Part 4

The evening of March 25th was an intensely interesting one to me. It was passed with the President alone in his study, marked by no interruptions. Busy with pen and papers when I entered, he presently threw them aside, and commenced talking again about Shakspeare. Little Tad coming in, he sent him to the library for a copy of the plays, from which he read aloud several of his favorite passages. Relapsing into a sadder strain, he laid the book aside, and leaning back in his chair, said, “There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper, and carried in my pocket, till by frequent reading I had it by heart. I would give a great deal,” he added, “to know who wrote it, but I never could ascertain.” Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the poem, “Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” Surprised and delighted, I told him that I should greatly prize a copy of the lines. He replied that he had recently written them out for Mrs. Stanton, but promised that when a favorable opportunity occurred he would give them to me.

Varying the subject, he continued: “There are some quaint, queer verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled, ‘The Last Leaf,’ one of which is to me inexpressibly touching. He then repeated these also from memory. The verse he referred to occurs in about the middle of the poem, and is this:--

“The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.”

As he finished this verse, he said, in his emphatic way, “For pure pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing finer than those six lines in the English language!”

A day or two afterward, he asked me to accompany him to the temporary studio, at the Treasury Department, of Mr. Swayne, the sculptor, who was making a bust of him. While he was sitting, it occurred to me to improve the opportunity to secure the promised poem. Upon mentioning the subject, the sculptor surprised me by saying that he had at his home, in Philadelphia, a printed copy of the verses, taken from a newspaper some years previous. The President inquired if they were published in any connection with his name. Mr. Swayne said that they purported to have been _written_ “by Abraham Lincoln.” “I have heard of that before, and that is why I asked,” returned the President. “But there is no truth in it. The poem was first shown to me by a young man named ‘Jason Duncan,’ many years ago.”

The sculptor was using for a studio the office of the Solicitor of the Treasury Department, an irregular room, packed nearly full of law books. Seating myself, I believe, upon a pile of these at Mr. Lincoln’s feet, he kindly repeated the lines, which I wrote down, one by one, as they fell from his lips:--

OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?[2]

Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved; The mother that infant’s affection who proved; The husband, that mother and infant who blest,-- Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

[The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised, Are alike from the minds of the living erased.]

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne, The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn, The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep, The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

[The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven, The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.]

So the multitude goes--like the flower or the weed That withers away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes--even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same our fathers have been; We see the same sights our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, we view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging, they also would cling;-- But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.

They loved--but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned--but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved--but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed--but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died--ay, they died;--we things that are now, That walk on the turf that lies over their brow, And make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

’Tis the wink of an eye--’tis the draught of a breath-- From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud:-- Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

XX.

On the way to the sculptor’s studio a conversation occurred of much significance, in view of the terrible tragedy so soon to paralyze every loyal heart in the nation. A late number of the New York “Tribune” had contained an account from a correspondent within the Rebel lines, of an elaborate conspiracy, matured in Richmond, to abduct, or assassinate--if the first was not found practicable--the person of the President. A secret organization, composed, it was stated, of five hundred or a thousand men, had solemnly sworn to accomplish the deed. Mr. Lincoln had not seen or heard of this account, and at his request, I gave him the details. Upon the conclusion, he smiled incredulously, and said: “Well, even if true, I do not see what the Rebels would gain by killing or getting possession of me. I am but a single individual, and it would not help their cause or make the least difference in the progress of the war. Everything would go right on just the same. Soon after I was nominated at Chicago, I began to receive letters threatening my life. The first one or two made me a little uncomfortable, but I came at length to look for a regular instalment of this kind of correspondence in every week’s mail, and up to inauguration day I was in constant receipt of such letters. It is no uncommon thing to receive them now; but they have ceased to give me any apprehension.” I expressed some surprise at this, but he replied in his peculiar way, “Oh, there is nothing like getting _used_ to things!”

In connection with this, Mr. Noah Brooks,--who was to have been Mr. Nicolay’s successor as private secretary to the President,--and Colonel Charles G. Halpine, of New York, have referred to personal conversations of exceeding interest, which I transcribe.

In an article contributed to “Harper’s Magazine,” soon after the assassination, Mr. Brooks says:--

“The simple habits of Mr. Lincoln were so well known that it is a subject for surprise that watchful and malignant treason did not sooner take that precious life which he seemed to hold so lightly. He had an almost morbid dislike for an escort, or guide, and daily exposed himself to the deadly aim of an assassin. One summer morning, passing by the White House at an early hour, I saw the President standing at the gateway, looking anxiously down the street; and, in reply to a salutation, he said, ‘Good morning, good morning! I am looking for a newsboy; when you get to that corner, I wish you would start one up this way.’ In reply to the remonstrances of friends, who were afraid of his constant exposure to danger, he had but one answer: ‘If they kill me, the next man will be just as bad for them; and in a country like this, where our habits are simple, and must be, assassination is always possible, and will come, if they are determined upon it.’”

A cavalry guard was once placed at the gates of the White House for a while, and he said, privately, that “he worried until he got rid of it.” While the President’s family were at their summer-house, near Washington, he rode into town of a morning, or out at night, attended by a mounted escort; but if he returned to town for a while after dark, he rode in unguarded, and often alone, in his open carriage. On more than one occasion the writer has gone through the streets of Washington at a late hour of the night with the President, without escort, or even the company of a servant, walking all of the way, going and returning.

Considering the many open and secret threats to take his life, it is not surprising that Mr. Lincoln had many thoughts about his coming to a sudden and violent end. He once said that he felt the force of the expression, “To take one’s life in his hand;” but that he would not like to face death suddenly. He said that he thought himself a great coward physically, and was sure that he would make a poor soldier, for, unless there was something inspiriting in the excitement of a battle, he was sure that he would drop his gun and run, at the first symptom of danger. That was said sportively, and he added, “Moral cowardice is something which I think I never had.”

Colonel Halpine, while serving as a member of General Halleck’s staff, had frequently to wait upon the President, both during official hours and at other times. On one of these occasions, Mr. Lincoln concluded some interesting remarks with these words: “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.”

“This expression,” writes Colonel Halpine, “called my attention afresh to what I had remarked to myself almost every time I entered the White House, and to which I had very frequently called the attention both of Major Hay and General Halleck--the utterly unprotected condition of the President’s person, and the fact that any assassin or maniac, seeking his life, could enter his presence without the interference of a single armed man to hold him back. The entrance-doors, and all doors on the official side of the building, were open at all hours of the day, and very late into the evening; and I have many times entered the mansion, and walked up to the rooms of the two private secretaries, as late as nine or ten o’clock at night, without seeing or being challenged by a single soul. There were, indeed, two attendants,--one for the outer door, and the other for the door of the official chambers; but these--thinking, I suppose, that none would call after office hours save persons who were personally acquainted, or had the right of official entry--were, not unfrequently, somewhat remiss in their duties.

“To this fact I now ventured to call the President’s attention, saying that to me--perhaps from my European education--it appeared a deliberate courting of danger, even if the country were in a state of the profoundest peace, for the person at the head of the nation to remain so unprotected.

“‘There are two dangers,’ I wound up by saying; ‘the danger of deliberate political assassination, and the mere brute violence of insanity.’

“Mr. Lincoln heard me through with a smile, his hands locked across his knees, his body rocking back and forth,--the common indication that he was amused.

“‘Now, as to political assassination,’ he said, ‘do you think the Richmond people would like to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than myself? In that one alternative, I have an insurance on my life worth half the prairie land of Illinois. And beside,’--this more gravely,--‘if there were such a plot, and they wanted to get at me, no vigilance could keep them out. We are so mixed up in our affairs, that--no matter what the system established--a conspiracy to assassinate, if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to see me for any one or more of its instruments.

“‘To betray fear of this, by placing guards or so forth, would only be to put the idea into their heads, and perhaps lead to the very result it was intended to prevent. As to the crazy folks, Major, why I must only take my chances,--the worst crazy people at present, I fear, being some of my own too zealous adherents. That there may be such dangers as you and many others have suggested to me, is quite possible; but I guess it wouldn’t improve things any to publish that we were afraid of them in advance.’

“Upon another occasion I remember his coming over one evening after dinner, to General Halleck’s private quarters, to protest--half jocularly, half in earnest--against a small detachment of cavalry which had been detailed without his request, and partly against his will, by the lamented General Wadsworth, as a guard for his carriage in going to and returning from the Soldiers’ Home. The burden of his complaint was that he and Mrs. Lincoln ‘couldn’t hear themselves talk,’ for the clatter of their sabres and spurs; and that, as many of them appeared new hands and very awkward, he was more afraid of being shot by the accidental discharge of one of their carbines or revolvers, than of any attempt upon his life or for his capture by the roving squads of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, then hovering all round the exterior works of the city.”

XXI.

Judge Bates, the Attorney-General, was one day very severe upon the modern deal school of art, as applied to historic characters and events. He instanced in sculpture, Greenough’s “Washington,” in the Capitol grounds, which, he said, was a very good illustration of the heathen idea of Jupiter Tonans, but was the farthest possible remove from any American’s conception of the Father of his Country. Powell’s painting in the Rotunda, “De Soto discovering the Mississippi,” and Mills’s equestrian statue of Jackson, in front of the President’s House, shared in his sarcastic condemnation. He quoted from an old English poet--Creech, I think he said--with much unction:--

“Whatever contradicts my sense I hate to see, and can but disbelieve.”

“Genius and talent,” said he, on another occasion, “are rarely found combined in one individual.” I requested his definition of the distinction. “Genius,” he replied, “conceives; talent executes.”

Referring to Mr. Lincoln’s never-failing fund of anecdote, he remarked, “The character of the President’s mind is such that his thought habitually takes on this form of illustration, by which the point he wishes to enforce is invariably brought home with a strength and clearness impossible in hours of abstract argument. Mr. Lincoln,” he added, “comes very near being a perfect man, according to my ideal of manhood. He lacks but one thing.” Looking up from my palette, I asked, musingly, if this was official dignity as President. “No,” replied Judge Bates, “that is of little consequence. His deficiency is in the element of _will_. I have sometimes told him, for instance, that he was unfit to be intrusted with the pardoning power. Why, if a man comes to him with a touching story, his judgment is almost certain to be affected by it. Should the applicant be a _woman_, a wife, a mother, or a sister,--in nine cases out of ten, her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail.”

XXII.

Mr. Seward, whose conversation much of the time, while sitting, was like that of a man soliloquizing aloud, told me on one occasion two or three good stories. Referring to the numerous portraits painted of him at different times, he said, that of all artists whom he had known, Henry Inman was most rapid in execution. For the full-length portrait, painted while he was Governor, for the city of New York, Inman required but two or three sittings of an hour each, with an additional quarter of an hour for the standing figure. This drew out something from me in relation to Elliott’s whole length of him, painted at the same period. “My experience with Elliott,” he rejoined, “who was then in the beginning of his career, was a very different affair. He seemed to think me like Governor Crittenden’s hen.” Laughing at the recollection, he lighted a cigar, and continued: “One day the Governor was engaged with his Council, when his little boy, of five or six years, came into the chamber, and said, ‘Father, the black hen is _setting_.’ ‘Go away, my son,’ returned the Governor; ‘I am very busy.’ The child disappeared, but soon returned, and putting his head in at the door, repeated the information. ‘Well, well,’ replied the Governor, ‘you must not bother me now; let her _set_.’ The door was shut, but soon afterward again cautiously opened, in the midst of a profound discussion, and the words rang out, ‘But father, she is setting on one egg!’ The Governor turned around, and looking into the dilated eyes of the excited little fellow, replied dryly, ‘Well, my son, I think we will let her _set_. Her time is not _very_ precious!’”

Another was of General R----, formerly of the New York State Senate. At the regular session one day, the General gave notice that the following day he would introduce a bill providing a thermometer for every institution of learning in the State. The next morning the clerk was in his private office at the usual hour, reading the bills aloud, and placing them on file for the business of the day. A gentleman who prided himself upon his classical attainments was present, and, as the clerk read the notice given by Senator R----, he was informed that a word borrowed from another language should, according to the rule, always be given its native pronunciation. The original of thermometer, the gentleman said, was a French term, which should be pronounced accordingly. By a process of reasoning the clerk was convinced; and when the bill was announced, he read it according to instructions. General R---- was observed to look up from writing, and fix his eye upon the clerk. The second reading passed, and he rose to his feet, bending forward upon his desk, listening intently, his eyebrows gradually contracting. “Third reading. Senator R---- gave notice of a bill to provide a _thermomētre_ for every institution of learning in the State.” By this time the attention of the entire house was drawn to the General. “Ther--what?” he demanded, in a stentorian tone. “_Thermomētre_” quietly responded the confident clerk. “Thermometer! thermometer! you ---- fool; don’t you know what a thermometer is?” thundered the enraged Senator, amid roars of laughter.

Speaking once of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Mr. Seward remarked, that, as statesmen, they could not well be compared; “they were no more alike than a Grecian temple and a Gothic church.”

I was much interested in an opinion he once expressed of equestrian statues. He said a grand character should never be represented in this form. It was ignoring the divine in human nature to thus link man with an animal, and seemed to him a degradation of true art. “Bucephalus,” in marble or bronze was well enough by itself. Place “Alexander” upon his back, and though the animal gained a degree of interest, the _man_ lost immeasurably.

XXIII.

Soon after the chalk sketch of my conception had been placed upon the canvas, I attended one of the receptions given by the Secretary of the Navy and Mrs. Welles. While standing as I thought unobserved, near a corner of the room, Mr. Seward approached me, and in a manner of more than usual warmth, said, “I told the President the other day that you were painting your picture upon a false presumption.” Looking at him in some surprise, I inquired his meaning. “Oh,” he rejoined, “you appear to think in common with many other foolish people, that the great business of this Administration is the destruction of slavery. Now allow me to say you are much mistaken. Slavery was killed years ago. Its death knell was tolled when Abraham Lincoln was elected President. The work of this Administration is the suppression of the Rebellion and the preservation of the Union. Abolitionists, like the different religious sects, have been chasing one idea, until they have come to believe that their horizon absolutely bounds the world. Slavery has been in fact but an incident in the history of the nation, inevitably bound to perish in the progress of intelligence. Future generations will scarcely credit the record that such an institution ever existed here; or existing, that it ever lived a day under such a government. But suppose, for one moment, the Republic destroyed. With it is bound up not alone the destiny of a race, but the best hopes of all mankind. With its overthrow the sun of liberty, like the Hebrew dial, would be set back indefinitely. The magnitude of such a calamity is beyond our calculation. The salvation of the nation is, then, of vastly more consequence than the destruction of slavery. Had you consulted me for a subject to paint, I should not have given you the Cabinet Council on Emancipation, but the meeting which took place when the news came of the attack upon Sumter, when the first measures were organized for the restoration of the national authority. That was the crisis in the history of this Administration--not the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation. If I am to be remembered by posterity,” he concluded, with much excitement of manner, “let it not be as having loved predominantly white men or black men, but as one who loved his country.”

Assenting to much that he had said, I replied, that with all deference, I could not accept his conclusions regarding slavery. Although more than a year had passed since the issue of the proclamation, the Confederacy, founded upon it, was yet powerful enough to threaten the destruction of the nation, though, for my own part, I did not question the result of the conflict. I looked upon the Declaration of Independence as the _assertion_ that all men were created free. Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was the _demonstration_ of this great truth. Without slavery the Republic would have been in no danger. That was the canker-worm gnawing away the nation’s life. Not until the Administration was ready to strike at the root and cause of the Rebellion, was there any reason to hope for the success of the national cause. Without this step, however grand or high the conception in the minds of men of the Republic, in all probability it would have perished. Therefore, in my judgment, no single act of the Administration could for one moment be compared with that of emancipation. Granting the potential view, the proclamation was necessary, as the sign and seal of the consummation.

“Well,” replied Mr. Seward, “you think so, and this generation may agree with you; but posterity will hold a different opinion.”