The Lincoln Story Book Part 52

"I DON'T WANT TO--BUT THAT'S IT IF I MUST DIE!"

In the ferment, as the term of Lincoln's first office-holding was terminating, the old war fever returned by which "Little Mac (McClellan), Idol of the Army" was hailed as "the hope of the country." Only this time the presage was that General Grant had only to secure that phantasm, the capture of Richmond, to be nominated and elected. This reached the President's ears through the "hanged good-natured friend," as Sheridan--the wit, not the general--calls the stinging tongue.

"Well," drawled Mr. Lincoln, "I feel very much like the man who said he did not particularly want to die, but, if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he wanted to die of!"

BEST LET AN ELEPHANT GO!

A rebel emissary, the notorious Jacob Thompson, was reported by the secret service as slipping through the North and trying to get pa.s.sage to Europe on the Allan steams.h.i.+p out of Portland, Maine, or Canada.

Brevet-general Dana, confidential officer to the War Department and the President, inquired if the fugitive was to be detained at Portland, where the provost-marshal thought he could capture him.

Secretary Stanton wanted him apprehended.

"H'm," said Lincoln, who was being shaved, "I don't know as I have any apprehension in that quarter. When you have an elephant on your hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run!"

(NOTE.--The "Unbeknownst" story has been applied to this tolerated "escape.")

HISTORY REPEATS.

There is a double echo in the Lincolnian saying, "No surrender, though at the end of one or a hundred defeats," from General-President Taylor's reply at Buena Vista: "General Taylor never surrenders,"

to its antecedent, not so well authenticated, of General Cambronne at Waterloo: "The Old Guard dies, but does not surrender."

"NOT THE PRESIDENT, BUT THE OLD FRIEND."

In February, 1865, General Grant's plans were so well shaped that, with the reenforcement of General Sherman returned from his march to Savannah, he could count on crus.h.i.+ng up Richmond, as an egg under trip-hammers. Before this the doom was registered, for the Southerners were at the end of their men, as before they had been at that of their means. Bridges burned or blown up, the rebel army was pouring out of their capital with the fear that their one or two ways of flight were already blocked by Sheridan or Sherman. The desperate attempt to arm the slaves against their coming deliverer was the "last kick."

Lee clung to Richmond in hope that his lieutenant, Johnston, would check the oncomer, but he was compelled to notify his President and colleagues that flight was their only resource when he could no longer fight.

Lincoln was at Petersburg at Grant's headquarters when, a few miles off, Davis received the fatal intelligence that Lee was being deserted so freely that there would not be a body-guard left him. He fled, to be ignominiously captured in female disguise. His lair was hot when Lincoln entered it, and made it his closet, whence he issued his orders.

Soon after this occupation the victor heard the name of Pickett announced to him. The Southern general, George Pickett, was a protege of his, as he smoothed his entry upon the West Point Military Academy book when he was a congressman. Without either knowing it, the hero was lying dead on a hard-fought field close by. But Lincoln ordered her admittance. She was accompanied by her little son. This alone would have prevailed over the President, but, as she formally addressed him as the authority, he interrupted:

"Not the President, but George's old friend!"

And beckoning the wondering boy to him with the irresistible attraction of men who love the young, and are intuitively loved by them, he said:

"Tell your father, rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of your mother's smile, and your own bright eyes."

This reconciliation on the fall of the sword was a token of the forgivingness of the North toward the chastened foes.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES!"

The Marquis of Chambrun, a French volunteer, who entered the Lincoln circle, relates in a more elegant strain the above incident. He states that Thompson and Sanders were informed upon, and Stanton repeated the information to the President with a view of having them intercepted.

But the other in his tender voice responded:

"Let us close our eyes, and leave them pa.s.s unnoticed."

DON'T JUDGE BY APPEARANCES.

The President's recklessness seems incredible as to going about the capital, as far as he knew and wished, without escort, but his "browsing," to use his word, about the perilous front while the concluding actions were enveloping Petersburg preliminarily to the rush at Richmond, partake of the nature of a fanatic's daring. This is the support to the otherwise taxing story told by Doctor J. E.

Burriss, of New York, then a volunteer soldier at the place. He states that Lincoln, so shabbily dressed as to be taken for a farmer or planter, was so treated by soldiery before a tobacco-warehouse under guard. They wanted tobacco, and begged him to allow some to be turned out. He approached a young lieutenant commanding the post, but the latter was insolent to the "old Southerner." The latter sent a soldier to General Grant, who himself rode up, post-haste, at the summons.

The soldiers were given some of the Indian weed, and the donor, turning to the impertinent officer, who had thought him a converted reb, said:

"Young sir, do not judge by appearances; and for the future treat your elders with more respect."

"NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM FURTHER."

Returning to Was.h.i.+ngton from Richmond, Lincoln read twice to friends on the journey, from his pocket Shakespeare:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.

"WENT AND RETURNED!"

The last days of March, 1865, contained the three battles, closing with that of Five Forks, signalizing the collapse of the Confederacy at Richmond. The President, at the front, sent the news of victories to the Cabinet at home. After the battles, the advance of the triumphing Unionists. On Monday morning Lincoln was enabled to telegraph the talismanic words so often dreamed of in the last agonizing years of fluctuating hope:

"_Richmond has fallen_! I am about to enter!"

Secretary Stanton, of the war office, immediately implored: "Do not peril your life!"

But in the morning he received this line from the most independent President known since Jackson: