The Lincoln Story Book Part 49

"'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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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 SMAs.h.i.+NG 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 ent.i.tled 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 cla.s.s 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!