The cartoon reproduced below was published in “Harper’s Weekly” on January 31st, 1863, the explanatory text, underneath, reading in this way:
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MANAGER LINCOLN: “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to say that the tragedy entitled ‘The Army of the Potomac’ has been withdrawn on account of quarrels among the leading performers, and I have substituted three new and striking farces, or burlesques, one, entitled ‘The Repulse of Vicksburg,’ by the well-known favorite, E. M. Stanton, Esq., and the others, ‘The Loss of the Harriet Lane,’ and ‘The Exploits of the Alabama’—a very sweet thing in farces, I assure you—by the veteran composer, Gideon Welles. (Unbounded applause by the Copperheads).”
In July, after this cartoon appeared, the Army of the Potomac defeated Lee at Gettysburg, and sounded the death-knell of the Confederacy; General Hooker, with his corps from this Army opened the Tennessee River, thus affording some relief to the Union troops in Chattanooga; Hooker’s men also captured Lookout Mountain, and assisted in taking Missionary Ridge.
General Grant converted the farce “The Repulse of Vicksburg” into a tragedy for the Copperheads, taking that stronghold on July 4th, and Captain Winslow, with the Union man-of-war Kearsarge, meeting the Confederate privateer Alabama, off the coast of France, near Cherbourg, fought the famous ship to a finish and sunk her. Thus the tragedy of “The Army of the Potomac” was given after all, and Playwright Stanton and Composer Welles were vindicated, their compositions having been received by the public with great favor.
Secretary of State Seward did not appreciate President Lincoln’s ability until he had been associated with him for quite a time, but he was awakened to a full realization of the greatness of the Chief Executive “all of a sudden.”
Having submitted “Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration”—a lengthy paper intended as an outline of the policy, both domestic and foreign, the Administration should pursue—he was not more surprised at the magnanimity and kindness of President Lincoln’s reply than the thorough mastery of the subject displayed by the President.
A few months later, when the Secretary had begun to understand Mr. Lincoln, he was quick and generous to acknowledge his power.
“Executive force and vigor are rare qualities,” he wrote to Mrs. Seward. “The President is the best of us.”
Superintendent Chandler, of the Telegraph Office in the War Department, once told how President Lincoln wrote telegrams. Said he:
“Mr. Lincoln frequently wrote telegrams in my office. His method of composition was slow and laborious. It was evident that he thought out what he was going to say before he touched his pen to the paper. He would sit looking out of the window, his left elbow on the table, his hand scratching his temple, his lips moving, and frequently he spoke the sentence aloud or in a half whisper.
“After he was satisfied that he had the proper expression, he would write it out. If one examines the originals of Mr. Lincoln’s telegrams and letters, he will find very few erasures and very little interlining. This was because he had them definitely in his mind before writing them.
“In this he was the exact opposite of Mr. Stanton, who wrote with feverish haste, often scratching out words, and interlining frequently. Sometimes he would seize a sheet which he had filled, and impatiently tear it into pieces.”
Several United States Senators urged President Lincoln to muster Southern slaves into the Union Army. Lincoln replied:
“Gentlemen, I have put thousands of muskets into the hands of loyal citizens of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Western North Carolina. They have said they could defend themselves, if they had guns. I have given them the guns. Now, these men do not believe in mustering-in the negro. If I do it, these thousands of muskets will be turned against us. We should lose more than we should gain.”
Being still further urged, President Lincoln gave them this answer:
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t see it as you do. You may be right, and I may be wrong; but I’ll tell you what I can do; I can resign in favor of Mr. Hamlin. Perhaps Mr. Hamlin could do it.”
The matter ended there, for the time being.
The President took a lively interest in all new firearm improvements and inventions, and it sometimes happened that, when an inventor could get nobody else in the Government to listen to him, the President would personally test his gun. A former clerk in the Navy Department tells an incident illustrative.
He had stayed late one night at his desk, when he heard some one striding up and down the hall muttering: “I do wonder if they have gone already and left the building all alone.” Looking out, the clerk was surprised to see the President.
“Good evening,” said Mr. Lincoln. “I was just looking for that man who goes shooting with me sometimes.”
The clerk knew Mr. Lincoln referred to a certain messenger of the Ordnance Department who had been accustomed to going with him to test weapons, but as this man had gone home, the clerk offered his services. Together they went to the lawn south of the White House, where Mr. Lincoln fixed up a target cut from a sheet of white Congressional notepaper.
“Then pacing off a distance of about eighty or a hundred feet,” writes the clerk, “he raised the rifle to a level, took a quick aim, and drove the round of seven shots in quick succession, the bullets shooting all around the target like a Gatling gun and one striking near the center.
“‘I believe I can make this gun shoot better,’ said Mr. Lincoln, after we had looked at the result of the first fire. With this he took from his vest pocket a small wooden sight which he had whittled from a pine stick, and adjusted it over the sight of the carbine. He then shot two rounds, and of the fourteen bullets nearly a dozen hit the paper!”
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General McClellan, aside from his lack of aggressiveness, fretted the President greatly with his complaints about military matters, his obtrusive criticism regarding political matters, and especially at his insulting declaration to the Secretary of War, dated June 28th, 1862, just after his retreat to the James River.
General Halleck was made Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces in July, 1862, and September 1st McClellan was called to Washington. The day before he had written his wife that “as a matter of self-respect, I cannot go there.” President Lincoln and General Halleck called at McClellan’s house, and the President said: “As a favor to me, I wish you would take command of the fortifications of Washington and all the troops for the defense of the capital.”
Lincoln thought highly of McClellan’s ability as an organizer and his strength in defense, yet any other President would have had him court-martialed for using this language, which appeared in McClellan’s letter of June 28th:
“If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
This letter, although addressed to the Secretary of War, distinctly embraced the President in the grave charge of conspiracy to defeat McClellan’s army and sacrifice thousands of the lives of his soldiers.
When General Cass was a candidate for the Presidency his friends sought to endow him with a military reputation.
Lincoln, at that time a representative in Congress, delivered a speech before the House, which, in its allusion to Mr. Cass, was exquisitely sarcastic and irresistibly humorous:
“By the way, Mr. Speaker,” said Lincoln, “do you know I am a military hero?
“Yes, sir, in the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought, bled, and came away.
“Speaking of General Cass’s career reminds me of my own.
“I was not at Stillman’s defeat, but I was about as near it as Cass to Hull’s surrender; and like him I saw the place very soon afterwards.
“It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break, but I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion.
“If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charging upon the wild onion.
“If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say that I was often very hungry.”
Lincoln concluded by saying that if he ever turned Democrat and should run for the Presidency, he hoped they would not make fun of him by attempting to make him a military hero.
About March, 1862, General Benjamin F. Butler, in command at Fortress Monroe, advised President Lincoln that he had determined to regard all slaves coming into his camps as contraband of war, and to employ their labor under fair compensation, and Secretary of War Stanton replied to him, in behalf of the President, approving his course, and saying, “You are not to interfere between master and slave on the one hand, nor surrender slaves who may come within your lines.”
This was a significant milestone of progress to the great end that was thereafter to be reached.
Mr. Lincoln being found fault with for making another “call,” said that if the country required it, he would continue to do so until the matter stood as described by a Western provost marshal, who says:
“I listened a short time since to a butternut-clad individual, who succeeded in making good his escape, expatiate most eloquently on the rigidness with which the conscription was enforced south of the Tennessee River. His response to a question propounded by a citizen ran somewhat in this wise:
“‘Do they conscript close over the river?’
“‘Stranger, I should think they did! They take every man who hasn’t been dead more than two days!’
“If this is correct, the Confederacy has at least a ghost of a chance left.”
And of another, a Methodist minister in Kansas, living on a small salary, who was greatly troubled to get his quarterly instalment. He at last told the non-paying trustees that he must have his money, as he was suffering for the necessaries of life.
“Money!” replied the trustees; “you preach for money? We thought you preached for the good of souls!”
“Souls!” responded the reverend; “I can’t eat souls; and if I could it would take a thousand such as yours to make a meal!”
“That soul is the point, sir,” said the President.
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On February 5th, 1865, President Lincoln formulated a message to Congress, proposing the payment of $400,000,000 to the South as compensation for slaves lost by emancipation, and submitted it to his Cabinet, only to be unanimously rejected.
Lincoln sadly accepted the decision, and filed away the manuscript message, together with this indorsement thereon, to which his signature was added: “February 5, 1865. To-day these papers, which explain themselves, were drawn up and submitted to the Cabinet unanimously disapproved by them.”
When the proposed message was disapproved, Lincoln soberly asked: “How long will the war last?”
To this none could make answer, and he added: “We are spending now, in carrying on the war, $3,000,000 a day, which will amount to all this money, besides all the lives.”
In his youth, Mr. Lincoln once got an idea for a thrilling, romantic story. One day, in Springfield, he was sitting with his feet on the window sill, chatting with an acquaintance, when he suddenly changed the drift of the conversation by saying: “Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first I had ever heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father’s horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl, and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was the one we had left a few hours before, and went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened—the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to me. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded that it was not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love with me.”
Lincoln’s reply to a Springfield (Illinois) clergyman, who asked him what was to be his policy on the slavery question was most apt:
“Well, your question is rather a cool one, but I will answer it by telling you a story:
“You know Father B., the old Methodist preacher? and you know Fox River and its freshets?
“Well, once in the presence of Father B., a young Methodist was worrying about Fox River, and expressing fears that he should be prevented from fulfilling some of his appointments by a freshet in the river.
“Father B. checked him in his gravest manner. Said he:
“‘Young man, I have always made it a rule in my life not to cross Fox River till I get to it.’
“And,” said the President, “I am not going to worry myself over the slavery question till I get to it.”
A few days afterward a Methodist minister called on the President, and on being presented to him, said, simply:
“Mr. President, I have come to tell you that I think we have got to Fox River!”
Lincoln thanked the clergyman, and laughed heartily.
The day of Lincoln’s second nomination for the Presidency he forgot all about the Republican National Convention, sitting at Baltimore, and wandered over to the War Department. While there, a telegram came announcing the nomination of Johnson as Vice-President.
“What,” said Lincoln to the operator, “do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?”
“Why,” replied the astonished official, “have you not heard of your own nomination? It was sent to the White House two hours ago.”
“It is all right,” replied the President; “I shall probably find it on my return.”
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The illustrated newspapers of the United States and England had a good deal of fun, not only with President Lincoln, but the latter’s Cabinet officers and military commanders as well. It was said by these funny publications that the President had set up a guillotine in his “back-yard,” where all those who offended were beheaded with both neatness, and despatch. “Harper’s Weekly” of January 3rd, 1863, contained a cartoon labeled “Those Guillotines; a Little Incident at the White House,” the personages figuring in the “incident” being Secretary of War Stanton and a Union general who had been unfortunate enough to lose a battle to the Confederates. Beneath the cartoon was the following dialogue:
SERVANT: “If ye plase, sir, them Gilliteens has arrove.” MR. LINCOLN: “All right, Michael. Now, gentlemen, will you be kind enough to step out in the back-yard?”
The hair and whiskers of Secretary of War Stanton are ruffled and awry, and his features are not calm and undisturbed, indicating that he has an idea of what’s the matter in that back-yard; the countenance of the officer in the rear of the Secretary of War wears rather an anxious, or worried, look, and his hair isn’t combed smoothly, either.
President Lincoln’s frequent changes among army commanders—before he found Grant, Sherman and Sheridan—afforded an opportunity the caricaturists did not neglect, and some very clever cartoons were the consequence.
Consider the sympathy of Abraham Lincoln. Do you know the story of William Scott, private? He was a boy from a Vermont farm.
There had been a long march, and the night succeeding it he had stood on picket. The next day there had been another long march, and that night William Scott had volunteered to stand guard in the place of a sick comrade who had been drawn for the duty.
It was too much for William Scott. He was too tired. He had been found sleeping on his beat.
The army was at Chain Bridge. It was in a dangerous neighborhood. Discipline must be kept.
William Scott was apprehended, tried by court-martial, sentenced to be shot. News of the case was carried to Lincoln. William Scott was a prisoner in his tent, expecting to be shot next day.
But the flaps of his tent were parted, and Lincoln stood before him. Scott said:
“The President was the kindest man I had ever seen; I knew him at once by a Lincoln medal I had long worn.
“I was scared at first, for I had never before talked with a great man; but Mr. Lincoln was so easy with me, so gentle, that I soon forgot my fright.
“He asked me all about the people at home, the neighbors, the farm, and where I went to school, and who my schoolmates were. Then he asked me about mother and how she looked; and I was glad I could take her photograph from my bosom and show it to him.
“He said how thankful I ought to be that my mother still lived, and how, if he were in my place, he would try to make her a proud mother, and never cause her a sorrow or a tear.
“I cannot remember it all, but every word was so kind.
“He had said nothing yet about that dreadful next morning; I thought it must be that he was so kind-hearted that he didn’t like to speak of it.
“But why did he say so much about my mother, and my not causing her a sorrow or a tear, when I knew that I must die the next morning?
“But I supposed that was something that would have to go unexplained; and so I determined to brace up and tell him that I did not feel a bit guilty, and ask him wouldn’t he fix it so that the firing party would not be from our regiment.
“That was going to be the hardest of all—to die by the hands of my comrades.
“Just as I was going to ask him this favor, he stood up, and he says to me:
“‘My boy, stand up here and look me in the face.’
“I did as he bade me.
“‘My boy,’ he said, ‘you are not going to be shot to-morrow. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep awake.
“‘I am going to trust you, and send you back to your regiment.
“‘But I have been put to a good deal of trouble on your account.
“‘I have had to come up here from Washington when I have got a great deal to do; and what I want to know is, how are you going to pay my bill?’
“There was a big lump in my throat; I could scarcely speak. I had expected to die, you see, and had kind of got used to thinking that way.
“To have it all changed in a minute! But I got it crowded down, and managed to say:
“‘I am grateful, Mr. Lincoln! I hope I am as grateful as ever a man can be to you for saving my life.
“‘But it comes upon me sudden and unexpected like. I didn’t lay out for it at all; but there is some way to pay you, and I will find it after a little.
“‘There is the bounty in the savings bank; I guess we could borrow some money on the mortgage of the farm.’
“‘There was my pay was something, and if he would wait until pay-day I was sure the boys would help; so I thought we could make it up if it wasn’t more than five or six hundred dollars.
“‘But it is a great deal more than that,’ he said.
“Then I said I didn’t just see how, but I was sure I would find some way—if I lived.
“Then Mr. Lincoln put his hands on my shoulders, and looked into my face as if he was sorry, and said; “‘My boy, my bill is a very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your bounty, nor the farm, nor all your comrades!
“‘There is only one man in all the world who can pay it, and his name is William Scott!
“‘If from this day William Scott does his duty, so that, if I was there when he comes to die, he can look me in the face as he does now, and say, I have kept my promise, and I have done my duty as a soldier, then my debt will be paid.
“‘Will you make that promise and try to keep it?”
The promise was given. Thenceforward there never was such a soldier as William Scott.
This is the record of the end. It was after one of the awful battles of the Peninsula. He was shot all to pieces. He said:
“Boys, I shall never see another battle. I supposed this would be my last. I haven’t much to say.
“You all know what you can tell them at home about me.
“I have tried to do the right thing! If any of you ever have the chance I wish you would tell President Lincoln that I have never forgotten the kind words he said to me at the Chain Bridge; that I have tried to be a good soldier and true to the flag; that I should have paid my whole debt to him if I had lived; and that now, when I know that I am dying, I think of his kind face, and thank him again, because he gave me the chance to fall like a soldier in battle, and not like a coward, by the hands of my comrades.”
What wonder that Secretary Stanton said, as he gazed upon the tall form and kindly face as he lay there, smitten down by the assassin’s bullet, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men who ever lived.”
One day during the Black Hawk War a poor old Indian came into the camp with a paper of safe conduct from General Lewis Cass in his possession. The members of Lincoln’s company were greatly exasperated by late Indian barbarities, among them the horrible murder of a number of women and children, and were about to kill him; they said the safe-conduct paper was a forgery, and approached the old savage with muskets cocked to shoot him.
Lincoln rushed forward, struck up the weapons with his hands, and standing in front of the victim, declared to the Indian that he should not be killed. It was with great difficulty that the men could be kept from their purpose, but the courage and firmness of Lincoln thwarted them.
Lincoln was physically one of the bravest of men, as his company discovered.
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Frank P. Blair, of Chicago, tells an incident, showing Mr. Lincoln’s love for children and how thoroughly he entered into all of their sports:
“During the war my grandfather, Francis P. Blair, Sr., lived at Silver Springs, north of Washington, seven miles from the White House. It was a magnificent place of four or five hundred acres, with an extensive lawn in the rear of the house. The grandchildren gathered there frequently.
“There were eight or ten of us, our ages ranging from eight to twelve years. Although I was but seven or eight years of age, Mr. Lincoln’s visits were of such importance to us boys as to leave a clear impression on my memory. He drove out to the place quite frequently. We boys, for hours at a time played ‘town ball’ on the vast lawn, and Mr. Lincoln would join ardently in the sport. I remember vividly how he ran with the children; how long were his strides, and how far his coat-tails stuck out behind, and how we tried to hit him with the ball, as he ran the bases. He entered into the spirit of the play as completely as any of us, and we invariably hailed his coming with delight.”
“Well,” said the President, “I would be very happy to oblige, if my passes were respected; but the fact is, sir, I have, within the past two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond, and not one has got there yet.”
The applicant quietly and respectfully withdrew on his tiptoes.
A certain United States Senator, who believed that every man who believed in secession should be hanged, asked the President what he intended to do when the War was over.
“Reconstruct the machinery of this Government,” quickly replied Lincoln.
“You are certainly crazy,” was the Senator’s heated response. “You talk as if treason was not henceforth to be made odious, but that the traitors, cutthroats and authors of this War should not only go unpunished, but receive encouragement to repeat their treason with impunity! They should be hanged higher than Haman, sir! Yes, higher than any malefactor the world has ever known!”
The President was entirely unmoved, but, after a moment’s pause, put a question which all but drove his visitor insane.
“Now, Senator, suppose that when this hanging arrangement has been agreed upon, you accept the post of Chief Executioner. If you will take the office, I will make you a brigadier general and Public Hangman for the United States. That would just about suit you, wouldn’t it?”
“I am a gentleman, sir,” returned the Senator, “and I certainly thought you knew me better than to believe me capable of doing such dirty work. You are jesting, Mr. President.”
The President was extremely patient, exhibiting no signs of ire, and to this bit of temper on the part of the Senator responded:
“You speak of being a gentleman; yet you forget that in this free country all men are equal, the vagrant and the gentleman standing on the same ground when it comes to rights and duties, particularly in time of war. Therefore, being a gentleman, as you claim, and a law-abiding citizen, I trust, you are not exempt from doing even the dirty work at which your high spirit revolts.”
This was too much for the Senator, who quitted the room abruptly, and never again showed his face in the White House while Lincoln occupied it.
“He won’t bother me again,” was the President’s remark as he departed.
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Lincoln was a very quiet man, and went about his business in a quiet way, making the least noise possible. He heartily disliked those boisterous people who were constantly deluging him with advice, and shouting at the tops of their voices whenever they appeared at the White House. “These noisy people create a great clamor,” said he one day, in conversation with some personal friends, “and remind me, by the way, of a good story I heard out in Illinois while I was practicing, or trying to practice, some law there. I will say, though, that I practiced more law than I ever got paid for.
“A fellow who lived just out of town, on the bank of a large marsh, conceived a big idea in the money-making line. He took it to a prominent merchant, and began to develop his plans and specifications. ‘There are at least ten million frogs in that marsh near me, an’ I’ll just arrest a couple of carloads of them and hand them over to you. You can send them to the big cities and make lots of money for both of us. Frogs’ legs are great delicacies in the big towns, an’ not very plentiful. It won’t take me more’n two or three days to pick ‘em. They make so much noise my family can’t sleep, and by this deal I’ll get rid of a nuisance and gather in some cash.’
“The merchant agreed to the proposition, promised the fellow he would pay him well for the two carloads. Two days passed, then three, and finally two weeks were gone before the fellow showed up again, carrying a small basket. He looked weary and ‘done up,’ and he wasn’t talkative a bit. He threw the basket on the counter with the remark, ‘There’s your frogs.’
“‘You haven’t two carloads in that basket, have you?’ inquired the merchant.
“‘No,’ was the reply, ‘and there ain’t no two carloads in all this blasted world.’
“‘I thought you said there were at least ten millions of ‘em in that marsh near you, according to the noise they made,’ observed the merchant. ‘Your people couldn’t sleep because of ‘em.’
“‘Well,’ said the fellow, ‘accordin’ to the noise they made, there was, I thought, a hundred million of ‘em, but when I had waded and swum that there marsh day and night fer two blessed weeks, I couldn’t harvest but six. There’s two or three left yet, an’ the marsh is as noisy as it uster be. We haven’t catched up on any of our lost sleep yet. Now, you can have these here six, an’ I won’t charge you a cent fer ‘em.’
“You can see by this little yarn,” remarked the President, “that these boisterous people make too much noise in proportion to their numbers.”
Being asked one time by an “anxious” visitor as to what he would do in certain contingencies—provided the rebellion was not subdued after three or four years of effort on the part of the Government?
“Oh,” replied the President, “there is no alternative but to keep ‘pegging’ away!”
After the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, Governor Morgan, of New York, was at the White House one day, when the President said:
“I do not agree with those who say that slavery is dead. We are like whalers who have been long on a chase—we have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or, with one ‘flop’ of his tail, he will yet send us all into eternity!”
President Lincoln was depicted as a headsman in a cartoon printed in “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,” on February 14, 1863, the title of the picture being “Lincoln’s Dreams; or, There’s a Good Time Coming.”
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The cartoon, reproduced here, represents, on the right, the Union Generals who had been defeated by the Confederates in battle, and had suffered decapitation in consequence—McDowell, who lost at Bull Run; McClellan, who failed to take Richmond, when within twelve miles of that city and no opposition, comparatively; and Burnside, who was so badly whipped at Fredericksburg. To the left of the block, where the President is standing with the bloody axe in his hand, are shown the members of the Cabinet—Secretary of State Seward, Secretary of War Stanton, Secretary of the Navy Welles, and others—each awaiting his turn. This part of the “Dream” was never realized, however, as the President did not decapitate any of his Cabinet officers.
It was the idea of the cartoonist to hold Lincoln up as a man who would not countenance failure upon the part of subordinates, but visit the severest punishment upon those commanders who did not win victories. After Burnside’s defeat at Fredericksburg, he was relieved by Hooker, who suffered disaster at Chancellorsville; Hooker was relieved by Meade, who won at Gettysburg, but was refused promotion because he did not follow up and crush Lee; Rosecrans was all but defeated at Chickamauga, and gave way to Grant, who, of all the Union commanders, had never suffered defeat. Grant was Lincoln’s ideal fighting man, and the “Old Commander” was never superseded.
Dr. Hovey, of Dansville, New York, thought he would call and see the President.
Upon arriving at the White House he found the President on horseback, ready for a start.
Approaching him, he said:
“President Lincoln, I thought I would call and see you before leaving the city, and hear you tell a story.”
The President greeted him pleasantly, and asked where he was from.
“From Western New York.”
“Well, that’s a good enough country without stories,” replied the President, and off he rode.
Lincoln’s habits at the White House were as simple as they were at his old home in Illinois.
He never alluded to himself as “President,” or as occupying “the Presidency.”
His office he always designated as “the place.”
“Call me Lincoln,” said he to a friend; “Mr. President” had become so very tiresome to him.
“If you see a newsboy down the street, send him up this way,” said he to a passenger, as he stood waiting for the morning news at his gate.
Friends cautioned him about exposing himself so openly in the midst of enemies; but he never heeded them.
He frequently walked the streets at night, entirely unprotected; and felt any check upon his movements a great annoyance.
He delighted to see his familiar Western friends; and he gave them always a cordial welcome.
He met them on the old footing, and fell at once into the accustomed habits of talk and story-telling.
An old acquaintance, with his wife, visited Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln proposed to these friends a ride in the Presidential carriage.
It should be stated in advance that the two men had probably never seen each other with gloves on in their lives, unless when they were used as protection from the cold.
The question of each—Lincoln at the White House, and his friend at the hotel—was, whether he should wear gloves.
Of course the ladies urged gloves; but Lincoln only put his in his pocket, to be used or not, according to the circumstances.
When the Presidential party arrived at the hotel, to take in their friends, they found the gentleman, overcome by his wife’s persuasions, very handsomely gloved.
The moment he took his seat he began to draw off the clinging kids, while Lincoln began to draw his on!
“No! no! no!” protested his friend, tugging at his gloves. “It is none of my doings; put up your gloves, Mr. Lincoln.”
So the two old friends were on even and easy terms, and had their ride after their old fashion.