most 
 feeling addresses I ever hstened to." When the 
 boys wanted to cheer he warned them good- 
 naturedly: "Don't cheer, boys. I confess I Hke 
 it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is 
 not military, and I guess we had better defer to 
 his opinion." 
 
 A trip to the battle-field of Antietam served to 
 accentuate certain malicious stories about the 
 President, and Lamon urged him to deny their 
 truthfulness. "No," said Lincoln; "in politics 
 every man must skin his own skunk. These 
 fellows are welcome to the hide of this one." 
 
 In the spring of 1862 the President spent 
 several days at Fortress Monroe, awaiting mili- 
 tary operations upon the Peninsula. As a por- 
 tion of the Cabinet were with him, that was tem- 
 porarily the seat of government, and he bore 
 with him constantly the burden of public affairs. 
 His favorite diversion was reading Shakespeare, 
 whom he rendered with fine discrimination and 
 feeling. One day (it chanced to be the day before 
 the taking of Norfolk), as he sat reading alone, 
 he called to his aide in the adjoining room, "You 
 have been writing long enough, Colonel; come 
 here; I want to read to you a passage in 
 
 143
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 * Hamlet.'" He read the discussion on ambition 
 between Hamlet and his courtiers, and the so- 
 liloquy in which conscience debates of a future 
 state. This was followed by passages from "Mac- 
 beth'*. Then, opening to "King John," he read 
 from the third act the passage in which Con- 
 stance bewails her imprisoned lost boy. 
 
 Then, closing the book, and recalling the words: 
 
 **And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln said: "Colonel, did you ever dream 
 of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding 
 sweet communion with that friend, and yet have 
 a sad consciousness that it was not a reality.? 
 Just so I dream of my boy Willie." Overcome 
 with emotion, he dropped his head on the table, 
 and sobbed aloud. 
 
 Lincoln never forgot a point. A sentinel who 
 was pacing near a camp-fire while Lincoln was 
 visiting the field, listening to the stories he told, 
 made the philosophical remark that that man 
 had a mighty powerful memory but an awful 
 poor "forgetter}^" He did not tell a story for 
 the sake of an anecdote, but to point a moral, to 
 clinch a fact. As an illustration of this General 
 
 144
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 Horace Porter tells the following story, which he 
 heard the last time he talked with Lincoln: 
 
 "We were discussing the subject of England's 
 assistance to the South, and how, after the col- 
 lapse of the Confederacy, England would find 
 she had aided it but little and only injured her- 
 self. He said: 'That reminds me of a barber 
 in Sangamon County. He had just gone to bed, 
 when a stranger came along and said he must 
 be shaved; that he had four days' beard on his 
 face and was going to a ball, and that the beard 
 must come off. Well, the barber reluctantly 
 got up and dressed, and seated the man in a 
 chair with a back so low that every time he 
 bore down on him he came near dislocating his 
 victim's neck. He began by lathering his face, 
 including his nose, eyes, and ears, stropped his 
 razor on his boot, and then made a drive at the 
 man's countenance as if he had practised mow- 
 ing in a stubble-field. He made a bold swath 
 across the cheek, carrying away the beard, » 
 pimple, and two warts. The man in the chair 
 ventured the remark, "You appear to make every- 
 thing level as you go." Said the barber, " Yes, 
 and if this handle don't break, I guess I'll get 
 away with what there is there." The man's 
 cheeks were so hollow that the barber could not 
 get down into the valleys with the razor, and 
 10 145
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 the ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his 
 finger in the man's mouth and press out the 
 cheeks. Finally he cut clear through the cheek 
 and into his own finger. He pulled the finger 
 out of the man's mouth, snapped the blood off 
 it, glared at him and said, "There, you lantern- 
 jawed cuss, you've made me cut my finger." ' 
 ** *Now,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'England will find 
 that she has got the South into a pretty bad 
 scrape by tr3'ing to administer to her, and in the 
 end she will find that she has only cut her own 
 linger. 
 
 All through the war it was suggested that the 
 diflSculties between the North and the South 
 could be speedily adjusted by arbitration, and 
 numerous committees were formed, by the North 
 especiall}^, to meet the overtures of some com- 
 mittees that were formed in the South. On one 
 occasion Mr. Lincoln reluctantly consented to 
 be one of a committee. He recognized the ab- 
 surdity of the undertaking, and knew that no 
 committees could patch up these differences; 
 they were too deep-rooted. At this meeting one 
 of the Confederate committee, to illustrate a 
 point, referred to the correspondence between 
 King Charles the First and his Parliament, as a 
 reliable precedent of a constitutional ruler deal- 
 
 146
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 ing with rebels. Mr. Lincoln replied as follows: 
 "Upon questions of history I must refer you to 
 Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, 
 and I don't profess to be; but my only distinct 
 recollection of the matter is that Charles lost his 
 head!'' 
 
 Further on during the same conference one of 
 the Confederates again pointed out the diffi- 
 culties that would arise if the slaves were sud- 
 denly liberated, and would precipitate not only 
 themselves but the entire society of the South 
 into irremediable ruin. No work would be done, 
 and the blacks and whites would starve to- 
 gether. The President waited for Mr. Seward 
 to answer the argument, but, as that gentleman 
 hesitated, he said: 
 
 "Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal 
 better about this matter than I, for you have 
 always lived under the slave system. I can 
 only say, in reply to your statement of the case, 
 that it reminds me of a man out in Illinois, by 
 the name of Chase, who undertook, a few years 
 ago, to raise a very large herd of hogs. It was a 
 great trouble to feed them, and how to get 
 around this was a puzzle to him. At length he 
 hit upon the plan of planting an immense field 
 of potatoes; and, when they were sufficiently 
 
 147
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 grown, he turned the whole herd into the field 
 and let them have full swing, thus saving not 
 only the labor of feeding the hogs, but that also 
 of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his 
 sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the 
 fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came 
 along. 
 
 " 'Well, well,' said he, 'Mr. Chase, this is all 
 very fine. Your hogs are doing very well just 
 now; but you know out here in Illinois the frost 
 comes early, and the ground freezes a foot deep. 
 Then what are they going to do.^' 
 
 "This was a view of the matter which Mr. 
 Chase had not taken into account. Butchering 
 time for hogs was away on in December or 
 January. He scratched his head, and at length 
 stammered: 'Well, it may come pretty hard on 
 their snouts; but I don't see but it will be root, 
 hog, or die!' " 
 
 The commissioners, one of them being Alex- 
 ander H. Stephens, who when in good health 
 weighed about ninety pounds, dined with the 
 President and Greneral Grant. After dinner, as 
 they were leaving, Stephens put on an English 
 ulster the tails of which reached the ground, 
 while the collar was somewhat above the wearer's 
 head. 
 
 14B
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 As Stephens went out, Lincoln touched Grant 
 and said : "Grant, look at Stephens. Did you ever 
 see such a little nubbin with as much shuck ?'^ 
 
 At the Hampton Roads conference Stephens 
 requested that Mr. Lincoln send back his nephew, 
 Lieutenant Stephens, who had been in a Federal 
 prison, having been taken prisoner at Vicksburg. 
 Mr. Lincoln sent for him. 
 
 "I told your uncle that 1 would send you to 
 him, Lieutenant. You have the freedom of the 
 city," Mr. Lincoln continued, ''as long as you 
 please to remain here. When you want to go 
 home, let me know, and I will pass you through 
 the lines." The interview was a memorable 
 one, and the Lieutenant remained in Washington 
 about two weeks, deeply moved by Lincoln's 
 kindness. He then got a pass from the President, 
 and at the same time Mr. Lincoln handed him 
 his photograph, saying: ^You had better take 
 that along. It is considered quite a curiosity 
 down your way, I believe." 
 
 After this conference, when the Confederate 
 commissioners — Vice-President Stephens, Camp- 
 bell, and Hunter — had traversed the field of 
 official routine with Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, 
 Lincoln took the "slim, pale-faced, consump- 
 
 149
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 tlve man" aside and, pointing to a sheet of paper 
 he held in his hand, said, "Stephens, let me 
 write 'Union' at the top of that page, and you 
 may v>^rite below it whatever you please." 
 
 Stephens told the President that he was there 
 to treat only on the basis of autonomy. "In 
 that case, Stephens," said Lincoln, sadly, "I am 
 guiltless of every drop of blood that may be shed 
 from this onward." 
 
 Lincoln used to say, and insisted, that Amer- 
 ican humor was marked by grimness and gro- 
 tesqueness, and told these stories to illustrate 
 his viewpoint. There was a soldier in the Army 
 of the Potomac carried to the rear of battle with 
 both legs shot off, who, seeing a pie-woman 
 hovering about, asked, *'Say, old lady, are them 
 pies sewed or pegged?" And there was another 
 soldier at Chancellorsville whose regiment, wait* 
 ing to be called into battle, was drinking coffee. 
 He was about to put his mug to his lips when a 
 stray bullet, just missing the coffee-drinker's 
 head, dashed the mug into fragments and left 
 the handle on his finger. The soldier angrily 
 growled, "Johnny, you can't do that again!" 
 
 "It seems," said Lincoln, "as if neither death 
 nor danger could quench the grim humor of the 
 American soldier." 
 
 ISO
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 On a narrow cot, in the military hospital at 
 City Point, Major Charles H. Houghton was 
 dying. He had been in command of Fort Has- 
 kell, a strategic point in the rear of Grant's hnes, 
 against which all the fury of Lee's attack was 
 being directed in an effort to break the Union 
 lines. Against Major Houghton, a mere boy 
 of twenty years, were pitted the science and 
 strategic knowledge of Gen. John B. Gordon, of 
 Georgia. 
 
 Help came at last. The long-haired gray men 
 were beaten back, and Lee's desperate move 
 was checked. Houghton's leg was amputated 
 and he was taken to the hospital at City Point, 
 so that he could die in comparative peace, on a 
 clean white cot. But for days he lingered on 
 the borderland of life. 
 
 Sometimes in the long stretches of the night, 
 when life and resistance are at low ebb, it seemed 
 to those who watched that he must be zigzagging 
 back and forth across and across that mysterious 
 line. Yet always in the morning, when friends 
 inquired for news of him, the surgeons could 
 say: 
 
 "He is aHve. That's all." 
 
 At nine o'clock one morning, the door at the 
 end of the ward was opened and Dr. MacDonald, 
 chief surgeon, called: 
 
 151
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "Attention! The President of the United 
 States." 
 
 There, outside the door, the sunlight streaming 
 into the room over square, gaunt shoulders, stood 
 Abraham Lincoln. Into the room he stalked, 
 bending his awkward form ungracefully — for the 
 doorway was low. At cot after cot he paused to 
 speak some word of cheer, some message of com- 
 fort to a wounded soldier. 
 
 At Houghton's cot the two men paused. 
 "This is the man," whispered MacDonald. 
 
 "So young!" questioned the President. "This 
 the man that held Fort Haskell?" 
 
 MacDonald nodded. 
 
 With a large, uncouth hand the President mo- 
 tioned for a chair. Silently a nurse placed one 
 ,at the cot's head. Houghton did not know; he 
 could not. As though he were afraid it would 
 clatter, and hurt the sufferer, Lincoln softly placed 
 his "stove-pipe" hat of exaggerated fashion on 
 the floor. Dust covered his clothes, which were 
 not pressed. As he leaned over the cot a tawdry 
 necktie, much awry, dangled near Houghton's 
 head. Gently as a woman he took the wasted, 
 colorless hand in his own sinewy one of iron 
 strength. Just the suspicion of a pressure was 
 there, but Houghton opened his eyes. 
 
 A smile which had forgotten suffering answered
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 the great President's sad smile. In tones soft, 
 almost musical it seemed, the President spoke to 
 the boy on the cot, told him how he had heard of 
 his great deeds, how he was proud of his fellow^ 
 countryman. 
 
 A few feeble words Houghton spoke in reply. 
 At the poor, toneless voice the President winced. 
 The doctor had told him that Houghton would 
 die. Then happened a strange thing. The Presi- 
 dent asked to see the wound which was taking 
 so noble a life. 
 
 Surgeons and nurses tried to dissuade hin\ 
 but Lincoln insisted. The horrors of war were 
 for him to bear as well as others, he told them, 
 and to him the wound was a thing holy. 
 
 Bandages long and stained were removed, and 
 the President saw. 
 
 Straightening on his feet, he flung his long, 
 lank arms upward. A groan such as Houghton 
 had not given voice to escaped the lips of the 
 President. 
 
 *'0h, this war! This awful, awful war!" he 
 sobbed. 
 
 Down the deep-lined furrows of the homely, 
 kindly face hot tears burned their way. Slowly, 
 tenderly, the President leaned over the pillow. 
 The dust of travel had not been washed from 
 his face. Now the tears, of which he was not 
 
 153
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 ashamed, cut furrows in the grime and stained 
 the white sheets on which they fell. While nurses 
 and surgeons and men watched there in the little 
 hospital, Abraham Lincoln took the palHd face 
 of Houghton between his hands and kissed it 
 just below the damp, tangled hair. 
 
 "My boy," he said, brokenly, swallowing, 
 **you must live. You must live!" 
 
 The first gleam of real, warm, throbbing life 
 came into the dull eyes. Houghton stiffened with 
 a conscious, elastic tension on the cot. With a 
 little wan smile he managed to drag a hand to 
 his forehead. It was the nearest he could come 
 to a salute. The awkward form of the President 
 bent lower and lower to catch the faint, faint 
 words. 
 
 "I intend to, sir," was what Houghton said. 
 And he did. 
 
 Early in 1865, feeling that the downfall of the 
 Confederacy was near, he determined to be on 
 the scene and in readiness to meet any emer- 
 gency which might arise. There he lived on a 
 boat in the James River, opposite the cluster of 
 huts on the bank which served as Grant's head- 
 quarters. Admiral Porter urged him to accept 
 his bed, but he insisted upon not disturbing the 
 Admiral and sleeping in a small state-room, whose 
 
 IS4
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 Serth was four inches shorter than his body. 
 *'I slept well," he said, next morning, "but 
 you can't put a long sword in a short scab- 
 bard." 
 
 His host set carpenters to work, in the absence 
 of his distinguished guest, to remedy the defi- 
 ciency. The state-room was quickly lengthened 
 and widened; and the following morning Lincoln 
 soberly reported : 
 
 "A miracle happened last night; I shrank six 
 inches in length and a foot sideways." The 
 Admiral was positive, however, that if he had 
 given him two fence-rails to sleep on he would 
 not have found fault. 
 
 "Carleton," the war correspondent of the Bos- 
 ton Journal, relates the following story : 
 
 " It was during the week before Richmond was 
 taken. The President was with General Grant 
 and others at City Point headquarters. The 
 party sat where they could see the river. A flat- 
 boat made its appearance, with apparently a 
 large family on board. The President was in- 
 formed that it was a planter of the vicinity, with 
 his wife and legitimate children, and not a few 
 colored women with their children, which were 
 also supposed to be his own. 'Ah, yes,' said 
 the President; *I see. It is Abraham, Isaac, and
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Ishmael, all in one boat.' The aptness of th'; 
 Scriptural allusion, and the quickness of the 
 President in responding, woke a smile on every 
 countenance." 
 
 *'I want to see Richmond," Lincoln said, when 
 he heard that that stronghold was once more in 
 Union hands. He went by the river from Grant's 
 headquarters, and landed from a twelve-oared 
 barge near Libby Prison. No military escort to 
 meet him, and not even a vehicle of any kind. 
 Taking his boy Tad hy the hand, he walked 
 through the streets for a mile and a half, guarded 
 only by ten sailors. The negroes were wild with 
 joy when they beheld their emancipator, before 
 whom they prostrated themselves. "Don't 
 kneel to me; that is not right," he said; and a 
 leader among them commanded in a hoarse 
 whisper, " 'Sh — 'sh — be still; heah our Saviour 
 speak." Lincoln said: "You must kneel to God 
 only. I am but God's humble instrument, but 
 you may rest assured that as long as I live no 
 one shall put a shackle on your limbs. God 
 bless you, and let me pass on," he said to them, 
 as he passed along. Again in the strange prog- 
 ress of this modest conqueror an old slave lifted 
 his hat, and the President returned the saluta- 
 tion by lifting his, whereat the crowd of negroes 
 
 156
 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 who followed him gaped in wonder to see a white 
 man uncover to a black. 
 
 Carl Schurz thus describes his entry into 
 Richmond: 
 
 " Richmond fell. Lincoln himself entered the 
 city on foot, accompanied only by a few officers 
 and a squad of sailors who had rowed him ashore 
 from the flotilla in the James River, a negro 
 picked up on the way serving as a guide. Never 
 had the world seen a more modest conqueror 
 and a more characteristic triumphal procession 
 — no army with banners and drums, only a throng 
 of those who had been slaves, hastily run to- 
 gether, escorting the victorious chief into the 
 capital of the vanquished foe. We are told that 
 they pressed around him, kissed his hands and 
 his garments, and shouted and danced with joy, 
 while tears ran down the President's care- 
 furrowed cheeks." 
 
 When he was in Richmond after it came into 
 the possession of the Union forces, he looked for 
 the home of George Pickett. **Is this where 
 George Pickett lives ? " he asked of a woman with 
 a baby in her arms who answered his summons. 
 She said she was Mrs. Pickett. Then he told 
 her who he was, insisting that he came not as 
 
 157
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 President, but simply as "Abraham Lincoln, 
 George's old friend," He took the little one in 
 his arms, and thus did this noble conqueror re- 
 store the Union in one heart. He had known 
 Pickett in Illinois and he obtained for him his 
 appointment at West Point
 
 Part VI 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
 
 VI 
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 DELEGATIONS from Baltimore called to pro- 
 test against the "pollution" of the soil of 
 Maryland by the feet of the soldiers marching 
 across it to fight against the South. They had no 
 difficulty in understanding the President's reply: 
 ** We must have troops; and, as they can neither 
 crawl under Maryland nor fly over it, they must 
 come across it." 
 
 When the war had actually begun he delighted 
 in the soldiers' grim humor in the face of death. 
 He told story after story about the "boys," 
 laughing, with tears in his gray eyes, at their 
 heroism in danger. He never laughed at the 
 private soldier, except in the pride of his hearty 
 patriotism. But he made constant fun of the 
 assumptions of generals and other high officials. 
 The stories he most enjoyed telling were of the 
 soldiers' scoffing at rank and pretension. He 
 delighted in the following: 
 11 i6i
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 A picket challenged a tug going up Broad 
 River, South Carolina, with: 
 
 "Who goes there?" 
 
 "The Secretary of War and Major-General 
 Foster," was the pompous reply. 
 
 "Aw! We've got major-generals enough up 
 here — why don't you bring us up some hard- 
 tack?" 
 
 On another occasion a friend burst into his 
 room to tell him that a brigadier-general and 
 twelve army mules had been carried off by a 
 Confederate raid. 
 
 "How unfortunate! Those mules cost us two 
 hundred dollars apiece!" was the President's 
 only reply. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was a very abstemious man, ate 
 very little and drank nothing but water, not 
 from principle, but because he did not like wine 
 or spirits. Once, in rather dark days early in 
 the war, a temperance committee came to him 
 and said that the reason we did not win was 
 because our army drank so much whisky as to 
 bring the curse of the Lord upon them. He said, 
 in repl}^, that it was rather unfair on the part of 
 the aforesaid curse, as the other side drank more 
 and worse whisky than ours did. 
 
 162
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Some one urged President Lincoln to place 
 General Fremont in command of some station. 
 While the President did not want to offend his 
 friend at a rather critical time of the war, he 
 pushed him gently and firmly aside in this wise: 
 He said he did not know where to place Gen- 
 eral Fremont, and it reminded him of an old 
 man who advised his son to take a wife, to 
 which the young man responded, "Whose wife 
 shall I take?" 
 
 On one occasion, exasperated at the discrep- 
 ancy between the aggregate of troops forwarded 
 to McClellan and the number of men the General 
 reported as having received, Lincoln exclaimed, 
 "Sending men to that army is like shoveling 
 fleas across a barnyard — half of them never get 
 there." 
 
 Lincoln's orders to his generals are filled with 
 the kindly courtesy, the direct argument, and 
 the dry humor which are so characteristic of the 
 man. To Grant, who had telegraphed, "If the 
 thing is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender," 
 Lincoln replied, "Let the thing be pressed." 
 
 To McClellan, gently chiding him for his in- 
 activity: "I have just read your despatch about 
 sore tongue and fatigued horse. Will you par- 
 
 163
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 don me for asking what the horses of your army 
 have done since the battle of Antietam that 
 fatigues anything?" 
 
 Referring to General McClellan*s inactivity. 
 President Lincoln once expressed his impatience 
 by saying, "McClellan is a pleasant and schol- 
 arly gentleman; he is an admirable engineer, but 
 he seems to have a special talent for stationary 
 engineering." 
 
 After a long period of inaction on the part of 
 the Union forces a telegrafn from Cumberland 
 Gap reached Mr. Lincoln, saying that firing was 
 heard in the direction of Knoxville. The Presi- 
 dent simply remarked that he was glad of it. 
 As General Bumside was in a perilous position 
 in Tennessee at that time, those present were 
 greatly surprised at Lincoln's calm view of the 
 case. "You see," said the President, "it re- 
 minds me of Mistress Sallie Ward, a neighbor 
 of mine, who had a very large family. Occasion- 
 ally one of her numerous progeny would be heard 
 crying in some out-of-the-way place, upon which 
 Mrs. Ward would exclaim, 'There's one of my 
 children not dead yet!' " 
 
 Writing to Hooker, who succeeded Bumside, 
 Lincoln said; 
 
 164
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 **I believe you to be a brave and skilful 
 soldier, which, of course, I Hke. I also believe 
 you do not mix politics with your profession, in 
 which you are right. You have confidence in 
 yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable, 
 quahty. You are ambitious, which within rea- 
 sonable bounds does good rather than harm; but 
 I think that during General Burnside's command 
 of the army you have taken counsel with your 
 ambition, and thwarted him as much as you 
 could, in which you did a great wrong to the 
 country and to a most meritorious and honorable 
 brother-officer. I have heard, in such a way as 
 to believe it, of your recently saying that both 
 the army and the government needed a dictator. 
 Of course, it is not for this, but in spite of it, that 
 I have given you the command. Only those 
 generals who gain successes can set up dictators. 
 What I now ask of you is military success, and 
 I will risk the dictatorship.' 
 
 >» 
 
 General Fry, who was Provost-Marshal of the 
 War Department and received daily instructions 
 from the President in regard to the draft for 
 troops, which wa^i one of the most embarrassing 
 and perplexing questions that arose during the 
 war, illustrates this peculiar trait by an anecdote. 
 He says: 
 
 i6s
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 «'i 
 
 'Upon one occasion the Governor of a State 
 came to my office bristling with complaints in 
 relation to the number of troops required from 
 his State, the details of drafting the men, and 
 the plan of compulsory service in general. I 
 found it impossible to satisfy his demands, and 
 accompanied him to the Secretary of War's office, 
 whence, after a stormy interview with Stanton, 
 he went alone to press his ultimatum upon the 
 highest authority. After I had waited anxiously 
 for some hours, expecting important orders or 
 decisions from the President, or at least a sum- 
 mons to the White House for explanation, the 
 Governor returned, and said, with a pleasant 
 smile, that he was going home by the next train, 
 and merely dropping in en route to say good-by. 
 Neither the business he came upon nor his inter- 
 view with the President was alluded to. 
 
 "As soon as I could see Lincoln I said: *Mr. 
 President, I am very anxious to learn how you 
 
 disposed of Governor . He went to your 
 
 office from the War Department in a towering 
 rage. I suppose you found it necessary to make 
 large concessions to him, as he returned from 
 you entirely satisfied.' 
 
 " 'Oh no,' he replied, 'I did not concede any- 
 thing. You know how that Ilhnois farmer man- 
 aged the big log that lay in the middle of the 
 
 i66
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 field? To the inquiries of his neighbors, one 
 Sunday, he announced that he had got rid of the 
 big log. "Got rid of it!** said they. "How did 
 you do it? It was too big to haul out, too knotty 
 to split, and too wet and soggy to burn; what did 
 you do ? '* " Well, now, boys," replied the farmer, 
 "if you won't divulge the secret, I'll tell you how 
 I got rid of it. / plowed around it" Now,' said 
 Lincoln, 'don't tell anybody, but that's the way I 
 
 got rid of Governor . / plowed around him, 
 
 but it took me three mortal hours to do it, and 
 I was afraid every moment he'd see what I 
 was at.* " 
 
 Commenting on Jeb Stuart's raid into Mary- 
 land and Pennsylvania and his complete circuit 
 of McClellan's army and his return over the 
 river unharmed despite McClellan's attempt to 
 head him off, Lincoln remarked: 
 
 "When I was a boy we used to play a game, 
 three times round and out. Stuart has been 
 round twice; if he goes round him once more, 
 gentlemen, McClellan will be out." 
 
 The General ascribed Stuart's success to his 
 lack of horses, and telegraphed that unless the 
 army got more horses there would be similar 
 expeditions. To this Halleck telegraphed: 
 
 "The President has read your telegram, and 
 
 167
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 directs me to suggest that if the enemy had more 
 occupation south of the river his cavalry would 
 not be so Hkely to make raids north of it." 
 
 "McClellan's tardiness," said Lincoln, "re- 
 minds me of a fellow in Illinois who had studied 
 law but had never tried a case. He was sued, and, 
 not having confidence in his ability to manage 
 his own case, employed a lawyer to manage it for 
 him. He had only a confused idea of the mean- 
 ing of law terms, and, on the trial, constantly 
 made suggestions to his lawyer, who paid but 
 little attention to him. At last, fearing that his 
 lawyer was not handling the opposing counsel 
 very well, he lost all his patience, and, springing 
 to his feet, cried out: 
 
 " *Why don't you go at him with a fi. fa., a 
 demurrer, a capias, a surrebutter, or ne exeat, 
 or something, and not stand there like a nudum 
 pactum or a non est?' " 
 
 A new levy of troops required, on a certain 
 occasion, the appointment of a large additional 
 number of brigadier and major generals. Among 
 the immense number of appHcations, Mr. Lincoln 
 came upon one wherein the claims of a certain 
 worthy (not in the service at all) "for a general- 
 ship" were glowingly set forth. But the appli- 
 
 i68
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 cant did not set forth whether he wanted to be 
 a brigadier or a major general. The President 
 observed this difficulty and solved it by a lucid 
 indorsement. The clerk, on receiving the paper 
 again, found written across its back, "Major- 
 General, I reckon. A. Lincoln." 
 
 A woman once approached the President 
 rather imperiously. **Mr. President," she said, 
 very theatrically, "you must give me a colonel's 
 commission for my son. Sir, I demand it, not 
 as a favor, but as a right. Sir, my grandfather 
 fought at Lexington. Sir, my uncle was the only 
 man that did not run away at Bladensburg. 
 Sir, my father fought at New Orleans, and my 
 husband was killed at Monterey,'* 
 
 " I guess, madam," answered Mr. Lincoln, dryly, 
 "your family has done enough for the country. 
 It is time to give somebody else a chance." 
 
 Some gentlemen were once finding fault with 
 the President because certain generals were not 
 given commands. "The fact is," repHed Mr. 
 Lincoln, "I've got more pegs than I have holes 
 to put them in," 
 
 One of the telegraph operators at the War 
 Department relates that the President came over 
 
 169
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 there at night during the war and remarked that 
 he had just been reading a httle book which some 
 one had given to his son Tad. It was a story of 
 a motherly hen who was strugghng to raise her 
 brood and teach them to lead honest and useful 
 lives, but in her efforts she was greatly annoyed 
 by a mischievous fox who made sad havoc with 
 her offspring. "I thought I would turn over to 
 the finis and see how it came out," said the Presi- 
 dent. "This is what it said : 'And the fox became 
 a good fox, and was appointed paymaster in the 
 army.' I wonder who he is!" 
 
 A person who wished to be commissioned as 
 brigadier told Mr. Lincoln in a sarcastic tone, 
 "I see there's no vacancy among the brigadiers 
 from the fact that so many colonels are com- 
 manding brigades." 
 
 "My friend," said Mr. Lincoln, "let me tell 
 you something about that. You are a farmer, 
 I beHeve; if not, you will understand me also. 
 Suppose you had a large cattle-yard, full of all 
 sorts of cattle, cows, oxen, and bulls, and you 
 kept kiUing, selling, and disposing of the cows and 
 oxen in one way or another, taking good care of 
 the bulls; by and by you would find out that you 
 had nothing but a yard full of old bulls, good for 
 nothing under heaven. 
 
 170
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 et^ 
 
 ^Now it will be just so with the army if I don*t 
 stop making brigadier-generals." 
 
 A woman came to the White House one day on 
 an unusual errand, which the President suspected 
 was a pretext, but he took her at her word and 
 gave her the following note to Major Ramsey, 
 of the quartermaster's department: 
 
 "My Dear Sir, — ^The lady bearer of this says 
 she has two sons who want to work. Set them 
 at it if possible. Wanting to work is so rare 
 a merit that it should be encouraged. 
 
 "A. Lincoln.'* 
 
 In the most trying days of the war Lincoln was 
 stroUing down Pennsylvania Avenue one evening 
 in company with one of his old and intimate 
 friends from Illinois. He was somewhat anxious 
 and depressed, for there still appeared at times 
 a strange melancholic vein in his temperament. 
 He felt grievously the overpowering responsi- 
 bility of his position, and some special care of 
 the moment rested apprehensively upon his 
 mind. 
 
 The two friends walked slowly along in silence, 
 when suddenly a man stepped in front of the 
 President, and, presenting a paper, said; 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln, this is the only opportunity I 
 
 171
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 have had to speak to you. Please consider my 
 case. I — " 
 
 Here Mr, Lincoln interrupted him impatiently: 
 "My man, don't annoy me this way. I have too 
 much to think of. You must let me alone." 
 
 Then he passed on with his companion, leaving 
 the apphcant standing dejectedly on the side- 
 walk. 
 
 The two friends walked a short distance with- 
 out speaking, when suddenly Mr. Lincoln stopped 
 and said: 
 
 "John, I treated that man shamefully. I must 
 go back and see him." 
 
 And he at once turned and walked up to the 
 petitioner, who had remained in his despondent 
 attitude. 
 
 "M}^ friend," said Lincoln, "I was rude to you 
 just now; I ask your pardon. I have a great 
 deal to worry and trouble me at this time, but 
 I had no right to treat you so uncivilly. Take 
 this card, and come to my office in the morning, 
 and I will do what I can for you. Good-night." 
 
 That done, he rejoined his friend, to resume 
 his melancholy manner, and silently they walked 
 on as before. 
 
 Noah Brookes relates the following: 
 "Returning from a visit to the Army of the 
 
 172
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Potomac, when its depots were at City Point, 
 I gave an account of my visit to the President, 
 as he had sent me with a special pass to Grant's 
 headquarters. He asked, jocularly, 'Did you 
 meet any colonels who wanted to be brigadiers, 
 or any brigadiers who wanted to be major- 
 generals, or any major-generals who wanted to 
 run things?' Receiving a reply in the negative, 
 he stretched out his hand in mock congratula- 
 tion, and said, 'Happy man!' 
 
 " Afterward an officer who had been attentive 
 to our httle party did come to my lodgings and 
 complain that he ought to be promoted, urging, 
 among other things, that his relationship to a 
 distinguished general kept him down. I told the 
 incident to the President, after recalling his pre- 
 vious questions to me. Lincoln fairly shrieked 
 with laughter, and, jumping up from his seat, 
 cried, * Keeps him down! Keeps him down! 
 That's all that keeps him up. 
 
 > >> 
 
 When Lincoln pleaded for a commission for 
 his son Robert he pleaded for it in his own pecu- 
 liar and diffident way. This communication has 
 a peculiar interest in view of the fact that it 
 came from one who bestowed such favors by the 
 thousand. Writing to General Grant, he says: 
 
 "Please read and answer this letter as though 
 
 173
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 I was not President, but only a friend. My son, 
 now in his twenty-second year, having graduated 
 at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war 
 before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the 
 ranks, nor yet give him a commission to which 
 those who have already served long are better 
 entitled and better qualified to hold. 
 
 "Could he, without embarrassment to you ot 
 detriment to the service, go into your mihtary 
 family with some nominal rank, I, and not the 
 public, furnishing his necessary means? If not, 
 say so without the least hesitation, because I 
 am as anxious and as deeply interested that you 
 shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself." 
 
 Once upon learning that a woman he had seen 
 in the halls of the War Department was there for 
 the purpose of securing a pass to visit her hus- 
 band in the Army of the Potomac, which was 
 against the rules, in order to show him their 
 first-born, Lincoln did not rest until he had tele- 
 graphed for the husband to came to Washington, 
 and a bed had been assigned to the mother and 
 child in one of the Washington hospitals. 
 
 His gentleness is also exhibited in the following 
 incident related by Morgan. He once reproved 
 a man who had been refused by every one else 
 
 174
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 for following him to the Soldiers' Home, his only- 
 refuge, and sent him away. Next day, after a 
 night of remorse, he sought the man out at his 
 hotel, and begged his forgiveness for treating 
 "with rudeness one who had offered his life for 
 his country" and was in trouble. Taking him 
 into his carriage, the President got him out of his 
 troubles. When he told Stanton what he had 
 done, the grim Secretary himself apologized for 
 rejecting the appeal. 
 
 "No, no," said Lincoln, "you did right in 
 adhering to your rules. If we had such a soft- 
 hearted fool as I am in your place, there would 
 be no rules that the army or the country could 
 depend on." 
 
 This story shows his accessibility and friend- 
 liness and the humorous disposition which was 
 so characteristic with him. A tax had been 
 levied on oxen. An owner of a pair came to Lin- 
 coln, who had more on his shoulders than any 
 other man in the world, to see if he would not 
 help him to get rid of the tax. Lincoln knew the 
 man, and remembered the oxen, and said: "Are 
 those the oxen I see standing at the corner when- 
 ever I go to the Treasury? I never saw them 
 move. Maybe they are not movable property. 
 Perhaps we may get them put down as real 
 
 175
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 estate." In this incident Lincoln appears in a 
 patriarchal character, which was certainly his, 
 reminding us of an Oriental prince seated at the 
 gate of his palace, or rather the representation 
 of one in comic opera. 
 
 A year or more before Mr. Lincoln's death a 
 delegation of clergymen waited upon him in 
 reference to the appointment of the army chap- 
 lains. The delegation consisted of a Presbyterian, 
 a Baptist, and an Episcopal clergyman. They 
 stated that the character of many of the chap- 
 lains was notoriously bad, and they had come to 
 urge upon the President the necessity of more 
 discretion in these appointments. 
 
 "But, gentlemen," said the President, "that 
 is a matter which the Government has nothing 
 to do with; the chaplains are chosen by the 
 
 regiments." 
 
 Not satisfied with this, the clergymen pressed, 
 in turn, a change in the system. Mr. Lincoln 
 heard them through without remark, and then 
 said, "Without any disrespect, gentlemen, I will 
 tell you a little story. 
 
 "Once, in Springfield, I was going off on a 
 short journey, and reached the depot a little 
 ahead of time. Leaning against the fence just 
 outside the depot was a little darky boy whom 
 
 176
 
 tt t 
 (t f 
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 I knew, named Dick, busily digging with his toe 
 
 in a mud-puddle. As I came up I said, *Dick, 
 
 what are you about?' 
 
 'Making a church,^ said he. 
 
 'A church!' said I; Vhat do you mean?* 
 
 'Yes, yes,' said Dick, pointing with his toe; 
 
 *don't you see? There is the shape of it; there's 
 
 the steps and front door — here the pews, where 
 
 the folks set, and there's a pulpit.' 
 
 " * Yes, I see,' said I, *but why don't you make 
 
 a minister?' 
 
 " 'Laws,' answered Dick, with a grin, 'I hain't 
 
 got mud enough!' " 
 
 In the course of the Rebellion an Austrian 
 count applied to President Lincoln for a position 
 in the army. Being introduced by the Austrian 
 minister, he needed, of course, no further recom- 
 mendation; but, as if fearing that his importance 
 might not be fully appreciated, he proceeded to 
 explain that he was a count, that his family were 
 ancient and highly respectable, when Lincoln, 
 with a merry twinkle in his eye, tapping the aris- 
 tocratic lover of titles on the shoulder in a fa- 
 therly way, as if the man had confessed to some 
 wrong, interrupted, in a soothing tone, "Never 
 mind; you will be treated with just as much 
 consideration for all that!" 
 12 177
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 A woman once requested of Lincoln that a 
 church in Alexandria that was being used for a 
 hospital be given up and rededicated for purposes 
 of worship. Mr. Lincoln asked if she had applied 
 to the post surgeon, and being assured that she 
 had but that he could do nothing for her, Lincoln 
 said, "Well, madam, that is an end of it then.'* 
 
 More for the purpose of testing her sentiments, 
 Mr. Lincoln continued: "You say you live in 
 Alexandria. How much would you be willing 
 to subscribe toward building a hospital there?" 
 
 She replied: "You may be aware, Mr. Lincoln, 
 that our property has been very much embar- 
 rassed b)^ the war, and I could not afford to give 
 much for such a purpose." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Lincoln, "and this war is not 
 over yet; and I expect we shall have another 
 fight soon, and that church ma}"- be very useful 
 as a hospital in which to nurse our poor wounded 
 soldiers. It is my candid opinion that God wants 
 that church for our wounded fellows. So, 
 madam, you will excuse me. I can do nothing 
 for you." 
 
 Afterward, in speaking of this incident, Mr. 
 Lincoln said that the lady as a representative 
 of her class in Alexandria reminded him of a 
 story of the young man who had an aged mother 
 and father owning considerable property. The 
 
 178
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 young man, being an only son, and believing that 
 the old people had lived out their usefulness, 
 assassinated them both. He was accused, tried, 
 and convicted of the murder. When the judge 
 came to pass sentence upon him, and called upon 
 him to give any reason he might have v^hy the 
 sentence of death should not be passed upon 
 him, he with great promptness replied that he 
 hoped the court would be lenient to him be- 
 cause he was a poor orphan! 
 
 "His skill in parrying troublesome questions 
 was wonderful," said Mr. Chauncey M. Depew. 
 "I was in Washington at a critical period of the 
 war, when the late John Ganson, of Buffalo, one 
 of the ablest lawyers in our State, and who, 
 though elected as a Democrat, supported all Mr. 
 Lincoln's war measures, called on him for expla- 
 nations. Mr. Ganson was very baldj with a 
 perfectly smooth face, and had a most direct 
 and aggressive way of stating his views or of 
 demanding what he thought he was entitled to. 
 He said: 
 
 " 'Mr. Lincoln, I have supported all of your 
 measures and think I am entitled to your con- 
 fidence. We are voting and acting in the dark 
 in Congress, and I demand to know — I think I 
 have the right to ask and to know — ^what is the 
 
 179
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 present situation and what are the prospects and 
 conditions of the several campaigns and armies?* 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln looked at him quizzically for a 
 moment, and then said, *Ganson, how clean you 
 shave!' 
 
 "Most men would have been offended, but 
 Ganson was too broad and intelligent a man not 
 to see the point and retire at once, satisfied, from 
 the field." 
 
 To a politician who criticized his course he 
 wrote, "Would you have me drop the war where 
 it is, or would you prosecute it in future with 
 eider-stalk squirts charged with rose water?" 
 
 The President was once called upon In reference 
 to a newly invented gun, concerning which a 
 committee had been appointed to make a report. 
 
 The "report" was sent for, and when it came 
 it was found to be of the most voluminous de- 
 scription. Mr. Lincoln glanced at it, and said, 
 "I should want a new lease of life to read this 
 through!" Throwing it down upon the table, 
 he added: "Why can't a committee of this kind 
 occasionally exhibit a grain of common sense? 
 If I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect 
 him to tell me his points — not how many hairs 
 there are in his tail." 
 
 i8o
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Mr. Lincoln sometimes had a very effective 
 way of dealing with men who troubled him with 
 questions. A visitor once asked him how many 
 men the rebels had in the field. 
 
 The President replied, very seriously, " Twelve 
 hundred thousand, according to the best authority.^* 
 
 The interrogator grew pale, and ejaculated, 
 "Good heavens!" 
 
 "Yes, sir; twelve hundred thousand — no doubt 
 of it. You see, all of our generals, when they 
 get whipped, say the enemy outnumbers them 
 from three or five to one, and I must believe 
 them. We have four hundred thousand men in 
 the field, and three times four make twelve. 
 Don't you see it?" 
 
 Here is a story told by General Fisk that Mr. 
 Lincoln rehshed much and often repeated. 
 
 When Fisk became a colonel he organized 
 his regiment with the understanding that he 
 was to do all the swearing of the regiment. One 
 of the teamsters, however, as the roads were not 
 always of the best, had difficulty in controlling 
 his temper and his tongue. Once, under unusual 
 difficulties, through a series of mud-pools a little 
 worse than usual, unable to control himself any 
 longer, this teamster burst forth into a volley of 
 energetic oaths. 
 
 i8i
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 The Colonel took him to account and reminded 
 him that he had agreed to let him (the Colonel) 
 do all the swearing of the regiment. 
 
 "Yes, I did, Colonel," he replied. "But the 
 fact was, the swearing had to be done then or 
 not at all, and you weren't there to do it.'* 
 
 Being informed of the death of John Morgan, 
 he said, "Well, I wouldn't crow over anybody's 
 death; but I can take this as resignedly as any 
 dispensation of Providence." 
 
 The President was once speaking about an 
 attack made on him by the Committee on the 
 Conduct of the War for a certain alleged blunder, 
 or something worse, in the Southwest, the mat- 
 ter involved being one which had fallen directly 
 under the observation of the officer to whom he 
 was talking, who possessed official evidence com- 
 pletely upsetting all the conclusions of the 
 committee. 
 
 "Might it not be well for me," queried the 
 officer, "to set this matter right in a letter to 
 some paper, stating the facts as they actually 
 transpired?" 
 
 "Oh no," replied the President; "at least, 
 not now. If I were to try to read, much less 
 answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop 
 
 182
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 might as well be closed for any other business. 
 I do the very best I know how — the very best I 
 can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. 
 If the end brings me out all right, what is said 
 against me won't amount to anything. If the 
 end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing 
 I was right will make no difference." 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, on a certain occa- 
 sion, "I feel about that a good deal as a man 
 whom I will call *Jones,' whom I once knew, 
 did about his wife. He was one of your meek 
 men, and had the reputation of being badly 
 henpecked. At last one day his wife was seen 
 switching him out of the house. A day or two 
 afterward a friend met him in the street, and 
 said: 'Jones, I have always stood up for you, 
 as you know; but I am not going to do it any 
 longer. Any man who will stand quietly and 
 take a switching from his wife deserves to be 
 horsewhipped.' Jones looked up with a wink, 
 patting his friend on the back. ^Now^ dontj 
 said he; 'why, it didn't hurt me any; and you've 
 no idea what a -power of good it did Sarah 
 Ann!' " 
 
 Speaking of resentment, he said: 
 
 "Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never 
 
 183
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 thought it paid. A man has no time to spend 
 half his hfe in quarrels." 
 
 Once, in reply to a delegation of bank presi- 
 dents who urged whether it was not time to 
 give up all thought of the Union, he told the 
 following story: 
 
 "When I was a young man in Illinois I boarded 
 for a time with the deacon of the Presbyterian 
 church. One night I was roused from my sleep 
 by a rap at the door, and I heard the deacon's 
 voice exclaiming, * Arise, Abraham! The Day of 
 Judgment has come!' I sprang from my bed 
 and rushed to my window, and saw stars falling 
 in great showers; but, looking back of them in 
 the heavens, I saw the grand old constellations, 
 with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and 
 true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did 
 not come to an end then, nor will the Union now.'* 
 
 He could be stern at times, and when the 
 frantic cry arose from the Northern commercial 
 interests for compromise, he said: "They seek 
 a sign, and none shall be given them. ... I 
 am not insensible to any commercial or finan- 
 cial depression that may exist, but nothing is 
 to be gained by fawning around the 'respectable 
 scoundrels' who got it up. Let them go to work 
 
 184
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 to repair the mischief of their own doing, and then 
 perhaps they will be less greedy to do the like 
 again." 
 
 As President, Lincoln was still the same great 
 democrat he had always been as a citizen. 
 During the four awful years of war his heart and 
 his thoughts were always with the soldier in the 
 ranks — and in both ranks, for the North and the 
 South was his country. So intent was Lincoln 
 upon saving all unnecessary suffering that the 
 doorkeepers had standing orders from him that, 
 no matter how great the throng, though Senators 
 and Representatives had to wait or to go away 
 without an audience, the President must see 
 before the day closed every messenger who came 
 to him with a petition for the saving of a 
 Ufe. 
 
 In connection with this he once said, "Some 
 of our generals complain that I impair discipline 
 in the army by my pardons and respites, but 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 joy- 
 ous the signing of my name will make him and 
 his family and his friends." 
 
 Upon a petition for the release of a soldier 
 condemned to death Lincoln wrote: "What pos- 
 
 i8s
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 sible injury can this lad work upon the cause 
 of the great Union? I say, let him go." 
 
 It is a lasting loss to American history that 
 there was not a special secretary at the White 
 House during Lincoln's administration to record 
 the stories of all Lincoln's pardons. Think of 
 the story that hes back of the short and simple 
 order, "Let this woman have her boy." 
 
 In passing upon a case of a lad condemned to 
 death for falling asleep upon his post, Lincoln 
 said: "I could not think of going into eternity 
 with the blood of that poor young man on my 
 skirts. It is not to be wondered at that a boy 
 raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going 
 to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, 
 fall asleep; and I cannot consent to shoot him 
 for such an act." The impressive sequel of this 
 act of mercy was brought to light when the dead 
 body of this soldier boy was found on the field 
 of Fredericksburg, and next to his heart a pho- 
 tograph of the President, across which he had 
 written, "God bless Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 After pardoning a deserter (condemned to 
 death), in answer to the prayer of his mother, 
 Lincoln said, "Perhaps I have done wrong, but, at 
 all events, I have made that poor woman happy." 
 
 i86
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Speed tells of a scene in the Presidential office 
 that was very touching. An aged mother who 
 had been pleading for the liberty of her boy, and 
 whose petition had been granted, said, as she was 
 leaving, "I shall probably never see you again 
 until we meet in Heaven." 
 
 Speed remonstrated with Mr. Lincoln, urging 
 that he had no business to expose himself to 
 such nerve-racking scenes. 
 
 "Things of the sort you have just seen don't 
 hurt me," insisted Lincoln; "it is the only thing 
 to-day that has made me forget my condition or 
 given me any pleasure." He added, "Die when 
 I may, I want it said of me by those who knew 
 me best that I plucked a thistle and planted a 
 flower where I thought a flower would grow." 
 
 The President kept on a table near him a pile 
 of thin blank cards on which he penciled some 
 of his most important orders. After hstening 
 patiently to a long complaint about the harsh or 
 unjust treatment some chaplain, soldier, or citi- 
 zen had suff"ered, Mr. Lincoln took grim dehght 
 in writing to the Secretary of War: 
 
 "Dear Stanton, — Let up on So-and-so. 
 
 "A. Lincoln." 
 
 Once it became Lincoln's duty to give an 
 official reprimand to a young officer who had 
 
 187
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STOR'IES 
 
 been court-martialed for a quarrel with one of 
 his associates. The reprimand is probably the 
 gentlest record in the annals of penal discourses, 
 and it shows in few words the principles which 
 ruled the conduct of this great and peaceable 
 man. 
 
 "The advice of a father to his son, 'Beware 
 of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear it, 
 that the opposer may beware of thee,' is good, 
 but not the best." 
 
 "Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make 
 the most of himself can spare time for personal 
 contention. Still less can he afford to take all 
 the consequences, including the vitiation of his 
 temper and the loss of self-control. 
 
 "Yield larger things to which you can show 
 no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, 
 though clearly your own. 
 
 " Better give your path to a dog than be bitten 
 by him in contesting for the right. Even killing 
 the dog would not cure the bite." 
 
 When his generals remonstrated with him for 
 his laxity in enforcing army rules, he never could 
 forget that after all a volunteer army was a hu- 
 man organization and that every soldier was a 
 son of his. And when it is considered that of 
 two and a half million enlistments more than 
 
 i88
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 two million were boys under twenty-one, and 
 that they graded all the way down to fifteen, 
 they were indeed children. 
 
 "There are already too many weeping wid- 
 ows," Lincoln insisted, when objection was made 
 because he had forbidden the shooting of twenty- 
 four deserters in a row; "for God's sake, don't 
 ask me to add to the number, for I won't do it." 
 
 *'They are shooting a boy to-day," he once 
 said; "I hope I have not done wrong to allow it." 
 
 "To-morrow is butcher's day," he said, one 
 Thursday, as he was looking over a heap of sen- 
 tences that lay upon his desk, "and I must go 
 through these papers and see if I can't find some 
 excuse to let these poor fellows off." 
 
 Appeals for clemency were made to him at all 
 times and places. Once a man went to him late 
 at night and aroused him from his slumbers. 
 He sat up in his night-clothes suspending the 
 sentence of a nineteen-year-old boy for having 
 fallen asleep at his post. And Lincoln was so 
 troubled lest his order might go wrong that he 
 dressed himself and went in person to the War 
 Department. Once when he feared that a sim- 
 ilar order might go astray he telegraphed to four 
 persons. Thousands of instances might be mul- 
 tiplied. "If he has no friend, I'll be his friend," 
 
 189
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 he said, when he ordered a stay of a sentence that 
 was to execute a soldier. 
 
 The most whimsical reason for granting a par- 
 don was that given to a German girl, who came, 
 poorly dressed, to plead, in broken English, for 
 the life of her brother, who, not understanding 
 English very well, had enlisted and deserted. 
 The President said to her, kindly: 
 
 "I'll be whipped if I don't pardon your brother. 
 Here you have come without an influential friend 
 to help you — but you seem to be a good, honest 
 girl." Then his eye fell upon her scant skirts. 
 "Yes, I'll pardon him — because — because — you 
 dont wear hoops/" 
 
 One day an old man came to him with a sad 
 tale of sorrow. His boy had been convicted of 
 unpardonable crimes and sentenced to death, 
 but he was an only son; and Lincoln said, kindly: 
 
 "I am sorry I can do nothing for you. Listen 
 to this telegram I received from General Butler 
 yesterday: 
 
 " 'President Lincoln, I pray you not to In- 
 terfere with the courts-martial of the army. You 
 will destroy all discipline among our soldiers. 
 
 "*B. F. Butler.'" 
 
 Lincoln watched the old man's grief for a 
 
 190
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 minute, and then exclaimed, "By jingo! Butler 
 or no Butler, here goes!" Writing a few words, 
 he handed the paper to the old man, reading: 
 
 "Job Smith is not to be shot until further 
 orders from me. Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 *'Why," said the old man, sadly, "I thought 
 it was a pardon. You may order him to be shot 
 next week." 
 
 "My friend," replied the President, "I see you 
 are not very well acquainted with me. If your 
 son never dies till orders come from me to 
 shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older 
 than Methuselah." 
 
 A Congressman who had failed to move Sec- 
 retary Stanton to grant a pardon went to the 
 White House late at night after the President 
 had retired, forced the way to his bedroom, and 
 earnestly besought his interference, exclaiming 
 earnestly: 
 
 "This man, Mr. Lincoln, must not be shot." 
 "Well," said the President, coolly, "I do not 
 believe shooting will do him any good," and the 
 pardon was granted. 
 
 One day a woman accompanied by a Senator 
 called on the President. The woman was the 
 wife of one of Mosby's men. Her husband had 
 
 191
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 been captured, tried, and condemned to be shot. 
 She came to ask for his pardon. The President 
 heard her story, and then asked what kind of 
 man her husband was. *'Is he intemperate? 
 Does he abuse the children and beat you ?" "Noj, 
 no," said the wife; "he is a good man, a good 
 husband; he loves me, and he loves the children, 
 and we cannot live without him. The only 
 trouble is that he is a fool about politics. I 
 live in the North, born there, and if I get him 
 home he will do no more fighting for the South." 
 "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, after examining the 
 papers, "I will pardon your husband and turn 
 him over to you for safe keeping." The poor 
 woman, overcome with joy, sobbed as though 
 her heart would break. 
 
 "My dear woman," said Lincoln, "if I had 
 known how badly it was going to make you feel, 
 I never would have pardoned him." "You do not 
 understand me," she cried, between her sobs — • 
 "you do not understand me." "Yes, yes, I do," 
 answered the President; "and if you do not go 
 away at once I shall be crying with you." 
 
 One day Judge Holt, the Judge-Advocate Gen- 
 eral of the army, in laying death-sentences before 
 the President, came to the case of a young soldier 
 who in battle hid behind a stump, and demoralized 
 
 192
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 his regiment by his cowardice. Lincoln remarked, 
 "Well, I'll have to put that with my leg cases." 
 
 "Leg cases!" said Judge Holt. "What do you 
 mean by leg cases, sir?" 
 
 "Why, why," replied Mr. Lincoln, "do you 
 see those papers crowded into those pigeon- 
 holes.'' They are the cases that you call by that 
 long title, 'cowardice in the face of the enemy,' 
 but I call them, for short, my *leg cases.' But I 
 put it to you to decide for yourself: If Almighty 
 God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how 
 can he help their running away with him?" 
 
 Chauncey M. Depew tells the following: 
 The reception held by the President day by 
 day was a series of amusing or aflPecting scenes. 
 He at once satisfied and reconciled an importu- 
 nate but Hfelong friend who wanted a mission to 
 a distant" country where the climate was very 
 unhealthy by saying, when all arguments failed, 
 "Strangers die there soon, and I have already 
 given the position to a gentleman whom I can 
 better spare than you." 
 
 When a little woman whose scant raiment 
 
 and pinched features indicated the struggle of 
 
 respectability with poverty secured, after days 
 
 'of effort, an entrance to his presence, he said, 
 
 13 193
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 "Well, my good woman, what can I do for you?" 
 She replied: "My son, my only child, is a soldier. 
 His regiment was near enough to my house for 
 him to take a day and run over and see his 
 mother. He was arrested as a deserter when he 
 re-entered the Hnes and condemned to be shot, 
 and he is to be executed to-morrow." Hastily 
 arising from his chair, the President left Senators 
 and Congressmen and Generals, and, seizing the 
 little woman by the hand, dragged her on a run, 
 as with great strides he marched with her to 
 the office of the Secretary of War. She could not 
 tell where the regiment then was, or at what 
 place or in what division the execution was to 
 take place, and Stanton, who had become wearied 
 with the President's clemency, which, he said, 
 destroyed discipline, begged the President to 
 drop the matter; but Mr. Lincoln, rising, said 
 with vehemence, "I will not be balked in this. 
 Send this message to every headquarters, every 
 fort, and every camp in the United States: 'Let 
 no military execution take place until further 
 orders from me. A. Lincoln.' " 
 
 Another instance of the many that show his 
 gentleness and consideration is here given: 
 
 "The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, 
 as appears by the record already before me. 
 
 194
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Yet before receiving this I had ordered his pun- 
 ishment commuted to imprisonment with hard 
 labor during the war, and had so telegraphed. 
 I did this, not on any merit in the case, but 
 because I am trying to evade the butchering 
 business lately." 
 
 An officer had disobeyed, or failed to com- 
 prehend an order. 
 
 "I believe I'll sit down," said Secretary Stan- 
 ton, "and give that man a piece of my mind." 
 
 "Do so," said Lincoln; "write him now while 
 you have It on your mind. Make it sharp. Cut 
 him all up." 
 
 ^- 5tanton did not need a second invitation. It 
 was a " bone-crusher " that he read to the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 "That's right," said Lincoln; "that's a good 
 one." 
 
 " Whom can I send It by } " mused the Secretary. 
 
 "Send It!" replied Lincoln, "send it! Why, 
 don't send it at all. Tear it up. You have freed 
 your mind on the subject, and that is all that is 
 necessary. Tear It up. You never want to send 
 such letters. I never do." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's language In ordinary conversa- 
 tion was characterized by the same simplicity 
 which adorned his speeches. 
 
 I9S
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 iC 
 
 'You never swear, Mr. President, do you?** 
 asked a prominent Boston man, who had talked 
 with him on several occasions. 
 
 *'0h, I don't have to," he laughed, not loud, but 
 deep. " You know I have Stanton in my Cabinet." 
 
 This may have been a reflection upon the 
 virile and vitriolic Secretary of War, but it was no 
 less a delicate compliment. 
 
 One morning Mr. Lincoln met a well-preserved 
 tramp near the White House grounds. The 
 tramp didn't know the President, and struck him 
 for the loan of a dime to save him from immedi- 
 ate starvation. 
 
 "You look like an able-bodied man," said the 
 President; "why don't you join the army?" 
 
 "They won't let me," whined the tramp. 
 "I'd be glad enough to die for my country, siij, 
 if they would give me the chance." 
 
 "Well, maybe I can be of service," said Mr. 
 Lincoln, kindly. Taking an envelop and pencil 
 from his pocket he wrote a note and addressed 
 it to the officer in charge of the recruiting station 
 near by, in Fifteenth Street. "Take that," he 
 said, passing it over, "and give it to the officer 
 at No. 714 Fifteenth Street. If he can't do any- 
 thing for you, come back here to me. I'm just 
 walking around." 
 
 196
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 The tramp took it and shuffled away, but he 
 never came back; neither did he go to the re- 
 cruiting office. The note was to this effect: 
 
 "Colonel Fielding, — ^The bearer is anxious 
 to go to the front and die for his country. Can't 
 you give him a chance?' 
 
 I 'J 
 
 An officer once forced his way Into the presence 
 of the President and said he had a grievance to 
 lay before him against Sherman,'who had threat- 
 ened to shoot him. 
 
 "Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, 
 I wouldn't trust him, for I believe he would do it." 
 
 A gentleman was relating to the President 
 how a friend of his had been driven away from 
 New Orleans as a Unionist, and how, on his ex- 
 pulsion, when he asked to see the writ by which 
 he was expelled, the deputation which called on 
 him told him that the Government had made 
 up their minds to do nothing illegal and so they 
 had issued no illegal writs, and simply meant to 
 make him go of his own free will. "Well," said 
 Mr. Lincoln, "that reminds me of a hotel-keeper 
 down at St. Louis who boasted that he never 
 had a death at his hotel, for whenever a guest was 
 dying In his house he carried him out to die in the 
 gutter." 
 
 197
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 Once, as he drove up to a hospital, Lincoln saw 
 one of the inmates walking directly in front of 
 his team, and he cried out to the driver to stop. 
 The horses were checked none too soon to avoid 
 running the man down. Then Lincoln saw that 
 the poor fellow, only a boy, had been shot in 
 both eyes. He got out of his carriage, and, taking 
 the bhnd soldier by the hand, asked him in 
 trembling tones for his name, his service, and his 
 residence. "I am Abraham Lincoln," he him- 
 self said as he was leaving, and the sightless face 
 of the youth was lit up with gratitude as he lis- 
 tened to the President's words of honest sym- 
 pathy. The next day the chief of the hospital 
 laid in the boy's hands a commission as first 
 lieutenant in the army of the United States, 
 bearing the President's signature, and with it 
 an order retiring him on three-quarters pay for 
 the years of helplessness that until then had 
 stretched before him through a hopeless future. 
 
 In 1862 the people of New York City feared 
 bombardment by Confederate cruisers, and public 
 meetings were held to consider the gravity of the 
 situation. Finally a delegation of fifty gentle- 
 men, representing hundreds of miUions of dollars, 
 was selected to go to Washington and persuade 
 the President to detail a gunboat to protect their 
 
 198
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 property. David Davis, while on the Supreme 
 Bench, went to the White House and presented 
 them to the President. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln heard them attentively, much 
 impressed, apparently, by the "hundreds of 
 milhons." When they had concluded, he said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am, by the Constitution, Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy of the 
 United States, and as a matter of law I can order 
 anything to be done that is practicable to be 
 done. I am in command of the gunboats and 
 ships of war; but, as a matter of fact, I do not 
 know exactly where they are. I presume they 
 are actively engaged, and it is therefore im- 
 possible for me to furnish you with a gunboat. 
 The credit of the Government is at a very low 
 ebb, greenbacks are not worth more than forty 
 or fifty cents on the dollar; and in this condition 
 of things, if I were worth half as much as you 
 gentlemen are represented to be, and as badly 
 frightened as you seem to be, I would build a 
 gunboat and give it to the Government." 
 
 Judge Davis said he never saw one hundred 
 millions sink to such insignificant proportions as 
 it did when the delegation left the White House. 
 
 When the war was still only half over, many 
 people at the North felt that a more vigor- 
 
 199
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 ous policy was demanded. There had been a 
 meeting of prominent Northern men, including 
 Governors of Northern States. They passed reso- 
 lutions that the campaign should be more ag- 
 gressive, and commissioned Mr. Dixon to call 
 on Mr. Lincoln, tell him of the meeting, and read 
 to him a record of its conclusions. 
 
 Mr. Dixon said that he undertook the task 
 with a great deal of satisfaction, and felt like a 
 very large-sized man when he went up to the 
 White House one evening to deliver himself of 
 his mission. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln listened in silence to what Mr. 
 Dixon had to say, a silence which added not a 
 little to the impressiveness of the latter's elo- 
 quence. When Mr. Dixon was done, Mr. Lincoln 
 said to him: 
 
 "Dixon, you are a good fellow, and I have al- 
 ways had a high opinion of you. It is needless 
 for me to add that what comes from those who 
 sent you here is authoritative. The Governors 
 of the Northern States are the North. What 
 they decide must be carried out. 
 
 "Still, in justice to myself, you must remember 
 that Abraham Lincoln is the President of the 
 United States. Anything that the President of 
 the United States does, right or wrong, will be 
 the acts of Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham Lin- 
 
 200
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 coin will by the people be held responsible for 
 the President's actions. 
 
 **But I have a proposition to make to you. 
 Go home and think the matter over. Come to 
 me to-morrow morning at nine o'clock and I will 
 promise to do anything that you then have de- 
 termined upon as right and proper. Good night." 
 
 Mr. Dixon left the White House feeling much 
 larger than when he entered it, assured that the 
 President put a higher value upon his abilities 
 than he had himself supposed. Dismissing this 
 pleasant thought, he consulted with himself as to 
 what should be done, now that the responsibility 
 had fallen on him to decide the policy of the 
 President of the United States. He endeavored 
 most seriously to put himself in the place of the 
 President and to find the best solution for the 
 great problems which must be met. 
 
 Many suggestions occurred to him, but one 
 after another was dismissed as for some reason 
 out of the question. When morning broke he 
 had not determined upon the policy which he 
 was to impose upon the President. He decided 
 not to go to the White House that morning. He 
 did not go the next day, nor the next. 
 
 Indeed, three weeks went by before he saw the 
 President. Then it was at a reception at Sec- 
 retary Seward's, and Mr. Dixon tried to get by 
 
 201
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 him In the crowd without attracting special at- 
 tention; but the long arm of the President shot 
 out, seized, and dragged him to one side. 
 
 "By the way, Dixon," said Mr. Lincoln, "I 
 beheve I had an appointment with you one 
 morning about three weeks ago." Mr. Dixon said 
 he recalled something of the sort. "Where have 
 you been all these weeks?" asked the President. 
 
 "Here In Washington," said Dixon; "but, to 
 tell the truth, Mr. President, I have decided 
 never to keep that appointment." 
 
 "I thought you would not when I made It for 
 you," was Mr. Lincoln's comment. 
 
 His power of metaphor Is well Illustrated In 
 this message to Hooker in the Gettysburg cam- 
 paign: "If the head of Lee's army Is at Martins- 
 burg and the tail of it on the plank road between 
 Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal 
 must be very slim somewhere. Could you not 
 break him?" 
 
 Letter to General Hooker, June 5, 1863: "In 
 one word, I would not take any risk of being en- 
 tangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half 
 over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front 
 and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way 
 or kick the other." 
 
 202
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 After the battle of Gettysburg Lincoln urged 
 Meade in a peremptory order to pursue Lee in 
 his retreat, attack him, and with one bold stroke 
 end the war. A friendly note came with it: 
 
 "The order I inclose is not of record. If you 
 succeed, you need not publish the order. If you 
 fail, pubHsh it. Then, if you succeed, you will 
 have all the credit of the movement. If not, 
 ril take all the responsibility." 
 
 Is there in our history a more generous act, a 
 nobler patriotism.'' 
 
 Some question has arisen as to Mr. Lincoln's 
 religious opinions, but this story illustrates his 
 attitude toward religion. A Southern woman 
 who had come to see Lincoln about her husband, 
 who was confined in a Northern prison because 
 of his "pernicious politics," mentioned the fact 
 that the prisoner was a religious man. 
 
 "I'm glad to hear that," said Mr. Lincoln, 
 cheerfully; and the lady smiled hopefully in re- 
 sponse. Then he went on, "Because any man 
 who wants to disrupt this Union needs all the 
 religion in sight to save him." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's love for the soldiers was well 
 known, and he was a frequent visitor at the 
 hospitals in Washington. A young doctor was 
 
 203
 
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 showing him around one afternoon to let him 
 speak to the men. The guide took him past the 
 entrance to a large room, saying that he didn't 
 suppose the President wanted to go in there, as 
 they were "only rebels." 
 
 But I do want to go in there," said Lincoln, 
 and don't you call them * rebels'; call them 
 'Johnnies.' It sounds friendher. Would you 
 want to be called a 'Yank' and neglected because 
 you did the best you knew?" 
 
 It is doubtful whether in all history or in all 
 literature there may be found a tribute at once 
 so touching, so comprehensive, and so happy in 
 expression as this. Its brevity and its depth, its 
 sincerity of tone, its poetic beauty, make Lincoln 
 one of the master writers of epistolary Hterature: 
 
 "Dear Madam, — I have been shown, in the 
 files of the War Department, a statement of the 
 Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are 
 the mother of five sons who have died gloriously 
 on the field of battle. 
 
 "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any 
 words of mine which should attempt to beguile 
 you from a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot 
 refrain from tendering to you the consolation 
 that may be found in the thanks of the Re- 
 public they died to save. 
 
 204
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 ({' 
 
 1 pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage 
 the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you 
 only the cherished memory of the loved and 
 lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to 
 have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of 
 freedom. 
 
 "Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln. 
 "To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass." 
 
 In reply to a committee that came to protest 
 about the conduct of the war and to suggest 
 changes, Lincoln told the following anecdote: 
 
 "Three moves, it is said, are worse than a fire. 
 There was a family in western Pennsylvania 
 who started their migrations pretty well off in a 
 Worldly way. But they moved and moved, hav- 
 ing less every time they moved, till after a while 
 they could carry everything in one wagon. It 
 was said that the chickens of the family got so 
 Used to being moved that whenever they saw 
 the wagon-sheets brought out they laid them- 
 selves on their backs and crossed their legs ready 
 to be tied." 
 
 Lincoln's remarkable facility, amounting to 
 genius, for saying things briefly yet with wonder- 
 ful appositeness is illustrated in the following 
 
 205
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 letter written to Carl Schurz. It contains a world 
 of humor, and yet tells its own story in its own re- 
 markable and peculiar way. Schurz at that time 
 took issue with the Administration as to its 
 policy, and the following letter is a reply to his 
 strictures: 
 
 "You think I could do better; therefore, you 
 blame me already. I think I could not do better; 
 therefore, I blame you for blaming me. I under- 
 stand you now to be willing to accept the help 
 of men who are not Republicans, provided they 
 have * heart in it.' Agreed. I want no others. 
 But who is to be the judge of hearts or of 'hearts 
 in it'? If I must discard my own judgment and 
 take yours I must also take that of others; and 
 by the time I should reject all I should be ad- 
 vised to reject, I should have none left. Repub- 
 licans or others— not even yourself. For be 
 assured, my dear sir, there are men who have 
 'heart in it' that think you are performing your 
 part as poorly as you think I am performing mine." 
 
 At the White House one day some gentlemen 
 from the West were much excited and troubled 
 about the commissions or omissions of the Ad- 
 ministration. The President heard them pa- 
 tiently, and then replied: "Gentlemen, suppose 
 all the property you were worth was in gold, and 
 
 206
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry 
 across the Niagara River on a rope, would you 
 shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him, 
 'Blondin, stand up a little straighter — Blondin, 
 stoop a little more — go a little faster — lean a 
 little more to the north — lean a little more to 
 the south'? No! You would hold your breath 
 as well as your tongue, and keep your hands 
 off until he was safe over. The Government is 
 carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures 
 are in their hands. They are doing the very best 
 they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and 
 we'll get you safe across." 
 
 Lincoln frequently showed that he could 
 easily avoid a direct answer and evade inquisi- 
 tive visitors when he thought it was impolitic 
 to make known his opinions. One of the latter 
 wanted to know his opinion of Sheridan, who 
 had just come from the West to take command 
 of the cavalry under Grant. Said Lincoln: 
 
 "I will tell you just what kind of a chap he is. 
 He is one of those long-armed fellows with short 
 legs that can scratch his shins without having to 
 stoop over to do so." 
 
 One day, when the vain boasting of a certain 
 general was the subject of discussion, Lincoln 
 
 207
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 was "reminded" of a farmer out in Illinois who 
 was in the habit of bragging about everj^thing 
 he did and had and saw, and particularly about 
 his crops. While driving along the road during 
 the haying season he noticed one of his neigh- 
 bors hauling a load of hay into his barn. He 
 could not resist the opportunity, and commenced 
 to brag about the size of his hay crop, which, 
 as usual, he asserted to be larger and better than 
 any ever before known in the county. After he 
 had finished he asked what kind of a crop his 
 neighbor had put in. 
 
 "The biggest crop you ever see!" was the 
 prompt reply. "I've got so much hay I don't 
 know what to do with it. I've piled up all I 
 can outdoors, and am going to put the rest of 
 it In the bam." 
 
 A gentleman asked Lincoln to give him a pass 
 through the Federal lines In order to visit Rich- 
 mond. "I should be very happy to oblige you," 
 said the President, "if my passes were respected; 
 but the fact is, within the past two years I have 
 given passes to Richmond to two hundred and 
 fifty thousand men, and not one has got there yet." 
 
 When the Sherman expedition which captured 
 Port Royal went out, there was a great curiosity 
 
 2o8
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 to know where it had gone. A person with un- 
 governable curiosity asked the President the 
 destination. 
 
 "Will you keep it entirely secret?" asked the 
 President. 
 
 "Oh yes, upon my honor." 
 
 "Well," said the President, "I will tell you." 
 Assuming an air of great mystery and drawing 
 the man close to him, he kept him awaiting the 
 revelation with great anxiety, and then said in 
 a loud whisper, which was heard all over the 
 room, "The expedition has gone to — sea." 
 
 An amusing yet touching instance of the 
 President's preoccupation of mind occurred at 
 one of his levees, when he was shaking hands with 
 a host of visitors passing him in a continuous 
 stream. An intimate acquaintance received the 
 usual conventional handshake and salutation, 
 but, perceiving that he was not recognized, kept 
 his ground, instead of moving on, and spoke 
 again; then the President, roused by dim con- 
 sciousness that something unusual had hap- 
 pened, perceived who stood before him, and, 
 seizing his friend's hand, shook it again heartily, 
 saying, "How do you do? Excuse me for not 
 noticing you at first; the fact is, I was thinking 
 of a man down South." He afterward privately 
 14 2og
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 acknowledged that the "man down South" was 
 Sherman, then on his march to the sea. 
 
 The President at one time received a report 
 that one of our Northern friends had been caught 
 by the rebels in Virginia and condemned to death, 
 the choice being left to him to be hanged or shot. 
 The writer, who was present when this report 
 was made, says that a trace of humor passed 
 over Lincoln's sad face when he said he was re-* 
 minded of a camp-meeting of old colored Meth- 
 odists in his earUer days. There was a brother 
 who responded often and with much enthusiasm 
 to the preacher with *'Amen" and "Bless de 
 Lawd," etc. The preacher drew a strong line, 
 sweeping the sinners on both sides into the devil's 
 net: "All those who thus sin are in the downward 
 path to ruin, and all those who so act, including 
 the whole human race, are on the sure road to 
 hell." The unctuous brother, bewildered, cried 
 out, " Bless de Lawd, dis nigga takes to de woods." 
 
 He was a keen and inveterate foe of all kinds 
 of sham, snobbery, cant, and officiaHsm. 
 
 Col. Silas W. Burt and several military friends 
 called on President Lincoln on business for 
 Governor Seymour of New York, late one even- 
 ing in the summer of '63. As they were about 
 to leave, one of the men, a certain major, under 
 
 210
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 the influence of liquor, leered at Mr. Lincoln and, 
 slapping him on the leg, said: 
 
 "Mr. President, tell us one of your goo^ stories'* 
 — with significant emphasis on the "good." 
 Colonel Burt thus refers to his mortification: 
 
 "If the floor had opened and dropped me out 
 of sight I should have been happy. The Presi- 
 dent drew himself up, and, turning his back as 
 far as possible upon the major, with great dig- 
 nity addressed the rest of us, saying: 
 
 " *I believe I have the popular reputation of 
 being a story-teller, but I do not deserve the name 
 in its general sense, for it is not the story itself, 
 but its purpose or eff'ect that interests me. I 
 often avoid a long and useless discussion by 
 others, or a laborious explanation on my own 
 part, by a short story that illustrates my point 
 of view. So, too, the sharpness of a refusal or 
 the edge of a rebuke may be blunted by an ap- 
 propriate story so as to save wounded feelings 
 and yet serve the purpose. No, I am not simply 
 a story-teller, but story-telling as an emollient 
 saves me much friction and distress.' " 
 
 In 1863 a certain captain of volunteers was 
 on trial in Washington for a misuse of the funds 
 of his company. The accused officer made only 
 a feeble defense, and seemed to treat the matter 
 
 211
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 with indifference. After a while, however, a new 
 charge, that of disloyalty to the Government, 
 came into the case. The accused was at once 
 excited to a high degree of indignation, and made 
 a very vigorous defense. He appeared to think 
 lightly of being convicted of embezzling, but to 
 be called a traitor was more than he could bear. 
 At the breakfast-table, one morning, the Presi« 
 dent, who had been reading an account of this 
 case in the newspaper, began to laugh, and said: 
 "This fellow reminds me of a juror in a case of 
 hen-stealing which I tried in Illinois many years 
 ago. The accused man was summarily con- 
 victed. After adjournment of court, as I was 
 riding to the next town, one of the jurors in the 
 case came cantering up behind me and com- 
 plimented me on the vigor with which I had 
 pressed the prosecution of the unfortunate hen- 
 thief. Then he added, 'Why, when I was young, 
 and my back was strong, and the country was 
 new, I didn't mind taking off a sheep now and 
 then. But stealing hens! Oh, Jerusalem!* 
 Now, this captain has evidently been stealing 
 sheep, and that is as much as he can bear.'* 
 
 Charles A. Dana, in his volume of recollections 
 gives a rather interesting incident illustrating 
 Lincoln's remarkable shrewdness: 
 
 212
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 <(i 
 
 'A spy whom we employed to report to us the 
 proceedings of the Confederate Government and 
 its agents, and who passed continually between 
 Richmond and St. Catherines, reporting at the 
 War Department upon the way, had come in 
 from Canada and had put into my hands an 
 important despatch from Clement C. Clay, Jr., 
 addressed to Mr. Benjamin. Of course, the seal 
 was broken and the paper read immediately. 
 It showed unequivocally that the Confederate 
 agents in Canada were making use of that 
 country as a starting-point for warlike raids, 
 which were to be directed against frontier towns 
 like St. Albans, in Vermont. Mr. Stanton 
 thought it important that this despatch should 
 be retained as a ground of reclamation to be 
 addressed to the British Government. It was on 
 a Sunday that it arrived, and he was confined to 
 his house by a cold. At his direction I went over 
 to the President and made an appointment with 
 him to be at the Secretary's house after church. 
 At the appointed hour he was there, and I read 
 the despatch to them^. Mr. Stanton stated the 
 reasons why it should be retained, and before decid- 
 ing the question Mr. Lincoln turned to me, saying: 
 
 "*Well, Dana?' 
 
 " I observed to them that this was a very im- 
 portant channel of communication, and that if 
 
 213
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 we stopped such a despatch as this it was at the 
 risk of never obtaining any more information 
 through that means. 
 
 "'Oh/ said the President, *I think you can 
 manage that. Capture the messenger, take the 
 despatch from him by force, put him in prison, 
 and then let him escape. If he has made Ben- 
 jamin and Clay believe his lies so far, he won't 
 have any difficulty in telling them new ones that 
 will answer for this case.' 
 
 " This direction was obeyed. The paper was 
 sealed up again and was delivered to its bearer. 
 General Augur, who commanded the district, 
 was directed to look for a messenger at such-and- 
 such a place on the road South that evening. 
 The man was brought to the War Department, 
 searched, the paper found upon him and identi- 
 fied, and he was committed to the Old Capitol 
 Prison. He made his escape about a week later, 
 being fired upon by the guard. A large reward 
 for his capture was advertised in various papers 
 East and West, and when he reached St. Cath- 
 erines with his arm in a sling, wounded by a bullet 
 which had passed through it, his story was be- 
 lieved by Clay and Thompson; or, at any rate, 
 if they had any doubts upon the subject, they 
 were not strong enough to prevent his carrying 
 their messages afterward." 
 
 214
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 Coming into the President's room one day, 
 Mr. Stanton said that he had received a telegram 
 from General Mitchel, in Alabama, asking in- 
 structions. He did not quite understand the 
 situation down there, but, having full confidence 
 in Mitchel's judgment, had answered, "All right; 
 go ahead." 
 
 "Now, Mr. President," he added, "if I have 
 made an error, I shall have to get you to counter- 
 mand the order." 
 
 "Once at the cross-roads down in Kentucky, 
 when I was a boy, a particularly fine horse was 
 to be sold," replied Lincoln. "They had a small 
 boy to ride him up and down. One man whis- 
 pered to the boy as he went by, 'Look here, boy, 
 hain't that horse got splints?* The boy repHed, 
 *Mister, I don't know what splints is; but if it's 
 good for him he's got it, and if it ain't good for 
 him he ain't got it.* Now," added Lincoln, "I 
 understand that if this is good for Mitchel it's 
 all right, but if it's not, I have got to counter- 
 mand it." 
 
 Some enemies and critics of General Grant 
 once called upon Mr. Lincoln and urged him to 
 oust Grant from his command. They repeated 
 with malicious intent the gossip that Grant 
 drank. "What does he drink?" asked Lincoln. 
 
 2IS
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 *( 
 
 Whisky," was the answer, "and in unusual 
 quantities." "Well," said the President, "just 
 iind out what particular kind he uses, and 
 I'll send a barrel to each of the other gen- 
 erals." 
 
 When again pressed on other grounds to get 
 rid of Grant, he declared, "I can't spare that 
 man; he fights." 
 
 Wade once came to the President to demand 
 the dismissal of Grant. In reply to one of his 
 remarks Lincoln said, "Senator, that reminds 
 me of a story.'* 
 
 "Yes, yes," Wade replied, "it is with you, sir, 
 all story, story! You are the father of every 
 military blunder that has been made during the 
 war. You are on your road to hell, sir, with this 
 government, by your obstinacy; and you are 
 not a mile off this minute." 
 
 Lincoln answered, "Senator, that is just about 
 the distance from here to the Capitol, is it not?" 
 Wade, as Lincoln put it, "grabbed up his hat 
 and cane and went away." 
 
 Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, 
 told this story to Miss Tarbell. Grant had made 
 a call for 300,000 men, and Lincoln replied that 
 he had already issued a call for 500,000. 
 
 216
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 "In 1864, when the call for extra troops came, 
 Chicago revolted. She had already sent 22,000 
 men up to that time, and was drained. When 
 the new call came, there were no young men to 
 go, no aliens except what were bought. The 
 citizens held a mass-meeting, and appointed three 
 persons, of whom I was one, to go to Washing- 
 ton and ask Stanton to give Cook County a 
 new enrolment. I begged off, but the committee 
 insisted, so I went. On reaching Washington, 
 we went to Stanton with our statement. He 
 refused entirely to give us the desired aid. Then 
 we went to Lincoln. *I cannot do it,' he said, 
 *but I will go with you to Stanton and hear the 
 arguments of both sides.' So we all went over 
 to the War Department together. Stanton and 
 General Fry were there; and they, of course, con- 
 tended that the quota should not be changed. 
 The argument went on for some time, and finally 
 was referred to Lincoln, who had been sitting 
 silent, listening. I shall never forget how he 
 suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a 
 black and frowning face. 
 
 " 'Gentlemen,' he said, in a voice full of bitter- 
 ness, * after Boston, Chicago has been the chief 
 instrument in bringing this war on the country. 
 The Northwest has opposed the South, as New 
 England has opposed the South. It is you who 
 
 217
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 are largely responsible for making blood flow as it 
 has. You called for war until we had it. You 
 called for emancipation, and I have given it to 
 you. Whatever you have asked for you have had. 
 Now you come here begging to be let off from 
 the call for men which I have made to carry 
 out the war you have demanded. You ought 
 to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to 
 expect better things of you. Go home, and raise 
 your 6,000 extra men. And you, Medill, you 
 are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune 
 have had more influence than any paper in 
 the Northwest in making this war. You can 
 influence great masses, and yet you cry to 
 be spared at a moment when your cause 
 is suff'ering. Go home and send us those 
 men.* 
 
 "I couldn't say anything. It was the first 
 time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an 
 answer. We all got up and went out, and when 
 the door closed, one of my colleagues said: 
 *Well, gentlemen, the old man is right. We 
 ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Let us never 
 say anything about this, but go home and raise 
 the men.' And we did — 6,000 men — making 
 28,000 in the war from a city of 156,000. But 
 there might have been crape on every door 
 almost in Chicago, for every family had lost a 
 
 218
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 son or a husband. I lost two brothers. It was 
 hard for the mothers." 
 
 General Fry had been detailed by the War 
 Office to act as escort to the President on 
 his way to Gettysburg, where he delivered his 
 immortal address. He was urged to make 
 haste, as there was but little time left for the 
 train's departure. The President told this story: 
 
 "I feel about this as the convict in one of our 
 Illinois towns felt when he was going to the gal- 
 lows. As he passed along the road in custody of 
 the sheriff the people, eager to see the execution, 
 kept crowding and pushing past him. At last he 
 called out: *Boys, you needn't be in such a hurry 
 to get ahead. There won't be any fun till I get 
 there.' " 
 
 After he had delivered this masterful piece of 
 orator}'^, which has been compared to the Sermon 
 on the Mount, he turned to Lamon and said: 
 "Lamon, that speech won't scour." 
 
 No collection of Lincolniana is really complete 
 without his greatest masterpiece — the famous 
 Gettysburg oration. It is deservedly placed 
 and ranked among the world's most eloquent 
 and most touching orations. Curiously, its 
 great beauty, its masterly construction, its ex- 
 
 219
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 treme simplicity were first discerned by English- 
 men. 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, 
 conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the propo- 
 sition that all men are created equal. Now we 
 are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
 that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
 great battle-field of that war. We have come to 
 dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting- 
 place for those who here gave their lives that 
 their nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
 and proper that we should do this. But, in a 
 larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
 consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The 
 brave men, living and dead, who struggled here 
 have consecrated it far above our power to add 
 or detract. The world will little note, nor long 
 remember, what we say here, but it can never 
 forget what they did here. It is for us the living, 
 father, to be dedicated here to the unfinished 
 Work which they who fought here have thus far 
 so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
 here dedicated to the great task remaining before 
 us; that from these honored dead we take in- 
 creased devotion to that cause for which they 
 gave the last full measure of devotion; that we 
 
 220
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
 have died in vain, that this nation, under God, 
 shall have a new birth of freedom; and that 
 government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 "I wish, Mr. President," said a government 
 official after a disastrous defeat of the Union 
 army, "that I might be a messenger of good 
 news instead of bad. I wish I could tell you 
 how to conquer or to get rid of those rebellious 
 States." 
 
 At this President Lincoln looked up, and a 
 smile came across his face as he said: "That re- 
 minds me of two boys out in Illinois who took 
 a short cut across an orchard. When they were 
 in the middle of the field they saw a vicious dog 
 bounding toward them. One of the boys was sly 
 enough to climb a tree, but the other ran around 
 the tree, with the dog following. He kept running 
 until, by making smaller circles than it was pos- 
 sible for his pursuer to make, he gained upon the 
 dog sufficiently to grasp his tail. He held on to 
 the tail with a desperate grip until nearly ex- 
 hausted, when he called to the boy up the tree 
 to come down and help. 
 
 'What for?' said the boy^ 
 
 *I want you to help me let this dog go.* 
 
 221 

 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 tc 
 
 'Now," concluded the President, "if I could 
 only let the rebel States go, it would be all right. 
 But I am compelled to hold on to them and make 
 them stay." 
 
 But even in the darkest days of the Rebellion 
 he gave himself up to the hghter things, saying, 
 "I laugh because I must not cry; that's all — 
 that's alL" 
 
 So when Hood's army was destroyed by 
 Thomas in December, 1864, the President told 
 this story: 
 
 "A certain rough, rude, and bullying man in 
 our county had a bulldog, which was as rude, 
 rough, and bullying as his master. Dog and man 
 were the terror of the neighborhood. Nobody 
 dared to touch either for fear of the other. But 
 a crafty neighbor laid a plan to dispose of the 
 dog. Seeing Slocum and his dog plodding along 
 the road one day, the dog a little ahead, this 
 neighbor, who was prepared for the occasion, 
 took from his pocket a chunk of meat, in which 
 he had concealed a big charge of powder, to 
 which was fastened a deadwood slow-match. 
 This he lighted and then threw into the road. 
 The dog gave one gulp at it, and the whole thing 
 disappeared down his throat. He trotted on a 
 few steps, when there was a sort of smothered 
 
 222
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 
 
 roar, the dog blevv up in fragments, a fore quarter 
 being lodged in a neighboring tree, a hind quar- 
 ter on the roof of a cabin, and the rest scattered 
 along the dusty road. Slocum came up and 
 viewed the remains. Then, more in sorrow than 
 in anger, he said, 'Bill war a good dawg; but, as 
 a dawg, I reckon his usefulness is over.' " The 
 President added, with a twinkle of his eye, 
 "Hood's army was a good army. We have been 
 very much afraid of it. But, as an army, I 
 reckon its usefulness is gone." 
 
 It was in the last days of the great struggle, 
 when the armies of Grant and Lee were in the 
 throes of the final fight for the possession of the 
 Old Dominion that Lincoln watched them from 
 the rear. "How many prisoners?" he asked, 
 eagerly. Every prisoner meant a merciful ending 
 and a saving of life. 
 
 On the night of the surrender of Lee at Ap- 
 pomattox Mr. Lincoln was serenaded by many 
 friends and enthusiastic Northerners. He made 
 the usual kindly conciliatory speech, and cor- 
 dially invited the erring States to come back into 
 the family. 
 
 The band played all sorts of patriotic airs — 
 "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," "Star- 
 
 223
 
 LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES 
 
 spangled Banner," and others. Mr. Lincoln, 
 looking toward the band-master, suggested: 
 
 "Play 'Dixie' now. It's ours." 
 
 So throughout his whole career his attitude 
 was generous toward the South.^ 
 
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