Henry J. Raymond, the famous New York editor, thus tells of Mr. Lincoln’s fondness for the Nasby letters:
“It has been well said by a profound critic of Shakespeare, and it occurs to me as very appropriate in this connection, that the spirit which held the woe of Lear and the tragedy of “Hamlet” would have broken had it not also had the humor of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” and the merriment of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“This is as true of Mr. Lincoln as it was of Shakespeare. The capacity to tell and enjoy a good anecdote no doubt prolonged his life.
“The Saturday evening before he left Washington to go to the front, just previous to the capture of Richmond, I was with him from seven o’clock till nearly twelve. It had been one of his most trying days. The pressure of office-seekers was greater at this juncture than I ever knew it to be, and he was almost worn out.
“Among the callers that evening was a party composed of two Senators, a Representative, an ex-Lieutenant-Governor of a Western State, and several private citizens. They had business of great importance, involving the necessity of the President’s examination of voluminous documents. Pushing everything aside, he said to one of the party:
“‘Have you seen the Nasby papers?’
“‘No, I have not,’ was the reply; ‘who is Nasby?’
“‘There is a chap out in Ohio,’ returned the President, ‘who has been writing a series of letters in the newspapers over the signature of Petroleum V. Nasby. Some one sent me a pamphlet collection of them the other day. I am going to write to “Petroleum” to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him!’
“Thereupon he arose, went to a drawer in his desk, and, taking out the ‘Letters,’ sat down and read one to the company, finding in their enjoyment of it the temporary excitement and relief which another man would have found in a glass of wine. The instant he had ceased, the book was thrown aside, his countenance relapsed into its habitual serious expression, and the business was entered upon with the utmost earnestness.”
On the occasion of a serenade, the President was called for by the crowd assembled. He appeared at a window with his wife (who was somewhat below the medium height), and made the following “brief remarks”:
“Here I am, and here is Mrs. Lincoln. That’s the long and the short of it.”
Some gentlemen were once finding fault with the President because certain generals were not given commands.
“The fact is,” replied President Lincoln, “I have got more pegs than I have holes to put them in.”
Lincoln “got even” with the Illinois Central Railroad Company, in 1855, in a most substantial way, at the same time secured sweet revenge for an insult, unwarranted in every way, put upon him by one of the officials of that corporation.
Lincoln and Herndon defended the Illinois Central Railroad in an action brought by McLean County, Illinois, in August, 1853, to recover taxes alleged to be due the county from the road. The Legislature had granted the road immunity from taxation, and this was a case intended to test the constitutionality of the law. The road sent a retainer fee of $250.
In the lower court the case was decided in favor of the railroad. An appeal to the Supreme Court followed, was argued twice, and finally decided in favor of the road. This last decision was rendered some time in 1855. Lincoln then went to Chicago and presented the bill for legal services. Lincoln and Herndon only asked for $2,000 more.
The official to whom he was referred, after looking at the bill, expressed great surprise.
“Why, sir,” he exclaimed, “this is as much as Daniel Webster himself would have charged. We cannot allow such a claim.”
“Why not?” asked Lincoln.
“We could have hired first-class lawyers at that figure,” was the response.
“We won the case, didn’t we?” queried Lincoln.
“Certainly,” replied the official.
“Daniel Webster, then,” retorted Lincoln in no amiable tone, “couldn’t have done more,” and “Abe” walked out of the official’s office.
Lincoln withdrew the bill, and started for home. On the way he stopped at Bloomington, where he met Grant Goodrich, Archibald Williams, Norman B. Judd, O. H. Browning, and other attorneys, who, on learning of his modest charge for the valuable services rendered the railroad, induced him to increase the demand to $5,000, and to bring suit for that sum.
This was done at once. On the trial six lawyers certified that the bill was reasonable, and judgment for that sum went by default; the judgment was promptly paid, and, of course, his partner, Herndon, got “your half Billy,” without delay.
When a member of Congress, Lincoln went to Lexington, Kentucky, to hear Henry Clay speak. The Westerner, a Kentuckian by birth, and destined to reach the great goal Clay had so often sought, wanted to meet the “Millboy of the Slashes.” The address was a tame affair, as was the personal greeting when Lincoln made himself known. Clay was courteous, but cold. He may never have heard of the man, then in his presence, who was to secure, without solicitation, the prize which he for many years had unsuccessfully sought. Lincoln was disenchanted; his ideal was shattered. One reason why Clay had not realized his ambition had become apparent.
Clay was cool and dignified; Lincoln was cordial and hearty. Clay’s hand was bloodless and frosty, with no vigorous grip in it; Lincoln’s was warm, and its clasp was expressive of kindliness and sympathy.
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President Lincoln had a little joke at the expense of General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in opposition to the Westerner in 1864. McClellan was nominated by the Democratic National Convention, which assembled at Chicago, but after he had been named, and also during the campaign, the military candidate was characteristically slow in coming to the front.
President Lincoln had his eye upon every move made by General McClellan during the campaign, and when reference was made one day, in his presence, to the deliberation and caution of the New Jerseyite, Mr. Lincoln remarked, with a twinkle in his eye, “Perhaps he is intrenching.”
The cartoon we reproduce appeared in “Harper’s Weekly,” September 17th, 1864, and shows General McClellan, with his little spade in hand, being subjected to the scrutiny of the President—the man who gave McClellan, when the latter was Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces, every opportunity in the world to distinguish himself. There is a smile on the face of “Honest Abe,” which shows conclusively that he does not regard his political opponent as likely to prove formidable in any way. President Lincoln “sized up” McClellan in 1861-2, and knew, to a fraction, how much of a man he was, what he could do, and how he went about doing it. McClellan was no politician, while the President was the shrewdest of political diplomats.
When Washington had become an armed camp, and full of soldiers, President Lincoln and his Cabinet officers drove daily to one or another of these camps. Very often his outing for the day was attending some ceremony incident to camp life: a military funeral, a camp wedding, a review, a flag-raising. He did not often make speeches. “I have made a great many poor speeches,” he said one day, in excusing himself, “and I now feel relieved that my dignity does not permit me to be a public speaker.”
Judge Kelly, of Pennsylvania, who was one of the committee to advise Lincoln of his nomination, and who was himself a great many feet high, had been eyeing Lincoln’s lofty form with a mixture of admiration and possibly jealousy.
This had not escaped Lincoln, and as he shook hands with the judge he inquired, “What is your height?”
“Six feet three. What is yours, Mr. Lincoln?”
“Six feet four.”
“Then,” said the judge, “Pennsylvania bows to Illinois. My dear man, for years my heart has been aching for a President that I could look up to, and I’ve at last found him.”
Mr. Jeriah Bonham, in describing a visit he paid Lincoln at his room in the State House at Springfield, where he found him quite alone, except that two of his children, one of whom was “Tad,” were with him.
“The door was open.
“We walked in and were at once recognized and seated—the two boys still continuing their play about the room. “Tad” was spinning his top; and Lincoln, as we entered, had just finished adjusting the string for him so as to give the top the greatest degree of force. He remarked that he was having a little fun with the boys.”
At another time, at Lincoln’s residence, “Tad” came into the room, and, putting his hand to his mouth, and his mouth to his father’s ear, said, in a boy’s whisper: “Ma says come to supper.”
All heard the announcement; and Lincoln, perceiving this, said: “You have heard, gentlemen, the announcement concerning the interesting state of things in the dining-room. It will never do for me, if elected, to make this young man a member of my Cabinet, for it is plain he cannot be trusted with secrets of state.”
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A Union general, operating with his command in West Virginia, allowed himself and his men to be trapped, and it was feared his force would be captured by the Confederates. The President heard the report read by the operator, as it came over the wire, and remarked:
“Once there was a man out West who was ‘heading’ a barrel, as they used to call it. He worked like a good fellow in driving down the hoops, but just about the time he thought he had the job done, the head would fall in. Then he had to do the work all over again.
“All at once a bright idea entered his brain, and he wondered how it was he hadn’t figured it out before. His boy, a bright, smart lad, was standing by, very much interested in the business, and, lifting the young one up, he put him inside the barrel, telling him to hold the head in its proper place, while he pounded down the hoops on the sides. This worked like a charm, and he soon had the ‘heading’ done.
“Then he realized that his boy was inside the barrel, and how to get him out he couldn’t for his life figure out. General Blank is now inside the barrel, ‘headed in,’ and the job now is to get him out.”
Government Printer Defrees, when one of the President’s messages was being printed, was a good deal disturbed by the use of the term “sugar-coated,” and finally went to Mr. Lincoln about it.
Their relations to each other being of the most intimate character, he told the President frankly that he ought to remember that a message to Congress was a different affair from a speech at a mass meeting in Illinois; that the messages became a part of history, and should be written accordingly.
“What is the matter now?” inquired the President.
“Why,” said Defrees, “you have used an undignified expression in the message”; and, reading the paragraph aloud, he added, “I would alter the structure of that, if I were you.”
“Defrees,” replied the President, “that word expresses exactly my idea, and I am not going to change it. The time will never come in this country when people won’t know exactly what ‘sugar-coated’ means.”
When a grocery clerk at New Salem, the annual election came around. A Mr. Graham was clerk, but his assistant was absent, and it was necessary to find a man to fill his place. Lincoln, a “tall young man,” had already concentrated on himself the attention of the people of the town, and Graham easily discovered him. Asking him if he could write, “Abe” modestly replied, “I can make a few rabbit-tracks.” His rabbit-tracks proving to be legible and even graceful, he was employed.
The voters soon discovered that the new assistant clerk was honest and fair, and performed his duties satisfactorily, and when, the work done, he began to “entertain them with stories,” they found that their town had made a valuable personal and social acquisition.
Marshal Ward Lamon was in President Lincoln’s office in the White House one day, and casually asked the President if he knew how the currency of the country was made. Greenbacks were then under full headway of circulation, these bits of paper being the representatives of United State money.
“Our currency,” was the President’s answer, “is made, as the lawyers would put it, in their legal way, in the following manner, to-wit: The official engraver strikes off the sheets, passes them over to the Register of the Currency, who, after placing his earmarks upon them, signs the same; the Register turns them over to old Father Spinner, who proceeds to embellish them with his wonderful signature at the bottom; Father Spinner sends them to Secretary of the Treasury Chase, and he, as a final act in the matter, issues them to the public as money—and may the good Lord help any fellow that doesn’t take all he can honestly get of them!”
Taking from his pocket a $5 greenback, with a twinkle in his eye, the President then said: “Look at Spinner’s signature! Was there ever anything like it on earth? Yet it is unmistakable; no one will ever be able to counterfeit it!”
Lamon then goes on to say:
“‘But,’ I said, ‘you certainly don’t suppose that Spinner actually wrote his name on that bill, do you?’
“‘Certainly, I do; why not?’ queried Mr. Lincoln.
“I then asked, ‘How much of this currency have we afloat?’
“He remained thoughtful for a moment, and then stated the amount.
“I continued: ‘How many times do you think a man can write a signature like Spinner’s in the course of twenty-four hours?’
“The beam of hilarity left the countenance of the President at once. He put the greenback into his vest pocket, and walked the floor; after awhile he stopped, heaved a long breath and said: ‘This thing frightens me!’ He then rang for a messenger and told him to ask the Secretary of the Treasury to please come over to see him.
“Mr. Chase soon put in an appearance; President Lincoln stated the cause of his alarm, and asked Mr. Chase to explain in detail the operations, methods, system of checks, etc., in his office, and a lengthy discussion followed, President Lincoln contending there were not sufficient safeguards afforded in any degree in the money-making department, and Secretary Chase insisting that every protection was afforded he could devise.”
Afterward the President called the attention of Congress to this important question, and devices were adopted whereby a check was put upon the issue of greenbacks that no spurious ones ever came out of the Treasury Department, at least. Counterfeiters were busy, though, but this was not the fault of the Treasury.
“General Grant is a copious worker and fighter,” President Lincoln wrote to General Burnside in July, 1863, “but a meagre writer or telegrapher.”
Grant never wrote a report until the battle was over.
President Lincoln wrote a letter to General Grant on July 13th, 1863, which indicated the strength of the hold the successful fighter had upon the man in the White House.
It ran as follows:
“I do not remember that you and I ever met personally.
“I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country.
“I write to say a word further.
“When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did—march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope, that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed.
“When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned northward, east of Big Black, I feared it was a mistake.
“I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.”
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Lincoln never used profanity, except when he quoted it to illustrate a point in a story. His favorite expressions when he spoke with emphasis were “By dear!” and “By jing!”
Just preceding the Civil War he sent Ward Lamon on a ticklish mission to South Carolina.
When the proposed trip was mentioned to Secretary Seward, he opposed it, saying, “Mr. President, I fear you are sending Lamon to his grave. I am afraid they will kill him in Charleston, where the people are excited and desperate. We can’t spare Lamon, and we shall feel badly if anything happens to him.”
Mr. Lincoln said in reply: “I have known Lamon to be in many a close place, and he has never, been in one that he didn’t get out of, somehow. By jing! I’ll risk him. Go ahead, Lamon, and God bless you! If you can’t bring back any good news, bring a palmetto.” Lamon brought back a palmetto branch, but no promise of peace.
Lincoln had been in the telegraph office at Springfield during the casting of the first and second ballots in the Republican National Convention at Chicago, and then left and went over to the office of the State Journal, where he was sitting conversing with friends while the third ballot was being taken.
In a few moments came across the wires the announcement of the result. The superintendent of the telegraph company wrote on a scrap of paper: “Mr. Lincoln, you are nominated on the third ballot,” and a boy ran with the message to Lincoln.
He looked at it in silence, amid the shouts of those around him; then rising and putting it in his pocket, he said quietly: “There’s a little woman down at our house would like to hear this; I’ll go down and tell her.”
After Lincoln had finished that celebrated speech in “Egypt” (as a section of Southern Illinois was formerly designated), in the course of which he seized Congressman Ficklin by the coat collar and shook him fiercely, he apologized. In return, Ficklin said Lincoln had “nearly shaken the Democracy out of him.” To this Lincoln replied:
“That reminds me of what Paul said to Agrippa, which, in language and substance, was about this: ‘I would to God that such Democracy as you folks here in Egypt have were not only almost, but altogether, shaken out of, not only you, but all that heard me this day, and that you would all join in assisting in shaking off the shackles of the bondmen by all legitimate means, so that this country may be made free as the good Lord intended it.’”
Said Ficklin in rejoinder: “Lincoln, I remember of reading somewhere in the same book from which you get your Agrippa story, that Paul, whom you seem to desire to personate, admonished all servants (slaves) to be obedient to them that are their masters according to the flesh, in fear and trembling.
“It would seem that neither our Savior nor Paul saw the iniquity of slavery as you and your party do. But you must not think that where you fail by argument to convince an old friend like myself and win him over to your heterodox abolition opinions, you are justified in resorting to violence such as you practiced on me to-day.
“Why, I never had such a shaking up in the whole course of my life. Recollect that that good old book that you quote from somewhere says in effect this: ‘Woe be unto him who goeth to Egypt for help, for he shall fall. The holpen shall fall, and they shall all fall together.’”
Lincoln’s quarrel with Shields was his last personal encounter. In later years it became his duty to give an official reprimand to a young officer who had been court-martialed for a quarrel with one of his associates. The reprimand is probably the gentlest on record:
“Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own.
“Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.”
Some one came to the President with a story about a plot to accomplish some mischief in the Government. Lincoln listened to what was a very superficial and ill-formed story, and then said: “There is one thing that I have learned, and that you have not. It is only one word—‘thorough.’”
Then, bringing his hand down on the table with a thump to emphasize his meaning, he added, “thorough!”
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Being in Washington one day, the Rev. Robert Collyer thought he’d take a look around. In passing through the grounds surrounding the White House, he cast a glance toward the Presidential residence, and was astonished to see three pairs of feet resting on the ledge of an open window in one of the apartments of the second story. The divine paused for a moment, calmly surveyed the unique spectacle, and then resumed his walk toward the War Department.
Seeing a laborer at work not far from the Executive Mansion, Mr. Collyer asked him what it all meant. To whom did the feet belong, and, particularly, the mammoth ones? “You old fool,” answered the workman, “that’s the Cabinet, which is a-settin’, an’ them thar big feet belongs to ‘Old Abe.’”
A soldier tells the following story of an attempt upon the life of Mr. Lincoln “One night I was doing sentinel duty at the entrance to the Soldiers’ Home. This was about the middle of August, 1864. About eleven o’clock I heard a rifle shot, in the direction of the city, and shortly afterwards I heard approaching hoof-beats. In two or three minutes a horse came dashing up. I recognized the belated President. The President was bareheaded. The President simply thought that his horse had taken fright at the discharge of the firearms.
“On going back to the place where the shot had been heard, we found the President’s hat. It was a plain silk hat, and upon examination we discovered a bullet hole through the crown.
“The next day, upon receiving the hat, the President remarked that it was made by some foolish marksman, and was not intended for him; but added that he wished nothing said about the matter.
“The President said, philosophically: ‘I long ago made up my mind that if anybody wants to kill me, he will do it. Besides, in this case, it seems to me, the man who would succeed me would be just as objectionable to my enemies—if I have any.’
“One dark night, as he was going out with a friend, he took along a heavy cane, remarking, good-naturedly: ‘Mother (Mrs. Lincoln) has got a notion into her head that I shall be assassinated, and to please her I take a cane when I go over to the War Department at night—when I don’t forget it.’”
Two ladies from Tennessee called at the White House one day and begged Mr. Lincoln to release their husbands, who were rebel prisoners at Johnson’s Island. One of the fair petitioners urged as a reason for the liberation of her husband that he was a very religious man, and rang the changes on this pious plea.
“Madam,” said Mr. Lincoln, “you say your husband is a religious man. Perhaps I am not a good judge of such matters, but in my opinion the religion that makes men rebel and fight against their government is not the genuine article; nor is the religion the right sort which reconciles them to the idea of eating their bread in the sweat of other men’s faces. It is not the kind to get to heaven on.”
Later, however, the order of release was made, President Lincoln remarking, with impressive solemnity, that he would expect the ladies to subdue the rebellious spirit of their husbands, and to that end he thought it would be well to reform their religion. “True patriotism,” said he, “is better than the wrong kind of piety.”
During the Presidential campaign of 1864 much ill-feeling was displayed by the opposition to President Lincoln. The Democratic managers issued posters of large dimensions, picturing the Washington Administration as one determined to rule or ruin the country, while the only salvation for the United States was the election of McClellan.
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We reproduce one of these 1864 campaign posters on this page, the title of which is, “The True Issue; or ‘That’s What’s the Matter.’”
The dominant idea or purpose of the cartoon-poster was to demonstrate McClellan’s availability. Lincoln, the Abolitionist, and Davis, the Secessionist, are pictured as bigots of the worst sort, who were determined that peace should not be restored to the distracted country, except upon the lines laid down by them. McClellan, the patriotic peacemaker, is shown as the man who believed in the preservation of the Union above all things—a man who had no fads nor vagaries.
This peacemaker, McClellan, standing upon “the War-is-a-failure” platform, is portrayed as a military chieftain, who would stand no nonsense; who would compel Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis to cease their quarreling; who would order the soldiers on both sides to quit their blood-letting and send the combatants back to the farm, workshop and counting-house; and the man whose election would restore order out of chaos, and make everything bright and lovely.
One day when President Lincoln was receiving callers a buxom Irish woman came into the office, and, standing before the President, with her hands on her hips, said:
“Mr. Lincoln, can’t I sell apples on the railroad?”
President Lincoln replied: “Certainly, madam, you can sell all you wish.”
“But,” she said, “you must give me a pass, or the soldiers will not let me.”
President Lincoln then wrote a few lines and gave them to her.
“Thank you, sir; God bless you!” she exclaimed as she departed joyfully.
It was in the spring of 1830 that “Abe” Lincoln, “wearing a jean jacket, shrunken buckskin trousers, a coonskin cap, and driving an ox-team,” became a citizen of Illinois. He was physically and mentally equipped for pioneer work. His first desire was to obtain a new and decent suit of clothes, but, as he had no money, he was glad to arrange with Nancy Miller to make him a pair of trousers, he to split four hundred fence rails for each yard of cloth—fourteen hundred rails in all. “Abe” got the clothes after awhile.
It was three miles from his father’s cabin to her wood-lot, where he made the forest ring with the sound of his ax. “Abe” had helped his father plow fifteen acres of land, and split enough rails to fence it, and he then helped to plow fifty acres for another settler.
Whenever the people of Lincoln’s neighborhood engaged in dispute; whenever a bet was to be decided; when they differed on points of religion or politics; when they wanted to get out of trouble, or desired advice regarding anything on the earth, below it, above it, or under the sea, they went to “Abe.”
Two fellows, after a hot dispute lasting some hours, over the problem as to how long a man’s legs should be in proportion to the size of his body, stamped into Lincoln’s office one day and put the question to him.
Lincoln listened gravely to the arguments advanced by both contestants, spent some time in “reflecting” upon the matter, and then, turning around in his chair and facing the disputants, delivered his opinion with all the gravity of a judge sentencing a fellow-being to death.
“This question has been a source of controversy,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “for untold ages, and it is about time it should be definitely decided. It has led to bloodshed in the past, and there is no reason to suppose it will not lead to the same in the future.
“After much thought and consideration, not to mention mental worry and anxiety, it is my opinion, all side issues being swept aside, that a man’s lower limbs, in order to preserve harmony of proportion, should be at least long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”
“The first week I was with my command there were twenty-four deserters sentenced by court-martial to be shot, and the warrants for their execution were sent to the President to be signed. He refused.
“I went to Washington and had an interview. I said:
“‘Mr. President, unless these men are made an example of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many.’
“He replied: ‘Mr. General, there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God’s sake, don’t ask me to add to the number, for I won’t do it.’”
In the early stages of the war, after several battles had been fought, Union troops seized a church in Alexandria, Va., and used it as a hospital.
A prominent lady of the congregation went to Washington to see Mr. Lincoln and try to get an order for its release.
“Have you applied to the surgeon in charge at Alexandria?” inquired Mr. Lincoln.
“Yes, sir, but I can do nothing with him,” was the reply.
“Well, madam,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that is an end of it, then. We put him there to attend to just such business, and it is reasonable to suppose that he knows better what should be done under the circumstances than I do.”
The lady’s face showed her keen disappointment. In order to learn her sentiment, Mr. Lincoln asked:
“How much would you be willing to subscribe toward building a hospital there?”
She said that the war had depreciated Southern property so much that she could afford to give but little.
“This war is not over yet,” said Mr. Lincoln, “and there will likely be another fight very soon. That church may be very useful in which to house our wounded soldiers. It is my candid opinion that God needs that church for our wounded fellows; so, madam, I can do nothing for you.”
An amusing instance of the President’s preoccupation of mind occurred at one of his levees, when he was shaking hands with a host of visitors passing him in a continuous stream.
An intimate acquaintance received the usual conventional hand-shake and salutation, but perceiving that he was not recognized, kept his ground instead of moving on, and spoke again, when the President, roused to a dim consciousness that something unusual had happened, perceived who stood before him, and, seizing his friend’s hand, shook it again heartily, saying:
“How do you do? How do you do? Excuse me for not noticing you. I was thinking of a man down South.”
“The man down South” was General W. T. Sherman, then on his march to the sea.
When Governor Custer of Pennsylvania described the terrible butchery at the battle of Fredericksburg, Mr. Lincoln was almost broken-hearted.
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The Governor regretted that his description had so sadly affected the President. He remarked: “I would give all I possess to know how to rescue you from this terrible war.” Then Mr. Lincoln’s wonderful recuperative powers asserted themselves and this marvelous man was himself.
Lincoln’s whole aspect suddenly changed, and he relieved his mind by telling a story.
“This reminds me, Governor,” he said, “of an old farmer out in Illinois that I used to know.
“He took it into his head to go into hog-raising. He sent out to Europe and imported the finest breed of hogs he could buy.
“The prize hog was put in a pen, and the farmer’s two mischievous boys, James and John, were told to be sure not to let it out. But James, the worst of the two, let the brute out the next day. The hog went straight for the boys, and drove John up a tree, then the hog went for the seat of James’ trousers, and the only way the boy could save himself was by holding on to the hog’s tail.
“The hog would not give up his hunt, nor the boy his hold! After they had made a good many circles around the tree, the boy’s courage began to give out, and he shouted to his brother, ‘I say, John, come down, quick, and help me let go this hog!’
“Now, Governor, that is exactly my case. I wish some one would come and help me to let the hog go.”