The President told a story which most beautifully illustrated the
muddled situation of affairs at the time McClellan’s fate was hanging in
the balance. McClellan’s work was not satisfactory, but the President
hesitated to remove him; the general was so slow that the Confederates
marched all around him; and, to add to the dilemma, the President could
not find a suitable man to take McClellan’s place.
The latter was a political, as well as a military, factor; his friends
threatened that, if he was removed, many war Democrats would cast their
influence with the South, etc. It was, altogether, a sad mix-up, and
the President, for a time, was at his wits’ end. He was assailed on all
sides with advice, but none of it was worth acting upon.
“This situation reminds me,” said the President at a Cabinet meeting one
day not long before the appointment of General Halleck as McClellan’s
successor in command of the Union forces, “of a Union man in Kentucky
whose two sons enlisted in the Federal Army. His wife was of Confederate
sympathies. His nearest neighbor was a Confederate in feeling, and his
two sons were fighting under Lee. This neighbor’s wife was a Union woman
and it nearly broke her heart to know that her sons were arrayed against
the Union.
“Finally, the two men, after each had talked the matter over with his
wife, agreed to obtain divorces; this they, did, and the Union man and
Union woman were wedded, as were the Confederate man and the Confederate
woman--the men swapped wives, in short. But this didn’t seem to help
matters any, for the sons of the Union woman were still fighting for the
South, and the sons of the Confederate woman continued in the Federal
Army; the Union husband couldn’t get along with his Union wife, and
the Confederate husband and his Confederate wife couldn’t agree upon
anything, being forever fussing and quarreling.
“It’s the same thing with the Army. It doesn’t seem worth while to
secure divorces and then marry the Army and McClellan to others, for
they won’t get along any better than they do now, and there’ll only be a
new set of heartaches started. I think we’d better wait; perhaps a real
fighting general will come along some of these days, and then we’ll
all be happy. If you go to mixing in a mix-up, you only make the muddle
worse.”
“LONG ABE’S” FEET “PROTRUDED OVER.”
George M. Pullman, the great sleeping-car builder, once told a joke in
which Lincoln was the prominent figure. In fact, there wouldn’t have
been any joke had it not been for “Long Abe.” At the time of the
occurrence, which was the foundation for the joke--and Pullman admitted
that the latter was on him--Pullman was the conductor of his only
sleeping-car. The latter was an experiment, and Pullman was doing
everything possible to get the railroads to take hold of it.
“One night,” said Pullman in telling the story, “as we were about going
out of Chicago--this was long before Lincoln was what you might call
a renowned man--a long, lean, ugly man, with a wart on his cheek, came
into the depot. He paid me fifty cents, and half a berth was assigned
him. Then he took off his coat and vest and hung them up, and they
fitted the peg about as well as they fitted him. Then he kicked off
his boots, which were of surprising length, turned into the berth, and,
undoubtedly having an easy conscience, was sleeping like a healthy baby
before the car left the depot.
“Pretty soon along came another passenger and paid his fifty cents. In
two minutes he was back at me, angry as a wet hen.
“‘There’s a man in that berth of mine,’ said he, hotly, ‘and he’s about
ten feet high. How am I going to sleep there, I’d like to know? Go and
look at him.’
“In I went--mad, too. The tall, lank man’s knees were under his
chin, his arms were stretched across the bed and his feet were stored
comfortably--for him. I shook him until he awoke, and then told him if
he wanted the whole berth he would have to pay $1.
“‘My dear sir,’ said the tall man, ‘a contract is a contract. I have
paid you fifty cents for half this berth, and, as you see, I’m occupying
it. There’s the other half,’ pointing to a strip about six inches wide.
‘Sell that and don’t disturb me again.’
“And so saying, the man with a wart on his face went to sleep again. He
was Abraham Lincoln, and he never grew any shorter afterward. We became
great friends, and often laughed over the incident.”