At the White House (excerpts from chapter)
The President once related an incident that had occurred at Decatur when the Illinois Republicans named him as their choice for the Presidency. An old Democrat from "Egypt," as southern Illinois was called, approached Mr. Lincoln and said, "So you're Abe Lincoln?"
"Yes, that is my name."
"They say you're a self-made man."
"Well, yes; what there is of me is self-made."
"Well, all I've got to say," observed the old man, after a careful survey of the Republican candidate, "is that it was a d—d bad job."
During the sitting of the Chicago Convention Lincoln had been trying, in one way or another, to keep down the excitement which was pent up within him by amusing himself and telling stories. When the news actually reached him he was in the editorial office of the Journal. He got up at once and allowed a little crowd to shake hands with him mechanically, then said:
"I reckon there's a little woman down at our house that would like to hear the news," and he started with rapid strides for home.
It cannot be charged that Mr. Lincoln was a husband to grace fashionable society. He hated clothing of all sorts, and it was his habit, on reaching his office or his home, to take off his boots, as he naively expressed it, "to allow his feet to breathe," and very often he would receive the friends of his wife at the door in his shirtsleeves. He was a thoroughly informal man. At the time of the Chicago visit just referred to, a prominent lady called by appointment to see Mrs. Lincoln. He received the caller and, apologizing for his wife's tardiness, explained that she would be down "as soon as she got all her trotting harness on."
Soon after Lincoln's election he held a reception in the principal hotel in Chicago. For several hours a continuous procession of his friends and admirers passed before him, many of them old and intimate acquaintances. It was amusing to observe Lincoln's unfeigned enjoyment, and to hear his hearty greeting in answer to familiar friends who exclaimed, "How are you, Abe?" he, responding in like manner with "Hello, Bill!" or "Jack!" or "Tom!" alternately pulling or pushing them along with his powerful hand and arm, saying, "There's no time to talk now, boys; we must not stop this big procession, so move on."
One day after his election, while a group of distinguished politicians from a distance were sitting in the Governor's room at Springfield, Ill., chatting with Lincoln, the door opened and an old lady in a big sunbonnet and the garb of a farmer's wife came in.
"I wanted to give you something to take to Washington, Mr. Lincoln," she said, "and these are all I had. I spun the yarn and knit them socks myself." And with an air of pride she handed him a pair of blue woolen stockings.
Lincoln thanked her cordially for her thoughtfulness, inquired after the folks at home, and escorted her to the door as politely as if she had been the Queen of England. Then, when he returned to the room, he picked up the stockings, held them by the toes, one in each hand, and with a queer smile upon his face remarked to the statesmen around him:
"The old lady got my latitude and longitude about right, didn't she?"
Upon Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington he immediately handed a copy of his inaugural address to his future Secretary of State, and the latter revised it in a vigorous and arrogant manner. Mr. Seward was always ready to offer advice and give directions upon every subject. Lincoln listened with respectful attention, but continued to exercise his own judgment, and the spirit of independence he showed concerning 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."
While Mr. Lincoln was a man of great evenness of temper and kindness of disposition, he was at the same time a masterful man. He permitted no man to meddle with his official responsibilities. This is illustrated in the following story: Soon after the outbreak of the war, it is said that Secretary Seward advised the President to confine his energies solely to military and internal affairs, and to leave him (Seward) as prime minister, to deal with our foreign affairs. Mr. Seward proposed to submit his views on the subject in writing. The President assented. The story goes, that one day Seward called on the President with a voluminous paper which he had prepared, folded and indorsed. The President took it. In front of him, on his table, was a row of trays. They were labeled "Secretary of State," "Secretary of War," and so on, and the last tray was marked "Unimportant." Glancing along down the list to the last, the President plumped into it Mr. Seward's suggestions in writing, saying that if the things suggested by Mr. Seward must be done, he (the President) must do them. In that modest way he gave Mr. Seward to understand that the President was not delegating the responsibilities of his administration to any one else. Two months afterward Secretary Seward had become better acquainted with Mr. Lincoln, and in a letter to his wife he said, "The President is the best of us all."
Men rushed to the White House in offended dignity to complain of the high-handed measures of the new Secretary, Stanton. To smooth the ruffled feelings of one of them, Lincoln told a story. "We may," he said, "have to treat Stanton as they are sometimes obliged to treat a Methodist minister I know out West. He gets wrought up to so high a pitch of excitement in his prayers and exhortations that they put bricks in his pockets to keep him down. But I guess," the President concluded, with a twinkle, "we'll let him jump a while first."
At the opening of the administration he was overwhelmed with persistent office-seekers, and so much of his time was occupied in listening to their demands and trying to gratify them that he felt he was not attending to military affairs and matters of public policy as closely as he should. He compared himself to a man who was so busy letting rooms at one end of his house that he had no time to put out a fire that was destroying the other end. And when he was attacked with the varioloid in 1861 he said to his usher:
"Tell all the office-seekers to come and see me, for now I have something that I can give them."
A delegation once waited upon Mr. Lincoln to ask the appointment of a gentleman as Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands.
Besides his fitness for the place they urged his bad health. The President said:
"Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that there are eight other applicants for that place and they are all sicker than your man."
Could any (even a professional) wag take off the swagger of a certain New Jersey Congressman better than this? He called on the President with two of his constituents, in order to see Lincoln as they would a show. "Mr. President," said he, "this is Mr. X and Mr. Y, and they are among the weightiest men in Southern New Jersey." After they had gone Lincoln said, "I wonder that end of the State didn't tip up when they got off it."
A Western Senator who had failed of a reelection brought his successor, one day, and introduced him to the President. Lincoln, in reply, expressed his gratification at making the acquaintance of a new Senator. "Yet," he added, "I hate to have old friends like Senator W—go away. And—another thing—I usually find that a Senator or Representative out of business is a sort of lame duck. He has to be provided for." When the two gentlemen had withdrawn I took the liberty of saying that Mr. W— did not seem to relish that remark. Weeks after, when I had forgotten the circumstance, the President said, "You thought I was almost rude to Senator W— the other day. Well, now he wants Commissioner Dole's place!" Mr. Dole was then Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
It is said that Lincoln very seldom invented a story. Once he said: "You speak of Lincoln stories. I don't think that is a correct phrase. I don't make the stories mine by telling them. I'm only a retail dealer."
Scripture stories and incidents were also used by Lincoln to illustrate his argument or to enforce a point. Judge E— had been concerned in a certain secret organization of "radical" Republicans, whose design was to defeat Lincoln's renomination. When this futile opposition had died out the Judge was pressed by his friends for a profitable office. Lincoln appointed him, and to one who remonstrated against such a display of magnanimity he replied: "Well, I suppose Judge E—, having been disappointed before, did behave pretty ugly; but that wouldn't make him any less fit for this place, and I have Scriptural authority for appointing him. You remember that when Moses was on Mount Sinai, getting a commission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at the foot of the mountain making a false god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron got his commission, you know."
"On arriving at the White House," relates General Wilson, "I found a Congressman in earnest conversation with the President. Looking at me as if I were an intruder, the politician stopped, and Mr. Lincoln said, 'It is all right—we are going out together; so turn on your oratory.' So the member resumed talking vigorously for five minutes or more, in behalf of his constituent, an applicant for some office. The President, looking critically at the right side of his face and then on the left, remarked, in an interested manner, 'Why, how close you do shave, John!' That was the way in which he baffled the office-seekers; and, although the Congressman was disappointed, of course, he could not avoid laughing. After his departure I said, 'Mr. President, is that the way you manage the politicians?' And he answered, 'Well, you must not suppose you have all the strategy in the army.'"
Certain officials in the government employ were very anxious to get absolute control of certain moneys to be disbursed by them. These moneys were formerly controlled by the district attorneys of certain districts, and the control of these district attorneys they were anxious to set aside, and they came to the President with this plea. He knew what they wanted, and told them the following story:
"You are very much like a man in 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 his case they had been so liberal that he soon found himself better off than before the fire, and got proud. One day a neighbor brought him a bag of oats, but the fellow refused it with scorn, and said, 'I am not taking oats now; I take nothing but money.'"
While Lincoln was always very patient, he often adopted droll methods of getting rid of bores. The late Justice Carter of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia used to relate an incident of a Philadelphia man who called at the White House so frequently, and took up so much of the President's time, that the latter finally lost his patience. One day when the 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 Carter, coming in with the next delegation, found the President doubled up with laughter at the success of his strategy. Before he could proceed to business the story had to be told.
He had a soft spot in his heart for the wounded soldiers who were incapacitated for duty, or, for that matter, for any kind of usefulness, as this message to the Senate will prove:
"Yesterday little endorsements of mine went to you in two cases of postmasterships sought for widows whose husbands have fallen in the battles of this war. These cases occurring on the same day brought me to reflect more attentively than I had before done as to what is fairly due from us here in the dispensing of patronage to the men who, by fighting our battles, bear the chief burden of saving our country. My conclusion is that, other claims and qualifications being equal, they have the better right; and this is especially applicable to the disabled soldier and the deceased soldier's family."
"One evening the President brought a couple of friends into the 'state dining-room' to see my picture," relates Carpenter. "Something was said, in the conversation that ensued, that 'reminded' him of the following circumstance: 'Judge —,' said he, 'held the strongest ideas of rigid government and close construction that I ever met. It was said of him, on one occasion, that he would hang a man for blowing his nose in the street, but he would quash the indictment if it failed to specify which hand he blew it with!"
Lord Lyons, the British minister in Washington, once presented the President with an autograph letter from Queen Victoria announcing, as is the custom of European monarchs, the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and added that whatever response the President would make he would immediately transmit. Mr. Lincoln responded by shaking the marriage announcement at the bachelor minister before him, saying, "Lyons, go thou and do likewise."
A New-Yorker at the White House said to the President that it seemed strange that the President of the United States and the President of the Confederate States should have been born in the same State.
"Oh, I don't know about that," laughed Mr. Lincoln. "Those Kentucky people will tell you that they raise 'most anything in their State, and I reckon they're mighty near right."
There was very little social life in the White House during the Lincoln administration. The President gave a few state dinners each year, such as were required by his official position, held a few public receptions to gratify the curiosity of the Washington people and strangers in the city, and gave one ball, which excited much 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.
Robert Dale Owen, the spiritualist, once read the President a long manuscript on an abstruse subject with which that rather erratic person loved to deal. Lincoln listened patiently until the author asked for his opinion, when he replied with a yawn:
"Well, for those who like that sort of thing I should think it is just about the sort of thing they would like."
Colonel Lamon in his Recollections tells this: A certain Washington police officer, who it seems was on intimate terms with the President, had accidentally killed a rough while making his arrest, and, though it was two o'clock in the morning, repaired at once to the White House, and requested Lincoln to come into his office. Mr. Lincoln heard his story, and observed that he had only done his duty. "It isn't that," answered the officer; "I know I did my duty, but I felt so badly over the affair that I wanted to talk to you about it." "Well," answered Lincoln, "go home now and get some sleep, but the next time you hit a man, don't hit him with your fist. Hit him with a club or a crowbar, or something that won't kill him."
When he came to New York early in the sixties he went to hear Henry Ward Beecher, and afterward visited Five Points, then a most notorious slum. He was called upon to address the children, and his homely and kindly talk so pleased them that when he stopped they cried, "Go on," "Oh, do go on." As he was leaving the room the teacher asked him his name.
"Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois," he answered simply, and added nothing more.
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 certain little black and white spotted animals which it is not necessary to name. One night Joe was awakened by an unusual cackling and fluttering among his chickens. Getting up, he crept out to see what was going on. It was a bright moonlight night, and he soon caught sight of half a dozen of the little pests, which, with their dam, were running in and out of the shadow of the shed. Very wrathy, Joe put a double charge into his old musket and thought he would 'clean out' the whole tribe at one shot. Somehow he only killed one, and the balance scampered off across the field. In telling the story Joe would always pause here and hold his nose. 'Why didn't you follow them up and kill the rest?' inquired his neighbors. 'Blast it,' said Joe, 'it was eleven weeks before I got over killin' one. If you want any more skirmishing in that line you can do it yourselves!'"
Once a friend complained to the President that a certain Cabinet officer was administering his office with unusual energy, in the hope of securing the Presidential nomination.
"That reminds me," said Mr. Lincoln, "that my brother and I were once plowing a field with a lazy horse, but at times he rushed across the field so fast that I could hardly keep up with him. At last I found an enormous chin-fly on him, and knocked it off. Now I am not going to make that mistake a second time. If the Secretary has a chin-fly on him I am not going to knock it off, if it will only make his department go."
This is related by Gen. James Grant Wilson:
"Among several good things, the President told of a southern Illinois preacher who, in the course of his sermon, asserted that the Saviour was the only perfect man who had ever appeared in this world; also that there was no record, in the Bible or elsewhere, of any perfect woman having lived on the earth. Whereupon there arose in the rear of the church a persecuted-looking personage who, the parson having stopped speaking, said, 'I know a perfect woman, and I've heard of her every day for the last six years.' 'Who was she?' asked the minister. 'My husband's first wife,' replied the afflicted female."
"I once knew," said Lincoln, "a sound churchman by the name of Brown, who was a member of a very sober and pious committee having in charge the erection of a bridge over a dangerous and rapid river. Several architects failed, and at last Brown said he had a friend named Jones who had built several bridges and undoubtedly could build that one. So Mr. Jones was called in.
"'Can you build this bridge,' inquired the committee.
"'Yes,' replied Jones, 'or any other. I could build a bridge to the infernal regions, if necessary.'
"The committee were shocked, and Brown felt called upon to defend his friend. 'I know Jones so well,' said he, 'and he is so honest a man and so good an architect that if he states soberly and positively that he can build a bridge to—to—why, I believe it; but I feel bound to say that I have my doubts about the abutment on the infernal side.'
"So," said Mr. Lincoln, "when politicians told me that the Northern and Southern wings of the Democracy could be harmonized, why, I believed them, of course; but I always had my doubts about the 'abutment' on the other side."
James Morgan tells, in his excellent Life, of Lincoln's freedom from the usual official vanity.
He rather shrank from than courted the official title of Mr. President, and generally referred to his office as "this place," "since I have been in this place," or, "since I came here." Referring at one time to the apartment reserved in the Capitol for the Chief Magistrate, he called it "the room, you know, that they call the President's room." Once he pleaded with some old Illinois friends who addressed him as Mr. President, "Now call me Lincoln, and I'll promise not to tell of the breach of etiquette."
Another story told by Morgan illustrates his inherent democracy. He dreamed he was in some great assembly, and the people drew back to let him pass, whereupon he heard some one say, "He is a common-looking fellow." In his dream Lincoln turned to the man and said, "Friend, the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is the reason why He made so many of them."
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts called at the White House early one morning. He was told that the President was downstairs, that he could go right down. He found the President polishing his boots. Somewhat amazed, Senator Sumner said, "Why, Mr. President, do you black your own boots?" With a vigorous rub of the brush, the President replied, "Whose boots did you think I blacked?"
War maps hung on the walls of his office, and his table was covered so deep with papers that it was not always possible for him to find room to rest his hand while signing his name to a document. "I am like the Patagonians," he said with a laugh, once, as he hunted for a place where he could write. "You know they live off oysters, and throw the shells out of the window. When the pile of shells grows so high as to shut in the window, they simply move and build a new house."
Abraham Lincoln once received a letter asking for a "sentiment" and his autograph. He replied: "Dear Madam,—When you ask a stranger for that which is of interest only to yourself, always inclose a stamp. Abraham Lincoln."
"The Wade and Davis matter troubles me little," said Lincoln to a friend. "Indeed, I feel a good deal about it as the old man did about his cheese when his very smart boy found, by the aid of a microscope, that it was full of maggots. 'Oh, father!' exclaimed the boy, 'how can you eat such stuff? Just look in here and see 'em wriggle.' The old man took another mouthful, and putting his teeth into it, replied grimly, 'Let 'em wriggle.' "
A well-known literary man was praising Lincoln at a dinner in New York. "Lincoln," said he, "could not stand tedious writing in others. He once condemned for its tediousness a Greek history, whereupon a diplomat took him to task. 'The author of that history, Mr. President,' he said, 'is one of the profoundest scholars of the age. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any man of our generation has plunged more deeply in the sacred fount of learning.' 'Yes, or come up drier,' said Lincoln."
Riding at one time through a Virginia wood, he made the following observation about a luxuriant vine which wrapped itself about a tree: "Yes, that is very beautiful; but that vine is like certain habits of men; it decorates the ruin it makes." Speaking of the difference between character and reputation, he said: "Character was like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree was the real thing."
"Friday, Feb. 19, 1864.—As I went into the Cabinet meeting, a fair, plump lady came forward and insisted she must see the President only for a moment—wanted nothing. I made her request known to the President, who directed that she be admitted. She said her name was Holmes, that she belonged in Dubuque, Iowa, was passing East, and came from Baltimore expressly to have a look at President Lincoln. 'Well, in the matter of looking at one another,' said the President, laughing, 'I have altogether the advantage.'"—Diary of Gideon Welles.
Early in life he had formed the habit of rising with the sun. One morning at six o'clock a passer-by saw him at the White House gateway. "Good morning," the President said. "I am looking for a newsboy. When you get to the corner I wish you would send one this way."
When, in 1863, Maryland was carried by the Emancipationists, and the legislature adopted a resolution creating a convention that should embody a law providing for a policy of emancipation, and the convention was elected by a majority of thirteen, there was great jubilation in Washington, and a body of Marylanders called on the President to congratulate him and the country upon the enlistment of Maryland among the free States. Lincoln made a short speech, and later on said in private: "I would rather have Maryland upon that issue than have a State twice its size upon the Presidential issue. It cleans up a piece of ground." Any one who has had any experience with cleaning up a piece of ground, digging up the roots and stumps as Lincoln had, will appreciate the simile.
Once when a deputation visited him and urged emancipation before he was ready, he argued that he could not enforce it, and, to illustrate, asked them:
"How many legs will a sheep have if you call the tail a leg?" They answered, "Five." "You are mistaken," said Lincoln, "for calling a tail a leg don't make it so"; and that exhibited the fallacy of their position more than twenty syllogisms.
"I would save the Union," he wrote to Horace Greeley. "I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could, at the same time, 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 destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I 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 as fast as they shall appear to be true views."
It may not be amiss, in a collection of this character, in order to show the marvelous fertility of this wonderful genius, to include an excerpt from his second inaugural address. This has been justly placed among the masterpieces of the world's greatest oratory. It has been compared most favorably with the loftiest portions of the Old Testament and properly classed among the most famous of all the written and spoken compositions in the English tongue. Like all of Lincoln's compositions, it had great brevity, but much pith and meat.
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
A caller upon the President on New Year's Day, 1864 said:
"I hope, Mr. President, one year from to-day I may have the pleasure of congratulating you on three events which now seem probable."
"What are they?" inquired he.
"First, that the Rebellion may be entirely crushed; second, that the constitutional amendment abolishing and prohibiting slavery may have been adopted; third, and that Abraham Lincoln may have been elected President."
"I think," replied he, with a smile, "I would be glad to accept the first two as a compromise."
Upon being congratulated on his renomination, he said, "I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Convention or the League has concluded that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap." Thus arose a maxim that has since become a part of the common speech.
Mr. Lincoln was fond of riding on horseback in the early evening to the Soldiers' Home. One night, during the latter part of 1863, he rode out with an orderly. When part way he sent the orderly back for something which he had left at the White House and rode on alone. After dusk he galloped up to the Home stables, and the hostler noticed that he was without his hat. Mr. Lincoln, answering the hostler's question, said, "Run back a few hundred yards and pick it up." The man had heard a shot, but thought little of it till Mr. Lincoln came galloping in. He found the hat and brought it to the President, who was still waiting at the stable. There was a bullet-hole near the top. Mr. Lincoln made the man promise not to speak of it. "It was probably an accident, and might worry my family." And he went to the Soldiers' Home as usual, but probably never again alone. A man had really undertaken to shoot him.
You see in this incident, and in a great many others that can be recalled, the simple, straightforward courage of the man. It never failed him.