When the Union forces were routed in the first battle of Bull Run, there
were many civilians present, who had gone out from Washington to witness
the battle. Among the number were several Congressmen. One of these was
a tall, long-legged fellow, who wore a long-tailed coat and a high plug
hat. When the retreat began, this Congressman was in the lead of the
entire crowd fleeing toward Washington. He outran all the rest, and was
the first man to arrive in the city. No person ever made such good use
of long legs as this Congressman. His immense stride carried him yards
at every bound. He went over ditches and gullies at a single leap, and
cleared a six-foot fence with a foot to spare. As he went over the fence
his plug hat blew off, but he did not pause. With his long coat-tails
flying in the wind, he continued straight ahead for Washington.
Many of those behind him were scared almost to death, but the flying
Congressman was such a comical figure that they had to laugh in spite of
their terror.
Mr. Lincoln enjoyed the description of how this Congressman led the race
from Bull’s Run, and laughed at it heartily.
“I never knew but one fellow who could run like that,” he said, “and
he was a young man out in Illinois. He had been sparking a girl, much
against the wishes of her father. In fact, the old man took such a
dislike to him that he threatened to shoot him if he ever caught him
around his premises again.
“One evening the young man learned that the girl’s father had gone
to the city, and he ventured out to the house. He was sitting in the
parlor, with his arm around Betsy’s waist, when he suddenly spied the
old man coming around the corner of the house with a shotgun. Leaping
through a window into the garden, he started down a path at the top
of his speed. He was a long-legged fellow, and could run like greased
lightning. Just then a jack-rabbit jumped up in the path in front of
him. In about two leaps he overtook the rabbit. Giving it a kick that
sent it high in the air, he exclaimed: ‘Git out of the road, gosh dern
you, and let somebody run that knows how.’
“I reckon,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that the long-legged Congressman, when he
saw the rebel muskets, must have felt a good deal like that young fellow
did when he saw the old man’s shot-gun.”
“FOOLING” THE PEOPLE.
Lincoln was a strong believer in the virtue of dealing honestly with the
people.
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,” he said
to a caller at the White House, “you can never regain their respect and
esteem.
“It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can
even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the
people all the time.”
“ABE, YOU CAN’T PLAY THAT ON ME.”
The night President-elect Lincoln arrived at Washington, one man was
observed watching Lincoln very closely as he walked out of the railroad
station. Standing a little to one side, the man looked very sharply at
Lincoln, and, as the latter passed, seized hold of his hand, and said in
a loud tone of voice, “Abe, you can’t play that on me!”
Ward Lamon and the others with Lincoln were instantly alarmed, and would
have struck the stranger had not Lincoln hastily said, “Don’t strike
him! It is Washburne. Don’t you know him?”
Mr. Seward had given Congressman Washburne a hint of the time the train
would arrive, and he had the right to be at the station when the
train steamed in, but his indiscreet manner of loudly addressing the
President-elect might have led to serious consequences to the latter.