The Lincoln Story Book by Henry L. Williams

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General Garfield met the issue with indignation. He called the act
"treason!" and denounced the author as a second Benedict Arnold. He
entreated loyal representatives:

"Do not believe that another such growth on the soil of Ohio deformed
the face of nature and darkened the light of God's day!"

When this speech met the President's eye, he hastened to thank General
Garfield for having "flayed Long alive."

* * * * *

"ONE ON 'EM NOT DEAD YET!"

As communications were cut off with the North, intense anxiety was
occasioned there by the situation in November, 1863, of General
Burnside, packed in Knoxville, Tennessee, by Longstreet's dreaded
veterans. At last a telegram reached the War Department, vaguely
telling of "Firing heard in the direction of Knoxville." The President
reading, expressed gladness, in spite of the remaining uncertainty.

"Why," said he to the group of officers and officials, "it reminds me
of a neighbor of ours, in Indiana, in the brush, who had a numerous
family of young ones. They were all the time wandering off into the
scrub, but she was relieved as to their being lost by a squall every
now and then. She would say: 'Thank the laws, there is one still
alive!' That is, I hope _one_ of our generals is in the thicket,
but still alive and kicking!"

Indeed, Burnside resisted a night storming-party, and Longstreet was
not "a lane that knew no turning," but turned and retreated!

* * * * *

THE SOUTH LIKE AN ASH-CAKE.

At the end of 1864, the Confederacy was scotched if not quite killed.
Sherman had halved it by striking into Savannah. East Tennessee and
southwest Virginia were cut by Stoneman. Alabama and Mississippi were
traversed by Grierson and Wilson. In sum, the new map resembled that
of a territory charted off into sections.

President Lincoln said that its face put him in mind of a weary
traveler in the West, who came at night to a small log cabin. The
homesteader and his wife said they would put him up, but had not a
bite of victuals to offer him. He accepted the truss of litter and was
soon asleep. But he was awakened by whispers letting out that in the
fire ashes a hoe-cake was baking. The woman and her mate were merry
over how they had defrauded the stranger of the food. Feeling mad at
having been sent to bed supperless--uncommon mean in that part--he
pretended to wake up and came forth to sit at the dying fire. He
pretended, too, that he was ill from worry.

"The fact is, my father, when he died, left me a large farm. But I had
no sooner taken possession of it than mortgages began to appear. My
farm was situated like this----" He took up the loggerhead poker to
illustrate, drawing lines in the ashes so as to enclose the ash-cake.
"First one man got so much of it one side," he cut off a side of the
hidden dough. "Then another brought in a mortgage and took off another
piece there. Then another here, and another there! and here and
there"--drawing the poker through the ashes to make the figure
plain--"until," he said, "there was nothing of the farm left for
anybody--which, I presume is the case with your cake!"

"And, I reckon," concluded Mr. Lincoln, "that the prospect is now
very good of the South being as cut up as the ash-cake!"--(Telegraph
Manager A. Chandler.)

* * * * *

"I COUNT FOR SOMETHING!"

The true lovers of the South were sorely wrung in 1864 by the Emperor
Napoleon taking advantage of the "lockup" of the United States, to set
a puppet in the Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the imperial throne--
so called--of Mexico. It was said that the Cabinet of Lincoln were
divided on the subject; whereon the Marquis of Chambrun, having
the ear of the Executive, called on him, and inquired on the real
state--would the United States intervene, if only by winking at a
filibustering expedition from the South, with Northern volunteers
accessory, to assist the natives against the usurper?

"There has been war enough," was his rejoinder, with that sadness
which Secretary Boutwell declares inseparable from him, but not due
to the depression of public affairs. "I know what the American people
want; but, thank God! I count for something, and during my second
term there will be no more fighting!"

It was left for his successor, with the two armies disbanded, but
still whetted for slaughter, to expel the French by the mere threat
of their union to restore the republic.

* * * * *

PASSES NO GOOD FOR RICHMOND.

A person solicited the President for a pass to Richmond. But the other
replied caustically:

"I should be happy to oblige you if my passes thither were respected;
but I have issued two hundred and fifty thousand to go to Richmond,
and not one man has got there yet!"

* * * * *

THE MAYOR IS THE BETTER HORSE.

The Lowell _Citizen_ editor participated in a presidential
reception in 1864, just before the fall of Richmond. The usher giving
intimation that the President would see his audience at once, all
were ushered into the inner room. "Abraham Lincoln's countenance bore
that open, benignant outline expected; but what struck us especially
was its cheerful, wide-awake expressiveness, never met with in the
pictures of our beloved chief. The secret may have been that Secretary
Stanton--middle-aged, well-built, stern-visaged man--had brought in
his budget good news from Grant." After saluting his little circle
of callers, they were seated and attended to in turn.

First in order was a citizen of Washington, praying for pardon in the
case of a deserter.

"Well," said the President, after carefully reading the petition,
"it is only natural for one to want pardon; but I must in that case
have a responsible name that I _know_. I don't know you. Do you
live in the city?"

"Yes."

"Do you know--h'm! the mayor?"

"Yes."

"Well, the _mayor_ is the better horse. Bring me his name and
I will let the boy off."

The soldier was pardoned.

* * * * *

THE REAL THING SUPERIOR TO THE SHAM BATTLE.

On the 25th of March, 1864, in honor of the President's renewal of
office, a grand review had been fixed at City Point, outside the
capital.

Whatever the opinion of the old military, the volunteers gave the
civilian commander "the soldiers' vote." In imitation of the French
soldiers dubbing Bonaparte "the Little Corporal," after his Italian
victories, the Americans promoted Lincoln to be their "captain,"
as Walt Whitman worded it, after his repeated reinstatement. He was
rapturously greeted by "his boys in blue." But the arrangements made
at Washington in the undisturbed council were upset by General Lee.
On that very morning he had attacked and taken Fort Stedman. To drive
him out required a veritable action not terminating for several hours.
Lincoln visited the scene of restoration after the carnage, and, on
hearing regrets that the review--the chief _recreation_ of the
Washingtonians--he checked the light-souled attendants with:

"This victory is better than any review."

* * * * *

THE TOOL TURNED ON THE HANDLE.

The scales having fallen from our sight and the figure of the greatest
American standing out colossal and clean-cut for posterity to worship
as without a blemish, it is hard to measure the conceit of the clique
of politicians, pettifoggers, and office-seekers certainly assisting
in the advancement of Abraham Lincoln from confined obscurity in the
West to the choice of the Northern nation. That was not enough, but
still gaging him with their tape they withheld justice from him,
after he displayed his worth in meeting the impending crisis.

When on the heels of the call for 300,000 men in 1863, came in spring,
1864, another for 500,000, to fortify General Grant in his finishing
maneuvers, a murmur was heard. Chicago, gallantly having done her
part, thought it was pumping at a void. A deputation from Cook County,
headed by Lincolnites, departed for the capital to object to the
summons. It was thought by his friends and long supporters that "their
own elect" could not resist their plea, or turn it off with a joke.
This deputation fined down to three persons, as it was not a patriotic
quest. One of them also wished to balk, being Joseph Medill, editor
of the Chicago _Tribune_. As a matter of course, Secretary of War
Stanton refused the indulgence, obdurate as he was. The President was
likewise averse, but he did consent to go over the matter with
Stanton. The result was the same. All was left solely to Lincoln,
since the personal argument was implied by the mediums selected.

"I"--said Medill to Miss Tarbell--"I shall never forget how Mr.
Lincoln suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning
face.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston,
Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the
country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England opposed
the South. It was you who were largely responsible for causing the
blood to flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You
called for emancipation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you
have asked, you have had.

"'Now you come here, begging to be let off from the call for men which
I have made to carry out the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed
of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you!

"'Go home and raise your six thousand extra men--the Cook County
rate. And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward! You and your
_Tribune_ have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest
in making this war. Go home and send us those men!'" They went home,
and they raised and sent those men!

* * * * *

"SOONER THE FOWL BY HATCHING THE EGG THAN SMASHING IT."

"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?... Concede that the new government is to what it should be
as the egg to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the
egg than by smashing it. (Laughter.)"--(Speech by A. Lincoln, his
last! in answer to a serenade at the White House, 11th April, 1865,
amid illuminations for the victories.)

* * * * *

TOO BUSY TO GO INTO ANOTHER BUSINESS.

There came into the presidential hearing a man of French accent from
New Orleans. He was evidently a diffident person, not knowing how
precisely to state his case. But the burden of it was that he was a
real-estate holder in New Orleans, and, since the advent of military
rulers there, he could not collect his rents, his living.

"Your case, my friend," said the President, "may be a hard one, but it
might be worse. If, with your musket, you had taken your chances with
the boys before Richmond, you might have found your bed and board
before now! But the point is, what would you have me do for you? I
have much to do, and the courts have been opened to relieve me in
this regard."

The applicant, still embarrassed, said: "I am not in the habit of
appearing before _big men_."

"And for that matter," it was quickly responded, "you have no need to
change your habit, for you are not before very big men now;" playfully
adding: "I am too busy to go into the rent-collection business."

* * * * *

THE SCALE OF REBELS.

When, at the finale, Lincoln reproved his own wife for using the
hackneyed expression of rebels, suggesting Confederates, as officially
accepted on both sides, a wit commented:

"The Southerners will be like the Jews. As a poor one is simply a
Jew, a rich one a Hebrew, and a Rothschild an Israelite, so it will
be rebels, Confederates, and our Southern brothers anew!"

* * * * *

ONE WAR AT A TIME.

When the Austrian archduke, Maximilian, was foisted upon Mexico as
its emperor by Napoleon III., the Southerners, who did not have their
"bellyful of fighting" by 1864, more than hinted that they would range
shoulder to shoulder with the Federals to try to expel him and the
mercenary Marshal Bazaine. But the President returned sagaciously:

"One war at a time!"

It was under his successor, Johnson, that the expulsion was effected
and the upstart executed by the exasperated Mexicans themselves.

(NOTE.--This was undoubtedly said, but Mr. Henry Watterson, in his
lecture on Lincoln, dates it as at the commencement of the war, when
Secretary Seward, to forestall possible European alliances in favor of
the Confederate States, proposed waging war against France and Spain,
already allied, and challenging Russia and England to follow.)

* * * * *

"AGIN' THE GOVERNMENT."

In the summer of 1864, the governor-general of Canada paid the
President a visit, with a numerous escort. During the late
unpleasantness, as much comfort as possible under the Neutrality Act
was believed to have been given the raiders into the border towns,
as witness the St. Alban's Bank steal and the outfitting of
blockade-runners. But they were treated at Washington with perfect
courtesy. The head of the British party, at the conclusion, said with
some sarcasm in his genial tone:

"I understand, Mr. President, that everybody is entitled to a vote
in this country. If we remain until November, can _we_ vote?"

"You would have to make a longer residence, which I could desire,"
politely replied the host; "only, I fear we should not gain much by
that--for there was a countryman of your excellency, from the sister
kingdom of Ireland, though, who came here, and on landing wanted to
exercise the privilege you seek--to vote early and often! But the
officials at Castle Garden landing-stage laughed at him, saying that
he knew nothing about parties, to which he replied:

"'Bother the parties! It is the same here with me as in the old
country--I am agin' the government!' You see, he wanted to vote on
the side of the Rebellion! Your excellency would then be no more at
a loss to decide on which side!"

* * * * *

PLOWING AROUND A LOG.

A State governor came to Washington, furious at the number of troops
headquarters commanded of him and the mode of collecting them. Irate
as he was, General Fry saw him bidding good-by to the Capitol with a
placid, even pleased, mien. The general inquired of Lincoln himself
how he had been so miraculously mollified.

"I suppose you had to make large concessions to him, as he returns
from you entirely satisfied?" suggested the general.

"Oh, no," replied the President, "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, he announced
he had gotten rid of it.

"'How did you do it?' they asked. 'It was too big to haul away, too
knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn. Whatever _did_ you
do?'

"'Well, now, boys, if you won't tell the secret, I'll tell you how.
I just plowed 'round it!'

"Now, Fry, don't tell anybody, but I just plowed around the
governor!"--(On the authority of General James B. Fry.)

* * * * *

NOT THE RIGHT "CLAY" TO CEMENT A UNION.

In 1864, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York _Tribune_, and
a great authority among the farming class and the extremists,
consented to attend an abortive peace consultation with Southern
representatives, George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, and Clement C.
Clay, at Niagara Falls. Clay was so set upon Jefferson Davis being
still left as a ruler in some high degree which would condone his
action as President of the seceded States, the project, like others,
was a "fizzle," as Lincoln would have said. To our President, Henry
Clay was the "beau-ideal of a statesman"; but it was clear that his
namesake was not of the Clay to cement a new Union!

* * * * *

"THE MAN DOWN SOUTH."

In August, 1864, a painful absorption was noticed in the President's
manner, growing more and more strained and depressed. The ancient
smile was fainter when it flitted over the long-drawn features, and
the eyes seemed to bury themselves out of sight in the cavernous
sockets, too dry for tears. These withdrawing fits were not uncommon,
but they had become frequent this summer, and at the reception he had
mechanically passed the welcome and given the hand-shake. But then the
abstraction became so dense that he let an old friend stand before him
without a glance, much less the usual hearty greeting expected. The
newcomer, alarmed, ventured to arouse him. He shook off his absence of
mind, seized the hand proffered him, and, while grasping it, exclaimed
as though no others were by, also staring and pained:

"Excuse me! I was thinking--thinking of a man--down South!"

He was thinking of Sherman--that military genius who "burned his ships
and penetrated a hostile country," like Cortez, and from whom no
reliable news had been received while he was investing Savannah.
Lincoln had in his mind been accompanying his captain on that forlorn
march--"smashing things"--to the sea.

* * * * *

THE DISMEMBERED "YALLER" DOG.

Toward the end of December, 1864, the news trickled in of the utter
discomfiture of Confederate General Hood's army at Nashville, by
General Thomas. An enthusiastic friend of the President said to him:

"There is not enough left of _Hood_ to make a dish-rag, is
there?"

"Well, no, Medill; I think Hood's army is in about the identical fix
of Bill Sykes' dog (the application from Dickens is noticeable as
showing Lincoln's eclectic reading) down in Sangamon County. Did you
never hear it?"

As a Chicago man Mr. Medill might be allowed to be ignorant of
Sangamon Valley incidents.

"Well, this Bill Sykes had a long, hungry _yaller_ dog, forever
getting into the neighbors' meat smokehouses, and chicken-coops, and
the like. They had tried to kill it a hundred-odd times, but the dog
was always too smart for them. Finally, one of them got a coon's
_innards,_ and filled it up with gunpowder, and tied a piece of
punk in the nozle. When he see this dog a-coming 'round, he fired this
punk, split open a corn-cake and _squoze_ the intestine inside,
all nice and slab, and threw out the lot. The dog was always ravenous,
and swallered the heap--kerchunk!

"Pretty soon along come an explosion--so the man said. The head of the
animal lit on the stoop; the fore legs caught a-straddle of the fence;
the hind legs kicked in the ditch, and the rest of the critter lay
around loose. Pretty soon who should come along but Bill, and he
was looking for his dog when he heard the supposed gun go off. The
neighbor said, innocentlike: 'William, I guess that there is not much
of that dog left to catch anybody's fowls?'

"'Well, no,' admitted Sykes; 'I see plenty of pieces, but I guess that
dog _as a dog_, ain't of much account.'

"Just so, Medill, there may be fragments of Hood's army around, but
I guess that army, _as an army_, ain't of much more account!"

(Joseph Medill was editor of the Chicago _Tribune;_ he was one
of the coterie who claimed to have "discovered" Abraham Lincoln,
and surely added propulsion to the wave carrying him to Washington.
Another version of this anecdote is applied to the breaking up of
General Early's rashly advanced army in July; but it would seem, by
Mr. Medill's name, that this is the genuine; the other is not told
in the Western vernacular of Mr. William Sykes.)

* * * * *

THE METEOROLOGICAL OMEN.

The second inauguration day was amid the usual March weather in the
District of Columbia, like the fickle April in unkinder latitudes:
smile and scowl. But as the President kissed the book there was
a sudden parting of the clouds, and a sunburst broke in all its
splendor. This is testified to by the newspaper correspondents,
Frank Moore, Noah Brooks, and others. The President said next day:

"Did you notice the sun burst? It made me jump!"

* * * * *

DID SHE TAKE THE WINK TO HERSELF?

Miss Anna Dickinson, lecturing by invitation in the House of
Representatives' Hall, alluded to the sunburst which came upon the
President on inauguration day, just as he took the oath of office. The
illustrious auditor sat directly in front of the lady, so that he also
faced the reporters' gallery behind her. Lincoln amiably glanced over
her head, caught sight of an acquaintance among the newspaper men, and
winked to him as she made the reference to the so-esteemed omen. Next
day he said to this gentleman--Noah Brooks:

"I wonder if Miss Dickinson saw me wink at _you?"_

* * * * *

GOING DOWN WITH COLORS FLYING.

All the wire-pulling of the many contestants for the presidential
chair failed to get a prize upon it. It was held that there must be
_in excelsis_ no "swapping of horses in crossing the stream,"
still turbid and dangerous. So the National Convention, held at
Baltimore, purged by this time of its former treasonable activity, at
the Soldiers' Fair, held there, the President had alluded to the time
when he had to be whisked through as past a bed of vipers, and said:

"Blessings on the men who have wrought these changes!"

All the States voted for the incumbent save Missouri, which stood for
General Grant, but the votes transferred to Lincoln, the opinion was
unanimous. Within two months he was driven by circumstances to call
out five hundred thousand men. His partizans regretted the necessity,
and on the old story that the people were tired of the war declared it
would prove injurious to his re-election. But it is undisputed that
about half the levies never reached their mustering-point. The arts
and wiles of the marplots were equaled only by the prodigality and
persistency of the parents to save their sons from "the evils of camp
life." It is but fair to the Puritans to accept their plea that the
loss of them fighting the country's battles did not so distress them.
Lincoln replied to the political argument nobly:

"Gentlemen, it is not necessary that I should be re-elected, but it
is necessary that our brave boys in the front should be supported, and
the country saved." (The hackneyed phrase had led to his party being
nicknamed "the Union-savers.") "I shall call out the five hundred
thousand more men, and if I go down under the measure I will go down
like the _Cumberland_, with my colors flying!"

(On the 8th of March, 1862, the Confederate iron-clad ram,
_Merrimac_, ran into and sank the Union sloop of war,
_Cumberland_, nearly all of the latter's company perishing.
Acting-captain Morris refused to strike his flag.)

* * * * *

THERE MUST BE THE BELL-MULE.

President Lincoln formally disavowed the desire erroneously attributed
to him by military critics that he wished to die "with soldiers'
harness on his back." To quote General Grant, to whom he said in their
first interview when the victor of the West was summoned to Washington
to be made lieutenant-general, and given full command over all the
national forces:

"Mr. Lincoln stated to me that he had never professed to be a military
man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted
to interfere with them; but that procrastination on the part of his
commanders, and the pressure of people at the North, and of Congress,
had forced him into issuing the 'executive orders.' He did not know
but that they were all wrong, and did not know that some of them
were."

* * * * *

"ROOT, HOG, OR DIE!"

In February, 1865, permission was requested from the National
Government for three appointees on a peace commission to confer
with the Executive. It was granted, but the parties were not allowed
to enter Washington, as they wanted to do, to give more luster to
the course. The interview of the President, Mr. Seward the "bottle-
holder"--as it was facetiously said about this sparring-match for
breath--was with Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, of
Alabama, on board of the _River Queen_, off Fort Monroe.
The discussion lasted four hours, but, though on friendly terms,
as "between gentlemen," resulted in nothing. For the President held
that the first step which must be taken was the recognition of the
Union. As was his habit, he rounded off the parley with one of his
stories apropos.

Mr. Hunter, a Virginian, had assumed that, if the South consented to
peace on the basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves would
precipitate ruin on not only themselves, but the entire Southern
society.

Mr. Lincoln said to Henry J. Raymond, of the _Times_, New York,
that:

"I waited for Seward to answer that argument, but, as he was silent,
I at length said: 'Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better
about that than I, for you have always lived under the slave system.
I can only say in reply to your statement of the case that it reminds
me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook to
raise a very large herd of hogs. It was a great trouble to feed them,
and how to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit upon
a plan of planting a great field of potatoes, and, when they were
sufficiently grown, turned the whole herd into the field and let them
have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs,
but also that of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his sagacity, he
stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when
a neighbor came along.

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