The reader will not be surprised to learn that getting into the presence
of the President was no laughing matter, and that his own habit of
occasionally using laughter during business hours did not always descend
to those under him in the government.
I arrived in Washington early on a crisp December morning, just a few days
before Christmas. I went straightway to the old Ebbit House, which was
then the fashionable gathering place for military people stationed or
sojourning in the capital. The contrast between "desk officers" and
officers in the field was even greater then than in more recent days,
because if the former were less smart in appearance than the modern
"citified" officer, the latter were, as a rule, vastly more disheveled
and disreputable in appearance than one would find in any army of to-day
on campaign. There were good reasons for this, of course, but they did not
greatly help to increase the confidence of a decidedly "seedy"-looking
young officer fresh from the swamps and thickets of North Carolina. I was
glad to get away from the environs of the Ebbit House after a brief but
very earnest effort to "spruce up."
When the time at last arrived that the ordeal was directly ahead, I
plucked up courage and walked up the footpath to the White House with a
tolerably certain step. Even at the height of the war President Lincoln
did not surround himself by the barriers which later Executives have found
necessary. One simply went to the White House, stated his business, and
waited his turn for an interview.
Once inside that building, however, my earlier timidity returned tenfold.
I had agreed that morning with the local correspondent of the New York
_Tribune_ to get all the material I could from Lincoln for an interview
for his paper. I trembled as with a chill when I told the doorkeeper that
I wished to see the President, and when the official coldly ordered me to
"come in and sit over there, in that row," I began to doubt whether I was
to be arrested for intrusion. The anteroom was crowded with
important-looking people, all waiting for an interview with Lincoln. I
wondered if I would ever get within sight of his door.
Presently, however, the President's personal secretary entered the room,
and passing along the line of visitors with a notebook, asked each to
state his business with the President. I showed my pass and in a few words
explained my errand, even mustering up courage to emphasize the urgency of
the case.
The secretary disappeared, and there was an awkward half hour of waiting.
Finally he returned by a side door and, calling out my name, directed me
in an official way to "come in at once" ahead of all the others. When I
had passed into the vestibule the secretary shut the reception-room door
behind us and, pointing to a door at the other side of the room, said,
hastily: "That is the President's door. Go over, rap on the door, and walk
right in." He then hurried out at a side door and left me alone.
Thus abandoned, I felt faint with terror, embarrassment, and conflicting
decisions. It was a most painful ordeal to be left to go in alone to meet
the august head of the nation--to rush alone into the privacy of the
commander-in-chief of all the loyal armies of the Union. It was an
especially trying period of the war which we had just passed through.
Sherman's march to the sea was still in progress. The President had not
yet received the historic telegram in which General Sherman offered him
the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift, but he was well aware of the
thorough devastation which that army left in its wake; and while he
understood its necessity, the thought filled him with deepest gloom.
Hood's Confederate army, which threatened for a time to repeat the
successes of General Kirby Smith, had been crushed in Tennessee, but only
after a period of suspense which stretched the nerves of all in
administration circles to within a degree of the breaking point. In
addition to this the voices of the "defeatists"--"Copperheads," they were
called then--were heard far and wide in the land, ranting and howling
their demand for a peace which would have been premature and inconclusive.
The cares and sorrows of the President had hardly been more severe during
the most critical days of the war than they were in December, 1864--it was
the dark just before the dawn.
Whether to turn and run for the street, to stand still, or to force myself
to rap on that awful door was a question filling my soul with frightful
emotions. I rubbed my head and walked several times across the vestibule
to regain possession of my normal faculties. No one who has not been
placed in such a startling situation can begin to realize what a
stage-struck heartache afflicted me. I had been under fire and heard the
shells crack and the bullets sing, but none of those experiences, so awful
to a green soldier, had so filled my being with a desire to run away. But
I recalled the fact that the President had the reputation of being a plain
man to whom any citizen could speak on the street and was kind-hearted to
an almost feminine degree, so I wiped my brow and at last drove myself
over to the door. There, with the desperation such as the suicide must
feel as he leaps from the cliff, I rapped hesitatingly on the door.
Instantly a strong voice from inside shouted, "Come in and sit down." It
was a command rather than an invitation.
I turned the knob weakly and entered, almost on tiptoe. There at the side
of a long table sat the same lank individual who spoke at the Cooper
Union four years before. The pallor of his face and the prominence of the
cheek bones seemed even more striking in contrast with the full beard than
when he was clean shaven. But his hair was as sadly disturbed and his
clothing had the same lack of style and fitness. An old gray shawl had
fallen across one corner of the table, where also lay numerous rolls of
papers. The President did not look up when I stepped in and hesitatingly
sat down in the chair nearest the door.
That close application to the task before him was a characteristic of
Lincoln which has not been emphasized by his biographers as it could and
should have been. To quote his own words, whenever he read a book he
"exhausted it." It seems to be the one great trait of character which
lifted him above the common clay from which he came. Lincoln had no
inheritance worth recording. He once wrote to his partner that what little
talent, money, and learning he had was "purloined or picked up."
Surely, never among the surprises which one finds in the history of this
nation is there one more unaccountable than the career of Abraham Lincoln.
How he first formed the habit, or where he adopted his method of mental
concentration, has not been revealed. The ability to focus one's whole
mind on a single idea is not such an unattainable achievement. Perhaps it
has no connection with genius in the true sense, but it serves to
concentrate all the rays of mental light and power until they penetrate
the hardest substances and ignite into explosion the latent power hitherto
unguessed.
There seems to be no other great quality in Lincoln's mentality, but that
one may account for all in him that was above the normal. He could manage
flatboats, split rails, endure fatigue, tell homely stories for
illustration, and wait with unshakable patience, but his greatest
achievement was in the power he gained to think hard and long with his
mind immovably concentrated upon a difficult problem.
That morning while I sat trembling by the door, the President read on with
undisturbed attention the manuscript before him, occasionally making notes
on the margin of the paper. He did not lift his eyes or move in his seat,
and it was not until he had read carefully the last sentence, had
scribbled his name or initials at the bottom of the last page, and had
tied the paper carefully with a string, that he looked up at his visitor.
Then a smile came over the worn face, and as he pulled himself into his
spring-backed chair he called out, cheerfully:
"Come over to the table, young man. Glad to see you. But remember that I
am a very busy man and have no time to spare; so tell me in the fewest
words what it is you want."
I took the seat at the table to which the President pointed, pulled out a
copy of the record of the case, and read the soldier's name. The
President stopped me almost sharply, saying:
"Oh, you don't need to read more about that case. Mr. Stanton and I talked
over that report carefully last week!"
Already my nervousness had been dispelled as if by magic. Indeed, the
President's cordial, familiar manner and apparent good will gave me the
courage to remark that it was "almost time for that order to be carried
out." For a moment Lincoln seemed to be offended by the hasty remark.
Flinging himself back in his chair with an impatient gesture, he said:
"You can go down to the Ebbit House _now_ and write to that soldier's
mother in Vermont and tell her the President told you that he never did
sign an order to shoot a boy under twenty years of age and _that he never
will_!"
As he uttered the last words of that remark he swung his long arms swiftly
over his head and struck the table violently with his fist. At that
moment Lincoln's boy, "Tad," then eleven years old, slipped off a stool in
the farther corner of the room, where he had been silently at play, and
Lincoln turned anxiously around at the sound of his fall. Seeing that the
little boy was unhurt, the President called:
"Come here, Tad, I wish to introduce you to this soldier!"
So quickly and easily had the purpose of my interview been accomplished
that for a moment it left me dazed. But Lincoln wanted no thanks. What was
done was done, and the incident was closed. The name of my young soldier
friend was not mentioned again in the course of what turned out to be a
long and wonderful chat about subjects as alien to discipline as music,
education, and the cultivation and use of humor. The President had a
purpose in detaining me, though at first I did not perceive what this was.
Without appearing in the least to see anything incongruous in the
act--while a score of important callers waited in the anteroom--Lincoln
threw his long arm about the little boy and plunged into a conversation of
the most personal sort. He told me it was his ambition to carry on a farm,
with Tad for a partner. He said that he had bought a farm at New Salem,
Illinois, where he used to dig potatoes at twenty-five cents a day, and
that Tad and he were to have mule teams and raise corn and onions. Then he
smiled as he remarked, "Mrs. Lincoln does not know anything about the plan
for the onions."
He said farming was, after all, the best occupation on earth. He then told
a number of incidents in his own life to illustrate, as he said, "How
little I know about farming!" The incidents were droll and full of wise
suggestions, which wholly disarmed me until I laughed without reserve.
Lincoln told of a visit Horace Greeley had made to the White House a few
weeks before to enlighten the President on "What I know about farming."
Lincoln said he half believed the story about Greeley wherein it was said
that he (Greeley) planted a long row of beans, and when in the process of
first growth the beans were pushed bodily out of the ground, Greeley
concluded that the beans "had made a blunder," and, pulling up each bean,
he carefully turned it over with the roots sticking out in the air.
The President then asked me if I was a farmer's boy, and when I answered
that I was brought up on a farm in the Berkshire Hills he burst out into
strong laughter and said, "I hear that you have to sharpen the noses of
the sheep up there to get them down to the grass between the rocks." Then
the President, as his mind was led away from the awful cares of state,
turned to a small side table and picked up a much-worn copy of the News
Stand Edition of the _Life and Sayings of Artemus Ward_. Both Ward and
Lincoln were skilled storytellers, and they were alike in their avoidance
of vulgar or low yarns. Lincoln was credited with thousands of yarns he
never heard, and with thousands to which he would not have listened
without giving a rebuke. Many of those at which he revolted have been
continued in print under his name. But Ward's speech concerning his visit
to the President among the office-seeking crowd was to Lincoln's mind "a
masterpiece of pure fun."
As we sat there Lincoln opened Artemus Ward's book and read several things
from it. Then closing it, he said, "Ward rests me more than any living
man."