Lincoln's Yarns and Stories Part 26

Mrs. Rose Linder Wilkinson, who often accompanied her father, Judge Linder, in the days when he rode circuit with Mr. Lincoln, tells the following story:

"At night, as a rule, the lawyers spent awhile in the parlor, and permitted the women who happened to be along to sit with them. But after half an hour or so we would notice it was time for us to leave them. I remember traveling the circuit one season when the young wife of one of the lawyers was with him. The place was so crowded that she and I were made to sleep together. When the time came for banis.h.i.+ng us from the parlor, we went up to our room and sat there till bed-time, listening to the roars that followed each ether swiftly while those lawyers down-stairs told stories and laughed till the rafters rang.

"In the morning Mr. Lincoln said to me: 'Rose, did we disturb your sleep last night?' I answered, 'No, I had no sleep'--which was not entirely true but the retort amused him. Then the young lawyer's wife complained to him that we were not fairly used. We came along with them, young women, and when they were having the best time we were sent away like children to go to bed in the dark.

"'But, Madame,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'you would not enjoy the things we laugh at.' And then he entered into a discussion on what have been termed his 'broad' stories. He deplored the fact that men seemed to remember them longer and with less effort than any others.

"My father said: 'But, Lincoln, I don't remember the "broad" part of your stories so much as I do the moral that is in them,' and it was a thing in which they were all agreed."

SORRY FOR THE HORSES.

When President Lincoln heard of the Confederate raid at Fairfax, in which a brigadier-general and a number of valuable horses were captured, he gravely observed:

"Well, I am sorry for the horses."

"Sorry for the horses, Mr. President!" exclaimed the Secretary of War, raising his spectacles and throwing himself back in his chair in astonishment.

"Yes," replied Mr., Lincoln, "I can make a brigadier-general in five minutes, but it is not easy to replace a hundred and ten horses."

MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR.

Dr. Jerome Walker, of Brooklyn, told how Mr. Lincoln once administered to him a mild rebuke. The doctor was showing Mr. Lincoln through the hospital at City Point.

"Finally, after visiting the wards occupied by our invalid and convalescing soldiers," said Dr. Walker, "we came to three wards occupied by sick and wounded Southern prisoners. With a feeling of patriotic duty, I said: 'Mr. President, you won't want to go in there; they are only rebels.'

"I will never forget how he stopped and gently laid his large hand upon my shoulder and quietly answered, 'You mean Confederates!' And I have meant Confederates ever since.

"There was nothing left for me to do after the President's remark but to go with him through these three wards; and I could not see but that he was just as kind, his hand-shakings just as hearty, his interest just as real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among our own soldiers."

COLD MOLa.s.sES WAS SWIFTER.

"Old Pap," as the soldiers called General George H. Thomas, was aggravatingly slow at a time when the President wanted him to "get a move on"; in fact, the gallant "Rock of Chickamauga" was evidently entered in a snail-race.

"Some of my generals are so slow," regretfully remarked Lincoln one day, "that mola.s.ses in the coldest days of winter is a race horse compared to them.

"They're brave enough, but somehow or other they get fastened in a fence corner, and can't figure their way out."

LINCOLN CALLS MEDILL A COWARD.

Joseph Medill, for many years editor of the Chicago Tribune, not long before his death, told the following story regarding the "talking to"

President Lincoln gave himself and two other Chicago gentlemen who went to Was.h.i.+ngton to see about reducing Chicago's quota of troops after the call for extra men was made by the President in 1864:

"In 1864, when the call for extra troops came, Chicago revolted. She had already sent 22,000 troops up to that time, and was drained. When the call came there were no young men to go, and no aliens except what were bought. The citizens held a ma.s.s meeting and appointed three persons, of whom I was one, to go to Was.h.i.+ngton and ask Stanton to give Cook County a new enrollment. On reaching Was.h.i.+ngton, we went to Stanton with our statement. He refused entirely to give us the desired aid. Then we went to Lincoln. 'I cannot do it,' he said, 'but I will go with you to the War Department, and Stanton and I will hear both sides.'

"So we all went over to the War Department together. Stanton and General Frye were there, and they, of course, contended that the quota should not be changed. The argument went on for some time, and was finally referred to Lincoln, who had been sitting silently listening.

"I shall never forget how he suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face.

"'Gentlemen,' he said, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing war on this country.

The Northwest has opposed the South as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making blood 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 which 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. 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. You can influence great ma.s.ses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men!'

"I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an answer. We all got up and went out, and when the door closed one of my colleagues said:

"'Well, gentlemen, the old man is right. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Let us never say anything about this, but go home and raise the men.'

"And we did--six thousand men--making twenty-eight thousand in the War from a city of one hundred and fifty-six thousand. But there might have been c.r.a.pe on every door, almost, in Chicago, for every family had lost a son or a husband. I lost two brothers. It was hard for the mothers."

THEY DIDN'T BUILD IT.

In 1862 a delegation of New York millionaires waited upon President Lincoln to request that he furnish a gunboat for the protection of New York harbor.

Mr. Lincoln, after listening patiently, said: "Gentlemen, the credit of the Government is at a very low ebb; greenbacks are not worth more than forty or fifty cents on the dollar; it is impossible for me, in the present condition of things, to furnish you a gunboat, and, in this condition of things, if I was worth half as much as you, gentlemen, are represented to be, and as badly frightened as you seem to be, I would build a gunboat and give it to the Government."

STANTON'S ABUSE OF LINCOLN.

President Lincoln's sense of duty to the country, together with his keen judgment of men, often led to the appointment of persons unfriendly to him. Some of these appointees were, as well, not loyal to the National Government, for that matter.

Regarding Secretary of War Stanton's att.i.tude toward Lincoln, Colonel A.

K. McClure, who was very close to President Lincoln, said:

"After Stanton's retirement from the Buchanan Cabinet when Lincoln was inaugurated, he maintained the closest confidential relations with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters expressing the utmost contempt for Lincoln, the Cabinet, the Republican Congress, and the general policy of the Administration.

"These letters speak freely of the 'painful imbecility of Lincoln,'

of the 'venality and corruption' which ran riot in the government, and expressed the belief that no better condition of things was possible 'until Jeff Davis turns out the whole concern.'

"He was firmly impressed for some weeks after the battle of Bull Run that the government was utterly overthrown, as he repeatedly refers to the coming of Davis into the National Capital.