Voices from the Past Part 155

He brushed his fingers through his s.h.a.ggy beard and sat down at his desk.

A gold watch -

Executive Mansion

September 1st, 1864

"This is a beautiful country," said John Brown, as the hangman hung him.

He was no black Christ: no gentle Uncle Tom; yet, he is becoming a black Christ as we continue this civil war, as we become more and more hara.s.sed by casualties. We will need black Christs if we are to free the negro. Uncle Tom's Cabin must add s.p.a.ce-room by room, year by year.

All the powers of earth seem to be combining against the chattel slave. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of every key-the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distance places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.

This evening I heard negroes singing, as I worked at my desk, the windows open. I heard that song in New Orleans on my first visit; I heard it later when on the Mississippi, when we were on our cargo-raft, when we tied up at a wharf. That was quite a sc.r.a.p. The blacks almost threw us off our raft.

Oh, was you ev er in Mo bile Bay,

Low lands, low lands, A way,

My John, A screw ing cot ton

By the day, My dol lar and a half a day.

Poverty...those days were poverty days.

And after this war is over we will have greater poverty in the South. Poverty will be a pestilence in the South.

It will require years of work to wipe it out. Poverty will breed treachery and crime. What police force will be able to contend with it? I will urge Congress to pa.s.s an aid bill. I will propose groups of citizenry who can advise.

The White House

Sat.u.r.day evening

Here are some interesting figures I encountered:

Less than one-half a day's cost of this war could pay for the slaves in the State of Delaware, at $400 per person.

All slaves by 1860 census: 1,798 Cost of these slaves: $719,200 One day's cost of the war: $2,000,000

Less than 87 days' cost of this war could, at the same $400 figure, pay for the slaves in the States of Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri:

Cost of the slaves: $173,048,8 00 87 days of war: $174,000,0 00

Would compensation to all the slave owners satisfy them? Of course not. Their honor is at stake. If we do not make common cause to save the good old s.h.i.+p of the Union on this voyage, n.o.body will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

Note:

Write General Grant regarding the improvement of all military telegraph service. Suggest a military Telegraphic Corps.

The White House

September 8, 1864

When I reviewed the Army of the Potomac, when the greatest cavalry in the world rode past, I felt no pride, only sorrow, for the military pomp. To those of pensive turn, the military implies death, men in uniform are death-men, dealers and receivers. They work in the counting house of death.

Tad rode with the cavalry, his little shoulders wrapped in a grey cloak.

Dear Tad, what do you know of pain? You will sit on my lap and babble and then ride horseback, and imagine yourself a great general.

There are no great generals, Tad.

I salute the officers but take off my hat to the men in the ranks. They are the great men. There are no victors- not if there is heart and memory among men, consideration for the maimed, the widows, the orphans, the deceased.

Some men war for glory. No...peace is the glory.

There is only one cause: the country, its flag, a united people from coast to coast. I know that of thousands of men, chosen from the ranks, there would be a thousand reasons why they fought. Perhaps that is not quite right.

The men in review, the thousands who rode and walked past, were soon to retreat. Mishandled by General Hooker, 20,000 were killed, died in a wilderness of trees and thickets.

Wilderness of trees and thickets...so is much of my concept of this war, due largely to inadequate reports or reports that arrive too late to be of any use.

My colored pins, on the fields of battle, designate more than battle lines, regiments, infantry, artillery, cavalry, fortifications...those pins are men, my men, my country.

I understand that some of the New Englanders dumped their Bibles on their long marches-their knapsacks too heavy. I can see those Bibles, dropped beside a fence post, left underneath a tree, regretfully placed on the side of a corncrib.