letter did not please Lincoln; and from that moment, with the instinct

of self-protection which he often displayed,--and his instincts were exceedingly accurate,--he was on his guard in dealing with the great man from New York. Nevertheless, he treated him with frankness and delicate courtesy and continued to correspond with him concerning confidential matters.

Upon his arrival in Washington he immediately handed a copy of his inaugural address to his future Secretary of State, and the latter revised it in such a vigorous and arrogant manner that the unfavorable impression was deepened. Mr. Seward was always at hand 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 several 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 Lincoln would have been disconcerted, at least, and would have immediately sought advice and assistance; but he did not mention the matter to any one, nor did he make any reply until Monday 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 countermand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, demands that you should, and my personal feelings 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."

After the return of the inaugural procession to the White House the two men had a long and confidential talk. No one knows what they said to each other, but Mr. Seward accepted the office and his nomination was sent to the Senate the next morning.

Mr. Seward at once assumed that he was Prime Minister with independent and autocratic powers. He sent agents upon secret missions, he indicated to his visitors the policy of the administration,--and made pledges on behalf of the President without consulting him. He opened negotiations with the secession leaders upon his own responsibility. He issued orders to officers of the army and navy over the heads of his associates in charge of those departments, and gave assurances to the representatives of foreign governments without the approval or even the knowledge of the President. He seemed cheerfully to assume responsibility for the entire government, and did not hesitate to permit the official representatives of the Southern States and the public generally to presume that he and not Lincoln was the highest and final authority. He even attempted to deceive his wife on this subject. "I will try to save freedom and my country," he wrote her. "I have assumed a sort of dictatorship.... It seems to me if I am absent only eight days, this administration, the Congress and the District would fall into consternation and despair.... I am the only hopeful, calm, and conciliatory person here...." Again he writes, "Only the soothing words which I have spoken have saved us and carried us along thus far. And still again the cares chiefly fall on me."

Secretary Welles wrote a book to describe the controversies between Mr. Seward and the rest of the Cabinet, in which he shows a good deal of resentment but a good deal of truth. Mr. Seward's moral perceptions were obscured by the responsibilities and power that had been assumed by him. Although he did not suspect it, he was gradually drifting into a collision with a stronger character than his own, and but for the magnanimity and generous nature of the President, his political career might have been swallowed up in his vanity and arrogance.

Upon April 1, after the new administration had been in control for a little more than three weeks, under the title "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration," he submitted the most extraordinary proposition that appears among the archives of the Department of State. Assuming that he, and not Lincoln, was responsible for the conduct of the administration and the management of the government; writing as if he were the Prime Minister and Lincoln an impotent king; he laid down his plan of action and the line of policy he intended to pursue. He proposed that Lincoln should practically relinquish his Presidential responsibilities and authority; that he should repudiate the party that had elected him; that he should ignore the principles upon which the Presidential campaign had been fought and surrender the moral triumph of the victory; that he should convene Congress and declare war against Great Britain, Russia, France, and Spain, and endeavor to negotiate for an offensive and defensive alliance with Canada, Mexico, and Central America against Europe. The following is the text:

"SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S CONSIDERATION, APRIL 1, 1861.

"_First._ We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign.

"_Second._ This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet applications for patronage, have prevented attention to other and more grave matters.

"_Third._ But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the administration, but danger upon the country.

"_Fourth._ To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. But how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leaving foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action.

"_Fifth._ The policy at home. I am aware that my views are singular, and perhaps not sufficiently explained. My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one,--namely, that we must

"CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, for a question upon UNION OR DISUNION:

"In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to one of patriotism or union.

"The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a slavery or a party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Republicans in the free States, and even by the Union men in the South.

"I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the issue. I deem it fortunate that the last administration created the necessity.

"For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and re-enforce all the ports in the Gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to be prepared for a blockade. Put the island of Key West under martial law.

"This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion. I would maintain every fort and possession in the South.

"FOR FOREIGN NATIONS.

"I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once.

"I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention.

"And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France,

"Would convene Congress and declare war against them.

"But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.

"For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.

"Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or

"Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and abide.

"It is not my especial province; but I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility."

It is impossible for any one to conceive the feelings of the President when he read this boastful and insolent document. But his self-control was so perfect, his anxiety to preserve harmony among those who were trying to save the Union was so great, and his patience so limitless that he returned the memorandum to Mr. Seward with the following firm and conclusive but courteous rebuke, and the subject was never alluded to again by either of them:

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1861.

"HON. W. H. SEWARD.

"MY DEAR SIR: Since parting with you, I have been considering your paper dated this day, and entitled 'Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration.' The first proposition in it is, '_First._ We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign.'

"At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, I said, 'The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.' This had your distinct approval at the time; and taken in connection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, directing him to employ every means in his power to strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic policy you now urge, with the single exception that it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumter.

"Again, I do not perceive how the reinforcement of Fort Sumter would be done on a slavery or party issue, while that of Fort Pickens would be on a more national and patriotic one.

"The news received yesterday in regard to San Domingo certainly brings a new item within the range of our foreign policy; but up to that time we have been preparing circulars and instructions to ministers and the like, all in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion that we had no foreign policy.

"Upon your closing proposition--that 'whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.

"'For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.

"'Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or

"'Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and abide.'--I remark that if this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend that there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the Cabinet.

"Your obedient servant, "A. LINCOLN."

The President never revealed this amazing incident to anybody but Mr. Nicolay, and it was never suspected by any member of his Cabinet until the correspondence was published by Nicolay and Hay in the _Century Magazine_, nearly thirty years after. Mr. Seward recognized his master at last and wrote his wife, "Executive force and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us."

From that time there were no serious differences between the President and his Secretary of State, although they frequently differed upon matters of policy as well as details of administration. Mr. Seward was loyal, devoted, and always respectful to his chief.

The same cannot be said of Secretary Chase. He also had been a rival of Lincoln for the Presidential nomination in 1860, and had gone into the Cabinet feeling that his supporters from Ohio had made Lincoln's nomination possible and that he was entitled to special consideration for that reason. He supported Lincoln cordially through the campaign, and among the first telegrams of congratulation received by the President-elect was one from him which read, "I congratulate you and thank God. The great object of my wishes and labors for nineteen years is accomplished in the overthrow of the slave power. The space is now clear for the establishment of the policy of freedom on safe and firm grounds. The lead is yours. The responsibility is great. May God strengthen you for your great duties."

After January 1 following the election, Mr. Chase was invited to Springfield, and upon his arrival the President-elect waived all ceremony and called upon him at his hotel. "I have done with you," said he, "what I would not have ventured to do with any other man in the country,--sent for you to ask you whether you will accept the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury without, however, being exactly prepared to offer it to you." Concerning this conversation Mr. Chase wrote to a friend as follows:

"He said he had felt bound to offer the position of Secretary of State to Mr. Seward as the generally recognized leader of the Republican party, intending, if he declined it, to offer it to me. He did not wish that Mr. Seward should decline it, and was glad that he had accepted, and now desired to have me take the place of Secretary of the Treasury."

Mr. Chase told the President-elect that he was not prepared to give a definite answer because he wanted to ask the advice of friends and be governed by the course of events. He valued the trust and its opportunities, but was reluctant to leave the Senate. No further communication took place between the two on the subject; but, assuming that Mr. Chase had accepted, Lincoln sent his name to the Senate on March 5 with those of other members of his Cabinet.

From the beginning of the administration Mr. Chase advocated a radical policy; was very urgent in advocating the relief of Fort Sumter and pushing the war, while Seward hung back. Mr. Chase's policy was presented in a memorandum, with similar ones from other members of the Cabinet, at the request of the President, in March, and reads as follows:

"If war is to be the consequence of an attempt to provision Fort Sumter, war will just as certainly result from the attempt to maintain possession of Fort Pickens.

"I am clearly in favor of maintaining Fort Pickens and just as clearly in favor of provisioning Fort Sumter. If that attempt should be resisted by military force, Fort Sumter should, in my judgment, be reinforced.

"If war is to be the result, I perceive no reason why it may not be best begun by military resistance to the efforts of the administration to sustain troops of the Union, stationed under the authority of the government, in a fort of the Union, in the ordinary course of service."

In the beginning Mr. Chase was a very strong supporter of General McClellan and frequently called the attention of the latter to his obligations to him. "The country was indebted to me," he wrote McClellan, "in some considerable degree for the change of your commission from Ohio into a commission of major-general of the army of the Union;" and he wrote a friend the good news, "McClellan is Commander-in-Chief! let us thank God and take courage!" but this was his habit. He invariably worshipped the rising sun, and was usually one of the first to turn his back upon old friends when they met with misfortunes. He usually cultivated the closest relations with those generals who had grievances against the administration. His correspondence and his diary, as published by his chosen biographer, are full of caustic and unkind criticisms of his chief. He received many letters containing violent abuse of the President and his colleagues in the government, and neither defended them nor rebuked the writers. He records in his diary a conversation with an officer who, meeting him, the Secretary of the Treasury, for the first time, was rude enough to utter a gross insult directed at the President. In his comments Mr. Chase seems to approve the remarks, and describes the President's assailant as "well read and extremely intelligent." But Mr. Chase never defended his colleagues when they were attacked. In reply to a violent criticism from an enemy of the administration, he wrote, "I am not responsible for the management of the war and have no voice in it, except that I am not forbidden to make suggestions, and do so now and then when I can't help it."

He soon lost his confidence in and admiration for McClellan, however, and in his criticisms concerning his dilatory tactics was the most bitter of all the Cabinet. He once drew up a paper, which he induced several of his colleagues to sign, demanding McClellan's removal. He continually offered advice and suggestions, and when they were not accepted he usually took the trouble to record his resentment in his diary or to express it in vigorous terms in a letter to some friend.

Chase was in favor of the unconditional emancipation of the slaves, and when the President laid before the Cabinet the Emancipation Proclamation he writes in his diary, "I said that I should give to such a measure my cordial support, but I should prefer that no expression on the subject of compensation should be made, and I thought that the measure of emancipation could be better and more quickly accomplished by allowing generals to organize and arm the slaves and by directing the commanders of departments to proclaim emancipation within their districts as soon as practicable. But I regarded this as so much better than inaction on the subject that I could give it my entire support."

The President was not unaware of the disposition of Mr. Seward to criticise himself and the members of his Cabinet, but placed so high a value upon his ability and his importance to the government that he treated him with the same patience that he did Mr. Stanton and others who were critical and petulant concerning his deliberation and other peculiarities. The extent to which this forbearance was exercised may be illustrated by a note addressed to the President by his Secretary of the Treasury, April 25, 1861, in which the latter was guilty of such bad taste and impertinence that Lincoln would have been justified in asking his instant resignation. Mr. Chase held the President practically responsible for the demoralized condition of affairs in the country and for all that had happened before his inauguration as well as since, and said, "Let me beg of you to remember that the disunionists have anticipated us in everything, and that as yet we have accomplished nothing but the destruction of our own property. Let me beg of you to remember also that it has been a darling object with the disunionists to secure the passage of a secession ordinance by Maryland.... Save us from this new humiliation. You alone can give the word."

Mr. Chase was in consultation with the President daily, he had been consulted about every situation and movement, he was quite as familiar with what had been done and what was intended as the President himself, and the reasons which prompted him to address his chief in such a manner can only be conjectured. It is believed that he was prompted to do so by one of the many hostile critics of the administration, and wrote the letter without realizing its tone and impertinence. But Lincoln received it with his usual complacency, made no complaint to any one about it, and calmly filed it away among his other correspondence.

Like Mr. Seward, he went into the Cabinet with the opinion that the President was incapable and inexperienced, and that it was his duty to support and assist him in the management of the government; but, unlike Mr. Seward, he was never able to rid himself of a sense of his own superiority. He had an honest conviction that he was more competent and would make a much better President himself, and that if his advice were accepted and his suggestions carried out, the war would be brought to a close much sooner than otherwise. He lacked confidence in his colleagues also and never lost an opportunity to express it. He considered himself their superior in zeal, ability, and devotion to the general welfare. He imagined that every disaster which occurred in the field was due to the refusal of the President and the Secretary of War to carry out the plans he suggested, and that every victory could be directly attributed to his wise counsel. This was not known at the time. Had it been, the people of the country would have been less charitable towards Mr. Chase. His egotism, jealousy, contempt, and hostility towards Lincoln and his fellow-members of the Cabinet were not fully disclosed until the publication of his biography, which contained extracts from his diary and copies of his voluminous correspondence.

The President would not allow the conduct or the disposition of his Secretary of the Treasury to make the slightest difference in his treatment of that official or to affect the policy of his administration, for in his management of the finances, without previous experience or preparation, Mr. Chase had shown genius equal to that of Alexander Hamilton, unswerving integrity, and untiring industry. So highly did Lincoln esteem his public services in this respect that he would have forgiven him anything; and Mr. Chase not only had his constant support, but he was less interfered with in the administration of his department than any other member of the Cabinet.

Mr. Chase began a serious and systematic canvass for the Presidential nomination as early as the fall of 1863, and although he continued to delude himself and assure his friends that he was indifferent to advancement and anxious only for the public good, he found plenty of leisure in the midst of his arduous duties and immense responsibilities to write hundreds of letters to friends in different parts of the Union pointing out the mistakes of the President and leaving the irresistible conclusion that he was the only man capable of saving the country. Many of these letters are published in his biography, and it is inexplicable that he preserved the documentary evidence of his treachery, and even more remarkable that his family thus exposed him to public censure and contempt.

Although Lincoln had the full confidence of the loyal people of the North, many disappointed politicians and other citizens in different parts of the country were dissatisfied with his management of affairs. The critics naturally gravitated together and sought to organize a movement to prevent his renomination. They found it difficult to contend against the popularity of the President, and looked among the discordant elements for a standard-bearer. Neither in Congress nor in the army was there any one who was willing to undertake the hopeless task until some of the leaders consulted Mr. Chase and, to their surprise, found him so indiscreet and disloyal as to encourage their opposition to the administration of which he was a member, and so foolish as to believe that he was strong enough to lead them to victory.

Mr. Chase fell willingly into the trap, although he continued to protest his loyalty and attachment to Lincoln. His only excuse was that the President's intellect and capacity for government were inferior to his own, and in its great emergency his beloved country needed the strongest man. He wrote his son-in-law, Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, "If I were controlled by merely personal sentiments I would prefer the re-election of Mr. Lincoln to that of any other man, but I think a man of different qualities from those the President has will be needed for the next four years."

President Lincoln was fully informed concerning every movement Mr. Chase made, for the latter was surrounded by false friends who were willing to destroy him. However, he rebuked the tale-bearers and discouraged all conversation concerning the ambition of his Secretary of the Treasury, and when the criticisms uttered by Mr. Chase of himself and the members of his Cabinet were brought to his attention, he declined to listen to them.

"I have determined," he said, "to shut my eyes so far as possible to everything of the sort. Mr. Chase makes a good Secretary and I shall keep him where he is. If he becomes President, all right. I hope we may never have a worse man. I am entirely indifferent as to his success or failure in these schemes as long as he does his duty at the head of the Treasury Department." He appointed Chase's partisans and wire-pullers to office as fast as the latter proposed them, although he knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was more amused than otherwise at the protestations of his own friends; but all the time he was conscious that he had every reason for magnanimity. With his usual political perspicuity, he was perfectly confident of his own nomination and re-election, and recognized that Chase was daily making mistakes that were fatal to his own political prospects. He endeavored to conceal his knowledge, and avoided explanations from his Secretary of the Treasury until the publication of a secret circular in the Washington newspapers signed by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, compelled Mr. Chase to allude to the subject. It was a spiteful, unjust, and untruthful attack upon the President, and proposed the nomination of Mr. Chase as his successor, appealing to patriotic citizens to organize in his support and correspond with the chairman of his committee.

Mr. Chase at once disavowed all knowledge of or responsibility for this circular, but explained that he had yielded to the urgent solicitations of friends and had consented to be a candidate for the Presidential nomination. "If there is anything in my action or position which in your judgment will prejudice the public interest under my charge, I beg you to say so. I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence. For yourself I cherish sincere respect and esteem and, permit me to add, affection."

The next day the President acknowledged the receipt of this letter and promised to answer it more fully later, which he did, saying,--

"... My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote; but I had, in spite of myself, known of its existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter, because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's committee, and of secret issues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who I supposed were sent out by it, for several weeks. I have known just as little of these things as my friends have allowed me to know. They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them: they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more....

"Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to consider from any stand-point other than my judgment of the public service, and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change."

If anything was needed to complete the collapse of the plans of Mr. Chase, the reputation of the man who signed the circular was sufficient. As fast as conventions were held delegations were instructed for Lincoln. The Republican members of the Ohio Legislature were so fearful lest they might be suspected of sympathizing with the ambition of Mr. Chase that they held a caucus and unanimously endorsed the President. Even little Rhode Island, supposed to be a pocket borough absolutely controlled by its Governor, who was a son-in-law of Mr. Chase, bolted and declared for Lincoln. The Secretary of the Treasury, left without a supporter in the Republican party, sought consolation from the Democrats, but they repudiated him and selected as their candidate General McClellan, a man who had been alternately eulogized and anathematized by him.

The retirement of Mr. Chase from the Cabinet was due to his determination to control the patronage of the Treasury Department in the State of New York without reference to the wishes of Mr. Morgan and Mr. Harris, the Senators from that State. There was also friction over Treasury appointments in other parts of the country. Mr. Chase's failure as a Presidential candidate made him very irritable, and whenever the President or any member of the Cabinet offered the slightest opposition to his plans or wishes, he showed so much temper that it was impossible to get along with him except by conceding all his demands. Lincoln, valuing his services in the Treasury so highly, endeavored to gratify him as far as possible, and assured other members of his Cabinet that, as Mr. Chase's ability, industry, and integrity were beyond question, he had a right to select men for whose proper conduct he was responsible. But when Mr. Chase invaded the political provinces of the members of the Senate, the President found it difficult to reconcile the differences, and on two occasions the Secretary of the Treasury tendered his resignation rather than yield what he considered to be his right to select all of his subordinates. Maunsell B. Field, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, quotes Lincoln as saying, "I went directly up to him [Chase] with the resignation in my hand, and putting my arm around his neck, said, 'Here is a paper with which I wish to have nothing to do. Take it back and be reasonable.' I had to plead with him a long time, but I finally succeeded, and heard nothing more of that resignation."

But this state of affairs could not endure. There came an occasion upon which the President was not able to give way, and when the two New York Senators objected to the appointment of the same Maunsell B. Field as Assistant Treasurer of New York, he was compelled to recognize their wishes. He wrote Mr. Chase, "As the proverb goes, no man knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it. I do not think Mr. Field a very proper man for the place, but I would trust your judgment and forego this were the greater difficulty out of the way.... Strained as I already am at this point, I do not think that I can make this appointment in the direction of still greater strain." But Mr. Chase felt that the President was acting badly and must be disciplined, and so he resigned again. To submit to Mr. Chase under the circumstances would be to abdicate in his favor and to offend his loyal supporters in New York; hence, without hesitation, he wrote Mr. Chase as follows: "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity I have nothing to unsay, yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service."

Mr. Chase was taken entirely by surprise. He supposed that the President, like himself, believed that his presence in the Treasury Department was indispensable to the salvation of the government. Governor Todd, of Ohio, was nominated as his successor, but declined, and the President then sent to the Senate the nomination of William Pitt Fessenden, a Senator from Maine and chairman of the Committee on Finance, entirely without that gentleman's knowledge.

After the President's secretary had left for the Capitol with the nomination, Mr. Fessenden appeared at the White House and, after preliminary conversation, suggested the appointment of Hugh McCulloch, who had served with great ability since the beginning of the war as Comptroller of the Currency. Lincoln listened to his eulogy of Mr. McCulloch with a gentle smile, and then informed him that he had already sent his own name to the Senate. Mr. Fessenden protested and declared that he would decline.

"If you decline," replied the President, "you must do it in open day, for I cannot recall the nomination."

The significance and appropriateness of Mr. Fessenden's nomination to succeed Mr. Chase was immediately recognized as a _coup d'état_ on the part of the President, and the former could not decline the responsibility. He served for only a few months, however, and was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch.

Mr. Chase could not suppress his sense of injury or cease talking about it. After he left the Cabinet, his criticisms of the President personally and the administration of the government became more frequent and bold than ever; but as soon as the death of Chief-Justice Taney of the Supreme Court was announced, he immediately claimed the vacancy. Notwithstanding all that had occurred, he was willing to forgive and forget, provided the President would make him Chief-Justice. Samuel Bowles, editor of the _Springfield Republican_, writes on December 4, 1864, two months after Taney's death, "Chase is going around peddling his grief in private ears and sowing dissatisfaction about Lincoln. Oh, how little great men can be!" The President at once made up his mind to appoint Mr. Chase, but would not announce his intention until he had heard the views of every Republican of importance. In the mean time Mr. Chase was appealing to his friends for support and endorsement and prophesying disasters for the government unless his appointment was made. One day Mr. Nicolay brought the President a letter from Mr. Chase.

"What is it about?" inquired Lincoln.

"Simply a kind and friendly letter."

"File it with the other recommendations," was the laconic reply.

On December 6, when the Senate met, Mr. Chase's nomination appeared among others. It was written out in Lincoln's own hand instead of upon a printed blank, as was customary. The nomination was confirmed without reference to a committee, and the same evening Mr. Chase wrote the President a very grateful acknowledgment. "Be assured," he said, "that I apprize your confidence and good-will more than any nomination to office."

Lincoln afterwards told Mr. Boutwell that he never had any intention of refusing the office to Mr. Chase. "There were three reasons why he should be appointed and one reason why he should not be," said the President. "In the first place, he occupies a larger space in the public mind with reference to the office than any other person. Then we want a man who will sustain the Legal Tender Act and the Proclamation of Emancipation. We cannot ask a candidate what he would do, and if we did and he should answer we should only despise him for it. But Chase wants to be President, and if he does not give that up it will be a great injury to him and a great injury to me. He can never be President."

Among the most urgent friends of Mr. Chase were Senator Sumner and Representative Alley, of Massachusetts, who went to Washington to plead with the President in his behalf.

"We found, to our dismay," said Mr. Alley, "that the President had heard of the bitter criticisms of Mr. Chase upon himself and his administration. Mr. Lincoln urged many of Mr. Chase's defects, to discover, as we afterwards learned, how his objection could be answered. We were both discouraged and made up our minds that the President did not mean to appoint Mr. Chase. It really seemed too much to expect of poor human nature. But early one morning in the following December I went to the White House, found the President in his library, and was cordially received. As I entered he made to me this declaration:

"'I have something to tell you that will make you happy. I have just sent Mr. Chase word that he is to be appointed Chief-Justice, and you are the first man I have told of it.'

"I said, 'Mr. President, this is an exhibition of magnanimity and patriotism that could hardly be expected of any one. After what he has said against your administration, which has undoubtedly been reported to you, it was hardly to be expected that you would bestow the most important office within your gift on such a man.'

"His quaint reply was, 'Although I may have appeared to you and to Mr. Sumner to have been opposed to Chase's appointment, there never has been a moment since the breath left old Taney's body that I did not conceive it to be the best thing to do to appoint Mr. Chase to that high office; and to have done otherwise I should have been recreant to my convictions of duty to the Republican party and to the country.'

"I repeated again my sense of his magnanimity and his patriotism in making the appointment.

"He replied, 'As to his talk about me, I do not mind that. Chase is, on the whole, a pretty good fellow and a very able man. His only trouble is that he has "the White House fever" a little too bad, but I hope this may cure him and that he will be satisfied.'"

One would suppose, after this exhibition of magnanimity on the part of the President, that he would escape the criticism of Mr. Chase at least, but the latter still considered himself the inspired critic of the administration and sought the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. Nor was this all. His decisions upon the bench were in direct contradiction to the positions he had taken as a member of the Cabinet. He had criticised the President for his weakness in refusing to attack the doctrine of State rights, yet, on the first opportunity, he appeared as the judicial champion and defender of that doctrine; from his place on the bench he declared unconstitutional the Legal Tender Act which he had himself assisted in preparing and whose passage through the House of Representatives had been secured by his personal influence. While he was Secretary of the Treasury he sustained and encouraged Mr. Stanton in the exercise of the "war power" more earnestly and took more radical grounds than any other member of the Cabinet, yet when those very transactions came before the Supreme Court he denounced them as illegal and unjustified. The only explanation, the only apology that could be made by the friends of Mr. Chase was that his mind was soured by disappointment. He was a man of unbounded ambition, he had been working all his life to become President, he was convinced of his own great talents, and could not reconcile himself to disappointment.

President Lincoln's character and methods are nowhere better illustrated than in the story of his relations with Edwin M. Stanton, his great Secretary of War, a man of intense personality, of arbitrary disposition, impetuous in action, impatient under restraint, and intolerant of opposition. Combined with these qualities Mr. Stanton had great learning, unselfish patriotism, and conscientious convictions of duty. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of Kenyon College, and when still young in years attained a high rank in the practice of his profession of the law, making his head-quarters first at Pittsburgh and in 1856 at Washington. He was born and bred in Democratic principles, but had a profound hatred of slavery, and during the administration of President Buchanan was pronounced in his opposition to the disunion schemes of the Southern politicians.

Shortly after the election in 1860, when the situation at Washington was becoming critical, President Buchanan sought his advice, and Mr. Stanton prepared an argument to prove that a State could be coerced into remaining in the Union. A few weeks later Mr. Buchanan called him into his Cabinet as Attorney-General, and he immediately joined with the loyal members of the Cabinet and the Republican leaders in Congress in vigorous efforts to save the Union. But after Lincoln was inaugurated Mr. Stanton became the most scornful and unsparing critic of the new administration. He called the President an imbecile, charged Cameron with corruption, and declared that the administration was treating the treasure of the nation as booty to be divided among thieves. He predicted disaster in every direction; he declared that in less than thirty days Jefferson Davis would be in possession of Washington, and used the most intemperate and unjust language that his lips could frame in his comments upon the character and the conduct of the President and his advisers. Therefore, when he was invited to succeed Mr. Cameron, the chief object of his detestation and attack, he was placed in a peculiar situation, but was broad-minded enough to appreciate Lincoln's magnanimity, and accepted the war portfolio as the highest duty that could be assigned to a citizen. He wrote ex-President Buchanan, "My accession to my present position was quite as sudden and unexpected as the confidence you bestowed upon me in calling me to your Cabinet. And the responsible trust was accepted in both instances from the same motives and will be executed with the same fidelity to the Constitution and the laws." In another letter he wrote, "I knew that everything that I cherish and hold dear would be sacrificed by accepting office, but I thought I might help to save the country, and for that I was willing to perish."

When some one objected to Stanton's appointment on account of his ungovernable temper, and stated that he was in the habit of jumping up and down when he lost his patience, Lincoln replied,--

"Well, if he gets to jumping too much, we will treat him as they used to treat a minister I knew out West. He would get so excited and wrought up at revival meetings that they had to put bricks in his pockets to keep him down. But I guess we will let Stanton jump a while first."

Lincoln and his new Secretary of War had met before, and the President had no reason to be friendly towards him. The story is told in the chapter relating to Lincoln's legal career. But the President was willing to submerge his personal feelings in his patriotism in order to secure the support and assistance of a man for whose ability, energy, and patriotism he had the highest respect. He selected Mr. Stanton for the same reason that he retained McClellan in command and postponed the Emancipation Proclamation. He was not thinking of himself, but of his country. He was not seeking a friend or an agreeable companion, but a man of executive ability, iron will, stern integrity, and physical endurance to relieve him from what was becoming an unendurable burden; for, up to this time, he had borne almost alone the responsibility for military movements in the field as well as the organization and equipment of the army. Months before he had foreseen that Mr. Cameron must soon leave the Cabinet, and had been on the lookout for a suitable Secretary of War. With the silent sagacity and foresight that were among his most remarkable characteristics, he had searched the list of public men, and, finding no one available among his friends, had gone over into the ranks of his opponents and had chosen perhaps the most unfriendly and vigorous critic of his administration. He had learned of Mr. Stanton's tremendous energy and keen perceptions and recognized at once how useful those traits would be in the War Department; while his fearless candor, his indifference to criticism, and the public confidence in his integrity were qualities equally valuable under the circumstances.

Within a few weeks he was satisfied of the accuracy of his judgment in making the selection, and their daily intercourse brought the two men into relations which could not have existed between men of weaker character. Unlike Mr. Chase, his colleague of the Treasury Department, Mr. Stanton had the highest admiration for Lincoln's ability and judgment, and his imperious will and stubborn convictions would not have yielded to any one else. On the other hand, no one appreciated so much as Lincoln the genuine worth, the deep sincerity, and the rare ability to organize and execute that existed in his new Secretary of War. There were continual differences of opinion between them. Men of strong character seldom think alike, and with his peculiar temperament and impulsive disposition Mr. Stanton could not have served under a chief less amiable and considerate than Lincoln.

There is no doubt that the President's patience was often sorely tried, but the same spirit that governed him when he invited Mr. Stanton into the Cabinet continued to recognize the necessity of toleration and forbearance. While he usually yielded to his War Secretary in details, in matters of supreme importance he invariably insisted upon following his own judgment, and with a gentle but unyielding firmness compelled Mr. Stanton to submit to his will. For example, Mr. Stanton refused to carry out an order of the President concerning the enlistment of rebel prisoners of war who wished to enter the service of the Union, and when the order was repeated, refused a second time. General Fry, the Provost-Marshal-General, who was present at the interview, describes the incident as follows:

"'Now, Mr. President, those are the facts, and you must see that your order cannot be executed,' exclaimed Stanton.

"Lincoln sat upon a sofa with his legs crossed, and did not say a word until the Secretary's last remark. Then he said, in a somewhat positive tone, 'Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll have to execute the order.'

"Stanton replied with asperity, 'Mr. President, I cannot do it.'

"Lincoln fixed his eyes upon Stanton, and in a firm voice, and with an accent that clearly showed his determination, he said, 'Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done.'

"Stanton realized that he was overmatched. He had made a square issue with the President and had been defeated, notwithstanding the fact that he was in the right. Upon an intimation from him I withdrew and did not witness his surrender. A few minutes after I reached my office I received instructions from the Secretary to carry out the President's order."

The President "always liked to get something on Stanton," as he used to say. Judge Shellabarger, of Ohio, relates this incident:

"A young man in the army, Ben Tappan, wanted a transfer from the volunteer service to the regular army, retaining his rank of Lieutenant and with staff duty. There was some regulation against such transfer; but Tappan's step-father, Frank Wright, thought it could be done. He had been to Secretary Stanton, who was an uncle of Tappan by marriage, and, on account of this so-called relationship, the Secretary declined to act in the matter. Wright and I therefore went up to the White House to see the President about it. After talking it over, Mr. Lincoln told a story, the application of which was that the army was getting to be all staff and no army, there was such a rush for staff duty by young officers. However, he looked over Lieutenant Tappan's paper, heard what Secretary Stanton had told us about his delicacy in transferring Lieutenant Tappan against the regulation because of his relationship by marriage. Then Mr. Lincoln wrote across the application something like the following endorsement:

"'Lieutenant Tappan, of ---- Regiment Volunteers, desires transfer to ---- Regiment, Regular service, and assigned to staff duty with present rank. If the only objection is Lieutenant Tappan's relationship to the Secretary of War, that objection is overruled.

"'A. LINCOLN.'

"Of course this threw the responsibility of breaking the regulation on Secretary Stanton. We never heard anything more about the transfer."

General Fry says, "A story has long been current that Lincoln sent an application for office with a note to the Secretary of War, directing that a letter of appointment be prepared for the man to the office he sought; that the applicant returned to the President and announced that Stanton refused to obey the order; that the President looked disappointed, but merely expressed his regret at the result, and remarked that he had not much influence with the administration. The anecdote has generally been interpreted as meaning that Lincoln could not control Stanton. The inference is erroneous. Lincoln, so far as I could discover, was in every respect the actual head of the administration, and whenever he chose to do so he controlled Stanton as well as all the other Cabinet ministers."

Ex-Representative John A. Kasson, of Iowa, says, "Numerous officers in the field had written me to have Colonel ----, of ---- Iowa Regiment, promoted to be a brigadier-general. The colonel deserved the promotion, but it was difficult to obtain. At last there came an Iowa resignation, and I went to the President, who signed an order to the Secretary of War to let Colonel ---- have the commission in place of the resigning brigadier. Mr. Stanton was seated on a sofa talking with a friend. I told him my errand, and handed him the President's order. He glanced at it, and said, in an angry tone,--

"'I shan't do it, sir; I shan't do it!' and passed the paper up to his clerk.

"Utterly amazed at these words, and indignant at his tone, I inquired why he refused to obey the President's order.

"'It isn't the way to do it, sir, and I shan't do it.'

"I was going on to speak of the merits of the officer and of the proceeding, my wrath rising, when he cut me off with,--

"'I don't propose to argue the question with you, sir; I shan't do it.'

"Utterly indignant, I turned to the clerk and asked to withdraw the paper.

"'Don't you let him have it, sir,' said Stanton; 'don't let him have it.'

"The clerk, whose hands were trembling like an Eastern slave before his pasha, withdrew the document which he was in the act of giving to me. I felt my indignation getting too strong for me, and, putting on my hat and turning my back to the Secretary, I slowly went to the door, with set teeth, saying to myself, 'As you will not hear me in your own forum, you shall hear from me in mine.'

"A few days later, after recovering my coolness, I reported the affair to the President. A look of vexation came over his face. Then he gave me a positive order for the promotion of the colonel to be a brigadier, and told me to take it over to the War Department. I replied that I could not speak again with Mr. Stanton till he apologized for his insulting manner to me on the previous occasion.

"'Oh,' said the President, 'Stanton has gone to Fortress Monroe and Dana is acting. He will attend to it for you.'"

Judge Usher, Lincoln's Secretary of the Interior, says, "Chief among his great characteristics were his gentleness and humanity, and yet he did not hesitate promptly to approve the sentences of Kennedy and Beall. During the entire war there are but few other evidences to be found of a willingness on his part that any one should suffer the penalty of death. His great effort seemed to be to find some excuse, some palliation for offences charged. He strove at all times to relieve the citizens on both sides of the inconveniences and hardships resulting from the war. It has often been reported that Secretary of War Stanton arbitrarily refused to carry out his orders. In all such cases reported it will be found that the President had given directions to him to issue permits to persons who had applied to go through the lines into the insurgent districts. The President said at one time, referring to Stanton's refusal to issue the permits and the severe remarks made by the persons who were disobliged,--

"'I cannot always know whether a permit ought to be granted, and I want to oblige everybody when I can, and Stanton and I have an understanding that if I send an order to him that cannot be consistently granted, he is to refuse it, which he sometimes does; and that led to a remark which I made the other day to a man who complained of Stanton, that I hadn't much influence with this administration, but expected to have more with the next.'"

Mr. George W. Julian, a Representative in Congress, said, "I called on the President respecting the appointments I had recommended under the conscription law, and took occasion to refer to the failure of General Frémont to get a command. He said he did not know where to place him, and that it reminded him of the old man who advised his son to take a wife, to which the young man responded, 'Whose wife shall I take?'

"At another time," said Mr. Julian, "a committee of Western men, headed by Mr. Lovejoy, procured from the President an important order looking to the exchange of Eastern and Western soldiers, with a view to more effective work. Repairing to the office of the Secretary, Mr. Lovejoy explained the scheme, as he had done before the President, but was met by a flat refusal.

"'But we have the President's order, sir,' said Lovejoy.

"'Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?' said Stanton.

"'He did, sir.'

"'Then he is a d--d fool,' said the irate Secretary.

"'Do you mean to say the President is a d--d fool?' asked Lovejoy in amazement.

"'Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.'

"The bewildered Congressman from Illinois betook himself at once to the President and related the result of his conference.

"'Did Stanton say I was a d--d fool?' asked Lincoln, at the close of the recital.

"'He did, sir, and repeated it.'

"After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said,--

"'If Stanton said I was a d--d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him.'"

Mr. Stanton was entirely without a sense of humor, and was the only member of the Cabinet who could not tolerate and could never understand Lincoln's stories and the reasons for his frequent resort to comic anecdotes and books of humor to relieve his mind from anxiety and the terrible strain that was always upon him. He never told a story himself, and would not waste his time listening to stories from others. With his unsympathetic disposition and nerveless constitution he could not understand the need of relaxation, and his serious mind regarded with disapproval and even contempt the simple remedies which the President applied as relief to his anxieties and care. Charles A. Dana, who was Mr. Stanton's assistant in the War Department, referring to this fact in his reminiscences, says,--

"The political struggle (November, 1864) had been most intense, and the interest taken in it, both in the White House and in the War Department, had been almost painful. I went over to the War Department about half-past eight in the evening and found the President and Mr. Stanton together in the Secretary's office. General Eckert, who then had charge of the telegraph department of the War Office, was coming in continually with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton would read them and the President would look at them and comment upon them. Presently there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called me up to a place by his side.

"'Dana,' said he, 'have you ever read any of the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby?'

"'No, sir,' I said. 'I have only looked at some of them, and they seemed to me quite funny.'

"'Well,' said he, 'let me read you a specimen,' and, pulling out a thin yellow-covered pamphlet from his breast-pocket, he began to read aloud. Mr. Stanton viewed this proceeding with great impatience, as I could see, but Mr. Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or a story, pause to con a new election telegram, and then open the book again and go ahead with a new passage. Finally Mr. Chase came in and presently Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed to him to be mere nonsense. The idea that when the safety of the republic was thus at issue, when the control of an empire was to be determined by a few figures brought in by the telegraph, the leader, the man most deeply concerned, not merely for himself but for his country, could turn aside to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests, was to his mind something most repugnant and damnable. He could not understand, apparently, that it was by the relief which these jests afforded to the strain of mind under which Lincoln had so long been living and to the natural gloom of a melancholy and desponding temperament--this was Mr. Lincoln's prevailing characteristic--that the safety and sanity of his intelligence were maintained and preserved."

VI

A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AND HIS GENERALS

When President Lincoln, confronted by the infirmities and incapacity of General Scott and the jealousy and rivalry of the younger officers of the army, was compelled to assume the direction of the conduct of the war, he was entirely ignorant of military affairs, except for the experience he had gained in his youth during the Black Hawk War, which, however, was more of a frontier frolic than a serious campaign. His own account of it is found in the autobiography he furnished to the press after his nomination to the Presidency:

"Abraham joined a volunteer company, and to his own surprise was elected captain of it. He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction. He went into the campaign, served nearly three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but was in no battle."

We know from others that Lincoln was one of the first to enlist, and that it was something besides ambition which led him to seek the captaincy of his company. During his first year in Illinois he worked for a time in a saw-mill run by a man named Kirkpatrick, who promised to buy him a cant-hook with which to move heavy logs. Lincoln offered to move the logs with his own common handspike, provided Kirkpatrick would give him in cash the two dollars which a cant-hook would cost. Kirkpatrick agreed to do so, but never did, and Lincoln always bore him a grudge. When the volunteers from Sangamon County assembled on the green to elect their officers, Lincoln discovered that Kirkpatrick was the only candidate for captain, and remarked to his friend and neighbor, Green,--

"Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook or I'll run against him for captain."

So he and Green began immediately to "hustle" for votes, and when the order was given for the men to assemble at the side of their favorite candidate for captain, three-fourths of them came to Lincoln, and he led them over the prairies and through the wilderness to the rendezvous. He had no knowledge of military tactics and did not even know the order to give. He used to describe his blunders with great amusement, and one that he enjoyed particularly was a device to get his men through a gate-way into an enclosure. They were marching across a field four abreast, and Lincoln could not remember the proper command for changing them into single file, "or getting the company through the gate endwise," as he described it. "So, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'The company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate.'"

This ingenuity did not save him from disgrace on other occasions, and once he was severely punished by being deprived of his sword on account of a violation of discipline. But these punishments did not seem to diminish the respect in which he was held by his company. They were proud of his wit, his strength, and his learning, and throughout their lives they remained devotedly attached to him because of his personal qualities. One day an Indian fugitive took refuge in the camp, and the soldier frontiersmen, with more or less experience of the treachery and cruelty of the savage, saw no reason why they should not put him out of the way at once, especially as they had come out to kill Indians; but Lincoln's humanity and sense of justice revolted at the murder of a helpless savage, and, at the risk of his life, he defied the entire camp and saved the Indian.

At the end of their term of service his company was mustered out, and most of the volunteers, seeing no prospect of glory or profit, started towards home; but Captain Lincoln re-enlisted the same day as a private, and often spoke of the satisfaction he felt when relieved of the responsibility of command. He served through the campaign. He was the strongest man in the army and the best wrestler, with the exception of a man named Thompson, who once threw him on the turf.

Black Hawk was captured through the treachery of his allies. Lincoln's battalion was mustered out at Whitewater, Wisconsin, by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who, twenty-nine years later, was to stand with him as the most interesting figure upon the national stage. A story that Lincoln was mustered into the service by Jefferson Davis has been widely published. It was a natural mistake, however, because Davis, then a lieutenant in the army, was stationed at a fort near Rock Island, but during the summer of the Black Hawk War he was on leave of absence and did not join his regiment until long after the Sangamon County volunteers had returned to their homes. However, Lincoln was to see and meet several interesting characters, including Colonel Zachary Taylor, whom he afterwards supported for President, General Winfield Scott, another Whig candidate for the Presidency and the commander of the army at the beginning of his administration, Lieutenant Albert Sidney Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general, and others of fame.

Lincoln never permitted any one to call him "captain," and when in Congress in 1848 he made a political speech in which he ridiculed the efforts of the friends of General Cass to obtain some political advantage from that eminent gentleman's services in a similar capacity. He said,--

"If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges on the wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes; and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. If ever I should conclude to doff whatever our Democratic friends may suppose there is of black-cockade Federalism about me, and thereupon they shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest that they shall not make fun of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me into a military hero."

When compelled to supervise the enlisting and equipment of a great army and plan campaigns that were to determine the destiny and the happiness and prosperity of the people, he was entirely without preparation or technical knowledge of the science of war, and could only rely upon his common sense and apply to military affairs the experience he had gained in politics. His talent developed rapidly, however, until he became recognized as the ablest strategist of the war, not excepting Grant or Sherman. His correspondence with his generals, his memoranda concerning the movements of troops, his instructions to the Secretary of War, the plans he suggested, and the comments and criticisms he made upon those of others indicate the possession of a military genius which in actual service would have given him a high reputation. In times of crisis his generals found him calm and resourceful; in great emergencies he was prompt, cool, and clear-sighted; and under the shock of defeat he was brave, strong, and hopeful.

Soon after his inauguration he began to realize the magnitude of the struggle and the responsibilities which rested upon him. He was convinced that the government was in the right, but determined that there should be no mistake on this point; therefore he gave the South every liberty and indulgence that could possibly be granted. He determined that the "overt act" should be committed by the South, that there should be no excuse to accuse the government of "invasion" or an attempt at "subjugation," and for that reason he delayed the attempt to reinforce and provision Fort Sumter. When the public understood the moral issues involved he gave the order, because he knew that he would be supported by a united North. In his inaugural address he said, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." And that solemn pledge he endeavored to fulfil even at the risk of Northern criticism and the loss of the military posts at Charleston and other points in the South.

It was a disheartening and almost impossible situation for the new administration. President Lincoln and General Scott were left almost entirely dependent upon strangers and men of no experience who had been appointed for political reasons rather than for capacity or knowledge. Nearly all the trained officers of the army resigned as fast as their native States seceded; officers of Northern birth and sympathies had been sent to distant posts so that they could not interfere with the treasonable designs of Secretary Floyd during the Buchanan administration. Confusion, corruption, and complications were unavoidable, and caused the President unutterable anxiety and distress. Ignorance and zeal often provoked more trouble than could be corrected, and jealousy, rivalry, and partisanship made matters worse.

The political problems alone would have been as great a load as mortal man might have been expected to carry, but his perplexities were increased, his time occupied, and his patience sorely tested by such an undignified and unpatriotic 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."

The area of the country was vast; the seat of war stretched from the Atlantic to the Missouri River, with a strip of States undecided in their purpose which must be carefully handled to prevent them from joining the Confederacy. With inexperienced and incompetent commanders, a divided Cabinet, public clamor dinning in his ears, and his mind harassed by other cares and perplexities, it was difficult to develop a military policy and plan a campaign for the suppression of the rebellion. Even if the situation had been divested of political significance, it would have taxed the genius of a Napoleon. The coast line to be protected was more than three thousand six hundred miles long, the frontier line was nearly eight thousand miles, and the field of operation covered an area larger than the whole of Europe. Furthermore, it was a political war, and everything must be planned with a view to political consequences. It was not a struggle between rival powers, nor for conquest, but for the preservation of the Union, and from the beginning President Lincoln appreciated that the common interests and the general welfare required that the integrity of the country be preserved with as little loss and as little punishment as possible to either side. Whatever damage was done must be repaired at the end by a reunited country; whatever was destroyed was a common loss. The war was a family affair, in which the sufferings and sorrows and material losses must be equally shared. With all these considerations in his mind, he undertook to guide the government in such a way as to prevent the dissolution of the Union and at the same time accomplish the overthrow of the slave power and the removal of that curse from the American people.

General Scott, like General Sherman, had accurately measured the requirements of the situation. Their experience and military instincts taught them that it was to be a long and a tedious struggle, and they urged deliberation and preparation as absolutely necessary to success. But, when General Sherman's opinion was made public, he was called a lunatic, and General Scott's practical plan of military operations was defeated by public ridicule. General Sherman demanded two hundred thousand men before attempting a campaign in the Mississippi Valley. General Scott called for only one hundred thousand men, but said they would be required for three years, and advised that they be distributed among ten or fifteen healthy camps for four months until they could be organized, drilled, and acclimated; then, after the navy had blockaded the harbors of the Southern coast, he proposed to move his army down both banks of the Mississippi River, establishing strong posts at frequent intervals to protect that stream until New Orleans was captured and occupied; he then proposed to move his army gradually eastward from the Mississippi and southward from the Potomac, slowly closing in upon the Confederacy until its military power was paralyzed. Notwithstanding the sorrows and anxieties of the North, the people howled with derision at this thorough, practical plan of the old veteran. The comic papers took it up and published cartoons representing a monster serpent with General Scott's head, coiled around the cotton States, and they called it "Scott's Anaconda." In the same breath they demanded a battle. "On to Richmond," they cried, and President Lincoln yielded to the clamor. The battle of Bull Run was fought, with its disastrous consequences. The lesson was valuable, as it taught the President that public opinion was not a safe guide to follow in military operations.

It must be remembered that in the midst of the most appalling situation in American history Lincoln stood practically alone because of a divided Cabinet and the age and infirmities of General Scott, then seventy-five years old, quite feeble in body and irritable of temper. The President had great respect for him and confidence in his patriotism and military judgment. He had supported Scott for President in 1852, had been in correspondence with him before the inauguration, and had encouraged him in his futile efforts to check the treasonable transactions of Secretary Floyd and other conspirators; but he soon discovered that the venerable warrior was in no condition to perform labor or assume responsibility. Yet he was reluctant to do anything to wound his pride or reflect upon his present ability. This increased the embarrassment and difficulties of the situation. General Scott recognized and appreciated Lincoln's consideration, but refused to resign or retire until finally driven from his post by McClellan.

At the White House, shortly after the battle of Bull Run, the old veteran, after listening to criticisms directed at the President for permitting the Union army to suffer defeat, broke out in his wrath,--

"Sir, I am the greatest coward in America. I will prove it. I fought this battle, sir, against my judgment; I think the President of the United States ought to remove me to-day for doing it. As God is my judge, after my superiors had determined to fight it, I did all in my power to make the army efficient. I deserve removal because I did not stand up when my army was not in a condition for fighting and resist to the last."

"Your conversation seems to imply that I forced you to fight this battle," suggested the President.

"I have never served a President who has been kinder to me than you have been," replied the general, avoiding the question.

The battle of Bull Run was fought to gratify the politicians. It was the only time the President yielded to public clamor, and he always regretted it. It was a political movement. When he assembled a council of war five days previous, the commanders declared that they had force enough to overcome the enemy; but General Scott was positive that such a victory could not be decisive, and advised a postponement of active hostilities for a few months until the army could be placed in a better condition. The Cabinet and the military committees of Congress feared that public sentiment in the North would not consent to the delay, and that the Confederate leaders would make such good use of it that the results of an offensive movement would be more doubtful then than now, hence an order for the advance was given. The President did not rebuke General Scott for his indignant outbreak, because he felt that his words were true.

The President suffered great anxiety during that eventful Sunday, but exhibited his usual self-control, and attended church with Mrs. Lincoln. After his noon dinner he walked over to the head-quarters of the army, where he found General Scott taking a nap, and woke him up to ask his opinion. The old gentleman was not only hopeful but confident, for one of his aides had arrived with a report that General McDowell was driving everything before him. The President's mind was relieved and about four o'clock he went out to drive. At six o'clock Secretary Seward staggered over the threshold of the White House and nervously asked for the President. When told that he was driving, he whispered to the private secretary,--

"Tell no one, but the battle is lost; McDowell is in full retreat, and calls on General Scott to save the capital."

When the President drove up to the portico a few minutes later he listened in silence to the message, but his head hung low as he crossed the White House grounds to head-quarters. There the disaster was confirmed, and he conferred long and anxiously with General Scott and Secretary Cameron as to the next duty. Towards midnight he returned to the White House and heard the accounts of members of Congress and others who had gone out to witness the battle. His long frame lay listlessly upon a couch, but his mind was active, his calmness and resolution had not been disturbed, and before he slept that night he had planned the reorganization of the army, and from that time undertook the direction of military as well as civil and diplomatic affairs; consulting freely with Senators and Representatives and officers of the army as he did with his constitutional advisers, but relying upon his own judgment more and more.

A gleam of hope arose in his mind that he might be relieved of much detail by George B. McClellan, a brilliant young officer, who had been called to Washington and appointed a major-general.

McClellan was a graduate of West Point, had served with distinction in the Mexican War, had been a member of a military commission to inspect the armies of Europe, had observed the conduct of the Crimean War, had been engaged in various scientific and diplomatic duties, had resigned from the army to become Chief Engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad when only thirty-one years old, was elected its Vice-President at thirty-two, and made President of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad when he was thirty-four. He had made a brief but dashing campaign in West Virginia, and was credited with saving that State to the Union. His brilliant professional attainments, the executive ability he had displayed in railway management, combined with attractive personal qualities and influential social connections, made him the most conspicuous officer in the Union army and naturally excited the confidence of the President, who gave him a cordial welcome and intrusted him with the most responsible duties, making him second only to General Scott in command.

Unfortunately, however, the honors which were showered upon McClellan turned his head, and the young commander not only failed to comprehend the situation and his relations to the President and General Scott, but very soon developed signs of vanity and insubordination which caused the President great concern. He saw himself followed and flattered by statesmen, politicians, and soldiers of twice his age and experience. The members of the Cabinet and even the President himself came to his residence to ask his advice, and the venerable hero of the Mexican War deferred to his judgment and accepted his suggestions without hesitation. McClellan was the idol of the army and a magnet that attracted all the interest, influence, and ambition that were centred at Washington at that period of the war. His state of mind and weakness of character were exhibited in letters he wrote to his family at this time, which, by a lamentable error of judgment, were afterwards printed in his biography.

On July 27 he wrote his wife, "I find myself in a new and strange position here, President, Cabinet, General Scott and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land."

A little later he wrote, "They give me my way in everything, full swing and unbounded confidence. Who would have thought when we were married that I should so soon be called upon to save my country?" Ten days after his appointment he declared, "I would cheerfully take the dictatorship and agree to lay down my life when the country is saved."

Very soon, however, the tone of his letters began to change. The President, General Scott, and the Cabinet had evidently begun to detect his weakness and egotism and no longer accepted his own estimate of his ability and importance. To the President's profound disappointment, he realized within a few days that McClellan was not a staff that could be leaned upon, while General Scott's admiration and confidence in his young lieutenant were shaken at their first interview.

With the air of an emperor McClellan began to issue extraordinary demands upon the President, the War Department, and the Treasury. It soon became apparent that he desired and expected to be placed in command of the greatest army of history; that he intended to organize and equip it according to the most advanced scientific theories; and when the President, the Secretary of War, and General Scott objected to the magnitude of his plans, pointed out their impracticability, and urged him to do something to check the alarming movements of the Confederates, he was seized with a delusion which remained with him to the end, that they were endeavoring to thwart and embarrass him. The tone of his letters to his wife was radically changed.

"I am here in a terrible place," he said; "the enemy have from three to four times my force; the President and the old General will not see the true state of affairs."

"I am weary of all this," he said a week later, "and disgusted with this administration,--perfectly sick of it;" and he declared that he remained at the head of affairs only because he had become convinced that he was alone the salvation of the country. He expressed especial contempt for the President, and said, "There are some of the greatest geese in the Cabinet I have ever seen,--enough to tax the patience of Job." The incompetence and stupidity of the President, he wrote, was "sickening in the extreme, and makes me feel heavy at heart when I see the weakness and unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this country."

He wrote other friends that his wisdom alone must save the country, that he spent his time "trying to get the government to do its duty, and was thwarted and deceived by these incapables at every turn." He demanded that all recruits be sent to his army and that all supplies be issued to him, as if the armies in the Mississippi Valley could take care of themselves. He demanded that "the whole of the regular army, old and new, be at once ordered to report here," and that the trained officers be assigned to him. "It is the task of the Army of the Potomac to decide the question at issue," he declared. When advice and suggestions were offered him he rejected them contemptuously, and announced that whenever orders were issued to him he exercised his own judgment as to obedience.

General McClellan's vanity and presumption might have been overlooked by General Scott, but his insulting remarks could not be excused. Their relations reached an acute stage in August, 1861, notwithstanding the President's efforts at reconciliation. Again and again he apologized for and explained away the rudeness of the younger officer towards his superior; and General Scott, realizing the President's embarrassment, begged to be relieved from active command because of his age and infirmities. Perhaps it would have been wiser if the wishes of the aged general had been complied with, for he was now practically helpless, fretful, and forgetful, and his sensitiveness made it necessary to consult him upon every proposition and admit him to every conference. Finally, McClellan's contemptuous indifference, persistent disrespect, and continual disobedience provoked General Scott beyond endurance, and on the last day of October he asked that his name be placed on the list of army officers retired from active service.

"For more than three years," he wrote, "I have been unable from a hurt to mount a horse or to walk more than a few paces at a time and that with much pain. Other and new infirmities, dropsy, and vertigo, admonish me that repose of mind and body are necessary to add a little more to a life already protracted much beyond the usual span of man."

Lincoln, however, continued to consult him, and in June, 1862, made a visit to West Point for the purpose of asking his advice upon certain military movements then in contemplation. General Scott outlived him, and was the most distinguished figure at the obsequies of the martyred President at New York City in April, 1865.

After General Scott's retirement McClellan assumed even greater importance in his own eyes, and treated the President in the same contemptuous manner; yet the latter's indulgence was inexhaustible, and he would not even allow personal indignity to himself to interfere with his relations with the commander of his army. He was accustomed to visit army head-quarters and General McClellan's residence in the most informal manner, entering both without notification of his coming, and, if the general was not in, returning to the White House; but one night in November, 1861, he called at General McClellan's residence on a matter so important that he decided to await the latter's return from a wedding. Although informed that the President had been waiting an hour, McClellan went directly by the drawing-room upstairs, and when a servant went to remind him that the President wished to see him, the general sent down word that he was retiring and would like to be excused. Lincoln did not mention the insult. No one could have detected any difference in his treatment of General McClellan thereafter, except that he never entered his house again, and after that date when he wanted to see him sent for him to come to the Executive Mansion. On another occasion when the young general treated him with similar arrogance, Governor Dennison, of Ohio, and General Mitchell remonstrated, but the President replied cheerfully,--

"Never mind; I will hold McClellan's horse if he will only bring us success."

But he did not bring success, and the public as well as both Houses of Congress became very impatient about the idleness and delay of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan's "All quiet on the Potomac" became a slang phrase as notorious as General Butler's "contraband." Newspaper artists and cartoonists made him the subject of ridicule, committees of Senators and Representatives waited upon him, Legislatures passed resolutions, but he was no more affected by those promptings than he had been by the entreaties and admonitions of the President. When positive orders were issued, McClellan refused to obey them, or obeyed them in such a manner as to defeat their purpose. A committee of Congress was appointed to make an investigation. The President began to lose his patience, and declared that "if something were not done the bottom would drop out of the whole affair. If McClellan did not want to use the army he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something." McClellan replied that his forces were insufficient; that he was outnumbered by the enemy. Finally, at a conference with the Cabinet, Secretary Chase, who had been his most enthusiastic admirer, but had lost all confidence in McClellan, asked the general point-blank what he intended to do and when he intended to do it. McClellan refused to answer the question unless the President ordered him to do so. The latter, with his usual consideration, attempted to protect the general, and in a conciliatory way asked whether he had resolved in his own mind when he would be able to make a forward movement. McClellan replied in the affirmative, but would give no further information. The President urged him to do so, but he continued to refuse, whereupon the former remarked,--

"Then I will adjourn the meeting."

The President waited a few weeks longer, and, as nothing was done, issued his famous Special War Order No. 1, in which he ordered the celebration of Washington's birthday, 1862, by a general movement of all the land and naval forces of the United States; but even then McClellan reported that he would be obliged to fall back until he could construct a railway.

"What does this mean?" asked the President, when Secretary Stanton read him the despatch.

"It means that it is a damn fizzle!" exclaimed the Secretary of War. "It means that he does not intend to do anything."

The President then issued General War Order No. 2, reorganizing the Army of the Potomac, and followed it with General War Order No. 3, which directed a movement in ten days; but still McClellan blocked the way, and continued to drill his troops, dig entrenchments, and write insolent letters to the President and Secretary of War.

"Had I twenty thousand or even ten thousand fresh troops to use to-morrow I could take Richmond," he telegraphed Secretary Stanton. "If I save this country now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."

The Secretary's rage may be imagined, and he would have had McClellan arrested and sent before a court-martial; but Lincoln's patience yet prevailed, and he crossed the Potomac for a personal conference with his insubordinate commander, urging him to make a forward movement. The members of the Cabinet drew up an indignant protest demanding the immediate removal of McClellan from command, but decided not to hand it to the President.

Finally, the Army of the Potomac was compelled to follow Lee northward, and after the battle of Antietam the President telegraphed McClellan: "Please do not let him [the enemy] get off without being hurt." Two weeks later he again visited the camp, and, after reviewing and inspecting the troops, remarked,--

"It is called the Army of the Potomac, but is only McClellan's body-guard."

President Lincoln's warmest defenders cannot excuse his procrastination with McClellan upon any other ground than excessive caution. They know that he acted against his own judgment; that he was convinced of McClellan's unfitness within three months after he had placed him in command, and that the conviction grew upon him daily, but his fear of offending public opinion and wounding McClellan's vanity led him to sacrifice the interests of the government and unnecessarily prolong the war. The same criticism can be made of his treatment of other generals intrusted with the command of the army. Of all his officers, no one ever possessed the full confidence of the President except General Grant.

While McClellan was in command Lincoln studied the military situation with characteristic thoroughness and penetration, and drew up memoranda in detail as to the movements of the army. He also gave his opinion as to what the enemy would do under the circumstances. These memoranda were rejected by McClellan in a contemptuous manner, but since they have become public they have commanded the respect and admiration of the ablest military critics.

The President's troubles were not confined to the Army of the Potomac, nor were they bounded by the Alleghany Mountains, but extended wherever there were military movements; wherever there were offices to be filled the same conditions existed; the same jealousies, rivalries, and incompetence interfered with the proper administration of the government. And the most popular heroes, the idols of the public, invariably caused the most confusion and showed the most flagrant indiscretion and incompetence. Second only in popularity to McClellan, perhaps even higher in the esteem of the Republican party, was John C. Frémont, the first candidate of that party for the Presidency, a man whose adventures as an explorer had excited the admiring interest of every school-boy, and whose activity in making California a state had given him a reputation for romance, gallantry, and patriotism. He was "the Pathfinder," and second only to Daniel Boone as a frontier hero. Seward had pressed him for appointment as Secretary of War; at one time Lincoln put him down on the slate as minister to France, and when the war broke out his name was among the first to suggest itself to the people as that of a savior of the country. He had been in France during the winter, and had sailed for home when Sumter was fired upon.

Upon his arrival in New York he was handed a commission as major-general in the regular army and orders to take command in the Mississippi Valley. It was an opportunity that any soldier might have envied, and the President expected him to proceed at once to his head-quarters at St. Louis, where his presence was imperatively needed; but the ovations he received in the East and the adulation that was paid him everywhere were too gratifying for his self-denial, and it was not until he received peremptory orders, twenty-five days after his appointment, that he proceeded leisurely westward to find his department in a state of the greatest confusion and apprehension. Instead, however, of devoting himself to the task of organization and getting an army into the field to quell disloyal uprisings and exterminate the bushwhackers who were burning towns, plundering farm-houses, tearing up railroads, murdering loyal citizens, and committing other crimes, he remained in St. Louis, taking more interest in political than in military questions, issuing commissions to his friends, and giving contracts with such a lavish hand and in such an irregular way as to provoke protest from the accounting officers of the government. Political intrigue and distrust were so prevalent that Frémont was accused of an ambition to lead a new secession movement, separate the Western States from the Union, and establish an empire under his own sovereignty similar to that of which Aaron Burr is supposed to have dreamed.

President Lincoln watched with anxiety and sorrow the dethronement of another popular idol, and defended and protected Frémont with the same charity and patience he had shown to McClellan. Instead of removing him from command, as he should have done, he endeavored to shield him from the consequences of his mismanagement, and sent General David Hunter, an old friend and veteran officer in whom he had great confidence, this request:

"General Frémont needs assistance which is difficult to give him. He is losing the confidence of men near him, whose support any man in his position must have to be successful.... He needs to have by his side a man of large experience. Will you not for me take that place? Your rank is one grade too high to be ordered to it; but will you not serve your country and oblige me by taking it voluntarily."

With this letter General Hunter went to St. Louis to try and save Frémont, but it was too late. Frémont's principal political backing came from the Blair family, who were also his warmest personal friends; but, when they endeavored to advise and restrain him, a quarrel broke out and Frémont placed General Frank P. Blair under arrest. Blair preferred formal charges against his commander; and his father and brother, the latter being Postmaster-General, demanded Frémont's removal on account of incapacity. Then, to increase Lincoln's anxieties and perplexities, Mrs. Jessie Benton Frémont, the daughter of Senator Benton and a romantic figure in American history, appeared in Washington to conduct her husband's side of the quarrel, denouncing the Blairs and all other critics with unmeasured contempt and earnestness.

The President confesses that he was exasperated almost beyond endurance. Mrs. Frémont, he says, "sought an audience with me at midnight, and attacked me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I had to avoid quarrelling with her. She more than once intimated that if General Frémont should decide to try conclusions with me, he could set up for himself."

While the weary President was spending sleepless nights planning the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac and an offensive campaign to satisfy public clamor, he endeavored to arbitrate the quarrel between Frémont and the Blairs. In the midst of his efforts at conciliation, General Frémont startled the country and almost paralyzed the President by issuing an emancipation proclamation and an order that all persons found with arms in their hands should be shot. The President wrote him a gentle but firm remonstrance, "in a spirit of caution and not of censure," he said, and sent it by special messenger to St. Louis, "in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you." Mrs. Frémont brought the reply to Washington. It was an apology mixed with defiance. Frémont asserted that he had acted from convictions of duty with full deliberation, and proceeded at length to argue the justice and expediency of the step; and he was as much encouraged in his defiance as Lincoln was embarrassed by the radical Republican leaders and newspapers of the North. Frémont's proclamation was revoked by order of the President, but it was not so easy to correct the mistakes he had made in administration. Finally, after long deliberation and upon the advice of three experienced officers in whom he had great confidence and who had been with Frémont and were familiar with his conduct and the political and military situation, the President relieved him from command.

Frémont accepted the inevitable with dignity. He issued a farewell address to his army, was given ovations by radical Republicans in different parts of the country, but was not again intrusted with an independent command.

After he arose from his sleepless bed the morning following the battle of Bull Run, Lincoln devoted every spare moment to the study of the map of the seat of war and to reading military history. A shelf in his private library was filled with books on tactics, the histories of great campaigns, and such military authorities upon the science of warfare as might afford him ideas, valuable information, and suggestions. He undertook the preparation of a plan of campaign precisely as he had been accustomed to prepare for a trial in court, and before many days his quick perceptions, his retentive memory, and his reasoning powers had given him wider knowledge than was possessed by any of his generals. He did not fail to consult every person in whom he had confidence both upon abstract military questions and geographical and political conditions, and before long he developed a plan which he submitted to the military committees of Congress a few days after Congress assembled in December, 1861. Several of the most influential Senators and Representatives who did not belong to the committees were invited to be present. He proposed, first to maintain the military force along the Potomac to menace Richmond; second, to move an army from Cairo southward within easy communication of a flotilla upon the Mississippi; and, third, to send an army from Cincinnati eastward to Cumberland Gap in East Tennessee. Preliminary to the latter movement he proposed the construction of a railway from Cincinnati to Knoxville by way of Lexington, Kentucky, in order to avoid the difficulties and delays of transportation through the mountains, and military authorities now agree that if his advice had been followed the war would have been shortened at least two years. Mr. Nicolay, his private secretary, reports the substance of the President's appeal to Congress, as he stood before a map of Tennessee in the President's room at the Capitol:

"I am thoroughly convinced that the closing struggle of the war will occur somewhere in this mountain country. By our superior numbers and strength we will everywhere drive the rebel armies back from the level districts lying along the coast, from those lying south of the Ohio River, and from those lying east of the Mississippi River. Yielding to our superior force, they will gradually retreat to the more defensible mountain districts, and make their final stand in that part of the South where the seven States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia come together. The population there is overwhelmingly and devotedly loyal to the Union. The despatches from Brigadier-General Thomas of October 28 and November 5 show that, with four additional good regiments, he is willing to undertake the campaign and is confident he can take immediate possession. Once established, the people will rally to his support, and by building a railroad, over which to forward him regular supplies and needed reinforcements from time to time, we can hold it against all attempts to dislodge us, and at the same time menace the enemy in any one of the States I have named."

There was no response to this appeal, except from the Senators and Representatives from East Tennessee, where nearly the entire population were loyal to the Union. One of the motives of the President in planning this campaign was to protect them from the raids of the Confederate cavalry. The Congressmen who heard him, however, were determined to gratify the public demand for an assault upon Richmond. All eyes were upon the Army of the Potomac, and it was popularly believed that if an assault were made and the Confederate capital captured, the rebellion would be promptly crushed. The President then undertook to carry out his plan with the forces at his disposal, but General Buell was too stubborn and too slow, either refusing to carry out his orders or wasting his time and strength in arguments against the practicability of the plan. If the same time, money, and military strength that were expended in his attempted march from Corinth to East Tennessee during the following summer had been devoted to the construction of a railroad, as proposed by the President, the entire situation in the Mississippi Valley would have been changed, and the battles which made Grant, Thomas, and Sherman famous would never have been fought. This is the opinion of the military experts after a quarter of a century of controversy, and the longer the subject is discussed the more firmly established is the verdict in favor of the wisdom and practicability of Lincoln's plan.

General McClellan was not the only military commander to annoy and perplex the President by procrastination and argument. The official records of the war at this time are filled with letters and telegrams addressed by Lincoln to Buell and Halleck, appealing to them to obey his orders and move towards the enemy. Buell kept promising to do so, but his delay was exasperating, and, differing in opinion from his superiors, he was, like McClellan, continually guilty of insubordination. Halleck, who was considered one of the ablest and best-equipped officers in the Union army, and was intended to be the successor of General Scott, was equally dilatory, although he had a better excuse, because, when he assumed command at St. Louis, succeeding General Frémont, he found the whole department in a deplorable condition, and was working with great energy and ability to organize and equip an army for the field. It is undoubtedly the case that both Buell and Halleck lacked confidence in the President's military capacity and placed a higher value upon their own judgment; but, whether the President realized this or not, he laid out the plan of a campaign and gave orders to both generals to co-operate in a joint land and river expedition up the Tennessee or Cumberland River. Neither made the slightest preparation for it or communicated with each other on the subject,--an act of insubordination that would not have been tolerated in any other country in the world. Then, when the President began to press his generals, Halleck excused himself for refusing to carry out his orders on the ground that it was bad strategy, and Buell made no reply whatever.

The patience of the President seemed inexhaustible. He kept his temper, and finally persuaded General Halleck to make a demonstration, which resulted in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson and the famous campaign of General Grant in the early spring of 1862. The results of that campaign might have been much more conclusive had General Buell obeyed orders and responded to the appeals of General Halleck for assistance and to the President's orders for him to co-operate. Lincoln watched every step of the march with anxious interest, and his telegrams show that he anticipated Grant's movements with remarkable accuracy. His suggestions show how familiar he was with the country and the location of the Confederate forces. One of his telegrams to Halleck illustrates his knowledge of detail. It reads,--

"You have Fort Donelson safe, unless Grant shall be overwhelmed from outside; to prevent which latter will, I think, require all the vigilance, energy, and skill of yourself and Buell, acting in full co-operation. Columbus will not get at Grant, but the force from Bowling Green will. They hold the railroad from Bowling Green to within a few miles of Fort Donelson, with the bridge at Clarksville undisturbed. It is unsafe to rely that they will not dare to expose Nashville to Buell. A small part of their force can retire slowly towards Nashville, breaking up the railroad as they go, and keep Buell out of that city twenty days. Meantime, Nashville will be abundantly defended by forces from all south and perhaps from here at Manassas. Could not a cavalry force from General Thomas on the upper Cumberland dash across, almost unresisted, and cut the railroad at or near Knoxville, Tennessee? In the midst of a bombardment at Fort Donelson, why could not a gunboat run up and destroy the bridge at Clarksville? Our success or failure at Fort Donelson is vastly important, and I beg you to put your soul in the effort. I send a copy of this to Buell."

Imagine his sensations when he received a reply from General Halleck: "Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major-generals of volunteers and give me command in the West. I ask this in return for Fort Henry and Donelson."

The President realized the situation, made the promotions, consolidated the different departments west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, placed Halleck in command, and directed him to take advantage of "the golden opportunity;" but the latter was too deliberate, and it required only a brief experience to demonstrate that he was unfit to command troops in the field. He was called to Washington, placed at the head-quarters of the army to succeed General McClellan, and Grant was left in command of the army in Tennessee, where he undertook the task of opening the Mississippi in his own way, having the full confidence of the President.

It is quite remarkable that from the beginning Lincoln's confidence in Grant was firm and abiding. This may have been partly due to the strong endorsements he had received from Representative Washburne and other mutual friends, although Grant was not highly regarded at home at that time, and found difficulty in obtaining a commission from the Governor of Illinois. President Lincoln had never seen him until he came East to take command of the army, and had heard evil as well as good reports concerning that silent but stubborn soldier who was working his way down the banks of the Mississippi and closing around Vicksburg. There is no evidence, however, except his own words, that Lincoln's faith in him was ever shaken. He gave Grant no orders, sent him no telegrams or letters such as he had written to Halleck, Buell, Rosecrans, and other commanders in the West, and there must have been some reason for his not doing so. We are left only the inference that his sagacity taught him that Grant was not a man to be interfered with; and although his patience, like that of the rest of the country, was being sorely tried by the lack of tangible results in the West, he waited until the problem was worked out and then wrote Grant the following candid and characteristic letter:

"MY DEAR GENERAL: I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did--march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong."

Such letters are very seldom written by the rulers of nations to the commanders of their armies. Confirming the obligation, and as a reward for the victories of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, the President recommended the revival of the rank of lieutenant-general, which had been conferred only upon Washington and Scott. His recommendation was adopted by Congress, Grant was called to Washington, and at a public reception at the White House on March 8, 1864, he met Lincoln for the first time. On the following day he was formally invested with his new rank and authority by the President in the presence of the Cabinet and several civil and military officials. It was not often that such formalities occurred at the capital of the simple republic. Lincoln was very much averse to formalities of all kinds. His democratic spirit led him to avoid parade, but here was an occasion which his political instincts taught him might be used to impress the country; hence the unusual ceremony was arranged.

General Grant did not reach Washington until the early evening of March 8, 1864, and the reception at the White House began at eight o'clock. A message from the White House notified him that the President desired his attendance if he was not too tired by his journey; so, immediately after his arrival he took a hasty supper, changed his travel-worn uniform for a fresh one, and, in company with an aide-de-camp, reached the White House about half-past nine o'clock. The cheers that greeted him as he was recognized by the crowd about the portico reached the President's ears, but that was the only announcement of the approach of the latest popular hero. General Grant took his place in line with the other guests and slowly passed through the corridor and anteroom to the door of the Blue Parlor where the President stood, with Mrs. Lincoln and the ladies of the Cabinet at his side, receiving his guests and shaking hands with them as they passed before him. He recognized Grant without an introduction, being familiar with his portraits, and these two remarkable men gazed into each other's eyes in an inquiring way for a moment, while the people watched them with absorbing interest. After exchanging the ordinary phrases of greeting, the President introduced General Grant to Mr. Seward, and the latter led him into the East Room, where he was received with cheer after cheer, and, blushing with embarrassment, was compelled to stand upon a sofa where people could see him, because he was so short of stature that he was hidden in the throng.

The President asked Grant to remain after the close of the reception, and they had a long conference. As Grant was leaving the White House the President explained to him the reasons for the formality that would be observed in presenting his commission as lieutenant-general on the following day.

"I shall make a very short speech to you," said he, "to which I desire that you should make a brief reply for an object; and that you may be properly prepared to do so I have written what I shall say, only four sentences in all, which I will read from my manuscript as an example which you may follow, and also read your reply, as you are perhaps not so much accustomed to public speaking as I am, and I therefore give you what I shall say so that you may consider it. There are two points that I would like to have you make in your answer: first, to say something which shall prevent or obviate any jealousy of you from any of the other generals in the service; and, second, something which shall put you on as good terms as possible with the Army of the Potomac. If you see any objection to this, be under no restraint whatever in expressing that objection to the Secretary of War."

General Grant and Mr. Stanton left the White House together. The next day, at one o'clock, in presence of the Cabinet, General Halleck, two members of Grant's staff, and the President's private secretary, the commission of lieutenant-general was formally delivered by the President. Mr. Lincoln said,--

"General Grant, the nation's appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance upon you for what remains to do in the existing great struggle, are now presented, with this commission constituting you Lieutenant-General in the army of the United States. With this high honor devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add that with what I here speak for the nation goes my own hearty personal concurrence."

The general had written his speech on half of a sheet of note-paper, in lead-pencil, but when he came to read it he was as embarrassed as Washington was when the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg tendered him its thanks after the Braddock campaign. He found his own writing very difficult to read, but what he said could hardly have been improved:

"Mr. President, I accept this commission with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought on so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectation. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me, and I know that, if they are met, it will be due to those armies and, above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men."

It will be observed that Grant did not comply with the request of the President, and his speech contains no reference to the subject to which the President alluded on the previous evening. Grant never offered an explanation and Lincoln never asked one. Some writers have advanced the theory that Secretary Stanton, who often differed from the President in regard to little matters, advised Grant not to refer to such delicate subjects, but it is more probable that, with his distrust of politicians and his fear of becoming complicated with them as McClellan and others had been, the wary warrior thought it wise to be entirely non-committal. Before leaving his head-quarters in the West, Grant had written Sherman, "I shall say very distinctly on my arrival there [Washington] that I shall accept no appointment which will require me to make that city my head-quarters," and Sherman had urged him to stand by that resolution: "Do not stay in Washington. Halleck is better qualified than you to stand the buffets of intrigue and politics."

After the presentation ceremonies the President and Grant retired together, and the latter inquired what was expected of him. Lincoln answered that he was expected to take Richmond; that every one who had tried it so far had failed, and he asked Grant point-blank if he thought he could do it. With the same directness and simplicity Grant answered that he could if he had the troops. The President assured him that he should have all the troops he needed and that he would not be interfered with in the management of the campaign. Grant himself says, "I did not communicate my plans to the President, nor did I to the Secretary of War, nor to General Halleck;" and the President wrote him that he neither knew nor wished to know his plan of operations, but wanted to tender his good wishes and promise every aid which the government could furnish. "If the results shall be less favorable than I hope and the government expects," he said, "the fault will not be the fault of the administration." Under those circumstances Grant assumed command of the army, and from that time President Lincoln felt himself relieved from the responsibility of planning and directing military movements.

After making an inspection of the army, Grant returned to Washington, had another conference with President Lincoln, established his head-quarters at Culpeper, and prepared for active operations. On April 30, 1864, the President sent him the following candid letter:

"Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you."

Grant's immediate reply confessed the groundlessness of his apprehensions:

"From my first entrance into the volunteer service of the country to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint--have never expressed or implied a complaint against the administration, or the Secretary of War, for throwing any embarrassment in the way of my vigorously prosecuting what appeared to me my duty. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked. Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you."

In his reminiscences, General Grant says, "Just after receiving my commission as lieutenant-general, the President called me aside to speak to me privately. After a brief reference to the military situation, he said he thought he could illustrate what he wanted to say by a story, which he related as follows: 'At one time there was a great war among the animals, and one side had great difficulty in getting a commander who had sufficient confidence in himself. Finally, they found a monkey, by the name of Jocko, who said that he thought he could command their army if his tail could be made a little longer. So they got more tail and spliced it on to his caudal appendage. He looked at it admiringly, and then thought he ought to have a little more still. This was added, and again he called for more. The splicing process was repeated many times, until they had coiled Jocko's tail around the room, filling all the space. Still he called for more tail, and, there being no other place to coil it, they began wrapping it around his shoulders. He continued his call for more, and they kept on winding the additional tail about him until its weight broke him down.' I saw the point, and, rising from my chair, replied, 'Mr. President, I will not call for more assistance unless I find it impossible to do with what I already have.'

"Upon one occasion," continued Grant, "when the President was at my head-quarters at City Point, I took him to see the work that had been done on the Dutch Gap Canal. After taking him around and showing him all the points of interest, explaining how, in blowing up one portion of the work that was being excavated, the explosion had thrown the material back into, and filled up, a part already completed, he turned to me and said, 'Grant, do you know what this reminds me of? Out in Springfield, Illinois, there was a blacksmith named ----. One day, when he did not have much to do, he took a piece of soft iron that had been in his shop for some time, and for which he had no special use, and, starting up his fire, began to heat it. When he got it hot he carried it to the anvil and began to hammer it, rather thinking he would weld it into an agricultural implement. He pounded away for some time until he got it fashioned into some shape, when he discovered that the iron would not hold out to complete the implement he had in mind. He then put it back into the forge, heated it up again, and recommenced hammering, with an ill-defined notion that he would make a claw hammer, but after a time he came to the conclusion that there was more iron there than was needed to form a hammer. Again he heated it, and thought he would make an axe. After hammering and welding it into shape, knocking the oxidized iron off in flakes, he concluded there was not enough of the iron left to make an axe that would be of any use. He was now getting tired and a little disgusted at the result of his various essays. So he filled his forge full of coal, and, after placing the iron in the centre of the heap, took the bellows and worked up a tremendous blast, bringing the iron to a white heat. Then with his tongs he lifted it from the bed of coals, and thrusting it into a tub of water near by, exclaimed with an oath, "Well, if I can't make anything else of you, I will make a fizzle, anyhow."'"

A friend once asked Lincoln whether the story was true that he had inquired where General Grant got his liquor, so that he might send a barrel to each of his other generals. Lincoln replied that the story originated in King George's time. When General Wolfe was accused of being mad, the King replied, "I wish he would bite some of my other generals."

At the dedication of the Lincoln monument at Springfield, October 15, 1874, General Grant said, "From March, 1864, to the day when the hand of the assassin opened a grave for Mr. Lincoln, then President of the United States, my personal relations with him were as close and intimate as the nature of our respective duties would permit. To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head and for his patience and patriotism. With all his disappointments from failures on the part of those to whom he had intrusted commands, and treachery on the part of those who had gained his confidence but to betray it, I never heard him utter a complaint, nor cast a censure, for bad conduct or bad faith. It was his nature to find excuses for his adversaries. In his death the nation lost its greatest hero; in his death the South lost its most just friend."

These relations thus established were never disturbed. Grant was the first of all the generals in whom the President placed implicit confidence; he was the only one with whom he seemed to feel entirely at ease; and although their communications were frequent and voluminous, there was seldom a difference of opinion. They contain no complaint or reproach, but ring with mutual confidence and appreciation. Seldom have two men of such remarkable character and ability enjoyed such unruffled relations. Military history furnishes no similar instance. Each seemed to measure the other at his full stature and recognize his strength. There were many busybodies carrying tales and striving to excite suspicion and jealousy, but their faith could not be shaken or their confidence impaired. Lincoln's letters to Grant offer a striking contrast to those addressed to Burnside, Hooker, McClellan, and other commanders.

General Ambrose E. Burnside was selected to command the Army of the Potomac after McClellan was relieved November 5, 1862. He was a classmate and intimate friend of his predecessor, handsome, brave, generous, and as modest as McClellan was vain. He not only did not seek the honor, but declined it twice on the ground that he was not competent to command so large an army, but finally accepted the responsibility at the urgent wish of the President, and very soon demonstrated the mistake. His career was as unfortunate as it was brief, but his manly report of the unfortunate battle of Fredericksburg did him great credit, for he assumed all the responsibility for the failure and said nothing but praise of his men.

The President replied by a kind and sympathetic despatch after his failure at Fredericksburg, and fully appreciated his situation. "Although you were not successful," he said, "the attempt was not an error nor the failure other than accident. The courage with which you in an open field maintained the contest against an intrenched foe, and the consummate skill and success with which you crossed and recrossed the river in the face of the enemy, show that you possess all the qualities of a great army, which will yet give victory to the cause of the country and of popular government."

Burnside's confession of failure destroyed the confidence of the army in him, and Burnside realized it. "Doubtless," he said, "this difference of opinion between my general officers and myself results from a lack of confidence in me. In this case it is highly necessary that this army should be commanded by some other officer, to whom I will most cheerfully give way."

The President replied, "I deplore the want of concurrence with you in opinion by your general officers, but I do not see the remedy. Be cautious, and do not understand that the government or the country is driving you. I do not yet see how I could profit by changing the command of the Army of the Potomac, and if I did I would not wish to do it by accepting the resignation of your commission."

Nevertheless, it was futile for the President to pretend that Burnside's usefulness as commander of the army was not at an end, and the latter determined to bring about a crisis himself by recommending for dismissal from the army General Joseph Hooker for "unjust and unnecessary criticisms of the actions of his superior officer.... As unfit to hold an important commission during a crisis like the present when so much patience, charity, confidence, consideration, and patriotism are due from every soldier in the field." Burnside also prepared an order dismissing nine other generals, and with his usual frankness took them to Washington and asked the President's approval. As an alternative he tendered his own resignation. Lincoln realized that a commander who had lost the confidence of his army and the country at large could not restore it by punishing his critics, so, in the most kindly manner, he accepted Burnside's resignation and assigned General Hooker to command. The President was fully aware of Hooker's weakness, and that the latter's conduct and language concerning Burnside and himself had been not only indiscreet and insubordinate, but actually insulting. But he was willing to overlook all that and confer honor and responsibility upon him because he believed in his ability and patriotism, and knew that the soldiers held him in higher esteem than any other general in the East. But accompanying Hooker's commission was a letter which no man but Abraham Lincoln could have written without giving offence, and nothing from the pen of the President at that period of his life better indicates the complete self-control and self-confidence which possessed him.

"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac," he said. "Of course I have done this upon what appears to me sufficient reason, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. 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 an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of 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 was 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. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories."

General Hooker received this rebuke and admonition in the spirit in which it was offered; he recognized its justice, and endeavored to restore himself in the President's estimation; but his first important movement was defeated by the enemy, and, although it was not so great a disaster as that of Burnside at Fredericksburg, the battle of Chancellorsville, in May, 1863, marked the darkest hour in the Civil War and inspired Lee and the Confederate authorities with confidence of the ultimate success of the rebellion. Mr. W. O. Stoddard, an inmate of the White House at that time, has given us the following picture:

"The darkest hour in the Civil War came in the first week of May, 1863, after the bloody battle of Chancellorsville. The country was weary of the long war, with its draining taxes of gold and blood. Discontent prevailed everywhere, and the opponents of the Lincoln administration were savage in their denunciation. More than a third of each day's mail already consisted of measureless denunciation; another large part was made up of piteous appeals for peace.

"There were callers at the White House. Members of the Senate and House came with gloomy faces; the members of the Cabinet came to consult or condole. The house was like a funeral, and those who entered or left it trod softly for fear they might wake the dead.

"That night the last visitors in Lincoln's room were Stanton and Halleck, and the President was left alone. Not another soul except the one secretary busy with the mail in his room across the hall. The ticking of a clock would have been noticeable; but another sound came that was almost as regular and as ceaseless. It was the tread of the President's feet as he strode slowly back and forth across his chamber. That ceaseless march so accustomed the ear to it that when, a little after twelve, there was a break of several minutes, the sudden silence made one put down his letters and listen.

"The President may have been at his table writing, or he may--no man knows or can guess; but at the end of the minutes, long or short, the tramp began again. Two o'clock and he was walking yet, and when, a little after three, the secretary's task was done and he slipped noiselessly out, he turned at the head of the stairs for a moment. It was so--the last sound he heard as he went down was the footfall in Lincoln's room.

"The young man was there again before eight o'clock. The President's room was open. There sat Lincoln eating his breakfast alone. He had not been out of his room; but there was a kind of cheery, hopeful morning light on his face. He had watched all night, but beside his cup of coffee lay his instructions to General Hooker to push forward. There was a decisive battle won that night in that long vigil with disaster and despair. Only a few weeks later the Army of the Potomac fought it over again as desperately--and they won it--at Gettysburg."

From the time when Hooker took command the President kept closer watch than ever upon the movements of the Army of the Potomac, and his directions were given with greater detail than before. He had no confidence in Hooker's ability to plan, although he felt that he was a good fighter.

Early in June, 1863, Hooker reported his opinion that Lee intended to move on Washington, and asked orders to attack the Confederate rear. To this Lincoln answered in quaint satire, "In case you find Lee coming north of the Rappahannock I would by no means cross to the south of it. If he should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg, tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight you in entrenchments and have you at a disadvantage, while his main force would in some way be getting an advantage of you northward. In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox would jump half over a fence and be liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other."

To illustrate how dependent was the commander of the Army of the Potomac upon Lincoln I give another despatch, sent by the President to Hooker when the latter proposed to make a dash upon Richmond while Lee was moving his army westward towards the Shenandoah Valley.

"If left to me, I would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it. If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile your communications, and with them your army, would be ruined. I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him and fret him."

A few days later Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg 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?" But Hooker made no attempt to do so, and merely followed Lee northward through Virginia and Maryland into Pennsylvania, keeping on the "inside track," as Mr. Lincoln suggested, between the Confederate army and Washington. Before the battle of Gettysburg, which ended the most aggressive campaign of the Confederates, a long-standing feud between Hooker and Halleck became so acute that the President saw that one or the other of them must be relieved. Hooker, in a fit of irritation because Halleck had declined to comply with some unimportant request, asked to be relieved from the command, and the President selected George G. Meade to succeed him. A few days later the battle of Gettysburg was fought. The vain ambition of Lee and Davis to raise the Confederate flag over Independence Hall and establish the head-quarters of the Confederate government in Philadelphia was dissipated and Lee fell back, leaving two thousand six hundred killed, twelve thousand wounded, and five thousand prisoners.

Lincoln's military instincts taught him that the war could be practically ended there if the advantages gained at Gettysburg were properly utilized, and so implored Meade to renew his attack. But Meade held back, Lee escaped, and for once the President lost his patience. In the intensity of his disappointment he wrote Meade as follows:

"You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg, and, of course, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated, and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg, while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit, and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two-thirds of the force you then had in hand? I would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect (that) you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it."

Before the mails left that night Lincoln's wrath was spent, his amiability was restored, and this letter was never sent.

It is impossible in the limits of this volume to relate the details of the war, but from the detached incidents that have been given, and the narrative of his relations with Scott, McClellan, Frémont, Grant, and other generals referred to in this chapter, the reader may form a clear and accurate conception of Abraham Lincoln's military genius and the unselfish and often ill-advised consideration with which he invariably treated his commanders. During the last year of the war the right men seem to have found the right places, and in all the voluminous correspondence of the President from the White House and the War Department with Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas there appears to have been a perfect understanding and complete unity of opinion and purpose between them. He allowed them greater liberty than other commanders had enjoyed, evidently because they had his confidence to a higher degree; he never was compelled to repeat the entreaties, admonitions, and rebukes with which the pages of his correspondence during the earlier part of the war were filled. His relations with Sherman cannot better be defined than by the following brief letter:

"MY DEAR GENERAL SHERMAN: Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah. When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that 'nothing risked, nothing gained,' I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours, for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce. And taking the work of General Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is, indeed, a great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages, but in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole--Hood's army--it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide. Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army, officers and men."

Lincoln's relations with Sheridan were limited. They never met but twice, and there was very little correspondence between them, the most notable being the laconic despatch after Sheridan's fight with Ewell at Sailor's Creek, near the Appomattox. That was one of the last blows struck at the Confederacy, and Sheridan, realizing the situation, made a hasty report, ending with the words,--

"If the thing is pressed I think Lee will surrender."

Grant forwarded the despatch to President Lincoln, who instantly replied,--

"Let the thing be pressed."

When he had read the telegram describing Sheridan's last fight with Early in the Shenandoah Valley, he remarked that he once knew a man who loaded a piece of punk with powder, lighted it, clapped it inside a biscuit, and tossed it to a savage dog that was snarling at him. In an instant the dog snapped it up and swallowed it. Presently the fire touched the powder and away went the dog, his head in one place, a leg here and another there, and the different parts scattered all over the country. "And," said the man, "as for the dog, as a dog, I was never able to find him." "And that," remarked the President, "is very much the condition of Early's army, as an army."

President Lincoln's appearance in Richmond after the Confederacy fell to pieces was one of the most dramatic scenes in all history because of its extreme simplicity and the entire absence of rejoicing or parade. There was no triumphant entrance, as the world might have expected when a conqueror occupies the capital of the conquered. Never before or since has an event of such transcendent significance occurred with so little ostentation or ceremony. Lincoln was at City Point, the head-quarters of General Grant, and was lodged upon a little steamer called the "River Queen" when he heard of the capture of Richmond and the fire that consumed a large part of that city. The same day he went up the river without escort of any kind, landed at a wharf near Libby Prison, found a guide among the colored people that were hanging around the place, and walked a mile or more to the centre of the city. The loafers at the wharf soon identified the President and surrounded him, striving to touch the hem of his garment. To protect the President and open a passage for him, Admiral Porter called sailors from his boat, who marched in front and behind him to the town. Lincoln did not realize the danger that surrounded him; he did not remember that he was in the midst of a community with whom he was still at war, or that they held him responsible for the sorrows they had suffered, the distress they had endured, and the destruction of their property. But, although within an hour from the time he landed every man, woman, and child knew of his presence, not a hand was lifted against him, not an unkind word was said; and, after visiting the head-quarters of General Weitzel, who was in command of the Union troops, the Capitol of the State which had been the seat of the Confederate government, the mansion which Jefferson Davis had occupied, Libby Prison, where so many officers had starved and died, and holding two important interviews with John A. Campbell, the Confederate Secretary of War, who had remained in Richmond when the rest of the government fled, he went leisurely back to his boat, returned to the steamer, and sailed for Washington, where, only a few days later, surrounded by his loyal friends and in the midst of an ovation, he was stricken by the bullet of an assassin.

Lincoln's personal courage was demonstrated early in life. He never showed a sense of fear. He never refused a challenge for a trial of strength, nor avoided an adventure that was attended by danger; and while President he had no fear of assassination, although he had many warnings and was quite superstitious. He was accustomed to ridicule the anxiety of his friends, and when the threats of his enemies were repeated to him he changed the subject of conversation. Senator Sumner was one of those who believed that he was in continual danger of assassination, and frequently cautioned him about going out at night. When the Senator's anxiety was referred to by friends one evening, the President said, "Sumner declined to stand up with me, back to back, to see which was the tallest man, and made a fine speech about this being the time for uniting our fronts against the enemy and not our backs. But I guess he was afraid to measure, though he is a good piece of a man. I have never had much to do with bishops where I live, but, do you know? Sumner is my idea of a bishop."

In his reminiscences, General Butler says, "He was personally a very brave man and gave me the worst fright of my life. He came to my head-quarters and said,--

"'General, I should like to ride along your lines and see them, and see the boys and how they are situated in camp.'

"I said, 'Very well, we will go after breakfast.'

"I happened to have a very tall, easy-riding, pacing horse, and, as the President was rather long-legged, I tendered him the use of him while I rode beside him on a pony. He was dressed, as was his custom, in a black suit, a swallow-tail coat, and tall silk hat. As there rode on the other side of him at first Mr. Fox, the Secretary of the Navy, who was not more than five feet six inches in height, he stood out as a central figure of the group. Of course the staff-officers and orderly were behind. When we got to the line of intrenchment, from which the line of rebel pickets was not more than three hundred yards, he towered high above the works, and as we came to the several encampments the boys cheered him lustily. Of course the enemy's attention was wholly directed to this performance, and with the glass it could be plainly seen that the eyes of their officers were fastened upon Lincoln; and a personage riding down the lines cheered by the soldiers was a very unusual thing, so that the enemy must have known that he was there. Both Mr. Fox and myself said to him,--

"'Let us ride on the side next to the enemy, Mr. President. You are in fair rifle-shot of them, and they may open fire; and they must know you, being the only person not in uniform, and the cheering of the troops directs their attention to you.'

"'Oh, no,' he said, laughing; 'the commander-in-chief of the army must not show any cowardice in the presence of his soldiers, whatever he may feel.' And he insisted upon riding the whole six miles, which was about the length of my intrenchments, in that position, amusing himself at intervals, where there was nothing more attractive, in a sort of competitive examination of the commanding general in the science of engineering, much to the amusement of my engineer-in-chief, General Weitzel, who rode on my left, and who was kindly disposed to prompt me while the examination was going on, which attracted the attention of Mr. Lincoln, who said,--

"'Hold on, Weitzel, I can't beat you, but I think I can beat Butler.'

"In the later summer (1863)," continues General Butler, "I was invited by the President to ride with him in the evening out to the Soldiers' Home, some two miles, a portion of the way being quite lonely. He had no guard--not even an orderly on the box. I said to him,--

"'Is it known that you ride thus alone at night out to the Soldiers' Home?'

"'Oh, yes,' he answered, 'when business detains me until night. I do go out earlier, as a rule.'

"I said, 'I think you peril too much. We have passed a half-dozen places where a well-directed bullet might have taken you off.'

"'Oh,' he replied, 'assassination of public officers is not an American crime.'

"When he handed me the commission (as major-general), with some kindly words of compliment, I replied, 'I do not know whether I ought to accept this. I received my orders to prepare my brigade to march to Washington while trying a cause to a jury. I stated the fact to the court and asked that the case might be continued, which was at once consented to, and I left to come here the second morning after, my business in utter confusion.'

"He said, 'I guess we both wish we were back trying cases,' with a quizzical look upon his countenance.

"I said, 'Besides, Mr. President, you may not be aware that I was the Breckenridge candidate for Governor in my State in the last campaign, and did all I could to prevent your election.'

"'All the better,' said he; 'I hope your example will bring many of the same sort with you.'

"'But,' I answered, 'I do not know that I can support the measures of your administration, Mr. President.'

"'I do not care whether you do or not,' was his reply, 'if you will fight for the country.'

"'I will take the commission and loyally serve while I may, and bring it back to you when I can go with you no further.'

"'That is frank; but tell me wherein you think my administration wrong before you resign,' said he. 'Report to General Scott.'

"'Yes, Mr. President, the bounties which are now being paid to new recruits cause very large desertions. Men desert and go home, and get the bounties and enlist in other regiments.'

"'That is too true,' he replied, 'but how can we prevent it?'

"'By vigorously shooting every man who is caught as a deserter until it is found to be a dangerous business.'

"A saddened, weary look came over his face which I had never seen before, and he slowly replied,--

"'You may be right--probably are so; but, God help me! how can I have a butcher's day every Friday in the Army of the Potomac?'"

VII

HOW LINCOLN APPEARED IN THE WHITE HOUSE

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 of 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 criticism from the religious press and from unfriendly sources. It was represented as a heartless exhibition 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 indulging in worldly amusements. These thoughtless writers did not know that during the reception, 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 bedside of their child, who was so ill that the postponement 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.

There was little opportunity for home life at the White House because of the confusion and distraction caused by the war. The President's labors were unceasing. He seldom took exercise or indulged in amusements. Occasionally he attended the theatre when distinguished performers happened to be in Washington, and usually invited them to his box to express his thanks for the pleasure they had afforded him and to ask questions about the play. He was particularly fond of Shakespeare, and attended the presentation of his plays as frequently as his official cares would permit; he found great diversion in their study, and could repeat many passages that he learned from the first copy he had ever seen while yet a clerk in Denton Offutt's store at New Salem. He had his own theories regarding Shakespeare, and when a prominent actor or Shakespearian scholar came his way, invariably discussed with him the Shakespearian mysteries and the original construction of the plays, with which he was very familiar.

He found diversion in comedies, and used to enjoy clever farces as much as any child. He often took his children to performances at the theatre, and their presence doubled his own enjoyment. This was practically his only recreation, except reading Burns, Petroleum V. Nasby, Artemas Ward, Josh Billings, and other comic writers who appealed to his keen sense of the ridiculous and diverted his attention from the cares of state when they were wearing upon him. He was not fond of games, although he sometimes played backgammon with his boys. For a time he practised basket-ball for exercise, but did not enjoy it. He had little out-door life; it was limited to a daily drive to and from the Soldiers' Home or to some military camp. He enjoyed the saddle and was a good rider, although in the long-tailed coat and tall silk hat which he always wore he made a grotesque figure on horseback. He had no taste for hunting or fishing, never smoked, and was very temperate in his habits. He yearned for rest, although his physical strength and endurance were beyond comparison with those of other public men. His labors and sleepless nights would have broken down any other constitution, and he was often weary. One day, during an especially trying period, he lifted his tired eyes from his desk and remarked to his secretary,--

"I wish George Washington or some other old patriot were here to take my place for a while, so that I could have a little rest."

If Lincoln had accepted the advice of his secretaries and his associates he might have spared himself a great deal of labor and annoyance. But he never excused himself from callers in the busiest period of the war; even when hundreds of important duties were pressing upon him, he never denied an attentive ear and a cheerful word. He was a genuine democrat in his feelings and practices, and, regardless of public affairs, listened patiently and considerately to the humblest citizen who called at the White House. One day, when his anteroom was crowded with men and women seeking admission to his presence and he was unusually perplexed by official problems, a friend remarked,--

"Mr. President, you had better send that throng away. You are too tired to see any more people this afternoon. Have them sent away, for you will wear yourself out listening to them."

"They don't want much and they get very little," he replied. "Each one considers his business of great importance, and I must gratify them. I know how I would feel if I were in their place."

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 that 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."

He had a remarkable capacity for work and for despatching business. Although deliberation was one of his strongest characteristics, he knew when to act and acted quickly. His brain was as tough and as healthy as his body. His appetite was always good and healthful. He ate sparingly of plain, wholesome food, but had no taste for rich dishes. He was temperate in every way except as concerned his labor, and in that he was tireless. He had the rare and valuable faculty of laying out work for others and being able to give instructions clearly and concisely. He loaded his Cabinet and his secretaries to the limit of their strength, but was always considerate and thoughtful of their comfort. Three of his secretaries lived with him in the White House and usually worked far into the night, and, even after their labors for the day had closed, Lincoln would often wander around barefooted and in his night-shirt, too wakeful to seek his own bed, and read poems from Burns, jokes from Artemas Ward, and the letters of Petroleum V. Nasby to the members of his household.

His sense of humor was his salvation. It was the safety-valve by which his heart was relieved. He was melancholy by nature and inclined to be morbid, and it was this keen enjoyment of the ridiculous that enabled him to endure with patience his official trials and anxiety.

One of the visitors in the early days of the administration says, "He walked into the corridor with us; and, as he bade us good-by and thanked ---- for what he had told him, he again brightened up for a moment and asked him in an abrupt kind of way, laying his hand, as he spoke, with a queer but not uncivil familiarity on his shoulder,--

"'You haven't such a thing as a postmaster in your pocket, have you?'

"---- stared at him in astonishment, and I thought a little in alarm, as if he suspected a sudden attack of insanity. Then Mr. Lincoln went on,--

"'You see, it seems to me kind of unnatural that you shouldn't have at least a postmaster in your pocket. Everybody I've seen for days past has had foreign ministers and collectors and all kinds, and I thought you couldn't have got in here without having at least a postmaster get into your pocket.'"

His stories were usually suggested by the conversation or by the situation in which he was placed; but often, in the company of congenial friends, he used to sit back in his chair and indulge in what he called "a good old time;" spinning yarns of his early experiences, describing the characteristics of odd people he had known, and relating amusing incidents that occurred daily, even under the shadows and among the sorrows of war. This habit was the result of his early associations, when the corner store was the club of the frontiersman and the forum for intellectual combats as well as the stage for entertainments. There Lincoln shone as the most brilliant planet that ever illuminated the communities in which he lived, and there he developed the gift which was to afford him so much pleasure and so great relief from oppressing care. He was a poet by nature. He had a deep sentiment and a high appreciation of the beautiful in literature as well as in life. His soul overflowed with sympathy, and his great nature was so comprehensive that it could touch every phase of human interest and meet every class and clan; but he was a restless listener, and when in the mood for talking it was difficult to interrupt him.

Chauncey M. Depew, relating his recollections of Lincoln says that once, while he was at the White House, "the President threw himself on a lounge and rattled off story after story. It was his method of relief, without which he might have gone out of his mind, and certainly would not have been able to have accomplished anything like the amount of work which he did. It is the popular supposition that most of Mr. Lincoln's stories were original, but he said, 'I have originated but two stories in my life, but I tell tolerably well other people's stories.' Riding the circuit for many years, and stopping at country taverns where were gathered the lawyers, jurymen, witnesses, and clients, they would sit up all night narrating to each other their life adventures; and the things which happened to an original people, in a new country, surrounded by novel conditions, and told with the descriptive power and exaggeration which characterized such men, supplied him with an exhaustless fund of anecdote which could be made applicable for enforcing or refuting an argument better than all the invented stories of the world."

The humorous aspect of an appeal or an argument never failed to strike him, and he enjoyed turning the point as much as telling a story. Once, in the darkest days of the war, a delegation of prohibitionists came to him and insisted that the reason the North did not win was because the soldiers drank whiskey and thus brought down the curse of the Lord upon them. There was a mischievous twinkle in Lincoln's eye when he replied that he considered that very unfair on the part of the Lord, because the Southerners drank a great deal worse whiskey and a great deal more of it than the soldiers of the North.

After the internal revenue laws were enacted the United States marshals were often sued for false arrest, and Congress appropriated one hundred thousand dollars to pay the expenses of defending them. Previously the officials brought into court on such charges appealed to the Attorney-General to instruct the United States district attorneys to defend them; but when this appropriation was made, with one accord, they said that they would hire their own lawyers and applied for the cash; which reminded the President of a man in Illinois 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 this case they were so liberal that he soon found himself better off than he had been before the fire, and got proud. One day a neighbor brought him a bag of oats, but the fellow refused it with scorn. "No," said he, "I'm not taking oats now. I take nothing but money."

One day, just after Lincoln's second inauguration, a Massachusetts merchant, visiting Washington, noticed the great crowd of office-seekers waiting for an audience with the President, and decided that he, too, would like to see him. Writing his name on a card, he added the line, "Holds no office and wants none." The card was taken to President Lincoln, who, instantly jumping up, said to the attendant, "Show him up; he is a curiosity." Passing the long line of office-seekers, the merchant went up to the President, who said he was refreshed to meet a man who did not want an office, and urged his stay. A long and pleasant conversation followed.

Mrs. McCulloch went to the White House one Saturday afternoon to attend Mrs. Lincoln's reception, accompanied by Mrs. William P. Dole, whose husband was Commissioner of Indian Affairs. "There were crowds in and out of the White House," said Mrs. McCulloch, "and during the reception Mr. Lincoln slipped quietly into the room and stood back alone, looking on as the people passed through. I suggested to Mrs. Dole that we should go over and speak to him, which we did. Mr. Lincoln said, laughingly,--

"'I am always glad to see you, ladies, for I know you don't want anything.'

"I replied, 'But, Mr. President, I do want something; I want you to do something very much.'

"'Well, what is it?' he asked, adding, 'I hope it isn't anything I can't do.'

"'I want you to suppress the _Chicago Times_, because it does nothing but abuse the administration,' I replied.

"'Oh, tut, tut! We must not abridge the liberties of the press or the people. But never mind the _Chicago Times_. The administration can stand it if the _Times_ can.'"

On a certain occasion the President was induced by a committee of gentlemen to examine a newly invented "repeating" gun, the peculiarity of which was that it prevented the escape of gas. After due inspection, he said,--

"Well, I believe this really does what it is represented to do. Now, have any of you heard of any machine or invention for preventing the escape of gas from newspaper establishments?"

However, Lincoln had great respect for the press. He was one day complaining of the injustice of Mr. Greeley's criticisms and the false light in which they put him before the country, when a friend, with great earnestness, suggested,--

"Why don't you publish the facts in every newspaper in the United States? The people will then understand your position and your vindication will be complete."

"Yes, all the newspapers will publish my letter, and so will Greeley," Lincoln replied. "The next day he will comment upon it, and keep it up, in that way, until at the end of three weeks I will be convicted out of my own mouth of all the things he charges against me. No man, whether he be private citizen or President of the United States, can successfully carry on a controversy with a great newspaper and escape destruction, unless he owns a newspaper equally great with a circulation in the same neighborhood."

Colonel John Hay, who resided in the White House during the entire administration of Lincoln, has given us this graphic picture of the President's home life and habits:

"The President rose early, as his sleep was light and capricious. In the summer, when he lived at the Soldiers' Home, he would take his frugal breakfast and ride into town in time to be at his desk at eight o'clock. He began to receive visits nominally at ten o'clock, but long before that hour struck the doors were besieged by anxious crowds, through whom the people of importance, Senators and members of Congress, elbowed their way after the fashion which still survives. On days when the Cabinet met--Tuesdays and Fridays--the hour of noon closed the interviews of the morning. On other days it was the President's custom, at about that hour, to order the doors to be opened and all who were waiting to be admitted. The crowd would rush in, throng in the narrow room, and one by one would make their wants known. Some came merely to shake hands, to wish him Godspeed; their errand was soon done. Others came asking help or mercy; they usually pressed forward, careless in their pain as to what ears should overhear their prayer. But there were many who lingered in the rear and leaned against the wall, hoping each to be the last, that they might in _tête-à-tête_ unfold their schemes for their own advantage or their neighbor's hurt. These were often disconcerted by the President's loud and hearty, 'Well, friend, what can I do for you?' which compelled them to speak, or retire and wait for a more convenient season. The inventors were more a source of amusement than of annoyance. They were usually men of some originality of character, not infrequently carried to eccentricity. Lincoln had a quick comprehension of mechanical principles, and often detected a flaw in an invention which the contriver had overlooked. He would sometimes go out into the waste fields that then lay south of the Executive Mansion to test an experimental gun or torpedo. He used to quote with much merriment the solemn dictum of one rural inventor that 'a gun ought not to rekyle; if it rekyles at all, it ought to rekyle a little forrid.'

"At luncheon time he had literally to run the gauntlet through the crowds that filled the corridors between his office and the rooms at the west end of the house occupied by the family. The afternoon wore away in much the same manner as the morning; late in the day he usually drove out for an hour's airing; at six o'clock he dined. He was one of the most abstemious of men; the pleasures of the table had few attractions for him. His breakfast was an egg and a cup of coffee; at luncheon he rarely took more than a biscuit and a glass of milk, a plate of fruit in its season; at dinner he ate sparingly of one or two courses. He drank little or no wine; not that he remained on principle a total abstainer, as he was during a part of his early life in the fervor of the 'Washingtonian' reform; but he never cared for wine or liquors of any sort and never used tobacco.

"There was little gayety in the Executive House during his time. It was an epoch, if not of gloom, at least of a seriousness too intense to leave room for much mirth. There were the usual formal entertainments, the traditional state dinners and receptions, conducted very much as they have been ever since. The great public receptions, with their vast, rushing multitudes pouring past him to shake hands, he rather enjoyed; they were not a disagreeable 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 withdrawn; then suddenly he would see some familiar 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 received 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.'

"During the first year of the administration the house was made lively by the games and pranks of Mr. Lincoln's two younger children, William and Thomas: Robert, the eldest, was away at Harvard, only coming home for short vacations. The two little boys, aged eight and ten, with their Western independence and enterprise, kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor wild with their good-natured disobedience; they organized a minstrel show in the attic; they made acquaintance with the office-seekers and became the hot champions of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish frolic, a child of great promise, capable of close application and study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle, and studious child sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was profoundly moved by his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble, but kept about his work the same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards to pour out its fulness on his youngest child. 'Tad' was a merry, warm-blooded, kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and inventions, the 'chartered libertine' of the Executive Mansion. He ran continually in and out of his father's cabinet, interrupting his gravest labors and conversations with his bright, rapid, and very imperfect speech,--for he had an impediment which made his articulation almost unintelligible until he was nearly grown. He would perch upon his father's knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up and carry him tenderly to bed.

"Mr. Lincoln spent most of his evenings in his office, though occasionally he remained in the drawing-room after dinner, conversing with visitors or listening to music, for which he had an especial liking, though he was not versed in the science, and preferred simple ballads to more elaborate compositions. In his office he was not often suffered to be alone; he frequently passed the evening there with a few friends in frank and free conversation. If the company was all of one sort he was at his best; his wit and rich humor had full play; he was once more the Lincoln of the Eighth Circuit, the cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest of story-tellers; but if a stranger came in he put on in an instant his whole armor of dignity and reserve. He had a singular discernment of men; he would talk of the most important political and military concerns with a freedom which often amazed his intimates, but we do not recall an instance in which this confidence was misplaced.

"Where only one or two were present he was fond of reading aloud. He passed many of the summer evenings in this way when occupying his cottage at the Soldiers' Home.

"He read Shakespeare more than all other writers together. He made no attempt to keep pace with the ordinary literature of the day. Sometimes he read a scientific work with keen appreciation, but he pursued no systematic course. He owed less to reading than most men. He delighted in Burns; of Thomas Hood he was also excessively fond. He often read aloud 'The Haunted House.' He would go to bed with a volume of Hood in his hands, and would sometimes rise at midnight and, traversing the long halls of the Executive Mansion in his night-clothes, would come to his secretary's room and read aloud something that especially pleased him. He wanted to share his enjoyment of the writer; it was dull pleasure for him to laugh alone. He read Bryant and Whittier with appreciation; there were many poems of Holmes that he read with intense relish. 'The Last Leaf' was one of his favorites; he knew it by heart, and used often to repeat it with deep feeling."

Ben: Perley Poore, in his reminiscences, says, "The White House, while Mr. Lincoln occupied it, was a fertile field for news, which he was always ready to give those correspondents in whom he had confidence, but the surveillance of the press--first by Secretary Seward and then by Secretary Stanton--was as annoying as it was inefficient. A censorship of all matter filed at the Washington office of the telegraph, for transmission to different Northern cities, was exercised by a succession of ignorant individuals, some of whom had to be hunted up at whiskey shops when their signature of approval was desired. A Congressional investigation showed how stupidly the censors performed their duty. Innocent sentences which were supposed to have a hidden meaning were stricken from paragraphs, which were thus rendered nonsensical, and information was rejected that was clipped in print from the Washington papers, which it was known regularly found their way into 'Dixie.'

"When irate correspondents appealed to Mr. Lincoln, he would good-naturedly declare that he had no control over his secretaries, and would endeavor to mollify their wrath by telling them a story. One morning in the winter of 1862, when two angry journalists had undertaken to explain the annoyances of the censorship, Mr. Lincoln, who had listened in his dreamy way, finally said,--

"'I don't know much about this censorship, but come downstairs and I will show you the origin of one of the pet phrases of you newspaper fellows.'

"Leading the way down into the basement, he opened the door of a larder and solemnly pointed to the hanging carcass of a gigantic sheep.

"'There,' said he; 'now you know what "_Revenons à nos moutons_" means. It was raised by Deacon Buffum at Manchester, up in New Hampshire. Who can say, after looking at it, that New Hampshire's only product is granite?'"

When William Lloyd Garrison came to Washington to thank the President for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, he visited Baltimore expressly for the purpose of inspecting the old jail in which he was confined for several weeks for being an abolitionist, but, much to his disappointment, the police in charge would not admit him. During his interview with the President he complained of this, and Lincoln remarked,--

"You have had hard luck in Baltimore, haven't you, Garrison? The first time you couldn't get out of prison and the second time you couldn't get in."

A woman called at the White House one day to ask the release from prison of a relative whom she declared was suffering from great injustice. She was very handsome and attractive and endeavored to use her attractions upon the President. After listening to her a little while, he concluded, as he afterwards explained, that he was "too soft" to deal with her, and sent her over to the War Department with a sealed envelope containing a card upon which he had written,--

"This woman, dear Stanton, is smarter than she looks to be."

Another 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."

A member of Congress from Ohio, and a famous man, by the way, once entered the Executive Chamber in a state of intoxication,--just drunk enough to be solemn,--and, as he dropped into a chair, exclaimed in dramatic tones the first line of the President's favorite poem:

"'Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?'"

"I see no reason whatever," retorted the President, in disgust.

A delegation of clergymen once called to recommend one of their number for appointment as consul at the Hawaiian Islands, and, in addition to urging his fitness for the place, appealed to the President's sympathy on the ground that the candidate was in bad health, and a residence in that climate would be of great benefit to him. Lincoln questioned the man closely as to his symptoms, and then remarked,--

"I am sorry to disappoint you, but there are eight other men after this place, and every one of them is sicker than you are."

A party of friends from Springfield called upon him one day and, as a matter of gossip, told him of the death and burial of a certain prominent Illinois politician who was noted for his vanity and love of praise. After listening to the description of his funeral, the President remarked,--

"If Jim had known he was to have that kind of a funeral, he would have died long ago."

One of the telegraph operators at the War Department relates that the President came over there at night during the war and remarked that he had just been reading a little book which some one had given to his son Tad. It was a story of a motherly hen who was struggling 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 President. "This is what it said: 'And the fox became a good fox, and was appointed paymaster in the army.' I wonder who he is?"

To a deputation that waited upon him to criticise certain acts of his administration, he made the following response:

"Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope; would you shake the cable and 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 our hands. We are doing the very best we can. Don't badger us. Keep quiet, and we will get you safe across."

A multitude of authentic anecdotes are told to show Lincoln's kindness of heart and his disposition to relieve the distress of those who came to him with stories of wrong or sorrow. His readiness to pardon soldiers who had been convicted by court-martial and sentenced to death caused great dissatisfaction at the War Department and among the army officers, who complained that his interference was destroying the discipline of the service; but whenever an appeal was made to him he always endeavored to find some reason, near or remote, for Executive clemency, and if that was impossible, he invariably gave an order for the postponement of the penalty until a further investigation could be made. A very flagrant case was brought to him of a soldier who had demoralized his regiment by throwing down his gun and running away in battle, and by trying to shield his own cowardice by inducing others to imitate him. When tried by court-martial there was no defence. It was shown that he was an habitual thief, had robbed his comrades, and that he had no parents or wife or child to excite sympathy. When Judge-Advocate-General Holt laid the case before Lincoln, he expected him to approve the death-sentence without hesitation. There was not the slightest excuse for clemency; the record of the case did not contain a single item of evidence in the man's favor. The President looked through the documents carefully, but in vain, to find some reason why the coward should not die. Then, running his long fingers through his hair, as he often did when puzzled, he looked up and said,--

"The only thing I can do with this, judge, is to put it with my leg cases."

"Leg cases!" exclaimed Judge Holt, with a frown at this supposed levity of the President in a case of life and death. "What do you mean by leg cases, sir?"

"Do you see those papers stuffed into those pigeonholes?" replied Lincoln. "They are the cases that you call 'cowardice-in-the-face-of-the-enemy,' but I call them 'leg cases' for short; and I will put it to you; I leave it for 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?"

One day an old man came to him with a sad tale of sorrow. His son 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 interfere 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 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 old 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."

One of the most famous cases of pardon was that of William Scott, a young boy from a Vermont farm, who, after marching forty-eight hours without sleep, volunteered to stand guard duty for a sick comrade in addition to his own. Nature overcame him, he was found asleep at his post within gunshot of the enemy, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be shot. A day or two before the execution Lincoln happened to visit that division of the army, and, learning of the case, asked permission to see the boy. He entered the tent that was used for a prison, talked to him kindly, inquired about his home, his parents, his schoolmates, and particularly about his mother, and how she looked. The boy had her photograph in his pocket and showed it to him, and Lincoln was very much affected. As he was leaving the tent, he put his hands on the lad's shoulders and said, with a trembling voice,--

"My boy, you are not going to be shot to-morrow. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep awake. I am going to trust you and send you back to the regiment. But I have been put to a great deal of trouble on your account. I have had to come here from Washington when I had a great deal to do. Now, what I want to know is, how are you going to pay my bill?"

In relating the story afterwards, Scott said, "I could scarcely speak. I had expected to die, you see, and had got kind of used to thinking that way. To have it all changed in a minute! But I got it crowded down and managed to say, 'I am grateful, Mr. Lincoln! I hope I am as grateful as ever a man can be to you for saving my life. But it comes upon me sudden and unexpected like. I didn't lay out for it at all; but there is something to pay you, and I will find it after a little. There is the bounty in the savings bank, and I guess we could borrow some money by a mortgage on the farm. Then my pay is something, and if you would wait until pay day I am sure the boys would help; so we could make it up if it isn't more than five or six hundred dollars.' 'But it is a great deal more than that,' he said. 'My bill is a very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your bounty, nor the farm, nor all your comrades! There is only one man in all the world who can pay it, and his name is William Scott! If from this day William Scott does his duty, so that, when he comes to die, he can look me in the face as he does now, and say, I have kept my promise, and I have done my duty as a soldier, then my debt will be paid. Will you make that promise and try to keep it?'"

The promise was gratefully given. It is too long a story to tell of the effect of this sympathetic kindness on Private William Scott. After one of the battles of the Peninsula he was found shot to pieces. He said, "Boys, I have tried to do the right thing! If any of you have the chance, I wish you would tell President Lincoln that I have never forgotten the kind words he said to me at the Chain Bridge; that I have tried to be a good soldier and true to the flag; that I should have paid my whole debt to him if I had lived; and that now, when I know I am dying, I think of his kind face, and thank him again, because he gave me the chance to fall like a soldier in battle and not like a coward by the hands of my comrades."

When Francis Kernan was a member of Congress during the war, a woman came to him one day and said that her husband had been captured as a deserter. The next morning he called at the White House and gave the President the facts. The man had been absent a year from his family, and, without leave, had gone home to see them. On his way back to the army he was arrested as a deserter and sentenced to be shot. The sentence was to be carried out that very day.

The President listened attentively, becoming more and more interested in the story. Finally he said, "Why, Kernan, of course this man wanted to see his family, and they ought not to shoot him for that." So he called his secretary and sent a telegram suspending the sentence. He exclaimed, "Get off that just as soon as you can, or they will shoot the man in spite of me!" The result was the man got his pardon and took his place again in the army.

A Congressman who had failed to move Secretary 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 must not be shot, Mr. Lincoln."

"Well," said the President, coolly, "I do not believe shooting will do him any good," and the pardon was granted.

The late Governor Rice, of Massachusetts, says, "It happened at one time that Senator Henry Wilson and myself called to see President Lincoln on a joint errand. As the door to Mr. Lincoln's room opened, a small boy, perhaps twelve years old, slipped in between the Senator and myself. The President appeared to be attracted to the lad, and asked, 'And who is the little boy?' an inquiry which neither the Senator nor myself could answer. The lad, however, immediately replied that he had come to Washington in the hope of obtaining a situation as page in the House of Representatives. The President began to say that he must go to Captain Goodnow, the head door-keeper of the House, as he had nothing to do with such an appointment; upon which the lad pulled from his pockets a recommendation from the supervisors of the town, the minister of the parish, and others, stating also that his mother was a widow, and pleading the necessities of the family. The President called the boy nearer to him, took his recommendation, and wrote upon the back as follows:

"'If Captain Goodnow can give this good little boy a place he will oblige

A. LINCOLN.'"

Mr. Titian J. Coffey, who was Assistant Attorney-General, relates that "in the spring of 1863 a very handsome and attractive young lady from Philadelphia came to my office with a note from a friend, asking me to assist her in obtaining an interview with the President. Some time before she had been married to a young man who was a lieutenant in a Pennsylvania regiment. He had been compelled to leave her the day after the wedding to rejoin his command in the Army of the Potomac. After some time he obtained leave of absence, returned to Philadelphia, and started on a brief honeymoon journey with his bride. A movement of the army being imminent, the War Department issued a peremptory order requiring all absent officers to rejoin their regiments by a certain day, on penalty of dismissal in case of disobedience. The bride and groom, away on their hurried wedding-tour, failed to see the order, and on their return he was met by a notice of his dismissal from the service. The young fellow was completely prostrated by the disgrace, and his wife hurried to Washington to get him restored. I obtained for her an interview with the President. She told her story with simple and pathetic eloquence, and wound up by saying,--

"'Mr. Lincoln, won't you help us? I promise you, if you will restore him, he will be faithful to his duty.'

"The President had listened to her with evident sympathy and a half-amused smile at her earnestness, and as she closed her appeal he said, with parental kindness,--

"'And you say, my child, that Fred was compelled to leave you the day after the wedding? Poor fellow, I don't wonder at his anxiety to get back, and if he stayed a little longer than he ought to have done we'll have to overlook his fault this time. Take this card to the Secretary of War and he will restore your husband.'

"She went to the War Department, saw the Secretary, who rebuked her for troubling the President and dismissed her somewhat curtly. As it happened, on her way down the War Department stairs, her hopes chilled by the Secretary's abrupt manner, she met the President ascending. He recognized her, and, with a pleasant smile, said,--

"'Well, my dear, have you seen the Secretary?'

"'Yes, Mr. Lincoln,' she replied, 'and he seemed very angry with me for going to you. Won't you speak to him for me?'

"'Give yourself no trouble,' said he. 'I will see that the order is issued.'

"And in a few days her husband was remanded to his regiment. I am sorry to add that, not long after, he was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, thus sealing with his blood her pledge that he should be faithful to his duty."

Attorney-General Bates, a Virginian by birth, who had many relatives in that State, one day heard that the son of one of his old friends was a prisoner of war and not in good health. Knowing the boy's father to be a Union man, Mr. Bates conceived the idea of having the son paroled and sent home, of course under promise not to return to the army. He went to see the President and said,--

"I have a personal favor to ask. I want you to give me a prisoner." And he told him of the case. The President said, "Bates, I have an almost parallel case. The son of an old friend of mine in Illinois ran off and entered the rebel army. The young fool has been captured, is a prisoner of war, and his old broken-hearted father has asked me to send him home, promising, of course, to keep him there. I have not seen my way clear to do it, but if you and I unite our influence with this administration I believe we can manage it together and make two loyal fathers happy. Let us make them our prisoners."

Lincoln's reputation for kindness of heart extended even among the officials of the Confederacy. Mr. Usher, Secretary of the Interior, says that when he returned from the Peace Conference on the James, in 1864, where he met Messrs. Stephens, Campbell, and Hunter, he related some of his conversations with them. He said that at the conclusion of one of his discourses, detailing what he considered to be the position in which the insurgents were placed by the law, they replied,--

"Well, according to your view of the case, we are all guilty of treason and liable to be hanged."

Lincoln replied, "Yes, that is so." And Mr. Stephens retorted,--

"Well, we supposed that would necessarily be your view of our case, but we never had much fear of being hanged while you are President."

From his manner in repeating this scene he seemed to appreciate the compliment highly. There is no evidence that he ever contemplated executing any of the insurgents for their treason. There is no evidence that he desired any of them to leave the country, with the exception of Mr. Davis. His great, and apparently his only, object was to have a restored Union.

A short time before the capitulation of General Lee, General Grant had told him that the war must necessarily soon come to an end, and wanted to know whether he should try to capture Jeff Davis or let him escape from the country if he would. Mr. Lincoln said,--

"About that, I told him the story of an Irishman who had taken the pledge of Father Mathew. He became terribly thirsty, applied to a bar-tender for a lemonade, and while it was being prepared whispered to him, 'And couldn't ye put a little brandy in it all unbeknown to meself?' I told Grant if he could let Jeff Davis escape all unbeknown to himself, to let him go. I didn't want him."

Near the close of the war his old friend, Thomas Gillespie, asked him what was to be done with the rebels. He answered, after referring to the vehement demand prevalent in certain quarters for exemplary punishment, by quoting the words of David to his nephews, who were asking for vengeance on Shimei because "he cursed the Lord's anointed:" "What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel?"

But the President could be very stern and determined when he considered it necessary, although, when compelled by his sense of duty to withhold a pardon, he usually gave reasons which could not be set aside and accompanied them by a lesson of value. An officer once complained to him, with great indignation, that General Sherman was a tyrant and a bully and unfit to command troops. Lincoln listened attentively until he had exhausted his wrath, and then inquired quietly if he had any personal grievance against General Sherman.

The officer replied that General Sherman had accused him of some misconduct and threatened to shoot him if it occurred again.

"If I were in your place," remarked the President, in a confidential whisper, "I wouldn't repeat that offence, because Sherman is a man of his word."

One day Mr. Nicolay brought the President a telegram from Philadelphia, stating that a man had been arrested in that city for an attempt to obtain fifteen hundred dollars on Lincoln's draft.

"I have given no authority for such a draft; and if I had," he added, humorously, "it is surprising that any man could get the money."

After a moment's reflection, Mr. Nicolay thought he knew the accused party.

"Do you remember, Mr. President, a request from a stranger a few days since for your autograph? You gave it to him upon a half-sheet of note-paper. The scoundrel doubtless forged an order above your signature, and has attempted to swindle somebody."

"Oh, that's the trick, is it?" said the President.

"What shall be done with him?" inquired Mr. Nicolay. "Have you any orders?"

"Well," replied Mr. Lincoln, pausing between the words, "I don't see but that he will have to sit upon the blister bench."

In 1861 E. Delafield Smith was United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. One of the first and most important of his trials was that of William Gordon for slave-trading. Gordon was convicted--the first conviction under the slave law that was ever had in the United States either North or South--and sentenced to be hanged. An extraordinary effort was made to have Lincoln pardon him. Mr. Smith deemed it his duty to go to Washington and protest against clemency. Lincoln took from his desk a reprieve already prepared and laid it before him. He picked up a pen, and held it in his hand while he listened to the argument of Mr. Smith on the imperative necessity of making an example of Gordon, in order to terrorize those who were engaged in the slave-trade. Then he threw down the pen and remarked,--

"Mr. Smith, you do not know how hard it is to have a human being die when you feel that a stroke of your pen will save him."

Gordon was executed in New York.

A volunteer major who had been wounded at Petersburg found himself mustered out of his regiment on that account, _nolens volens_, and appealed to the President for an appointment on staff duty, so that he could still continue to perform service regardless of his physical incapacity.

The President took down a large volume of the laws of Congress, opened to the page and section of the act, put his finger on the line, and read aloud the words which authorized him to make staff appointments only on the request of a general commanding a brigade, division, or corps. The major admitted that he had not brought such an application, for he had not thought it necessary. "It cannot be done," said the President, "without such a request. I have no more power to appoint you, in the absence of such a request, than I would have to marry a woman to any man she might want for her husband without his consent. Bring me such an application and I will make it at once, for I see you deserve it."

The late Governor Rice, of Massachusetts, said, "A mercantile firm in Boston had an office boy whose duty, among other things, was to take the mail to and from the post-office. This boy was fresh from the country, and, seeing his opportunity to get money from the letters intrusted to him, yielded to the temptation, was detected, convicted, and imprisoned; but the employers and the jury joined with the boy's father to obtain his pardon. The father appeared in Washington with a petition numerously signed. I introduced him to the President, to whom I also handed the petition. Mr. Lincoln put on his spectacles, threw himself back in his chair and stretched his long legs and read the document. When finished, he turned to me and asked if I met a man on the stairs. 'Well,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'his errand was to get a man pardoned, and now you come to get a boy out of jail. But I am a little encouraged by your visit. They are after me on the men, but appear to be roping you in on the boys. The trouble appears to come from the courts. It seems as if the courts ought to be abolished, anyway; for they appear to pick out the very best men in the community and send them to the penitentiary, and now they are after the same kind of boys.'"

Once he received a message from a zealous Irish soldier with more courage than brains (or he would not have telegraphed direct to the President), who had been left behind in the retreat of the army across the Potomac before the advancing columns of Lee's army, with one gun of his battery on the bank of the river below Edwards Ferry. It read about thus: "I have the whole rebel army in my front. Send me another gun and I assure your honor they shall not come over." This pleased the President greatly, and he sent him an encouraging reply, suggesting that he report his situation to his superior officer.

A rebel raid on Falls Church, a little hamlet a dozen miles from Washington, had resulted in the surprise and capture of a brigadier-general and twelve army mules. When Lincoln heard of it he exclaimed,--

"How unfortunate! I can fill that general's place in five minutes, but those mules cost us two hundred dollars apiece."

Captain Knight, who was in charge of the guard at the War Department, said, "Mr. Lincoln's favorite time for visiting the War Department was between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. His tall, ungainly form wrapped in an old gray shawl, wearing usually a shockingly bad hat, and carrying a worse umbrella, came up the steps into the building. Secretary Stanton, who knew Mr. Lincoln's midnight habits, gave a standing order that, although Mr. Lincoln might come from the White House alone (and he seldom came in any other way), he should never be permitted to return alone, but should be escorted by a file of four soldiers and a non-commissioned officer.

"On the way to the White House, Mr. Lincoln would converse with us on various topics. I remember one night, when it was raining very hard, as he saw us at the door, ready to escort him, he addressed us in these words: 'Don't come out in this storm with me to-night, boys; I have my umbrella, and can get home safely without you.'

"'But,' I replied, 'Mr. President, we have positive orders from Mr. Stanton not to allow you to return alone, and you know we dare not disobey his orders.'

"'No,' replied Mr. Lincoln, 'I suppose not; for if Mr. Stanton should learn that you had let me return alone, he would have you court-martialed and shot inside of twenty-four hours.'

"I was detailed upon one occasion to escort the President to the Soldiers' Home," continued Captain Knight. "As we approached the front gate, I noticed what seemed to be a young man groping his way, as if he were blind, across the road. Hearing the carriage and horses approaching, he became frightened, and walked in the direction of the approaching danger. Mr. Lincoln quickly observed this, and shouted to the coachman to rein in his horses, which he did as they were about to run over the unfortunate youth. He had been shot through the left side of the upper part of the face, and the ball, passing from one side to the other, had put out both his eyes. He could not have been over sixteen or seventeen years of age, and, aside from his blindness, he had a very beautiful face. Mr. Lincoln extended his hand to him, and while he held it he asked him, with a voice trembling with emotion, his name, his regiment, and where he lived. The young man answered these questions and stated that he lived in Michigan; and then Mr. Lincoln made himself known to the blind soldier, and with a look that was a benediction in itself, spoke to him a few words of sympathy and bade him good-by. The following day after his interview with the President he received a commission as a first lieutenant in the regular army of the United States, accompanied by an order of retirement upon full pay; and, if he is living to-day, he is doubtless drawing the salary of a first lieutenant in the United States army on the retired list."

The most important battle of the war was fought at the polls in the Northern States in November, 1864, and from the hour that the result was announced the Southern Confederacy was doomed. It lost the confidence and respect of the people within its own jurisdiction and of the nations of Europe. Several attempts were made by the Southern leaders to open negotiations for peace, but President Lincoln gave them plainly to understand that he could not recognize the Confederacy as anything but a rebellion against the government. Then General Lee undertook "to meet General Grant with the hope that ... it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of controversy ... to a convention," etc. Grant immediately wired Lee's letter to Mr. Stanton, who received it at the Capitol on the last night of the session of Congress, where the President, attended by his Cabinet, had gone, as usual, to sign bills. Having read the telegram, Mr. Stanton handed it to the President without comment. By this time Lincoln felt himself completely master of the situation. He knew the people were behind him and would approve whatever he thought best for the welfare of the country. He had full confidence in the commanders of his armies and knew that they were crowding the Confederates into the last ditch. Therefore, for the first time since the beginning of the war, he could act promptly upon his individual judgment. Without consulting any one, he wrote the following despatch, which, without a word, he passed over the table for Stanton to sign and send:

"The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for capitulation of General Lee's army or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions. Such questions the President holds in his own hand and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile you are to press to the utmost your military advantages."

This little despatch crushed the last hope of the Confederate authorities; but, before the end could come, Lee resolved to make one more desperate attempt to escape from the toils in which he was involved. His assault was made with great spirit on March 25, and from that day until April 7 there was fighting all along the line. In the mean time Lincoln went down to City Point, where Grant had his head-quarters, on the James River a few miles below Richmond, and there had a conference with the three great heroes of the war, Sherman having come from North Carolina and Sheridan from the other side of Richmond. It was a remarkable meeting,--the first and last time these four men were ever together.

After the conference, at which Lincoln expressed his sympathy with the desperate situation in which the Confederates were placed, Grant sent a note through the lines to Lee, saying, "The results of the last week must have convinced you of the hopelessness of further resistance," and added that he regarded it a duty "to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood" by asking Lee's surrender. Lee replied that he reciprocated the desire to avoid further bloodshed, and asked for terms. Grant answered that there was only one condition, that the officers and men surrendered should be disqualified from taking up arms again. Lee replied the next day that he did not think the emergency had arisen for the surrender of his army, but offered to meet Grant at ten o'clock the next morning on the old stage line to Richmond between the pickets of the two armies. Grant answered that "the terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds of millions of property." Lee had hoped to arrest the movement of the Union troops by entering into negotiations, but found that Grant understood his purpose and was drawing more closely around him, so he accepted the inevitable and asked an interview for the surrender of his army.

The meeting at the McLean mansion at Appomattox has been too often described to require reference in these pages, except to call attention to the fact that General Grant's letter accepting the surrender of Lee's army was in direct violation of the amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863, and President Lincoln's order sent from the Capital on the night of March 3. No one knows whether Lincoln ever called his attention to that fact. There is no record of a reprimand or even a comment from the President, and it is probable that his joy and gratitude were so overwhelming that he did not even question the terms. General Grant, however, in his "Memoirs," says that he was overcome by feelings of sympathy for his heroic antagonist, and that the closing sentence of his letter, which practically pardoned the entire army, was written without a thought of its far-reaching significance.

President Lincoln was the same man in triumph that he had been in distress. Neither joy nor grief could disconcert him, but no one witnessed the enthusiasm of the public over the news from Appomattox with greater gratification. The story of his visit to Richmond is told in Chapter VI. Upon his return to Washington he took up at once the important work of restoring order in the South with as much zeal and energy as he had shown in the prosecution of the war.

On April 11, from one of the windows of the White House, in response to a serenade, he delivered his last speech, in which he departed from the habit of reticence he had practised throughout the war and expressed more of his views and purposes than he had ever previously done on a similar occasion.

April 14, the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter, was celebrated by restoring the identical flag to the staff from which it had been lowered four years before. General Robert Anderson performed that thankful duty; the Rev. Matthias Harris, the former chaplain of Fort Sumter, offered prayer; General E. D. Townsend read the original despatch announcing the evacuation; and Henry Ward Beecher delivered a brilliant oration, which concluded with these words:

"We offer to the President of these United States our solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years, and permitted him to behold this auspicious confirmation of that national unity for which he has waited with so much patience and fortitude, and for which he has labored with such disinterested wisdom."

General Grant, who arrived in Washington on the morning of the 14th, expressed anxiety concerning the situation of General Sherman, because he had heard nothing from him for several days. The President assured him that he need have no concern, because the night before he had dreamed that he was on board a curious vessel sailing rapidly towards a dark and indefinite shore, and awoke before landing. He said he had had exactly the same dream before the battles of Antietam, Murfreesborough, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and other great victories. Although the members of the Cabinet were accustomed to similar revelations of that mysticism which was one of Lincoln's characteristics, they were greatly impressed; but Grant dismissed it with the comment that there was no victory at Murfreesborough, and that the battle there had no important results. The President did not seem to notice this matter-of-fact remark, and continued to describe his dream and the sensations which followed it, insisting that Sherman would soon report an important victory, because he could think of no other possible event to which his dream might refer. Twelve days later, April 26, came the news of the surrender of Johnston's army to Sherman and the end of the war.

In the presence of General Grant, the Cabinet discussed the subject of reconstruction. As there was a difference of opinion and lack of information concerning the proposed regulations for governing trade between the States, the President appointed Mr. Stanton, Mr. Welles, and Mr. McCulloch a committee to submit recommendations.

At the previous Cabinet meeting Secretary Stanton had submitted a plan for the re-establishment of civil government, which was discussed at length. It was providential, the President said, that Congress would not sit again for at least seven months, which would allow him time to restore order and civil authority without interference. He expressed sympathy with the people of the South and a desire to avoid further bloodshed and exhibitions of resentment or vindictiveness. He believed that they needed charity more than censure. He said that he would not permit the severe punishment of the Southern leaders, notwithstanding the clamor from the North. No one need expect to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them.

"Frighten them out of the country!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms around as if he were driving sheep; "let down the bars; scare them off! Enough lives have been sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union!"

Secretary Welles records in his diary this extraordinary scene at the last meeting of the Lincoln Cabinet, and adds that, as the President dismissed his advisers, he urged them to give the most earnest consideration to the problem that had been presented by the restoration of peace.

The President spent the rest of the day with his son Robert and other personal friends, violating his rule and refusing to admit any one on official business. During the afternoon he went with Mrs. Lincoln for a long drive, and seemed to be in an unusually happy and contented mood. She said that he talked of going back to Springfield to practise law. His heart was overflowing with gratitude to the Heavenly Father, he said, for all His goodness, and particularly for the close of the war and the triumph of the Union arms, for there would be no further bloodshed or distress. The members of his family and his secretaries agree that they never had known him to be in such a satisfied and contented state of mind. The clouds that had hung over him for four years had cleared away; the war was over, peace was restored, and the only duty left to him was extremely grateful to his nature,--the task of restoring happiness and prosperity.

After dinner that evening Mr. Colfax and Mr. Ashmun, of the House of Representatives, who were about to leave Washington for the summer, came to inquire if the President intended to call an extra session of Congress. He assured them that he did not; and, as they were leaving the White House, Ward Lamon, the United States Marshal of the District of Columbia, and one of his oldest friends, called to ask a pardon for an old soldier who had been convicted of violating the army regulations. According to the recollection of Mr. Pendel, one of the President's messengers, Lincoln told his last story at that time. As he was about to sign the pardon, he turned to Lamon, saying,--

"Lamon, do you know how the Patagonians eat oysters?"

"No, I do not, Mr. Lincoln," was the reply.

"It is their habit to open them as fast as they can and throw the shells out of the window, and when the pile of shells grows to be higher than the house, why, they pick up stakes and move. Now, Lamon, I felt like beginning a new pile of pardons, and I guess this is a good one to begin on."

The President, Mrs. Lincoln, and General and Mrs. Grant had accepted a box at Ford's Theatre that evening, and, the fact having been announced in the newspapers, there was a large attendance. Providentially General Grant changed his mind at the last moment and took a train for New York instead. Mrs. Lincoln invited Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, the daughter and step-son of Senator Ira Harris, of New York, to take the vacant places, and the party arrived at the theatre shortly after the curtain rose. About ten o'clock John Wilkes Booth, a dissipated young actor and fanatical sympathizer of the South, pushed his way through the crowd to the President's box, showed a card to the usher who had been placed at the door to keep out inquisitive people, and was allowed to enter. The eyes of the President and his companions were fixed upon the stage, so that his entrance was unnoticed. Carrying a knife in his left hand, Booth approached within arm's length of the President and fired a pistol; dropping that weapon, he took the knife in his right hand and struck savagely at Major Rathbone, who caught the blow upon his left arm, receiving a deep wound. Booth then vaulted over the railing of the box upon the stage, but his spur caught in the folds of the drapery and he fell, breaking his leg. Staggering to the footlights, he brandished his dripping knife, shouted in a tragic manner "_Sic semper tyrannis_," the State motto of Virginia, and disappeared between the flies.

Major Rathbone shouted "Stop him!" The actors upon the stage were stupefied by fright and surprise, and it was several seconds before the audience realized what had happened. They were brought to their senses by some one who shouted, "He has shot the President!" Several men jumped upon the stage in pursuit of the assassin, while three army surgeons who happened to be present forced their way through the crowd to the President's box. As soon as a passage could be cleared, the President was carried across the street and laid upon a bed in a small house, where Mrs. Lincoln followed him almost overcome by the shock from which she never recovered. Major Rathbone, exhausted by the loss of blood, was carried home. Messengers were sent for the Cabinet, for the President's family physician, and for the Surgeon-General of the army. Robert Lincoln and John Hay learned the news from the shouts of a frantic crowd which soon poured through the gates of the White House, and hurried at once to the little house on Tenth Street. On their way they were told that most of the Cabinet had been murdered.

The physicians who surrounded the President's bed pronounced the wound fatal. The assassin's bullet entered the back of his head on the left side, passed through the brain, and lodged behind the left ear. But for his powerful physique and his abundant vitality, it would have brought instant death. He never recovered consciousness, but lingered through the night and died at twenty-two minutes past seven in the morning. Dr. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which the President attended, was kneeling in prayer by his bedside; Surgeon-General Barnes, of the army, had his finger upon the President's pulse; Robert Lincoln, Senator Sumner, and one of the assistant secretaries leaned upon the foot of the bed. Colonel Hay describes the scene as follows:

"As the dawn came and the lamplight grew pale in the fresher beams, his pulse began to fail; but his face even then was scarcely more haggard than those of the sorrowing group of statesmen and generals around him. His automatic moaning, which had continued through the night, ceased; a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features. At twenty-two minutes after seven he died. Stanton broke the silence by saying, 'Now he belongs to the ages.' Dr. Gurley kneeled by the bedside and prayed fervently. The widow came in from the adjoining room, supported by her son, and cast herself with loud outcry on the dead body."

VIII

THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SLAVES

Abraham Lincoln's hatred of slavery was inborn, but its development began when he saw human beings sold at auction on the levee at New Orleans and chained and beaten upon the decks of Mississippi River steamboats on their way to market. These horrors were first witnessed by him when he made his voyage on the flat-boat from Gentryville, and the impression was deepened upon his second journey four years later from New Salem. Even to the day of his death the recollection was vivid. He alluded to it frequently while the slave problem was perplexing him and his advisers during the war, and the picture was before his eyes when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. As one of his companions said, "Slavery ran the iron into him then and there."

However, the mind of the boy had been prepared for this impression by the teachings of his mother. In 1804 a crusade against slavery in Kentucky was started by the itinerant preachers of the Baptist Church, and the Rev. Jesse Head, the minister who married Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, was a bold abolitionist and boldly proclaimed the doctrine of human liberty wherever he went. Lincoln's father and mother were among his most devoted disciples, and when he was a mere child Abraham Lincoln inherited their hatred of human servitude. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he once said in a speech. "I cannot remember when I did not think so and feel so."

Down in a corner of Indiana where the Lincolns lived there were slaves for years after the admission of the State to the Union, in spite of the ordinance of 1787 and the statutes which Lincoln read in his youth. Nor was the fact a secret. The census of 1820 showed one hundred and ninety slaves, but during the next year the State Supreme Court declared them free.

In the following year (1822) occurred a great moral revolution on the frontier. Then commenced the struggle between the friends and opponents of slavery which lasted until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Abraham Lincoln, with the preparation I have described, was from the beginning an active participant, and gradually became a leader in one of the greatest controversies that has ever engaged the intellectual and moral forces of the world.

In 1822, eight years before the Lincoln family left Indiana, an attempt was made to introduce slavery into Illinois, and was defeated by Edward Coles, of Virginia, the Governor, who gave his entire salary for four years to pay the expense of the contest. The antislavery members of the Legislature contributed a thousand dollars to the fund, which was spent in the distribution of literature on the subject. For a time the storm subsided, but the deep hatred of the iniquity was spreading through the North, and abolition societies were being organized in every city and village where the friends of human freedom existed in sufficient numbers to sustain themselves against the powerful proslavery sentiment. Occasionally there was a public discussion, but the controversy raged most fiercely at the corner groceries, at the county court-house, and at other places where thinking men were in the habit of assembling, and Lincoln was always ready and eager to enter the debates. His convictions were formed and grew firmer as he studied the question, and his moral courage developed with them. It was a good deal of an ordeal for an ambitious young man just beginning his career to attack a popular institution, in the midst of a community many of whom had been born and educated in slave States and considered what he believed a curse to be a divine institution. Nevertheless, the sense of justice and humanity stimulated Abraham Lincoln to take his place upon the side of freedom, and he never lost an opportunity to denounce slavery as founded on injustice and wrong.

His first opportunity to make a public avowal of his views occurred in 1838, when the Illinois Legislature passed a series of resolutions declaring that the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-holding States by the Federal Constitution, and "that we highly disapprove of the formation of abolition societies and of the doctrines promulgated by them." Lincoln and five other members of the Legislature voted against these resolutions; and in order to make his position more fully understood by his constituents and the members of the Whig party throughout the State, he prepared a protest, which he persuaded Dan Stone, one of his colleagues from Sangamon County, to sign with him, and, at their request, it was spread upon the journal of the House, as follows:

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the people of the District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions is their reasons for entering this protest."

This, I am confident, is the first formal declaration against the system of slavery that was made in any legislative body in the United States, at least west of the Hudson River.

A few months after this event occurred the tragic death of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of a religious newspaper at Alton, whose antislavery editorials enraged the proslavery mob, which murdered him and threw his press and type into the Mississippi River. In this case, as in many others, the blood of a martyr was the seed of the faith. The mob that murdered Elijah P. Lovejoy did more to crystallize public opinion and stimulate the movement than all the arguments and appeals uttered up to that date.

After his bold action in the Legislature Lincoln was recognized as the antislavery leader in the central part of Illinois, but was frequently the object of criticism because of his conservative views. He argued, then, as he did twenty-five years later, that the Constitution of the United States was sacred, and as long as it existed must be obeyed. It recognized the right to hold slaves in certain States, and therefore that right could not be denied until the Constitution was appropriately amended. The friends of freedom were at liberty to denounce the great wrong, but they must proceed legally in securing its removal. This position was taken by Lincoln when he was only twenty-eight years old, and he held it until the abolition of slavery became a military necessity. At the same time he was patiently and confidently trying to educate public sentiment and lead the abolition movement in the right direction.

Lincoln's second opportunity to place himself formally on record occurred when he was a member of the House of Representatives, where the controversy had been carried long before, and had been revived and vitalized by the treaty with Mexico at the close of the war of 1848, which added to the United States a territory as large as half of Europe. The slave-holders immediately demanded it for their own, but in the previous Congress the Whig and antislavery Democrats had succeeded in attaching to an appropriation bill an amendment known as the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited the extension of slavery into the territory recently acquired. This had been followed up by the adoption of similar provisions wherever the Whigs could get an opportunity to attach them to other legislation. Lincoln used to say that during his two years in Congress he voted for the Wilmot Proviso in one form or another more than fifty times.

Upon his arrival in Washington his horror of the slavery system and the impressions received during his voyages to New Orleans were revived by witnessing the proceedings and the distress in the slave-markets of the national capital, and he determined to devote his best efforts to a removal of that scandal and reproach. Fifteen years later, in one of his speeches during the debate with Douglas, he described the slave-shambles of Washington, and said, "In view from the windows of the Capitol a sort of negro livery stable where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, has been openly maintained for more than fifty years."

He believed that Congress had power under the Constitution to regulate all affairs in the Territories and the District of Columbia, and, after consulting with several of the leading citizens of Washington, he introduced a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The first two sections prohibit the introduction of slaves within the limits of the District or the selling of them out of it, exception being made to the servants of officials of the government from the slave-holding States. The third section provides for the apprenticeship and gradual emancipation of children born of slave mothers after January 1, 1850. The fourth provides full compensation for all slaves voluntarily made free by their owners. The fifth recognizes the fugitive-slave law, and the sixth submits the proposition to a popular vote, and provides that it shall not go into force until ratified by a majority of the voters of the District.

This bill met with more violent opposition from other parts of the country than from the slave-holders who were directly affected. The people of the South feared that it might serve as a precedent for similar actions in other parts of the country and stimulate the antislavery sentiment of the North. On the other hand, the abolitionists, with that unreasonable spirit which usually governs men of radical views, condemned the measure as a compromise with wrong, and declared that they would never permit money from the public treasury to be expended for the purchase of human beings. No action was taken in Congress. The bill was referred to the appropriate committee and was stuffed into a pigeonhole, where it was never disturbed; but it is a remarkable coincidence that less than fifteen years later it was Lincoln's privilege to approve an act of Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

It is interesting to watch the development of Lincoln's views on the slavery question, as revealed by his public utterances and private letters during the great struggle between 1850 and 1860, until the people of the republic named him as umpire to decide the greatest question that ever engaged the moral and intellectual attention of a people. Here and there appear curious phrases, startling predictions, vivid epigrams, and unanswerable arguments. For example, in 1855 he declared that "the autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown and proclaim free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves." A reference to the dates will show that Alexander II., by imperial decree, emancipated the serfs of Russia almost upon the same day, at the same hour, that the Southern States began the greatest war of modern times to protect and extend the institution of slavery.

At Rochester, in the summer of 1859, Mr. Seward furnished the Republican party a watch-cry when he called it "the irrepressible conflict," but two years before and repeatedly after Lincoln uttered the same idea in almost the same phrase. In three Presidential campaigns, in two contests for the Senate, and in almost every local political contest after 1840 slavery was the principal theme of his speeches, until the Douglas debate of 1858 caused him to be recognized as the most powerful advocate and defender of antislavery doctrines.

Senator Douglas found great amusement in accusing Lincoln of a desire to establish social equality between the whites and the blacks, and in his speeches seldom failed to evoke a roar of laughter by declaring that "Abe Lincoln" and other abolitionists "wanted to marry niggers." Lincoln paid no attention to this vulgar joke until he saw that it was becoming serious, and that many people actually believed that the abolitionists were proposing to do what Douglas had said. He attempted to remove this impression by a serious discussion of the doctrine of equality, and in one of his speeches declared, "I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife." In another speech he said, "I shall never marry a negress, but I have no objection to any one else doing so. If a white man wants to marry a negro woman, let him do it,--if the negro woman can stand it."

At another time he said, "If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more, it I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of that gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it that no man would question how I ought to decide."

In his Cooper Union speech may be found his strongest argument. "If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality,--its universality. If it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension,--its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.... Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in the free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care,' on a question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

In a letter dated July 28, 1859, he wrote, "There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me some uneasiness.... Douglas's popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just principle, nationalizes slavery, and revives the African slave-trade inevitably. Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the argument which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from having slaves, and when you have found it, it will be an equally good one why Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from importing slaves from Africa."

While he was campaigning in Ohio, in 1859, occurred the John Brown episode at Harper's Ferry, which created intense excitement throughout the entire country and particularly in the South, where it was interpreted as an organized attempt of the abolitionists to arouse an insurrection among the slaves. In his speeches Lincoln did much to allay public sentiment in Illinois, for he construed the attack upon Harper's Ferry with his habitual common sense. He argued that it was not a slave insurrection, but an attempt to organize one in which the slaves refused to participate, and he compared it with many attempts related in history to assassinate kings and emperors. "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people until he fancies himself commissioned by heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on Old England in one case and on New England in the other does not disprove the sameness of the two things."

It was not long after the inauguration that President Lincoln was compelled to treat the slavery problem in a practical manner. To him it ceased to be a question of morals and became an actual, perplexing problem continually appearing in every direction and in various forms. The first movement of troops dislodged from the plantations of their owners a multitude of slaves, who found their way to the camps of the Union army and were employed as servants, teamsters, and often as guides. The Northern soldier took a sympathetic interest in the escaped slave, and as fast as he advanced into slave territory the greater that sympathy became. A Virginia planter looking for a fugitive slave in a Union camp was a familiar object of ridicule and derision, and he seldom found any satisfaction.

One day the representative of Colonel Mallory, a Virginia planter, came into the Union lines at Fortress Monroe and demanded three field-hands who, he asserted, were at that time in the camp. General B. F. Butler, who was in command, replied that, as Virginia claimed to be a foreign country, the fugitive-slave law could not possibly be in operation there, and declined to surrender the negroes unless the owner would take the oath of allegiance to the United States. A newspaper correspondent, in reporting this incident, took the ground that, as the Confederate commanders were using negroes as laborers upon fortifications, under international law they were clearly contraband of war. A new word was coined. From that moment, and until the struggle was over, escaped negroes were known as "contrabands," and public opinion in the North decided that they were subject to release or confiscation by military right and usage. General Butler always assumed the credit of formulating that doctrine, and insisted that the correspondent had adopted a suggestion overheard at the mess-table; but, however it originated, it had more influence upon the solution of the problem than volumes of argument might have had. When it became known among the negroes in Virginia that the Union troops would not send them back to slavery, the plantations were deserted and the Northern camps were crowded with men, women, and children of all ages, who had to be clothed and fed. General Butler relieved the embarrassment by sending the able-bodied men to work upon the fortifications, by utilizing the women as cooks and laundresses, and by permitting his officers to employ them as servants.

After a time the exodus spread to Washington, and the slaves in that city began to find their way across the Potomac into the military camps, which caused a great deal of dissatisfaction and seemed to have an unfavorable effect upon the political action of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri; so that President Lincoln was appealed to from all sides to order the execution of the fugitive-slave law in States which he was trying to keep in the Union. He believed that public sentiment was growing and would ultimately furnish a solution. He quoted the Methodist presiding elder, riding about his circuit at the time of the spring freshets, whose young companion showed great anxiety as to how they should cross Fox River, then very much swollen. The elder replied that he had made it the rule of his life never to cross Fox River until he came to it.

With the same philosophical spirit, Lincoln made the negro question "a local issue," to be treated by each commander and the police of each place as circumstances suggested, and, under his instructions, the commandant at Washington issued an order that "fugitive slaves will under no pretext whatever be permitted to reside, or be in any way harbored, in the quarters and camps of the troops serving in this department." This served to satisfy the complaints of the Maryland planters and the slave-holders of the District of Columbia until Congress passed the confiscation act, which forfeited the property rights of disloyal owners. That was the first step towards emancipation.

President Lincoln's plan to invest military commanders with practical authority to solve the negro problem according to their individual judgment soon got him into trouble, especially with his Secretary of War, for the latter, in his report to Congress, without the knowledge of the President and without consulting him, explained the policy of the government as follows:

"If it shall be found that the men who have been held by the rebels as slaves are capable of bearing arms and performing efficient military service, it is right, and may become the duty, of the government to arm and equip them, and employ their services against the rebels, under proper military regulation, discipline, and command."

The report did not reach the public; it was suppressed and modified before being printed in the newspapers; but that paragraph made Mr. Cameron's resignation necessary. As amended, the report contained a simple declaration that fugitive and abandoned slaves, being an important factor in the military situation, would not be returned to disloyal masters, but would be employed so far as possible in the services of the Union army, and withheld from the enemy until Congress should make some permanent disposition of them.

Lincoln was severely criticised by the antislavery newspapers of the North. But he did not lose his patience, and in his message to Congress declared his intention to keep the integrity of the Union prominent "as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action of the Legislature." But while he was writing these guarded and ambiguous phrases he had already decided to propose a plan of voluntary abolition for the District of Columbia similar to that he had offered in Congress thirteen years before. It was a measure of expediency and delay. He evidently had no expectation that such a proposition would be adopted. He undoubtedly realized that it was impossible; but his political sagacity and knowledge of human nature taught him that the public, to use a homely but significant expression which was familiar to his childhood, "must have something to chaw on," and further illustrated his point by reminding a caller how easily an angry dog might be diverted by throwing him a bone.

He soon followed this up by proposing to Delaware a scheme for the purchase by the government of the seventeen hundred and ninety-eight slaves shown by the census of 1860 to be still held in that State, at the rate of four hundred dollars per capita. A majority of the Lower House of the Legislature of Delaware accepted the idea, but the Senate rejected it and the subject was dropped. But Lincoln did not allow the minds of his antislavery critics to rest. He kept them busy discussing new propositions, and on March 6, 1862, sent a special message to the two Houses of Congress recommending the gradual abolishment of slavery by furnishing to the several States from the public treasury sufficient funds "to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." By this proposition he avoided the objections to the general government interfering with the domestic affairs of the States, and left the people of each State to arrange for emancipation in their own way. "It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them," he said in his message, and again called attention to the probable effects of the war upon the slave situation. The representatives of the border States in Congress took no heed of the warning, but the Northern papers devoted a great deal of space to a discussion of the proposition, and Lincoln's purpose of giving them something to talk about was accomplished. The most serious objection was based upon the enormous expenses. As early as 1839 Henry Clay estimated the value of the slaves at one billion two hundred and fifty million dollars, and upon the same basis of calculation it must have exceeded two billion dollars in 1860; but Lincoln answered that one-half day's cost of the war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars a head, and that eighty-seven days' cost would pay for all the slaves in the border States.

He called together the Congressional delegates from the border States and made an earnest effort to convince them of the expediency of his plan. The House of Representatives adopted it by a two-thirds vote, although few of the members from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri voted with the affirmative. A month later the resolution was concurred in by the Senate, and what Thaddeus Stevens, the radical leader of the House, described as "the most diluted milk-and-water-gruel proposition ever given to the American people" became a law.

It is not necessary to say that the Legislatures of the border States never had an opportunity to take advantage of the proposition; history moved too fast for them. But Lincoln at once began a systematic campaign in Congress to secure legislation for the purchase of all the slaves belonging to loyal owners in the District of Columbia, and that became a law on April 16, 1862.

Public opinion was being rapidly educated; the Republican majority in Congress was pledged to the doctrine of emancipation; the slave-holders in the border States were being led gradually to realize the inevitable, and if they had been wise they would promptly have accepted the generosity of the President's proposition and thus have escaped the enormous pecuniary losses which they suffered by the Emancipation Proclamation a little later.

Before Congress adjourned, laws were passed which materially altered the situation. The army was prohibited from surrendering fugitive slaves; the confiscation act was greatly enlarged; all slaves actually employed in military service by the Confederacy were declared free; the President was authorized to enlist negro regiments for the war; the Missouri Compromise was restored; slavery was forbidden in all Territories of the United States; appropriations were made for carrying into effect the treaty with Great Britain to suppress the slave-trade; the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, two black republics, were formally recognized, and two nations of negroes, with negro Presidents, negro officials, and negro ambassadors, were admitted on an equality into the sisterhood of civilized nations. Any one who would have predicted such legislation a year previous would have been considered insane, even six months previous it would have been declared impossible.

The next sensation was an emancipation proclamation issued by General David Hunter, who commanded the Department of the South, which declared free all persons held as slaves in the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Lincoln promptly vetoed Hunter's order and declared it unauthorized and void, saying that he reserved to himself, "as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free" when "it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government."

This announcement should have satisfied the North and have been a sufficient warning to the South, because as we read it now we can see Lincoln's purposes between the lines.

The President could not permit the Congressional delegations from the border States to return to their constituents without one more admonition and one more appeal to their patriotism and their sense of justice and wisdom. He called them to the White House and read to them a carefully prepared argument in support of his plan to sell their slaves to the government. Two-thirds of them united in an explanation of their reasons for rejecting the scheme on account of its impracticability, and the remainder promised to submit it to their constituents. The reception of this last appeal convinced Lincoln that he could do nothing by moral suasion, and he immediately determined to try the use of force.

"It has got to be," he told a friend afterwards. "We had played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game; and I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and, without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation."

On July 22, 1862, he read to his Cabinet the first draft of a proclamation, not for the purpose of asking their advice, he told them, but for their information. But every man was pledged to confidence, and the secret was so well kept that the public had no suspicion of his intention, and the radical newspapers and abolitionists continued to criticise and attack him in a most abusive manner. A committee of clergymen from Chicago came to Washington to urge him to issue an emancipation proclamation. He received them respectfully, but did not tell them that their wishes would have been anticipated but for the defeat of the Union army at the second battle of Bull Run. He made them an eloquent but evasive speech, and appealed to their good sense. "Now, gentlemen," he said, "if I cannot enforce the Constitution down South, how can I enforce a mere Presidential proclamation? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative like the Pope's Bull against the comet."

Mr. Colfax, who accompanied the delegation, says that "one of these ministers felt it his duty to make a more searching appeal to the President's conscience. Just as they were retiring, he turned and said to Mr. Lincoln,--

"'What you have said to us, Mr. President, compels me to say, in reply, that it is a message to you from our Divine Master, through me, commanding you, sir, to open the doors of bondage that the slave may go free!'

"Mr. Lincoln replied instantly, 'That may be, sir, for I have studied this question by night and by day for weeks and for months; but if it is, as you say, a message from your Divine Master, is it not odd that the only channel he could send it by was that roundabout route by that awfully wicked city of Chicago?'

"In discussing the question, he used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called his tail a leg, replied, 'Five.' To which the prompt response was made that _calling_ the tail a leg would not _make_ it a leg.

"He sought to measure so accurately, so precisely, the public sentiment that, whenever he advanced, the loyal hosts of the nation would keep step with him. In regard to the policy of arming the slaves against the Rebellion, never, until the tide of patriotic volunteering had ebbed and our soldiers saw their ranks rapidly melting away, could our colored troops have been added to their brigades without perilous discontent, if not open revolt. Against all appeals, all demands, against even threats of some members of his party, Lincoln stood like a rock on this question until he felt that the opportune moment had arrived."

Not only was he denounced by the abolitionists, but by the foremost leaders of the Republican party, such as Benjamin F. Wade and Horace Greeley, and received appeals from loyal people of the South, to whom he replied, with his usual patience, "What is done and omitted about the slaves is done and omitted on the same military necessity. I shall not do more than I can, and shall do all that I can, to save the government."

In his view, military necessity was the only justification for the violation of the Constitution, which protected the slaves. In the second place, his delay was due to a doubt whether public sentiment in the North was prepared for a measure so radical and far-reaching; by his hope that the people of the border States would soon be willing to accept the act as a friendly as well as a necessary solution of a dilemma; and, finally, because of his profound respect for the Constitution which he had sworn to maintain. He would not free the negro because the Constitution stood in his way, and only for the sake of the Union was he willing to override that sacred instrument. This purpose was tersely expressed when, under great provocation, he allowed himself to violate his own rule and reply to Horace Greeley, who had attacked him in an open letter of unjust censure, accusing him of neglecting his duty.

"I would save the Union," he said, frankly. "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, destroy 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 to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save 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 believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, 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 help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

Contemplating the events in the history of emancipation in a perspective of forty years, it is difficult to say whether we admire more the skill with which President Lincoln led public sentiment along with him or the reticence and dignity with which he restrained his own desire to yield to the influence of the good people of the North and protect himself from the clamor of his critics. His letter to Mr. Greeley was not an argument in a controversy, nor an apology for or defence of his policy; but he intended it to be a warning to prepare the slave-holders of the border States and the South for an event which only he and his Cabinet knew was about to happen, and, at the same time, to divert the attention of the Union people of the North until a favorable opportunity arrived for proclaiming freedom.

Mr. Greeley was not satisfied with the assurances contained in the letter, and continued to attack the President in a persistent manner. He was invited to come to Washington and "fight it out in private," but sent his managing editor instead, who spent an interesting evening and had an animated argument with the President; but the latter could not trust him with the momentous secret, and was compelled to wait until a Union victory offered a favorable opportunity to take the step he contemplated. As he told the Chicago pastors, he had not decided against a proclamation of liberty for the slaves, but held the matter under advisement. "And I can assure you," he added, "that the subject is on my mind by day and by night; more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do."

Accordingly, on September 22, 1862, after the battle of Antietam, he called his Cabinet together and announced his intention to issue a proclamation of emancipation. "I have gotten you together to hear what I have written down," he said. "I do not want your advice about the main matter, because I have determined that myself. This I say without intending anything but respect for all of you. I alone must bear the responsibility for taking the course which I feel I ought to take."

The preliminary proclamation was issued, and in his annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Lincoln recommended the passage of a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment providing compensation for every State which would abolish slavery before the year 1900, another guaranteeing freedom to all slaves that had been released by the chances of war, and a third authorizing Congress to provide a plan of colonization for them. His idea was to send them either to Africa, to the West Indies, or to Central America, and he encouraged several extensive plans of colonization, which, however, were not carried into practical operation. In this connection it is interesting to recall the reminiscences of General Butler, who says that shortly before the assassination the President sent for him and said,--

"'General Butler, I am troubled about the negroes. We are soon to have peace. We have got some one hundred and odd thousand negroes who have been trained to arms. When peace shall come I fear lest these colored men shall organize themselves in the South, especially in the States where the negroes are in preponderance in numbers, into guerilla parties, and we shall have down there a warfare between the whites and the negroes. In the course of the reconstruction of the government it will become a question of how the negro is to be disposed of. Would it not be possible to export them to some place, say Liberia or South America, and organize them into communities to support themselves?'

"General Butler replied, 'We have large quantities of clothing to clothe them, and arms and everything necessary for them, even to spades and shovels, mules, and wagons. Our war has shown that an army organization is the very best for digging up the soil and making intrenchments. Witness the very many miles of intrenchments that our soldiers have dug out. I know of a concession of the United States of Colombia for a tract of thirty miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama for opening a ship canal. The enlistments of the negroes have all of them from two or three years to run. Why not send them all down there to dig the canal? They will withstand the climate, and the work can be done with less cost to the United States in that way than in any other. If you choose, I will take command of the expedition. We will take our arms with us, and I need not suggest to you that we will need nobody sent down to guard us from the interference of any nation. We will proceed to cultivate the land and supply ourselves with all the fresh food that can be raised in the tropics, which will be all that will be needed, and your stores of provisions and supplies of clothing will furnish all the rest. Shall I work out the details of such an expedition for you, Mr. President?'

"He reflected for some time, and then said, 'There is meat in that suggestion, General Butler; there is meat in that suggestion. Go and talk to Seward and see what foreign complications there will be about it.'

"But that evening Secretary Seward, in his drive before dinner, was thrown from his carriage and severely injured, his jaw being broken, and he was confined to his bed until the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted murder of himself by one of the confederates of Booth, so that the subject could never be again mentioned to Mr. Lincoln."

The final proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. On the afternoon of December 31, after the Cabinet meeting was over Lincoln rewrote the document with great care, embodying in it several suggestions which had been made by his Cabinet, but rigidly adhering to the spirit of the original. In his judgment, the time had now come for adopting this extreme measure, and "upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."

The morning of New Year's day was occupied by the official reception, and the President was kept busy until about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he went to the Executive Chamber, took the manuscript from a drawer in his desk, wrote his name, and closed a controversy that had raged for half a century. He carefully laid away the pen he had used for Mr. Sumner, who had promised to obtain it for George Livermore, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, an old abolitionist and the author of a work on slavery which had greatly interested Lincoln. It was a steel pen with an ordinary wooden handle, such as is used by school-children and can be bought for a penny at any stationery store. The end of the holder showed the marks of Lincoln's teeth, for he had a habit of putting his pen-holder into his mouth whenever he was puzzled in composition.

Lincoln's own commentary and explanation of the step which led to this edict of freedom was written little more than a year later, to a friend, and should be carefully studied before forming a judgment upon the reasons for and the consequences of that act:

"I am naturally antislavery," he said. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter."

Lincoln did not live to witness the consummation or the consequences of the edict. The preliminary resolution for a constitutional amendment was not secured until after a long struggle in Congress and against the most determined opposition. Were it not for Lincoln's political skill and tact, it might never have been adopted. The work of ratification by the loyal States was not completed until December, 1865, when Mr. Seward, still Secretary of State, issued a proclamation announcing that the thirteenth amendment had been ratified by twenty-seven of the thirty-six States then composing the Union, and that slavery and involuntary servitude were from that time and forever impossible within the limits of the United States.

Some one has arranged the Emancipation Proclamation so that its words form an accurate profile of Abraham Lincoln's face. The picture is perfect and not a letter of the document is wanting.

Lincoln's ideas concerning the enfranchisement of the negroes were expressed in a letter to Governor Hahn congratulating him upon having his name fixed in history as the first free Governor of the State of Louisiana, and saying, "Now, you are about to have a convention which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the colored people may not be let in,--as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty safe within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion--not to the public, but to you alone."

On April 11, 1865, he made his last speech. It was delivered from the portico of the White House in response to an invitation from the managers of a jubilee celebration over the surrender of Lee's army. Twice before was he called out by serenading parties, and on both occasions declined to give more than a few informal expressions of congratulation and gratitude; but, being pressed by the committee, he consented to deliver a formal address, and with great care prepared a manuscript upon the reconstruction problem. It was undoubtedly intended as a "feeler" to test public sentiment in the North, and that portion of it which relates to negro suffrage is as follows:

"We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relations to the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again get them into their proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact easier to do this without deciding, or even considering, whether those States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between those States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.

"It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and those who have served our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it?

"Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free State Constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. The Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the States--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants--and they ask the nation's recognition and its assistance to make good the committal.... We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not obtain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only as what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."

We have the testimony of members of the Cabinet that the question of suffrage was several times discussed, and that Lincoln and Mr. Chase differed as to constitutional authority and limitations in that matter. Mr. Chase held that Congress had the right and power to enact such laws for the government of the people of the States lately in rebellion as might be deemed expedient to the public safety, including the bestowal of suffrage upon the negroes; but Lincoln held that the latter right rested exclusively with the States. In his amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863, he said that any provision by which the States shall provide for the education and for the welfare of "the laboring landless and homeless class will not be objected to by the national Executive;" and Mr. Usher, his Secretary of the Interior, says, "From all that could be gathered by those who observed his conduct in those times, it seemed his hope that the people in the insurgent States, upon exercising authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States, would find it necessary to make suitable provision, not only for the education of the freedmen, but also for their acquisition of property and security in its possession, and to secure that would find it necessary and expedient to bestow suffrage upon them, in some degree at least."

Mr. Hugh McCulloch, who succeeded Mr. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, says, "There is nothing in his record to indicate that he would have favored the immediate and full enfranchisement of those who, having been always in servitude, were unfit for an intelligent and independent use of the ballot. In the plan for the rehabilitation of the South which he and his Cabinet had partially agreed upon, and which Mr. Johnson and the same Cabinet endeavored to perfect and carry out, no provision was made for negro suffrage. This question was purposely left open for further consideration and for Congressional action, under such amendments of the Constitution as the changed condition of the country might render necessary. From some of his incidental expressions, and from his well-known opinions upon the subject of suffrage and the States' right to regulate it, my opinion is that he would have been disposed to let that question remain as it was before the war; with, however, such amendments of the Constitution as would have prevented any but those who were permitted to vote in Federal elections from being included in the enumeration for representatives in Congress, thus inducing the recent Slave States, for the purpose of increasing their Congressional influence and power, to give the ballot to black men as well as white."

IX

A MASTER IN DIPLOMACY

That rare gift which in the every-day affairs of life is called tact and in statecraft is known as diplomacy was possessed by Abraham Lincoln to a degree that was remarkable for a man of his meagre education and limited experience. Before his nomination to the Presidency his fame and activity had been almost exclusively provincial, and in a province which had not yet grown out of the formative period; but he was a profound student of human nature, and possessed a quality called sagacity, which is the nearest approach to wisdom and is a gift of nature. This knowledge and quality were developed during his political life. A successful politician must be a diplomatist and a statesman. The English language lacks terms to describe men of Lincoln's attainments. The French, Spaniards, and Germans have definitions for different grades of politicians, while the English are limited to that single word, and apply it to every person who participates in political affairs, from a ward-worker in the slums of the cities to an occupant of the Executive chair of the nation. William McKinley, like Abraham Lincoln, was a consummate politician and at the same time a statesman and a diplomatist. The dictionary definition of the latter is "a man who has dexterity or skill in managing negotiations of any kind;" and diplomacy, by the same authority, is "artful management with a view of securing advantages."

According to this definition, Lincoln, as a diplomatist, was unsurpassed in his generation either at home or abroad, as the history of the foreign relations of our government during his administration will show. He guided the foreign policy of the United States from 1861 to 1865 as closely as he directed its military campaigns until 1864, when he yielded the responsibility to General Grant; and, although the public gave the credit to Seward, the members of the Cabinet, the foreign committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and others intimately associated with that branch of the administration recognized his genius in all the larger attributes of diplomacy. The untrained lawyer from the prairies without hesitation assumed the responsibility of conducting the foreign policy of the government in the most critical period of its existence, and revised the diplomatic correspondence of his Secretary of State, who had the reputation of being one of the most subtle and far-sighted statesmen of his age. But the developments showed that Lincoln alone had a complete grasp of a situation unprecedented in our history.

He was a diplomatist by nature, and developed the talent early. When a boy, he was selected as umpire at wrestling-matches, cock-fights, horse- and foot-races, and other rude sports of the neighborhood because his associates had confidence in his judgment and honesty. Because he had tact, in addition to those qualities, he was the peacemaker and court of appeals in quarrels; the referee in disputes; the arbiter in controversies concerning literature, theology, woodcraft, and morals. His decisions were rarely, if ever, questioned. 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, musingly; "but I think it very likely, for I have 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."

And he always avoided collisions. It was not because he lacked courage or confidence. Obstinacy is often mistaken for courage, and, as one of Lincoln's advisers remarked, "Political graveyards are filled with buried ambitions and crushed hopes because of that mistake, which Mr. Lincoln never made." He never allowed an antagonist to fathom his thoughts or to see the line along which he was working. He gave way in matters of small importance to secure a firmer position to fight a more important battle. He overcame obstacles and escaped entanglements by the exercise of this faculty called diplomacy, without surrendering a principle or making an important concession.

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 was one of the most embarrassing and perplexing questions that arose during the war, illustrates this peculiar trait by an anecdote. He says,--

"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 for 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 summons 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 dropped in _en route_ to say good-by. Neither the business he came upon nor his interview 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 anything. You know how that Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the middle of his 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. _I ploughed around it._" Now,' said Lincoln, 'don't tell anybody, but that's the way I got rid of Governor ----. _I ploughed 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.'"

Those who were associated with Lincoln noticed the rapid development of his diplomatic talent. In meeting emergencies he constantly surprised them by the manifestation of a capacity to grapple with hidden and unknown difficulties that could have been possessed only by so strong and deep a nature. His secretaries testify that he could receive any kind of tidings without emotion or variation in face and manner. "He never seemed to hear anything with reference to itself," one of them described it, "but solely with a quick forward grasping for the consequences; for what must be done next. The announcement of a defeat or disaster did not bring to him the blow only, but rather the consideration of a counter-stroke. With a calm, sublime reliance upon God and the everlasting principles of right, he was able to conduct the nation through the most tremendous civil war ever waged and never committed a serious mistake."

Lincoln was pre-eminently a Democrat because he believed in a government of the people by the people for the people. His early training, his contact with "the plain people," as he loved to call them, his knowledge of their prejudices and preferences, their habits of thought and methods of judgment, enabled him to judge accurately of public opinion, and his deep sympathy with them gave him confidence that whatever met their approval was right and just. That explains his loyal obedience to the will of the majority, his refusal to adopt radical measures, and his strength of purpose when he believed that his plans would be approved by them. His critics asserted that his procrastination with McClellan, his postponement of the emancipation of the slaves, and his apparent reluctance to act upon measures which were considered necessary to the salvation of the country were signs of weakness and cowardice; but no man ever showed greater courage when he felt that he was right.

When Lincoln came to Washington he had no experience in diplomacy or statesmanship; as an attorney, he had dealt only with local and State statutes; as a legislator, his experience was limited to provincial affairs; his only knowledge of the operations of the general government was acquired during the two years he was in Congress and from books that he read. He had never argued a case before the Supreme Court, he had never studied international law, he knew nothing of the organization of armies, and he was unfamiliar with the relations between the Chief Executive and his Cabinet; but we have seen in Chapter V. how promptly, firmly, and conclusively, and at the same time with what tact and diplomacy, he rebuked Seward's suggestion that he should surrender the prerogatives of his office to the Secretary of State, how positive yet how gentle was his treatment of Frémont, and how thorough his knowledge of the laws of nations is disclosed by his correspondence concerning the movement of troops through Maryland and Virginia, regarding the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_, the arrest of Vallandigham, and especially in connection with the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Lincoln made it a rule never to deny or explain any charge against himself, nor to reply to an attack, except when the fortunes of his country seemed to be involved; and when he did make a reply it was always complete and satisfactory.

Almost the very moment that he crossed the threshold of the White House Lincoln was confronted with the gravest diplomatic problem of his experience, and its solution required not only knowledge of precedent but skill in argument. The claim of the Confederacy to be recognized as a nation by the powers of Europe had practically been waived by President Buchanan when he admitted that the Federal government had no authority to keep a State in the Union if it desired to secede. This admission had been confirmed by the apparent acquiescence in the withdrawal of South Carolina and other States; by the organization of the Confederacy at Montgomery without interference or protest; by the failure to reinforce Fort Sumter; and by Buchanan's practical abdication of executive power when, in his message of January 8, 1861, he threw the entire responsibility of the situation upon Congress.

All through these rapid and radical changes the foreign powers received no official explanation or information from the Department of State at Washington, and were left to draw their own inferences from the news which appeared in the public press, until February 28, when Jeremiah S. Black, for a few weeks Secretary of State, issued a circular instructing our representatives at foreign capitals that the government of the United States had not relinquished its constitutional jurisdiction anywhere within its territory and did not intend to do so. In the same circular he gave instructions that a recognition of the Confederacy must not be allowed. Upon assuming the duties of Secretary of State, Mr. Seward hastily confirmed these instructions and expressed the confidence of the President in the speedy suppression of the Rebellion and the restoration of the unity and harmony of the nation. From France and England came non-committal and unsatisfactory replies, and before Mr. Adams, who had been appointed minister to England, could arrive in London, an unfriendly ministry issued a proclamation of neutrality practically recognizing the Confederate States as an independent government and conceding it the privileges of a belligerent power. Thus, before it had a single ship afloat, its fleets were tendered the hospitality of the British ports on terms of equality with the fleets of the United States. France at once imitated this precipitate action, which was prompted by the desire of the British manufacturers to secure free trade and cheap cotton. The Emperor of the French was actuated by confidence that a division of the American Union would aid in the advancement of his plans to erect an empire in Mexico.

Exasperated by the injustice of this action, Mr. Seward wrote Mr. Adams a despatch which would have imperilled our relations with Great Britain had it been delivered in its original form. Fortunately, the President had enjoined the Secretary of State not to send anything of importance without first submitting it to him; hence Lincoln was able to modify what Mr. Seward's inflammable temper had suggested and at the same time add to the force and the dignity of the despatch. A comparison of the text of the original with the final copy as sent to the American legation at London demonstrates the superiority of Lincoln's judgment as well as his mastery of the language of diplomacy. It is remarkable that a mind untrained to consider the consequences of international discourtesy and a hand unaccustomed to frame the phrases of diplomacy should have been so apt and so skilful in removing the sting from the indignant paragraphs of an experienced statesman without diminishing their tone, or force, or dignity.

If the letter, as it came from the hands of Mr. Seward, had been delivered at the British Foreign Office according to instructions, Mr. Adams would have burned his bridges behind him. He would have placed himself in the attitude of breaking off intercourse, and thus made it impossible for him to use any further influence or even to ascertain the disposition and intention of the British government. The only thing left for him would have been to close the legation and return to the United States. Lincoln's modifications left him free to manage a delicate situation as circumstances and his own judgment indicated. He was not only left within the range of personal and diplomatic courtesy, but by Lincoln's clever phrasing the burden of proof was thrown upon the British government.

This skilful use of terms until that time unfamiliar to Lincoln has always excited the admiration of philologists and diplomatists because of the nice sense he displayed of the shades of meaning and the effect of adding emphasis and improving the courtesy of expression at the same time. The comprehensive knowledge of the situation and the appreciation of the results which might follow seem almost supernatural in a man who had been only three months in office, was entirely without experience in diplomacy, had never before prepared a diplomatic note, and whose mind was perplexed about home affairs. The highest authorities have pronounced it the work of a master, as showing a freedom of knowledge of and insight into foreign affairs, a skill in shaping phrases, a delicate sense of propriety, an appreciation of the methods of diplomatic dealings, and a penetration which entitled the President to the highest honors of statesmanship.

And thus was a misunderstanding and perhaps a war with England avoided by a simple change in terms and phrases. We can only conjecture what might have happened; but, had Seward's despatch been sent as originally written, it would probably have resulted in the formal recognition and the success of the Southern Confederacy.

During the first term of General Grant's administration, Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, brought the original manuscript to a Cabinet meeting, and it excited so much interest that Mr. Boutwell proposed to have twelve fac-similes made by the photographer of the Treasury Department. Twelve copies were taken and the negative then destroyed.

It was not long before the government was again involved in a complication with Great Britain owing to the zeal of Captain Charles Wilkes, of the gunboat "San Jacinto," who overhauled the British mail steamer "Trent" and took from the passenger cabin ex-Senators J. M. Mason and John Slidell, who had been accredited by the Confederate government as envoys to the European courts, and had managed to elude the blockade and sail from Havana. The British government, people, and press regarded the act as a violation of international law and an outrage upon the British flag, and preparations for war were begun, while Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, was instructed to close his legation and return to England unless the prisoners were released and a satisfactory apology offered within seven days.

If it had not been for the kindly sympathy of Queen Victoria, President Lincoln would not have been allowed to apologize; but with her own hand she modified the instructions to Lord Lyons and gave our government an opportunity to withdraw from an untenable position. The situation was exceedingly embarrassing and critical, because the action of Captain Wilkes was not only applauded by the public, but it was officially approved by the Secretary of the Navy, and the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution commending him for his brave and patriotic conduct.

While the President and his Cabinet no doubt admired Captain Wilkes for the qualities he had displayed, they were placed in a serious dilemma because of the energetic and peremptory demands of the British government. The President took the matter into his own hands, and the most experienced diplomatist or the most skilful lawyer could not have prepared a clearer, stronger, more dignified, or courteous despatch than he wrote for Mr. Seward's signature, suggesting that the matter be submitted to friendly arbitration.

"The President is unwilling to believe," he wrote, "that Her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that Her Majesty's government will consent to hear him; yet this much he directs me to say, that this government has intended no affront to the British flag or to the British nation; nor has it intended to force into discussion an embarrassing question; all of which is evident by the fact hereby asserted, that the act complained of was done by the officer without orders from, or expectation of, the government. But, being done, it was no longer left to us to consider whether we might not, to avoid a controversy, waive an unimportant though a strict right; because we, too, as well as Great Britain, have a people justly jealous of their rights, and in whose presence our government could undo the act complained of only upon a fair showing that it was wrong, or at least very questionable. The United States government and people are still willing to make reparation upon such showing.

"Accordingly, I am instructed by the President to inquire whether Her Majesty's government will hear the United States upon the matter in question. The President desires, among other things, to bring into view, and have considered, the existing rebellion in the United States; the position Great Britain has assumed, including Her Majesty's proclamation in relation thereto; the relation the persons whose seizure is the subject of complaint bore to the United States, and the object of their voyage at the time they were seized; the knowledge which the master of the 'Trent' had of their relation to the United States, and of the object of their voyage, at the time he received them on board for the voyage; the place of the seizure; and the precedents and respective positions assumed in analogous cases between Great Britain and the United States.

"Upon a submission containing the foregoing facts, with those set forth in the before-mentioned despatch to your lordship, together with all other facts which either party may deem material, I am instructed to say the government of the United States will, if agreed to by Her Majesty's government, go to such friendly arbitration as is usual among nations, and will abide the award."

This despatch was not sent; nor was it ever submitted to the Cabinet. Before the opportunity arrived the President was convinced of the danger of temporizing. Eight thousand troops were despatched from London to Canada, a British fleet was ordered to American waters, and the export of arms and ammunition from Great Britain was forbidden. The President's cool judgment and common sense also taught him that the position of our government was untenable, and, with his keen perceptions as a lawyer, he saw how the United States could honorably withdraw and at the same time use the incident to its own advantage and get the better of the controversy.

"We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of neutrals," he said. "We fought Great Britain for insisting by theory and practice on the right to do precisely what Captain Wilkes has done. If Great Britain shall now protest against the act and demand their release, we must give them up and apologize for the act as a violation of our own doctrines, and thus forever bind her over to keep the peace in relation to neutrals, and so acknowledge that she has been wrong for sixty years."

Mr. Seward prepared a long and remarkable presentation of the case of the United States which is considered one of the ablest of his many state papers. He admitted that Captain Wilkes had done wrong and had exceeded his instructions, but asserted that "this government has neither meditated, nor practised, nor approved any deliberate wrong in the transaction to which they have called its attention, and, on the contrary, that what has happened has been simply an inadvertency, consisting in the departure by the naval officer, free from any wrongful motive, from a rule uncertainly established, and probably by the several parties concerned either imperfectly understood or entirely unknown. For this error the British government has a right to expect the same reparation that we, as an independent state, should expect from Great Britain or any other friendly nation in a similar case.... If I decide this case in favor of my own government, I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse and forever abandon its essential policy. The country cannot afford the sacrifice. If I maintain those principles and adhere to that policy, I must surrender the case itself.... The four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort Warren, in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully liberated."

Thus, through Lincoln's penetration and judgment, a great international peril was not only averted, but Great Britain was forced to relinquish her own contentions and adopt the American doctrine respecting this class of neutral rights.

There were frequent matters of controversy between the British Foreign Office and the Department of State at Washington during the four years of war because of the systematic violation of the neutrality laws by English subjects, and they were aggravated by the unconcealed sympathy of the British people with the Confederate States. Our government was ably represented in London by Charles Francis Adams, in whom Lincoln had great confidence, and his voluminous instructions from time to time, although prepared by Secretary Seward, were always carefully revised by the President. Altogether, the diplomatic correspondence during that period, both in matters of controversy and particularly concerning offers of mediation in our affairs made by the European powers, shows a diplomatic penetration and skill which excite the admiration of students.

Among other perplexing questions with which he was compelled to deal was the invasion of Mexico and the attempt to establish an empire at the city of the Montezumas. The President took the most positive and determined ground in support of the Monroe doctrine--more advanced than had been attempted at that time. He expressed an unqualified disapproval of the French invasion; and, although he was not in a position to intervene with force, lost no opportunity of making known to the other powers of Europe, and through our minister in Paris to the Emperor of France himself, that the movement to erect a monarchy on American soil was repugnant to the United States. To strengthen his position he suggested that Governor Dennison, who was to be chairman of the Baltimore Convention in 1864, give a strong endorsement of the Monroe doctrine in his opening speech, and that the Convention adopt a resolution declaring that the people of the United States would not permit the overthrow of a republican government or the establishment of a monarchy upon the Western continent.

Early in 1865 Lincoln and Secretary Seward received three peace commissioners from the Confederacy--Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell,--who wanted the President to recognize the Southern Confederacy as a foreign government. Mr. Hunter urged this very strongly, declaring that the recognition of Jefferson Davis's official authority to make a treaty was an indispensable step to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament as a trustworthy precedent. When Mr. Hunter made this point, Lincoln looked up quickly and remarked,--

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

One of the most remarkable examples of Lincoln's tact and diplomacy is found in his treatment of a Cabinet crisis in December, 1862, when the danger of a permanent division of the Republican party into two hostile factions seemed imminent and unavoidable. As the reader has already learned from this narrative, the Cabinet was never harmonious or united. It was divided by personal jealousies and rivalries as well as by differences concerning matters of policy from the day of the inauguration. Gradually Mr. Seward became the leader of the conservative and Mr. Chase of the radical element of the Republican party, and while both conducted the business of their departments with patriotism, ability, and skill, they were not only mutually hostile, but suspected each other's motives. From a very early day Mr. Chase became an outspoken candidate for the Presidential nomination against Lincoln, and his criticism, as we have learned in Chapter V., included his fellow-members of the Cabinet. Mr. Seward, on the other hand, was loyal to the President, but had given great offence to the radical element of his party by some of his published despatches and private utterances, particularly one diplomatic note in which he had included the antislavery men with the secessionists as responsible for bringing on the war. The dissatisfaction was aggravated by other offences to such a degree that the Republicans of the Senate called a caucus to consider the matter and passed a resolution demanding the dismissal of Mr. Seward from the Cabinet. The cooler members of the Senate succeeded in having this action reconsidered and a substitute resolution adopted requesting a reconstruction of the official family. The meaning and intention of the caucus, however, could not be concealed by this indefinite resolution, and as soon as Mr. Seward learned of the proceeding, he and his son, who was Assistant Secretary of State, tendered their resignations. The President tucked them into a pigeonhole of his desk without comment.

The following morning a caucus committee waited upon the President and presented the resolution, each Senator, in turn, submitting his personal views as to the unfitness of the Secretary of State to remain in the administration, chiefly because of his lack of interest in antislavery measures under consideration which they considered essential to a successful prosecution of the war. Lincoln listened to them with respectful attention, asked an opportunity for reflection, and invited them to return to the White House in the evening for his reply. He called the Cabinet, except Mr. Seward, together at the same hour, and when the committee and the ministers met each was greatly surprised to see the others.

The President remarked that he thought it best to fight it out and have it over, and was determined that every point of difference between them should be exposed and explained before his guests separated. He read the resolution of the caucus and then called upon the Senators to explain themselves, which they did with earnestness. The Cabinet replied with equal candor,--all except Secretary Chase, who found himself in a very embarrassing position, because he had been chiefly instrumental in creating the dissatisfaction by misrepresenting the opinions of Seward and the rest of his colleagues to his friends in the Senate. He could not deny it, for the witnesses were present; nor could he defend himself for doing so. He could only protest against being entrapped in a mortifying predicament and express his regret that he had attended the meeting. Without malice, but with the hope of correcting the bad habits of his Secretary of the Treasury, the President had made sure that he should be present.

When everybody had said all that he had to say, Lincoln astonished them by announcing that he intended to take a vote, and he put the question directly whether, after the explanations which had been heard, Mr. Seward should be excused. Senators Grimes, Trumbull, Sumner, and Pomeroy voted "Yes," Senator Harris "No," and Senators Collamer, Fessenden, and Howard declined to vote. Mr. Wade, the other member of the committee, was absent.

The President decided that the vote had been in favor of Mr. Seward. While the Senators realized that the President had outwitted them, they, nevertheless, left the White House satisfied that Seward's position was untenable, and that after this incident he would be compelled voluntarily to retire from the Cabinet. As the committee was leaving the President's room, Senator Trumbull, with great vehemence, accused Mr. Chase of double-dealing, and the latter, having no defence to the charge, tendered his resignation the following morning, and was very much surprised at the alacrity with which the President received it.

When the Cabinet retired, Lincoln took the resignation of Mr. Seward from his desk and, holding it up beside that of Mr. Chase, remarked to a personal friend to whom he had briefly sketched the situation,--

"Now I can ride. I have got a pumpkin in each end of my bag."

A few moments after he sat down at his desk, with his own hand made two copies of the following note, and sent one to Mr. Seward and the other to Mr. Chase by messenger:

"You have respectively tendered me your resignation as Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. I am apprized of the circumstances which render this course personally desirable to each of you; but, after the most anxious consideration, my deliberate judgment is that the public interest does not admit of it. I therefore have to request that you will resume the duties of your departments respectively."

Mr. Seward at once recognized the situation and wrote the President, saying, "I have cheerfully resumed the functions of this department in obedience to your command," and sent a copy of the note to the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Chase, however, was not so frank. He realized that he had made a serious mistake, and by his duplicity had lost the confidence of the Republican leaders of the Senate as well as that of his colleagues in the Cabinet. He suspected that Mr. Seward had somehow obtained an advantage of him, and he was not sure which way he had better turn; so he asked time for reflection, and finally wrote a long letter to the President explaining his situation and his views, and concluded by saying that he thought both Mr. Seward and himself had better retire. He did not send the letter at once, but held it until the following day; and when he learned that Seward's resignation was withdrawn, enclosed it in another note stating that, while he had not changed his views, he was ready to resume his post or to retire from it if, in the judgment of the President, the success of the administration might be promoted thereby.

This was the end of the episode. The President had cleared up the misunderstanding between the Cabinet and the Senate and the members of his own official family by a novel expedient which is often adopted to reconcile quarrels between children, but was altogether new in diplomacy and statesmanship. Both sides to the controversy were conscious that they had placed themselves in the wrong, and, even under their chagrin, must have recognized the humor of the situation and the diplomatic skill with which Lincoln had handled it. The President himself was very proud of his triumph.

"I do not see how it could have been better," he said afterwards. "If I had yielded to the storm and dismissed 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."

In this case and frequently throughout his administration the President resorted to the old-fashioned and homely but sensible methods that were commonly resorted to on the frontier to settle controversies between neighbors when the courts were scattered and litigation was considered disreputable. They were new in the administration of a government, but were none the less effective.

Lincoln frequently showed that he could easily avoid a direct answer and evade inquisitive 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 was "reminded" of a farmer out in Illinois who was in the habit of bragging about everything 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 neighbors 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 out-doors and am going to put the rest of it in the barn."

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."

While Lincoln was always very patient, he often adopted droll methods for getting rid of bores. The late Justice Cartter 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 gentleman was particularly verbose and persistent, 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 Cartter, 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.

"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 explanations. Mr. Ganson was very bald, 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 confidence. 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 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."

Senator Fessenden came from the Capitol, one day, in a terrible rage because Mr. Lincoln had made certain promises, in matters of patronage, which he considered unjust to himself, and reproached and denounced the President in intemperate language. Mr. Lincoln made no explanation or reply, but listened calmly until the fury of the storm was spent, when, in his droll way, he inquired,--

"You are an Episcopalian, aren't you, Fessenden?"

"Yes, sir. I belong to that church."

"I thought so. You Episcopalians all swear alike. Seward is an Episcopalian; Stanton is a Presbyterian. You ought to hear him swear." And he continued to describe the several varieties of swearing and the nice distinctions between different kinds of profanity in the most philosophical manner, until Fessenden's fury was extinguished and he could discuss the reasons for the offensive appointment in a rational manner.

A visitor once asked Lincoln how many men the rebels had in the field.

He replied, very seriously, "Twelve hundred thousand, according to the best authority."

"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?"

When the Sherman expedition which captured Port Royal went out there was a great curiosity to know where it had gone. A person with ungovernable 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 waiting 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."

A gentleman asked Lincoln to give him a pass through the Federal lines in order to visit Richmond. "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."

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 10th 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 large rat hole, which will bear looking into. Respectfully,

"A. LINCOLN."

A certain Senator once called at the White House to persuade Lincoln to issue an order to the Secretary of War to pay a constituent of his a considerable sum of money for services which clearly he had not rendered, the amount being claimed on the ground that he would have rendered them if he had been permitted to do so. Lincoln heard the statement of facts and the argument with his usual patience and rendered his decision as follows:

"Years ago when imprisonment for debt was legal in some States a poor fellow was sent to jail by his creditors and compelled to serve out his debt at the rate of a dollar and a half per day. Knowing the exact amount of the debt, he carefully calculated the time he would be required to serve. When the sentence had expired he informed his jailer of the fact, and asked to be released. The jailer insisted upon keeping him four days longer. Upon making up his statement, however, he found that the man was right, and that he had served four days longer than his sentence required. The prisoner then demanded not only a receipt in full of his debt, but also payment for four days' extra service, amounting to six dollars, which he declared the county owed him.

"Now," said Lincoln, "I think your client has just about as good a claim for the money as he had."

"I am very much of your opinion, Mr. President," said the Senator, soberly, as he retired.

Mr. Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, says, "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 Mr. 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 office after church. At the appointed time he was there, and I read the despatch to them. Mr. Stanton stated the reasons why it should be retained, and before deciding the question Mr. Lincoln turned to me, saying,--

"'Well, Dana?'

"I observed to them that this was a very important channel of communication, and that if 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 Benjamin 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 Confederate messenger at such a place on the road that evening. The man was arrested, brought to the War Department, searched, the paper found upon him and identified, 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. Catherines with his arm in a sling, wounded by a bullet which had passed through it, his story was believed by Messrs. Clay and Jacob 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.

"The last time I saw Mr. Lincoln to speak with him," continued Mr. Dana, "was in the afternoon of the day of his murder. The same Jacob Thompson was the subject of our conversation. I had received a report from the Provost-Marshal of Portland, Maine, saying that Jacob Thompson was to be in that town that night for the purpose of taking the steamer for Liverpool, 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 five 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 attached to his office, washing his hands. 'Halloo, 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 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 on hand, and he wants to run away, better let him run.'"

When a friend brought to his attention the fact that Secretary Chase was seeking the nomination for President, the President accepted the announcement with the utmost good-humor, and said,--

"My half-brother was once ploughing corn on a Kentucky farm. I was driving the horse and he holding the plough. The horse was lazy, but on one occasion rushed across the field so fast that I, even with my long legs, could hardly keep pace with him. On reaching the end of the furrow, I found an enormous chin-fly fastened upon him, and knocked him off. My brother asked me what I did that for. I told him I didn't want the old horse bitten in that way. 'Why,' said he, 'that's what makes him go.' If Mr. Chase has a Presidential chin-fly biting him, I'm not going to knock him off, if it will only make his department go."

Coming into the President's room one day, Mr. Stanton said that he had received a telegram from General Mitchell, in Alabama, asking instructions. He did not quite understand the situation down there, but, having full confidence in Mitchell'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 countermand 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 whispered to the boy as he went by, 'Look here, boy, hain't that horse got splints?' The boy replied, '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 Mitchell it's all right, but if it's not I have got to countermand it."

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 himself 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 depredations of those 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 killin' one. If you want any more skirmishing in that line you can do it yourselves!'"

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 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."

A day or two before his inauguration a delegation of merchants and bankers who had been sent to the Peace Congress called upon Lincoln to remonstrate against the use of force to restrain the South, and to plead for a conciliatory policy towards the slave-holders. Mr. William E. Dodge declared that the whole world was anxiously awaiting the inaugural address, and added, "It is for you, sir, to say whether the nation shall be plunged into bankruptcy, and whether the grass shall grow in the streets of our commercial cities."

"Then I say it shall not," Lincoln answered coolly, with a twinkle in his eye. "If it depends upon me, the grass will not grow anywhere except in the fields and meadows."

"Then you must yield to the just demands of the South," declared Mr. Dodge." You must leave her to control her own institutions. You will admit slave States into the Union on the same conditions as free States. You will not go to war on account of slavery."

A sad but stern expression swept over Lincoln's face. "I do not know that I understand your meaning, Mr. Dodge," he answered, without raising his voice; "nor do I know what my acts or my opinions may be in the future, beyond this. If I ever come to the great office of the President of the United States, I shall take an oath. I shall swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is a great and solemn duty. With the support of the people and the assistance of the Almighty I shall undertake to perform it. It is not the Constitution as I should like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will be preserved and defended until it is enforced and obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, and enforced and defended, let the grass grow where it may."

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 gentlemen, representing hundreds of millions of dollars, was selected to go to Washington and persuade the President to detail a gunboat to protect their 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 millions." When they had concluded, he said,--

"Gentlemen, I am, by the Constitution, Commander-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 therefore is impossible for me to furnish you 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.

X

LINCOLN'S PHILOSOPHY, MORALS, AND RELIGION

Abraham Lincoln has left us abundant testimony in words and works of his code of morals and religious creed. He was a man of keen perception of right and wrong, of acute conscience and deep religious sentiment, although he was not "orthodox." He declined to join a church because of conscientious scruples. He would not confess a faith that was not in him. His reason forbade him to accept some of the doctrines taught by the Baptist and Christian churches, to which his parents belonged, and the Presbyterian denomination, of which his wife was a member. Nevertheless, he was regular and reverential in his attendance upon worship. Shortly after his marriage he rented a pew in the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, and occupied it with his wife and children at the service each Sunday morning unless detained by illness. In Washington he was an habitual attendant of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Gurley, who was also his intimate friend, tells us that he was "a true believer" and "entirely without guile." One of Lincoln's mental traits was his inability to accept or put aside a proposition until he understood it. His conscience required him to see his way clearly before making a start, and his honesty of soul would not allow him to make a pretence that was not well founded. No consideration or argument would induce him to abandon a line of conduct or accept a theory which his analytical powers or sense of caution taught him to doubt.

From his mother he inherited a rigid honesty which was demanded by public opinion in early days and was the safeguard of the frontier. There were no locks upon the cabin doors nor upon the stables. A man who committed a theft would not be tolerated in a community, and if he took a horse or a cow or any article which was necessary for the sustenance of a family he was outlawed, if he escaped with his life. Merchants never thought of locking up their stores, and often left them entirely unprotected for days at a time while they went to the nearest source of supply to replenish their stock or were absent for other reasons. If their patrons found no one to serve them, they helped themselves, and, as prices varied little from year to year, they were able to judge for themselves of the value of the goods, and reported the purchase and paid the bill the next time they found the merchant at home.

When Abraham Lincoln was clerking for Denton Offutt, he walked three miles one evening after the store was closed to return a sixpence which had been overpaid. On another occasion he gave four ounces for half a pound of tea and delivered the difference before he slept. For this and other acts of the same sort he became known as "Honest Old Abe," but he was no more conspicuous for that quality than many of his neighbors. He was the type and representative of a community which not only respected but required honesty, and were extremely critical and intolerant towards moral delinquencies. Accustomed all their lives to face danger and grapple with the mysterious forces of nature, their personal and moral courage were qualities without which no man could be a leader or have influence. A liar, a coward, a swindler, and an insincere man were detected and branded with public contempt. Courage and truth were commonplace and recognized as essential to manhood.

Abraham Lincoln's originality, fearlessness, and self-confidence, his unerring perceptions of right and wrong, made him a leader and gave him an influence which other men did not have. He was born in the same poverty and ignorance, he grew up in the same environment, and his muscles were developed by the same labor as his neighbors', but his mental powers were much keener and acute, his ambition was much higher, and a consciousness of intellectual superiority sustained him in his efforts to rise above his surroundings and take the place his genius warranted. Throughout his entire life he adhered to the code of the frontier. As a lawyer he would not undertake a case unless it was a good one. He often said he was a very poor man on a poor case. His sense of justice had to be aroused before he could do his best. If his client were wrong, he endeavored to settle the dispute the best way he could without going into court; if the evidence had been misrepresented to him, he would throw up the case in the midst of the trial and return the fee. The public knowledge of that fact gave him great influence with the courts and kept bad clients away from him.

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 following response:

"Yes, there is no reasonable doubt that I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood 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 them as it does to you. I shall not take your case, but I will give you a little advice for nothing. You seem a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way."

He carried this code of morals into the Legislature, and there are several current anecdotes of his refusal to engage in schemes that were not creditable. On one occasion a caucus was held for consultation over a proposition Lincoln did not approve. The discussion lasted until midnight, but he took no part in it. Finally, an appeal was made to him by his colleagues, who argued that the end would justify the means. Lincoln closed the debate and defined his own position by saying,--

"You may burn my body to ashes and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right."

Lincoln did not often indulge in hysterical declamation, but that sentence is worth quoting because it contains his moral code.

As President he was called upon to deliver a reprimand to an officer who had been tried by court-martial for quarrelling. It was probably the "gentlest," say his biographers, Nicolay and Hay, "ever recorded in the annals of penal discourses." It was as follows:

"The advice of a father to his son, 'Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear it that the opposed 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 vitiating 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."

Even as a boy in Indiana he acquired a reputation for gentleness, kindness, and good-nature. He was appealed to by people in trouble, and his great physical strength and quick intelligence made him a valuable aid on all occasions. Once he saved the life of the town drunkard, whom he found freezing by the roadside on a winter night. Picking him up in his arms, he carried him to the nearest tavern and worked over him until he revived. The people who lived in the neighborhood of Gentryville, Indiana, and New Salem, Illinois, where his early life was spent, have many traditions of his unselfishness and helpful disposition. He chopped wood for poor widows and sat up all night with the sick; if a wagon stuck in the mud, he was always the first to offer assistance, and his powerful arms were equal to those of any three men in the town. When he was living at the Rutledge tavern at New Salem he was always willing to give up his bed to a traveller when the house was full, and to sleep on a counter in his store. He never failed to be present at a "moving," and would neglect his own business to help a neighbor out of difficulty. His sympathetic disposition and tender tact enabled him to enter the lives of the people and give them assistance without offence, and he was never so happy as when he was doing good.

His religious training was limited. His father and mother, while in Kentucky, belonged to the sect known as Free-will Baptists, and when they went to Indiana they became members of the Predestinarian Church, as it was called; not from any change in belief, but because it was the only denomination in the neighborhood. Public worship was very rare, being held only when an itinerant preacher visited that section. Notice of his approach would be sent throughout the neighborhood for twenty miles around, and the date would be fixed as far in advance as possible. When the preacher appeared he would find the entire population gathered in camp at the place of meeting, which was usually at cross-roads where there were fodder for the horses and water for man and beast. After morning preaching people from the same neighborhood or intimate acquaintances would gather in groups, open their lunch-baskets, and picnic together. At the afternoon service children and "confessors" would be baptized, and towards night the party would separate for their homes, refreshed in faith and uplifted in spirit.

When Thomas Lincoln removed to Illinois he united with the Christian church commonly called "Campbellites," and in that faith he died.

Abraham Lincoln's belief was clear and fixed so far as it went, but he rejected important dogmas which are considered essential to salvation by some of the evangelistic denominations. "Whenever any church will inscribe over its altar as a qualification for membership the Saviour's statement of the substance of the law and Gospel, 'Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and soul."

He was an habitual reader of the Bible. He was more familiar with its contents than most clergymen, and considered it the highest example of literature in existence as well as the highest code of morals. His study of the Bible and familiarity with its pages are shown in his literary style and frequent quotations. In 1864 he wrote his old friend, Joshua Speed, "I am profitably engaged reading the Bible. Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the balance upon faith and you will live and die a better man."

He had no sympathy with theologians. He frequently declared that it was blasphemy for a preacher to "twist the words of Christ around so as to sustain his own doctrine," and often remarked that "the more a man knew of theology the farther he got away from the true spirit of Christ."

"John," he one day said to a friend, "it depends a great deal how you state a case. When Daniel Webster did it, it was half argument. Now, you take the subject of predestination, for example. You may state it one way and you cannot make much out of it; you state it another and it seems quite reasonable."

When he was a young man at New Salem in 1834 Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" and Volney's "Ruines" made a great impression upon him, and he prepared a review of these books, which it is supposed he intended to read before a literary society that had been organized in the neighborhood. His friend, Samuel Hill, with his old-fashioned notions of atheism, got hold of the manuscript and burned it. Lincoln was quite indignant at the time, but afterwards admitted that Hill had done him a service. This incident has often been cited as evidence that Lincoln was an agnostic, just as other incidents in his life have been used to prove that he was a spiritualist, and still others that he was a Freemason; but he was none of them. He commended Masonry, but never joined that order; his inquisitive mind led him to investigate certain spiritualistic phenomena, and his essay at New Salem was nothing more than a presentation of the views of two famous unbelievers without personal endorsement.

Like Napoleon, Wellington, Bismarck, and other famous men, Lincoln was very superstitious. That peculiarity appeared frequently during his life. Even to the very day of his death, as related in Chapter VII., he told his Cabinet and General Grant of a dream which he was accustomed to have before important events in the war. A curious incident is related in his own language:

"A very singular occurrence took place the day I was nominated at Chicago, four years ago, of which I am reminded to-night. In the afternoon of the day, returning home from down town, I went upstairs to Mrs. Lincoln's reading-room. Feeling somewhat tired, I lay down upon a couch in the room, directly opposite a bureau, upon which was a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other. I arose, and lay down again with the same result. It made me quite uncomfortable for a few moments, but, some friends coming in, the matter passed out of my mind. The next day, while walking on the street, I was suddenly reminded of the circumstance, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I had never seen anything of the kind before, and did not know what to make of it. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position, and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction of optics which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment, with a like result; and, as I had said to myself, accounting for it on some principle unknown to me, it ceased to trouble me. But some time ago I tried to produce the same effect here by arranging a glass and couch in the same position, without success."

He did not say, at this time, that either he or Mrs. Lincoln attached any significance to the phenomenon, but it is known that Mrs. Lincoln regarded it as a sign that the President would be re-elected.

President Lincoln once invited a famous medium to display his alleged supernatural powers at the White House, several members of the Cabinet being present. For the first half-hour the demonstrations were of a physical character. At length rappings were heard beneath the President's feet, and the medium stated that an Indian desired to communicate with him.

"I shall be happy to hear what his Indian majesty has to say," replied the President, "for I have very recently received a deputation of our red brethren, and it was the only delegation, black, white, or blue, which did not volunteer some advice about the conduct of the war."

The medium then called for a pencil and paper, which were laid upon the table and afterwards covered with a handkerchief. Presently knocks were heard and the paper was uncovered. To the surprise of all present, it read as follows:

"Haste makes waste, but delays cause vexations. Give vitality by energy. Use every means to subdue. Proclamations are useless. Make a bold front and fight the enemy; leave traitors at home to the care of loyal men. Less note of preparation, less parade and policy talk, and more action.--Henry Knox."

"That is not Indian talk," said the President. "Who is Henry Knox?"

The medium, speaking in a strange voice, replied, "The first Secretary of War."

"Oh, yes; General Knox," said the President. "Stanton, that message is for you; it is from your predecessor. I should like to ask General Knox when this rebellion will be put down."

The answer was oracularly indefinite. The medium then called up Napoleon, who thought one thing, Lafayette another, and Franklin differed from both.

"Ah!" exclaimed the President; "opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners. Their talk is very much like the talk of my Cabinet. I should like, if possible, to hear what Judge Douglas says about this war," said the President.

After an interval, the medium rose from his chair and, resting his left hand on the back, his right into his bosom, spoke in a voice no one could mistake who had ever heard Mr. Douglas. He urged the President to throw aside all advisers who hesitated about the policy to be pursued, and said that, if victory were followed up by energetic action, all would be well.

"I believe that," said the President, "whether it comes from spirit or human. It needs not a ghost from the bourne from which no traveller returns to tell that."

His taint of superstition, like his tendency to melancholy, was doubtless inherited from his ancestors and was shared by all sensitive people whose lives were spent in the mysterious solitude and isolation of the Western frontier. It is manifested by the denizens of the forests, the mountains, and the plains, and wherever else sensitive natures are subjected to loneliness and the company of their own thoughts. Lincoln's mind was peculiarly sensitive to impressions; his nature was intensely sympathetic, his imagination was vivid, and his observation was keen and comprehensive. With all his candor, he was reticent and secretive in matters that concerned himself, and the struggle of his early life, his dismal and depressing surroundings, the death of his mother, and the physical conditions in which he was born and bred were just the influences to develop the morbid tendency which was manifested on several occasions in such a manner as to cause anxiety and even alarm among his friends. He realized the danger of submitting to it, and the cure invented and prescribed by himself was to seek for the humorous side of every event and incident and to read all the humorous books he could find.

His poetic temperament was developed early and frequently manifested while he was in the White House. He loved melancholy as well as humorous poems. He could repeat hymns by the hundreds, and quoted Dr. Watts' and John Wesley's verses as frequently as he did Shakespeare or Petroleum V. Nasby or Artemas Ward. His favorite poem was "Oh! Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud."

Judge Weldon, of the Court of Claims, remembers the first time he heard him repeat it. "It was during a term of court, in the same year, at Lincoln, a little town named for Mr. Lincoln. We were all stopping at the hotel, which had a very big room with four beds, called the lawyers' room. Some of us thin fellows doubled up; but I remember that Judge Davis, who was as large then as he was afterwards, when a Justice of the Supreme Bench, always had a bed to himself. Mr. Lincoln was an early riser, and one morning, when up early, as usual, and dressed, he sat before the big old-fashioned fireplace and repeated aloud from memory that whole hymn. Somebody asked him for the name of the author; but he said he had never been able to learn who wrote it, but wished he knew. There were a great many guesses, and some said that Shakespeare must have written it. But Mr. Lincoln, who was better read in Shakespeare than any of us, said that they were not Shakespeare's words. I made a persistent hunt for the author, and years after found the hymn was written by an Englishman, William Knox, who was born in 1789 and died in 1825."

All his life Lincoln was a temperance man. His first essay was a plea for temperance. His second was a eulogy of the Declaration of Independence. He belonged to the Sons of Temperance in Springfield, and frequently made temperance speeches. Judge Weldon remembers that he was once in Mr. Douglas's room at Springfield when Lincoln entered, and, following the custom, Mr. Douglas produced a bottle and some glasses and asked his callers to join him in a drink. Lincoln declined on the ground that for thirty years he had been a temperance man and was too old to change. Leonard Swett says,--

"He told me not more than a year before he was elected President that he had never tasted liquor in his life. 'What!' I said, 'Do you mean to say that you never tasted it?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I never tasted it.'"

In one of his speeches is found this assertion: "Reasonable men have long since agreed that intemperance is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all evils of mankind."

Mr. C. C. Coffin, a famous newspaper writer of that time, who accompanied the notification committee from the Chicago Convention to Springfield, related in his newspaper a few days later an incident that occurred on that occasion. He says that after the exchange of formalities Lincoln said,--

"'Mrs. Lincoln will be pleased to see you, gentlemen. You will find her in the other room. You must be thirsty after your long ride. You will find a pitcher of water in the library.'

"I crossed the hall and entered the library. There were miscellaneous books on the shelves, two globes, celestial and terrestrial, in the corners of the room, a plain table with writing materials upon it, a pitcher of cold water, and glasses, but no wines or liquors. There was humor in the invitation to take a glass of water, which was explained to me by a citizen, who said that when it was known that the committee was coming, several citizens called upon Mr. Lincoln and informed him that some entertainment must be provided.

"'Yes, that is so. What ought to be done? Just let me know and I will attend to it,' he said.

"'Oh, we will supply the needful liquors,' said his friends.

"'Gentlemen,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'I thank you for your kind intentions, but must respectfully decline your offer. I have no liquors in my house, and have never been in the habit of entertaining my friends in that way. I cannot permit my friends to do for me what I will not myself do. I shall provide cold water--nothing else.'"

Colonel John Hay, one of his secretaries and biographers, says, "Mr. Lincoln was a man of extremely temperate habits. He made no use of either whiskey or tobacco during all the years I knew him."

Mr. John G. Nicolay, his private secretary, says, "During all the five years of my service as his private secretary I never saw him drink a glass of whiskey and I never knew or heard of his taking one."

There is not the slightest doubt that Lincoln believed in a special Providence. That conviction appears frequently in his speeches and in his private letters. In the correspondence which passed between him and Joshua Speed during a period of almost hopeless despondency and self-abasement, Lincoln frequently expressed the opinion that God had sent their sufferings for a special purpose. When Speed finally acknowledged his happiness after marriage, Lincoln wrote, "I always was superstitious. I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, and which union I have no doubt He had foreordained. Whatever He designs He will do for me yet. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord is my text just now."

Later in life, writing to Thurlow Weed, he said, "Men are not flattered by being shown that there is a difference of purpose between the Almighty and themselves. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world."

In one of his speeches he said, "I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side."

When he learned that his father was very ill and likely to die, he wrote his step-brother, John Johnston, regretting his inability to come to his bedside because of illness in his own family, and added,--

"I sincerely hope that father may yet recover his health; but, at all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that if we could meet now it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with the many loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them."

At Columbus, Ohio, he said to the Legislature of that State, convened in joint session in the hall of the Assembly, "I turn, then, and look to the American people, and to that God who has never forsaken them."

In the capital of New Jersey, to the Senate, he said, "I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which the struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, His almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle."

That he believed in the efficacy of prayer there is no doubt. "I have been driven many times to my knees," he once remarked, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."

A clergyman came to Washington from a little village in Central New York to recover the body of a gallant young captain who had been killed at the second battle of Bull Run. Having accomplished his errand, he was presented at the White House by the representative from his district. The Congressman at once retired, leaving him alone with Lincoln, who asked in a pleasant tone what he could do for his visitor.

"I have not come to ask any favors of you, Mr. President," the latter replied. "I have only come to say that the loyal people of the North are sustaining you and will continue to do so. We are giving you all that we have,--the lives of our sons as well as our confidence and our prayers. You must know that no pious father or mother ever kneels in prayer these days without asking God to give you strength and wisdom."

The tears filled Lincoln's eyes as he thanked his visitor and said, "But for those prayers I should have faltered and perhaps failed long ago. Tell every father and mother you know to keep on praying and I will keep on fighting, for I am sure that God is on our side."

As the clergyman started to leave the room, Lincoln held him by the hand and said, "I suppose I may consider this a sort of pastoral call."

"Yes," replied the clergyman.

"Out in our country," continued Lincoln, "when a parson made a pastoral call it was always the custom for the folks to ask him to lead in prayer, and I should like to ask you to pray with me to-day; pray that I may have strength and wisdom." The two men knelt side by side before a settee and the clergyman offered the most fervent appeal to the Almighty Power that ever fell from his lips. As they rose, Lincoln grasped his visitor's hand and remarked in a satisfied sort of way,--

"I feel better."

In July, 1863, in Washington, D. C., on the Sunday after the battle of Gettysburg, General Sickles, who had lost a leg, was brought to Washington. Lincoln called upon him at the hospital, with his son Tad, and remained an hour or more. He greeted Sickles heartily and complimented him on his stout fight at Gettysburg. Sickles asked whether he was not anxious during the Gettysburg campaign. Lincoln gravely replied that he was not; that some of his Cabinet and many others in Washington were, but that he himself had had no fears. General Sickles inquired his reasons. Lincoln hesitated, but finally replied,--

"Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of your campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, I went into my room one day and locked the door, and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for a victory at Gettysburg. I told God that if we were to win the battle He must do it, for I had done all I could. I told Him this was His war, and our cause was His cause, but that we couldn't stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. And then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg I would stand by Him. And He did, and I will. And after that--I don't know how it was, and I can't explain it, but soon--a sweet comfort crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettysburg, and that is why I had no fears about you."

Presently General Sickles asked what news he had from Vicksburg. The President answered that he had none worth mentioning, but that Grant was still "pegging away" down there. He said he thought a good deal of him as a general and was not going to remove him, although urged to do so. "Besides," he added, "I have been praying over Vicksburg also, and believe our Heavenly Father is going to give us victory there, too, because we need it to bisect the Confederacy and have the Mississippi flow unvexed to the sea."

John G. Nicolay, who probably knew Lincoln as thoroughly and was as familiar with his opinions as any one, said,--

"I do not remember ever having discussed religion with Mr. Lincoln, nor do I know of any authorized statement of his views in existence. He sometimes talked freely, and never made any concealment of his belief or unbelief in any dogma or doctrine, but never provoked religious controversies. I speak more from his disposition and habits than from any positive declaration on his part. He frequently made remarks about sermons he had heard, books he had read, or doctrines that had been advanced, and my opinion as to his religious belief is based upon such casual evidences. There is not the slightest doubt that he believed in a Supreme Being of omnipotent power and omniscient watchfulness over the children of men, and that this great Being could be reached by prayer. Mr. Lincoln was a praying man; I know that to be a fact. And I have heard him request people to pray for him, which he would not have done had he not believed that prayer is answered. Many a time have I heard Mr. Lincoln ask ministers and Christian women to pray for him, and he did not do this for effect. He was no hypocrite, and had such reverence for sacred things that he would not trifle with them. I have heard him say that he prayed for this or that, and remember one occasion on which he remarked that if a certain thing did not occur he would lose his faith in prayer.

"It is a matter of history that he told the Cabinet he had promised his Maker to issue an emancipation proclamation, and it was not an idle remark. At the same time he did not believe in some of the dogmas of the orthodox churches. I have heard him argue against the doctrine of atonement, for example. He considered it illogical and unjust and a premium upon evil-doing if a man who had been wicked all his life could make up for it by a few words or prayers at the hour of death; and he had no faith in death-bed repentances. He did not believe in several other articles of the creeds of the orthodox churches. He believed in the Bible, however. He was a constant reader of the Bible and had great faith in it, but he did not believe that its entire contents were inspired. He used to consider it the greatest of all text-books of morals and ethics, and that there was nothing to compare with it in literature; but, at the same time, I have heard him say that God had too much to do and more important things to attend to than to inspire such insignificant writers as had written some passages in the good book.

"Nor did he believe in miracles. He believed in inexorable laws of nature, and I have heard him say that the wisdom and glory and greatness of the Almighty were demonstrated by order and method and not by the violation of nature's laws.

"It would be difficult for any one to define Mr. Lincoln's position or to classify him among the sects. I should say that he believed in a good many articles in the creeds of the orthodox churches and rejected a good many that did not appeal to his reason.

"He praised the simplicity of the Gospels. He often declared that the Sermon on the Mount contained the essence of all law and justice, and that the Lord's Prayer was the sublimest composition in human language. He was a constant reader of the Bible, but had no sympathy with theology, and often said that in matters affecting a man's relations with his Maker he couldn't give a power of attorney.

"Yes, there is a story, and it is probably true, that when he was very young and very ignorant he wrote an essay that might be called atheistical. It was after he had been reading a couple of atheistic books which made a great impression on his mind, and the essay is supposed to have expressed his views on those books,--a sort of review of them, containing both approval and disapproval,--and one of his friends burned it. He was very indignant at the time, but was afterwards glad of it.

"The opposition of the Springfield clergy to his election was chiefly due to remarks he made about them. One careless remark, I remember, was widely quoted. An eminent clergyman was delivering a series of doctrinal discourses that attracted considerable local attention. Although Lincoln was frequently invited, he would not be induced to attend them. He remarked that he wouldn't trust Brother ---- to construe the statutes of Illinois and much less the laws of God; that people who knew him wouldn't trust his advice on an ordinary business transaction because they didn't consider him competent; hence he didn't see why they did so in the most important of all human affairs, the salvation of their souls.

"These remarks were quoted widely and misrepresented to Lincoln's injury. In those days people were not so liberal as now, and any one who criticised a parson was considered a sceptic."

The refusal of the Springfield clergy to support him for President, to which Mr. Nicolay refers, gave him great concern, and he expressed himself on that subject quite freely to Mr. Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois, who occupied a room adjoining and opening into the Executive Chamber at Springfield, which Lincoln used as an office during the Presidential campaign.

"Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations," he said to Mr. Bateman, showing a polling list, "and all of them are against me but three, and here are a great many prominent members of churches; a very large majority are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian,--God knows I would be one,--but I have carefully read the Bible and I do not so understand this book," and he drew forth a pocket New Testament. "These men well know," he continued, "that I am for freedom in the Territories, freedom everywhere as free as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me; I do not understand it at all.

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but Truth is everything; I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same, and they will find it so.

"Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care, and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated, and these men will find they have not read their Bible right."

The influence of the Springfield clergy was, however, scarcely noticeable. Here and there throughout the country some religious newspaper, minister, or bigoted layman opposed his election on that pretext, but the numerical strength of this class of his opponents was very small; and after the inauguration and the development of the secession conspiracy the Springfield preachers, like other Christian people from one end of the North to the other, displayed their patriotism. As the war progressed the influence of the entire church, Protestant and Catholic, was given to the support of the President, except occasionally when some extreme antislavery community would condemn what they considered the procrastination of the President concerning the emancipation of the slaves. Scarcely a religious body ever met without adopting resolutions of sympathy and support, and no manifestations of loyalty and approval throughout the entire war gave him greater gratification. His response in each case was a confession of human weakness and his reliance upon Divine Power.

In 1863, when the New School Presbyterians embodied their sentiments of loyalty to the Union in an eloquent memorial to the President, he replied, "From the beginning I saw that the issues of our great struggle depended upon Divine interposition and favor.... Relying as I do upon the Almighty power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions that you have just read," etc.

To a committee of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1864 he said, "It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, more prayers to heaven than any other. God bless the Methodist Church! Bless all the churches; blessed be God who in this great trial giveth us the churches."

To the Quakers of Iowa, who had sent him an address through Senator Harlan, he wrote, "It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that, in the efforts which I have made, and am making, for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply aware than myself that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness, and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure."

One of the most significant of the President's letters, in which he expresses himself with less than his usual reserve, was written to Mrs. Gurney, wife of an eminent preacher of the English Society of Friends, in the autumn of 1864: "I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations, and to no one of them more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains."

Being requested to preside at a meeting of the Christian Commission held in Washington on February 22, 1863, he wrote, "Whatever shall tend to turn our thoughts from the unreasoning and uncharitable passions, prejudices, and jealousies incident to a great national trouble such as ours, and to fix them on the vast and long-enduring consequences, for weal or for woe, which are to result from the struggle, and especially to strengthen our reliance on the Supreme Being for the final triumph of the right, cannot but be well for us all."

Mr. Herndon, his law partner, remembers that he often said that his creed was the same as that of an old man named Glenn, whom he heard speak at an experience meeting in Indiana: "When I do good, I feel good, and when I do bad, I feel bad; and that's my religion."

Hay and Nicolay, his secretaries, in their biography say, "Lincoln was a man of profound and intense religious feeling. We have no purpose of attempting to formulate his creed; we question if he himself ever did so. We only have to look at his authentic public and private utterances to see how deep and strong in all the latter part of his life was the current of his religious thought and emotion. He continually invited and appreciated at their highest value the prayers of good people. The pressure of the tremendous problems by which he was surrounded; the awful moral significance of the conflict in which he was the chief combatant; the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility, which never left him for an hour,--all contributed to produce, in a temperament naturally serious and predisposed to a spiritual view of life and conduct, a sense of reverent acceptance of the guidance of a Superior Power. From that morning when, standing amid the falling snow-flakes on the railway car at Springfield, he asked the prayers of his neighbors in those touching phrases whose echo rose that night in invocations from thousands of family altars, to the memorable hour when on the steps of the National Capitol he humbled himself before his Creator in the sublime words of the second inaugural, there is not an expression known to have come from his lips or his pen but proves that he held himself answerable in every act of his career to a more august tribunal than any on earth. The fact that he was not a communicant of any church, and that he was singularly reserved in regard to his personal religious life, gives only the greater force to these striking proofs of his profound reverence and faith.

"In final substantiation of this assertion we publish two papers from the hand of the President, one official and the other private, which bear within themselves the imprint of a sincere devotion and a steadfast reliance upon the power and benignity of an overruling Providence. The first is an order which he issued on the 16th of November, 1862, on the observance of Sunday:

"'The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service. The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine will demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to a measure of strict necessity. The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperilled, by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High.'

"In September, 1862, while his mind was burdened with the weightiest question of his life, wearied with all the considerations of law and expediency with which he had been struggling for two years, he retired within himself and tried to bring some order into his thoughts by rising above the wrangling of men and of parties and pondering the relations of human government to the Divine. In this frame of mind, absolutely detached from any earthly considerations, he wrote this meditation. It has never been published. It was not written to be seen of men. It was penned in the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into closer communion with its Maker:

"'The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began, and, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.'"

On September 22, 1862, at a Cabinet meeting, Lincoln submitted his determination to issue a proclamation of emancipation of the slaves. He said that his mind was fixed, his decision made, and therefore he did not ask the opinion of his advisers as to the act, but he wished his paper announcing his course to be as correct in terms as it could be made without any change in his determination. That is the recollection of Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, who in his diary refers to Lincoln's "Covenant with God," as follows:

"In the course of the discussion on this paper, which was long, earnest, and, on the general principle involved, harmonious, he remarked that he had made a vow--a covenant--that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. It might be thought strange, he said, that he had in this way submitted the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind what he should do. God had decided this question in favor of the slaves. He was satisfied it was right,--was confirmed and strengthened in his action by the vow and the results."

The diary of Secretary Chase for the same day contains a similar account of the same discussion, and quotes the President as saying,--

"When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made the promise to myself and [hesitating a little] to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfil that promise."

Mr. Usher, the Secretary of the Interior, says that when the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was submitted to the Cabinet, Mr. Chase remarked,--

"This paper is one of the utmost importance, greater than any state paper ever made by this government. A paper of so much importance, and involving the liberties of so many people, ought, I think, to make some reference to the Deity. I do not observe anything of the kind in it."

Lincoln said, "No; I overlooked it. Some reference to the Deity must be inserted. Mr. Chase, won't you make a draft of what you think ought to be inserted?"

Mr. Chase promised to do so, and at the next meeting presented the following:

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."

When Lincoln read the paragraph, Mr. Chase said, "You may not approve it, but I thought this or something like it would be appropriate."

Lincoln replied, "I do approve it; it cannot be bettered, and I will adopt it in the very words you have written."

The reader has perceived from these pages the strength and the weakness of Abraham Lincoln. His errors were due to mercy and not to malice; to prudence and not to thoughtlessness or pride; to deliberation and not to recklessness. Perhaps he might have shortened the war by removing McClellan and placing in command of the armies before Richmond a commander of greater force and energy; perhaps he might have abolished human bondage by earlier action, as demanded by the antislavery element in the North; but who can tell what disasters might have been caused by impetuous action? If Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan had been at his side at the beginning of the war, history might have been different.

But who is so perfect or so wise as to judge Abraham Lincoln?

His greatest fault was his inability to suppress his sympathies. He once said, "If I have one vice, it is not being able to say 'No.' And I consider it a vice. Thank God for not making me a woman. I presume if He had He would have made me just as ugly as I am, and nobody would ever have tempted me."

On another occasion he said, "Some of our generals complain that I impair discipline and encourage insubordination in the army by my pardons and respites; but it rests me after a hard day's work if I can find some good cause for saving a man's life; and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends."

And with a happy smile beaming upon his careworn face, he again signed his name that saved another life. It was his theory that when a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds and gives satisfactory evidence of it, he can safely be pardoned.

An old lady came to him with tears in her eyes to express her gratitude for the pardon of her son, a truant soldier.

"Good-by, Mr. Lincoln," she said; "I shall probably never see you again until we meet in heaven."

He was deeply moved. He took her right hand in both of his and said, "I am afraid with all my troubles I shall never get to that resting-place you speak of; but if I do, I am sure I shall find you. That you wish me to get there is, I believe, the best wish you could make for me. Good-by."

To his oldest and most intimate friend he said, "Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow."

His greatness consisted not in his eloquence as an orator, nor his shrewdness as a lawyer, nor his tact as a diplomatist, nor his genius in planning and directing military affairs, nor his executive ability, but in his absolute self-control, his unselfishness, the full maturity of his wisdom, the strength of his convictions, his sound judgment, his absolute integrity, his unwavering adherence to the principles of truth, justice, and honor, his humanity, his love of country, his sublime faith in the people and in Republican institutions. He was without malice or the spirit of resentment, without envy or jealousy, and he suppressed his passions to a degree beyond that of most men. He entered the Presidency with an inadequate conception of his own responsibilities, but when he saw his duty he did it with courage, endurance, magnanimity, and unselfish devotion. In his eulogy of Lincoln, uttered a few days after the assassination, Ralph Waldo Emerson said,--

"He grew according to the need; his mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem grew so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was a man so fitted to the event.

"In four years--four years of battle days--his endurance, his fertility and resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of an heroic epoch."

Index

Acceptance, Lincoln's letter of, 157

Adams, Charles Francis, 354

----, John Quincy, 144

Address, first inaugural, 170

----, second inaugural, 89

Admitted to the bar, 65

Advice to young lawyers, 70, 82

Alley, John B., 54, 175, 216

Amendment, thirteenth, adopted, 337

Ancestry of Lincoln, 15

Anderson, General Robert, 231, 308

Anecdotes of Lincoln, 29, 49, 69, 74, 81, 95, 128, 133, 141, 159, 161, 164, 175, 178, 220, 222, 226, 234, 259, 278, 280, 290, 310, 330, 343, 360

Anger, Lincoln's, 54

Appearance, Lincoln's, 48

Argument, Lincoln's method of, 79, 86, 96, 100, 125

Arrival at Washington, Lincoln's, 169

Assassination conspiracy, 168

---- of Lincoln, 311

Atheism, story of Lincoln's, 376

Autobiography, Lincoln's, 59

Bailache, William H., 170

Baker, Edward D., 54, 83, 134, 137, 169

Bar, early practice at, 65, 66, 83

Bateman, Dr. Newton, 158, 388

Bates, Edward, 181, 298

Beecher, Henry Ward, 190

Berry and Lincoln, 34, 63

Bible, Lincoln's admiration for, 387

Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, 20

Bixby, letters to Mrs., 51

Black Hawk War, 65, 229

Blair, Francis P., 187

----, Montgomery, 181, 187, 191

Bloomington Convention, 105, 149

Books, Lincoln's early, 56

Boone, Daniel, related to Lincoln, 16

Booth, John Wilkes, 311

Boutwell, George S., 216

Boyhood of Lincoln, 21, 24, 60, 93

Brown, John, 322

Browning, Orville H., 39, 134, 170

Bryant, William Cullen, 124

Buchanan Cabinet, disloyalty of, 165

---- sends emissary to Lincoln, 162

Buell, General, 252

Bull Run, battle of, 236

Burns, Lincoln's love of, 288

Burnside, General, 262

Butler, General B. F., 273, 294, 323, 333

Cabin in which Lincoln was born, 19

Cabinet, dissensions of, 186, 235, 356

----, selection of, 174, 179, 193

Calhoun, John, 35, 63

Cameron, Simon, 193, 220, 238, 325

Campaign of, Presidential, 1860, 155

Campaigning, Lincoln's method of, 96, 133

Campaigns, plans of military, 249

Campbell, John A., 272

Canal, isthmus, 334

Candidate for Congress, 137

---- for Legislature, 129

---- for President, 158

---- for Senate, 146, 150

Capacity for labor, Lincoln's, 279

Capital, removal of Illinois State, 135

Cartter, Judge, 175, 360

Cartwright, Peter, 138

Cass, General, 231

Chandler, A. B., 53

Character, Lincoln's, 14, 91, 370, 396

Chase, Salmon P., 174, 204, 210, 216, 243, 340, 356

Chicago Convention (1860), 158

Chief-Justice, Chase appointed, 216

Children, Lincoln's, 46, 287

----, Lincoln's love of his, 46

Choate, Joseph H., 125

Christian Commission, 390

Church, Lincoln's attendance at, 370

Circuit, following the judicial, 67, 83

Clergy, opposition of Springfield, 387

Coffey, Titian J., 184, 297

Coles, Edward, Governor, 315

Colfax, Schuyler, 153, 182, 310, 330

Colonization, Lincoln advocates negro, 333

Confusion in government, 186, 233

Congress, speeches in, 98, 145

Congressional campaign, 137

---- experience, Lincoln's, 139

Conners, Senator, 55

Contraband question, the, 323

Convention, Bloomington, 156

----, Decatur, 26, 149

----, Illinois State (1860), 156

---- of 1860, National, 27, 158

Cooper Institute speech, 86, 124, 321

Courage, Lincoln's, 272

Creed, Lincoln's, 391

Dana, Charles A., 227, 364

Davis, David, 67, 83, 193, 369, 379

----, Henry Winter, 187

----, Jefferson, 140, 231

Death, Lincoln's, 313

Debate, Lincoln's first, 96

---- with Douglas, 86, 100, 110, 114

Debt, Lincoln's, 33

Decatur Convention, 149

Defeat by people, Lincoln's only, 130

Democracy, Lincoln's, 345

Dennison, William, 193, 242

Depew, Chauncey M., 85, 93, 281, 361

Diplomacy, Lincoln's ability in, 342, 346, 351

Diplomatist, definition of, 342

Disloyalty in Buchanan's Cabinet, 233

Dodge, William E., 368

Douglas, Stephen A., 40, 74, 83, 86, 100, 107, 114, 122, 134, 151, 169, 320, 380

Dreams, Lincoln's, 308

Duel, Lincoln's, 42

Earnings, Lincoln's first, 24

Eckert, General, 53, 227

Education, Lincoln's, 58, 91

Edwards, Ninian W., 40

Election declared, Lincoln's, 166

----, Presidential, of 1860, 161

Electoral vote counted, 166

Emancipation accomplished, 335

----, Lincoln's ideas of, 319

---- proclamation, 183, 329, 335, 394

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 396

Emigration of Lincoln family, 17

England, diplomatic relations with, 347, 351

Essay, Lincoln's first, 94

Ethics, Lincoln's legal, 70

Experience, Lincoln's legislative, 135

----, ---- Congressional, 139

Farewell to Springfield neighbors, 47

Faults, Lincoln's, 395

Fees, Lincoln's, 45, 72

Fenton, Reuben E., 173

Fessenden, William Pitt, 214, 361

Field, Munsell B., 213

First dollar, Lincoln's, 24

---- lawsuit, Lincoln's, 65

Fish, Hamilton, 350

Flatboat, Lincoln's, 32

Foreign policy, 346

Fortune, Lincoln's, 45

France, diplomatic relations with, 348

"Freeport Doctrine," Douglas's, 107, 120

Frémont, General John C., 246

Frémont, Mrs., 247

Fry, General James F., 88, 221, 344

Fugitive-slave law, 323

Garrison, William Lloyd, 290

Genius, Lincoln's military, 232, 249, 269

Gentry, Mr., 25

Gentryville, Indiana, 21, 25, 94

Gettysburg speech, 86, 89

Giddings, Joshua R., 140

Gilmer, John A., 181

God, belief in, 370

Governorship of Oregon, offered, 137

Graham, Menton, 62

Grammar, Lincoln's first, 63

Grant, General, 177, 232, 245, 252, 253, 260, 300, 308

Greeley, Horace, 92, 284, 332

Green, General Duff, 162

Gurley, Rev. Dr., 313, 370

Hahn, letter to Governor, 337

Halleck, General, 191, 251

Hanks, Dennis, 26

----, John, 23, 27, 32

----, Nancy, Lincoln's mother, 18, 22

Harris, Senator, 311

Hay, Colonel John, 88, 284, 311, 381

Hayti, recognition of, 328

Herndon, W. H., 33, 108, 372

Holloway, Commissioner of Patents, 174

Holmes's poems, Lincoln's love of, 289

Holt, Judge-Advocate-General, 293

Home, Lincoln's first, 19

----, Lincoln's second, 20

----, Lincoln's third, 21

----, Lincoln's fourth, 26

----, Lincoln's fifth, 44

----, Lincoln's sixth, 45

---- life, Lincoln's, 45, 227, 284

Honesty, Lincoln's, 34, 84, 371

Hood's poems, Lincoln's love of, 288

Hooker, General Joseph, 263

"House divided against itself" speech, 110

Humor, Lincoln's, 50, 93, 281, 344, 361

Hunter, General David, 247, 328

Illinois Central Railroad, litigation with, 72

---- State Convention of 1860, 156

Inauguration, Lincoln's first, 169

----, Lincoln's second, 89

Indiana, migration to, 21

Indiana, Revised Statutes of, 56

Infidelity, story of Lincoln's, 376

Invention, Lincoln's, 32

Jefferson, Joseph, reminiscences of, 68

Johnson, Reverdy, 76

Johnston, General Albert Sidney, 231

----, John, Lincoln's step-brother, 23, 30, 32, 382

----, Sally Bush, 23, 30

Judd, Norman B., 154, 188

Judicial procedure, early, 66

Julian, George W., 174, 225

Kasson, John A., 223

Kelso, Jack, 95

Kernan, Francis, 296

Kindness of heart, Lincoln's, 279, 292, 296

Lamon, Ward, 310

Land Office Commissionership, 143

Law-books, Lincoln's first, 57, 64

Law, how he came to study, 56

Lawyer, Lincoln becomes a, 64

Learning, Lincoln's love of, 56, 78, 91

Lee's surrender, 307

Legislature, candidate for, 129

Liberia, recognition of, 328

Lincoln admitted to the bar, 65

----, ancestry of, 15

----, anger of, 54

---- appointed postmaster, 34

----, arrival in Washington of, 169

----, assassination of, 311

----, atheism of, story of, 376

----, autobiography of, 59

----, birthplace of, 20

----, Black Hawk War, 65, 229

----, boyhood of, 21, 24, 60, 93

----, candidate for President, 158

----, character of, 14, 91, 370, 396

----, code of morals of, 372

----, Congressional experience of, 139

----, courage of, 272

----, creed of, 391

----, death of, 313

----, debate of, with Douglas, 40, 74, 83, 86, 100, 107, 114, 122, 134, 151, 160, 169, 320, 380

----, diplomacy of, 342, 346, 351

----, duel of, 42

----, education of, 58, 91

----, election of, declared, 166

----, farewell of, to neighbors, 47

----, faults of, 395

----, fees of, 45, 72

----, first campaign of, for Legislature, 129

----, first earnings of, 24

----, first impressions of, of slavery, 314

----, first inauguration of, 169

----, first lawsuit of, 65

----, first meeting of, with McClellan, 71

----, first school of, 61

---- first suggested for President, 153

----, foreign policy of, 346

----, fortune of, 45, 74

----, grandmother of, 17

----, home life of, 45

----, homes of, 19, 20, 21, 26, 44, 45

----, honesty of, 34, 84, 371

----, journey of, to New Orleans, 25

----, kindness of heart of, 279, 292, 296

----, last speech of, 338

----, legal ethics of, 70, 83

----, legal methods of, 74, 79, 83, 86

----, legislative experience of, 135

----, letter of, accepting Presidential nomination, 157

----, "Lost Speech" of, 106

----, love-affairs of, 35, 37, 38, 40

----, love of, for his children, 46, 53

----, ----, for learning, 56, 78, 91

----, marriage of, 44

----, memory of, 93

----, method of argument of, 79, 86, 96, 100, 125

----, military genius of, 232, 249, 269

----, muscular strength of, 28

----, nomination of, for Congress, 138

----, notification of, of nomination to Presidency, 156

----, oratory of, 86, 116

----, Peoria speech of, 91

----, personal appearance of, 48

----, place in history of, 13, 86, 91

----, plans of, for purchasing slaves, 326

----, political career of, 129

----, political sagacity of, 344

----, popularity of, 130

----, receives emissaries from rebel leaders, 163

----, recommendations of, for office, 142

----, religious views of, 370, 381

---- seeks Presidential nomination, 155

----, sisters of, 20, 26

----, speeches of, 95, 97, 100, 114, 125, 133

----, Springfield speech of, 104, 109

----, stature of, 29

----, step-mother of, 23, 30

----, superstitions of, 309

----, surveying of, 34

----, visit to Richmond of, 271

----, weakness of, 395

Lincoln, Anna, 17

----, Robert T., 30, 46, 177, 310, 312

----, "Tad", 287

----, Thomas, 17, 21, 30, 375

----, Willie, 277

Liquor selling, Lincoln's, 34

Literary style, Lincoln's, 86

Locke, David R., 36, 51

Logan, Stephen T., 35, 44, 69

"Lost Speech," Lincoln's, 106

Louisiana, reconstruction of, 339

Love-affairs, Lincoln's, 35, 38

Lovejoy, assassination of, 317

Lyons, Lord, 350

Maltby, Captain, 55

Markland, General, 189

Marriage, Lincoln's, 44

Mason-Slidell affair, 350

McClellan's first meeting with Lincoln, 71

McClellan, General, 197, 206, 238, 250

McCulloch, Hugh, 183, 214, 309, 340

McCulloch, Mrs., 283

McDowell, General, 237

McKinley, William, 342

Meade, General George C., 268

Medill, Joseph, 122

Melancholy, Lincoln's, 50

Memory, Lincoln's, 93

Methods, Lincoln's legal, 74, 79, 83

----, Lincoln's political, 133

Mexican question, 354

Migration to Illinois, 26

Military genius, Lincoln's, 232, 249, 269

Missouri Compromise, 102, 146

Monroe Doctrine, 354

Moral courage, Lincoln's, 130

Morals, Lincoln's code of, 372

Morgan, E. D., 29

Muscular strength, Lincoln's, 28

Negroes, enlistment of, 325

New Orleans, Lincoln's journey to, 25, 32, 314, 318

Nicolay, John G., 90, 158, 199, 204, 214, 250, 379, 385

Nominated for Congress, 138

Nomination, notified of Presidential, 156, 380

Office seekers, clamors of, 164, 186, 279

Offutt, Denton, 32, 62, 129

Oglesby, Richard J., 26

Oratory, Lincoln's, 86, 125

Oregon, offered governorship of, 143

Owen, Robert Dale, 360

Owens, Mary, 38

Pardon of soldiers, 36, 52

Patent case, Lincoln's, 75

Patronage, Lincoln's opinions about, 143

Peace Commissioners, 355

Peoria speech, Lincoln's, 91

Petroleum V. Nasby, 36, 51, 280

Philadelphia speech (1860), 167

Pinkerton, Allan, 168

Platform, Lincoln's first political, 129

Poem, Lincoln's favorite, 379

Poems, Lincoln's, 94

Poetry, love of, 95, 287, 379

Politician, definition of, 342

Political career, Lincoln's, 129

---- sagacity, Lincoln's, 96, 133, 160, 171, 177, 199, 344

Pomeroy, Senator, 211

Poore, Ben: Perley, 289

Popularity, Lincoln's, 130

Porter, Admiral, 272

Postmaster, Lincoln appointed, 34

Practice, Lincoln's law, 74, 82

Prayer, Lincoln's belief in, 382

Presbyterian Church, Springfield, 46

President, Lincoln elected, 161

Presidential nomination, Lincoln seeks, 155

Press, Lincoln's respect for, 283, 289

Proclamation, Emancipation, 183, 329, 335, 394

Property, Lincoln's, 45

Rails that Lincoln split, 26

Rathbone, Major, 311

Rebel leaders send emissary to Lincoln, 162

Recommendations for office, Lincoln's, 142

Relatives in Kentucky, 16

---- in Virginia, 16

Religious prejudice against, 137

---- views, Lincoln's, 370

Republican National Convention (1856), 149 (1860), 156

Rice, Governor, 296

Richmond, Lincoln visits, 271

Rutledge, Anne, 37

Sagacity, Lincoln's political, 160, 171, 177

School, Lincoln's first, 61

Scott, General, 229, 235, 242

Secession begins, 161

Senate, candidate for, 146, 150

----, difficulty with, 356

Senatorial campaign, 108, 146

Seward, William H., 181, 197, 204, 208, 236, 334, 337, 348, 351, 355

Shakespeare, Lincoln's love of, 288

Shellabarger, Judge, 222

Sheridan, General, 270, 339

Sherman, General, 232, 270, 235, 269, 300

Shields, James, 40, 42

Short, James, 33

Sickles, General Daniel E., 384

Sisters, Lincoln's, 20

Slavery, Lincoln's first impressions of, 25, 57, 314

----, first protest against, 316

----, Lincoln's plan to abolish, in Washington, 318

Slaves, Lincoln's plans for purchase of, 326

----, money value of, 327

Smith, Caleb B., 182

Social life in Washington, 38, 227

Speakership, candidate for, 136

Speech at Philadelphia, 167

----, Lincoln's last, 338

----, the "Lost", 106

Speeches, campaign, 95, 133

----, first political, 95

---- in Congress, 98, 144, 145

---- in Legislature, 97

Speed, James, 185

----, Joshua F., 41, 96, 185, 375, 396

Spiritualism, Lincoln's views of, 376

Springfield made capital of Illinois, 135

---- speech, Lincoln's, 104, 109

Stanton, Edwin D., 183, 189, 218, 224, 244, 253, 290, 298, 309, 313

----, Lincoln's first meeting with, 76

Statesmanship? what is, 342

Stature, Lincoln's, 29

Stephens, Alexander H., 145, 162, 355

Step-mother, Lincoln's, 23, 30

Stevens, Thaddeus, 52

Stoddard, W. O., 265

Strength, muscular, Lincoln's, 28

Stuart, John T., 64

Study, Lincoln's habits of, 58, 77, 91

Stump oratory, Lincoln's, 96, 104, 114, 125, 133

Suffrage, negro, Lincoln's views on, 337, 338

Sumner, Charles, 176, 216, 272, 334

Sunday proclamation, Lincoln's, 392

Superstition, Lincoln's, 309, 376

Supreme Court, Chase's appointment to, 216

Surveying, Lincoln's, 34

Swett, Leonard, 60, 84, 380

Tact, Lincoln's, 171, 285, 343, 361

"Tad" Lincoln, 287

Taney, Chief-Justice, 169

Taylor, President, election of, 142

Teachers, Lincoln's, 61

Temperance, Lincoln's views on, 380

Theatre, Ford's, 311

Thomas, General, 270

Tod, Governor, 214

Todd, Miss Mary, 40, 44, 47

Tragedy in Lincoln family, 17

Trent affair, 350

Trumbull, Lyman, 108, 148, 357

Tuck, Amos, 144, 176

Usher, John T., 183, 340

Wade, Benjamin F., 187

Washburne, E. B., 141, 148, 165, 169, 253

Weakness, Lincoln's, 395

Webster, Daniel, 140

Weed, Thurlow, 160, 171, 173, 181, 197, 382

Weldon, Lawrence, 80, 379

Welles, Gideon, 184, 196, 310

Wentworth, Long John, 75

Whig party organized, 136

White, Horace, 104, 118, 149

Wilkes, Captain Charles, 350

Wilson, Henry, 296

Wit, Lincoln's, 50, 91, 96

Yates, Richard, 103

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

"fugitive slave law" and "fugitive-slave law" both appear in the original book; regularized to "fugitive-slave law" in this eBook.

"proslavery" and "pro-slavery" both occur in the original book; unchanged here.

Letter facing page 168: in handwritten date "October 3, 1861", "3" (rather than "5") is based on examination of other samples of Lincoln's handwriting.

Page 289: "Ben: Perley Poore" did abbreviate his first name with a colon. His name also appears without a colon on page 98.

End of Project Gutenberg's Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleroy Curtis