The Lincoln Story Book Part 33

"Well, gentlemen," determined the President gravely, "if that be so, and there is any way under heaven whereby the rebels can be saved, then, for G.o.d's sake and for their sakes, let the man be appointed."

WHIPPING AROUND THE STUMP.

On New-year's morning, 1864, President Lincoln entered the War Department building. His sensitive nature, more than ever strained to the utmost tension, was irritated by hearing a woman wailing over a child in her arms at an office door. Major Eckert requested to ascertain the cause of the grief brought back the painful but not unexampled explanation. A soldier's wife had come to Was.h.i.+ngton with her babe, expecting to have no difficulty in going on under pa.s.s to the camp where her husband was under the colors. But she learned, to her dismay, that, while an officer's wife has few obstacles to meet in communing with her husband under like circ.u.mstances, the private's is dissimilarly situated. This poor soul, with little money anyway, was perplexed how to wait in the expensive city till her wish was granted.

"Come, Eckert," blurted out the chief in his frank manner, "let's send the woman down there!"

It was recited that the war office had strengthened the orders against women in camp.

"H'm!" coughed the other in his dry way, ominous of an alternative, "let us whip the devil around the stump since he will not step right over! Send the woman's husband leave of absence to report _here_--to see his wife and baby!"

So the officer on duty wrote the order, and the couple were happily reunited.--(By A. B. Chandler, manager of postal telegraphs, attached to the War Department in the war.)

"LIFE TOO PRECIOUS TO BE LOST."

Benjamin Owen, a young Vermont volunteer, was sentenced to the extremity for being asleep on post. Lincoln was especially lenient in these cases, as he held that a farm-boy, used to going to bed early, was apt to maintain the habit in later life. It came out that the youth had taken the place of a comrade the night before, as extra duty, and this overwork had fatigued him so that his succ.u.mbing was at least explicable. This clue being in a letter he wrote home, his sister journeyed to the capital with it and showed it to the President.

"Oh, that fatal sleep!" he exclaimed, "thousands of lives might have been lost through that fatal sleep!"

He wrote out the pardon, and said to the girl:

"Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a youth like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life too precious to be lost."

He went in his carriage to deliver the pardon to the proper authorities for its execution--and not the soldier's. Then, making out a furlough for the released volunteer, he saw him and the sister off on the homeward journey, pinning a badge on the former's arm with the words:

"The shoulder which should bear a comrade's burden, and die for it so uncomplainingly, must wear that strap!"

MERCY HAS PRECEDENCE OVER THE RIGID.

On the 9th of April, 1865, Lee accepted Grant's easy conditions, and practically everything was completed but the formal signing of the capitulation. The wide rejoicing covered the earth, the eye-witnesses may say, with one smile of relief and gladness. Was.h.i.+ngton looked gay with bunting, like New York City on the day of "Show your flag!"

Above all, the President, whose words at Springfield, in 1860, to the Illinois school superintendent, Newton Bateman, were justified: "I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be vindicated (in condemning slavery)."

It was, therefore, in a receptive mood that he was found by Senator J. B. Henderson, of Missouri. This gentleman came for the third time on an errand of pity.

At the close of the war, one Colonel Green, brother to United States Senator James S. Green, crossed into Mississippi with his friend and brother in arms, George E. Vaughan. He gave Vaughan letters for home and started him to carry news to his family. Captured within the Federal lines, he was held as a spy. Mr. Henderson succeeded in getting a retrial, and even a third hearing, but still the man was under sentence of death. On the afternoon of April 14, he called at the White House, and insisted that the pardon should be granted now if ever, "in the interest of peace and consideration."

The gladsome chief agreed with him, and directed him to go to Secretary Stanton and have the prisoner released. But the inflexible official, on whom the general glee had no softening, refused, and the man had but two days to live. When the intermediary hurried back to the Executive Mansion, the President was dressed to go to Ford's Theater, with his wife, his son, and a young couple of friends.

Nevertheless, he stopped, went into the study, and wrote an unconditional release and pardon for Vaughan, saying:

"I think this will have precedence over Stanton!"

It was his last official act--one of mercy and forgiveness.

TAKEN FROM REBELLION AND GIVEN TO LOYALTY.

A lady out of Tennessee, which was early to join secession, came to Was.h.i.+ngton in search of her son, a youth enlisted in the Confederate Army. She found him in the Fort Henry hospital, where, allowed to see him, as she was loyal, in spite of regulations about prisoners of war, she learned that he would recover. She induced him to recant and offer his parole if he were allowed freedom. She called on Secretary Stanton, but he was in one of his boorish moods--was he ever out of them?--and repulsed her with rudeness. She finally appealed to the President, who seemed very often balm to Stanton, "a fretful corrosive applied to a deathly wound," and he gave her an order to receive the young man if he swore off his pledge to the wrong side.

"To take the young man from the ranks of the rebellion," he said to her, "and give him to a loyal mother is a better investment to this government than to give him up to its deadly enemies."

The young man was enabled to resume his studies, but in a Northern college!

SUSPENSION IS NOT EXECUTION.

Among those generals--amateurs, like the President, themselves--who disapproved of any leniency in discipline, was Major-general Benjamin F. Butler. He wrote to his commander-in-chief so impudent an epistle as the annexed:

"MR. PRESIDENT: I pray you not to interfere with the court-martial of this army. (_His_, of course--his skill was discoursed upon by General Grant, who said that Butler had "corked himself up.") You will destroy all discipline among the soldiers."

But in the teeth of this embargo, moved by the entreaties of an old father whose son was under death sentence by this despot, he said:

"Butler or no Butler, here goes!" and, seizing his pen, wrote that the soldier in prison was not to be shot until further orders.

The affected parent eagerly took the precious paper, but his jaw fell on seeing the text: he had looked for a full pardon. But the comforter hastened to explain:

"Well, my old friend, I see that you are not very well acquainted with me. If your son never looks upon death till further orders from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than Methuselah."

"THE DISCONTENTED ... ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED--"

In 1856, Mr. Lincoln had figured prominently in the Fremont-Dayton presidential campaign, and ever since he had been partial to the "Pathfinder," though he clearly saw that he would be a rival for the chair at Was.h.i.+ngton--his long-cherished ambition. He gave, at the outset of the war, the most important military command, that of the Mountain, or Western Department, to Fremont. The latter attempted to "steal his thunder" by issuing a forerunner of the Emanc.i.p.ation Act, and was removed; but Lincoln reinstated him till he had to repeat the removal. He was repaid by the incorrigible marplot setting up as candidate for the chief magistracy after it was settled that the retiring officer should be reelected. Nevertheless, the compet.i.tor's party was so small that, in allusion to it, Lincoln read from "Samuel," Book I:

"And every one who was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men!"