Voices from the Past Part 160

The White House

January 12, 1865

Behind a hospital, the other day, I saw a wheelbarrow filled with amputated hands, arms, and legs.

I walked up close to the barrow, uncertain what I saw there. A hand reached out for my hand.

I held that hand. The stiff fingers were those of a farmer-a man from Tennessee or Illinois, a corn-husker's hand.

I saw a boy's hand next to the farmer's.

I wanted to put those amputated pieces back in their proper world. All those pieces, the hands, legs, feet, wanted to return to the woods, the prairie, the barns, the canoes, the plantations.

As I write down these words my hands are not steady.

The White House

January 20, 1865

A month or so ago, I wrote General Grant on behalf of Robert. Now that Robert has graduated from Harvard, he insists on joining the army. I agree. Grant has replied and has given him a captain's commission, and he is to become a member of Grant's personal staff. Robert has not written me; perhaps he had learned of his mother's parental concern and has included me as an obstruc- tionist. Now he is less likely to be bayoneted or blown to shreds while on the General's staff.

Another of Mary's brothers has been killed in action.

Her fears for Robert are understandable.

I must impress her that fewer White House levees are in order. I realize it was proper to honor Prince Napoleon but there are few such obligations. I shun ostentation.

We have no right to ostentation these war times. That money that goes into ostentation can go into blankets for the soldiers.

A calm evening

Late

"Devoutly to be wished"...to have a woman, enjoy her physically; yet preserve essential private values.

A helpmeet, yes, but it has been my misfortune to never encounter such a woman who was also a woman.

Early in life, at East Salem, I learned about the unhappiness of others.

Misguided lives are powerful guideposts.

In the wilderness I found something mystic, something out of self for self. It taught me to be legally self.

In Springfield, I studied its citizens, its girls and women; I found that being an outsider was wise.

My wisdom is indeed my misfortune.

The White House

2/15/65

Yesterday a woman came to me, crying, sobbing, pleading for the release of one of her sons from service, since her husband and three sons were in the army.

I wrote a discharge for one of her sons and gave her instructions where to go and what to say, to get her lad released.

She found the military camp, regiment, company; she found her son wounded, dying in a nearby hospital. After his death she begged:

"Mr. President, will you give me the next one of my boys?" Again she produced official papers.

"I have just lost a son... I have another," I managed to say. As she stood beside my chair I wrote a release; as I wrote she placed her hand on my head and smoothed my hair with a mother's touch.

When I gave her the doc.u.ment she ran sobbing, crying her thanks.

The White House

2/18/65

Again I admit that dreams have perplexed me. I also think them significant if we can interpret them properly.

Last week I had a dream that has haunted me ever since.

After it occurred I opened the Bible. Strange as it may seem, it was at the 28th chapter of Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream of Jacob. I turned to other pa.s.sages... I seemed to encounter a vision wherever I looked.

I should not have related the dream to Mary but the thing got possession of me, and, like Banquo's ghost, it would not down.

As I told her I felt something grabbing at my throat.

About ten days ago I went to bed late. I had been waiting for important dispatches from the front. I was very weary and fell asleep as soon as I lay down. Then I began to dream.

There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me; then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs.

There the silence was broken by the same sobbing, but any mourners were invisible. I walked from room to room; every object was familiar. I was puzzled, alarmed. I kept on until I arrived at the East Room. There I met a sickening surprise.

Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse, in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers acting as guards. Beyond the soldiers was a crowd.

"Who is dead in the White House?" I asked one of the soldiers.