The Lincoln Story Book Part 46

BRIGADIERS CHEAP--CHARGERS COSTLY.

The news was transmitted to the Executive that a brigadier-general and his escort of cavalry had been "gobbled up," the current and expressive term, by rebel raiders, near Fairfax Court-house, close enough to resound the echoes of the affray.

"I am sorry of the loss of the horses," deplored the President. "I mean that I can make a brigadier-general any day--but those horses cost the government a hundred and twenty-five to fifty dollars a head!"

TO CURE SINGING IN THE HEAD.

The key to the trammels which bore upon the several generals of the Army of the Potomac is found in the fears of the inhabitants of the capital that at the least weakness in its defenders, there would be a s.h.i.+fting of the two governments, and the Richmond one would replace that at Was.h.i.+ngton. [Footnote: This seems unlikely now, but General Lee and many competent judges clung to the belief that, had his General Early held his position at Gettysburg, Jefferson Davis, and not Abraham Lincoln, would have occupied Was.h.i.+ngton's seat--for a time, anyway! But IF--the story of the Civil War is studded with "Ifs."] But the navy was not considered in this relation. Hence, there was a proposition to draw the rebel forces from the North, by threatening the Southern seaports with naval attacks, and descents of the tars and marines. A deputation visited the President with this project. He listened to its unfolding with his proverbial patient attention, and rejoined:

"This reminds me of the case of a girl out our way, troubled with a singing in the head. All the remedies having been uselessly tried, a plain, common horse-sense sort of a fellow (he bowed to the deputation) was called in.

"'The cure is simple,' he said; 'what is called by sympathy--make a plaster of psalm tunes and apply to the feet; it will draw the singing down and out!'"--(Repeated by Frank Carpenter's "Recollections.")

BOWING TO THE BOY OF BATTLES.

Congressman W. D. Kelley wished to procure the admittance of a youth into the Naval School. Though a lad he had "shown the mettle of a man" on two serious occasions, while belonging to the gunboat _Ottawa_. The President has the right to send three candidates to the school yearly, who have served a year in the naval service.

Thrilled by the recital of the youth's heroic conduct, the President wrote to the secretary of the navy to have the boy put on the list of his appointees. But the subject was found short of the age required.

He would not be fourteen until September of that year, and it was but July.

Lincoln had the hero appear before him. He admired him frankly and altered the order so as to suit the later date. He bade the boy go home and have "a good time" during the two months, as about the last holiday he would get. The President had reconsidered his first impression that the "disturbance" was but "an artificial excitement."

"And that's the boy who did so gallantly in those two great battles!"

he mused; "why, I feel that I should bow to him, and not he to me."--(Authority: Congressman W. D. Kelley; the person was Willie Bladen, U. S. N.)

WHEN WAs.h.i.+NGTON WAS ALL ONE TAVERN.

As men wining with Mars expect to sup with Pluto, the drinking at the capital during the war was horrifying. The bars were overflowing with officers, and while, as "Orpheus C. Kerr" was saying of the civil-service corps, that spilling red ink was very different from spilling red blood, the novices in uniform were staining their new coats with port. Coming out of the West with the unique recommendation, "This gentleman from Kentucky never drinks," President Lincoln had only the American standby, the ice-water pitcher, on his sideboard. And up to the last, even when the jubilation upon the war's close made many a stopper fly out of the tabooed bottle, he could say: "My example never belied the position I took when I was a young man."

So he could reply to a New England women's temperance deputation, probably believing the caricaturists who pictured "Old Abe"

mint-juleping with the eagle.

"They would be rejoiced if they only knew how much I have tried to remedy this great evil." Indeed, he was still "meddling" when he wrote and spoke against drunken habits in the army, especially among the officers.

"BREAK THE CRITTER WHERE SLIM!"

Lincoln's letters to his generals would be a revelation of character if it were not already famed. He warns "Fighting Joe" Hooker, in June, 1863, "not to get entangled on the Rappahannock, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to give one way or kick the other." Later: "Fight Lee, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him--and fret him!" Finally: "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the critter must be slim _somewhere_; could you not break him there?"

HOW GET HIM OUT?

During the avalanche of plans to conduct the suppression of the rebellion, a genius proposed what afterward seemed a forecast for Sherman's march to the sea. But at the time, Lincoln saw in it merely a desperate venture which would detail a rescue-party much more important.

"That reminds me," he said, with his whimsical smile, "of a cooper out my way, new at the trade and much annoyed by the head falling in as he was hooping in the staves around it. But the bright idea occurred to him to put his boy in to hold up the cover. Only when the job was completed by this inner support, the new problem rose: how to get the boy out?

"Your plan is feasible, sir; but how are you to get the boy out?"

(The story was originally credited to a Chinese cooper, to whom modern caskmaking was a mystery.)

"A PLEASURE TO PRESIDE, AT LAST!"

On the 4th of March, 1863, when Congress was closing the session, President Lincoln gave away the bride at a marriage ceremony held--by his invitation--in the House of Representatives' chamber. This seems a singular and high honor to the couple. Their preeminence and the function being acclaimed by all the notables connected with the field and the forum in the capital, was a characteristic testimonial to the comforters whose service to the soldier was inestimable. The pair were John A. Fowle and Elida Rumsey, the man from Boston, the lady from New York. They were both attendants on the hospitals at the front, when their acquaintance verged into community, and this eventful matrimony.

Lincoln had met both, in his continuous calls at the hospitals, and offered the west wing of the Capitol building for the wedding. He gave away the bride, and in the records figure his name and those of the ill.u.s.trious witnesses. He gave a huge basket of the finest flowers from the White House conservatory. He stayed to witness the dedication of the Soldier's Library, founded by Mr. Fowle, who had seen the arrant want of reading-matter by our soldiers--so few being illiterate. At the President's hint, Congress granted the ground for the library, but the Pension Office now occupies the site.

Sixty-three was a dark year, and the President might well say on this typical incident, during a time there was little marrying, it is for once a pleasure to _preside_.

ON THE LORD'S SIDE.

On a pastor a.s.suring the President that "the Lord is on our side!" he replied:

"I am not at all concerned about that, for 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."

"TO CANAAN!"

This hymn plays quite a part in the music of the Civil War. There is a negro variation--"Canaan's fair and happy land," given to the old hymn, "Canaan's happy sh.o.r.e," which, better known by its chorus: "Say, brothers, will you meet us?" and turned by the soldiers into the grand "John Brown's body's moldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on," was paraphrased by Julia Ward Howe into a "battle hymn." And Holmes wrote "To Canaan," relative to the first levy. And to top these, the Southerners had a parody on the "Old John Brown," also called "Lincoln Going to Canaan."