He hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in
his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels,
trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking
off.--MACBETH.
[Sidenote: REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.]
The assassination of President Lincoln, while these chapters are in
press, attaches a sad interest to everything connected with his memory.
During the great canvass for the United States Senate, between Mr.
Lincoln and Mr. Douglas, the right of Congress to exclude Slavery from
the Territories was the chief point in dispute. Kansas was the only
region to which it had any practical application; and we, who were
residing there, read the debates with peculiar interest.
No such war of intellects, on the rostrum, was ever witnessed in
America. Entirely without general culture, more ignorant of books than
any other public man of his day, Douglas was christened "the Little
Giant" by the unerring popular instinct. He who, without the learning
of the schools, and without preparation, could cope with Webster,
Seward, and Sumner, surely deserved that appellation. He despised
study. Rising after one of Mr. Sumner's most scholarly and elaborate
speeches, he said: "Mr. President, this is very elegant and able, but
we all know perfectly well that the Massachusetts Senator has been
rehearsing it every night for a month, before a looking-glass, with a
negro holding a candle!"
[Sidenote: HIS GREAT CANVASS WITH DOUGLAS.]
Douglas was, beyond all cotemporaries, a man of the people. Lincoln,
too, was distinctively of the masses; but he represented their sober,
second thought, their higher aspirations, their better possibilities.
Douglas embodied their average impulses, both good and bad. Upon the
stump, his fluency, his hard common sense, and his wonderful voice,
which could thunder like the cataract, or whisper with the breeze,
enabled him to sway them at his will.
Hitherto invincible at home, he now found a foeman worthy of his
steel. All over the country people began to ask about this "Honest Abe
Lincoln," whose inexhaustible anecdotes were so droll, yet so exactly
to the point; whose logic was so irresistible; whose modesty, fairness,
and personal integrity, won golden opinions from his political enemies;
who, without "trimming," enjoyed the support of the many-headed
Opposition in Illinois, from the Abolition Owen Lovejoys of the
northern counties, down to the "conservative" old Whigs of the Egyptian
districts, who still believed in the divinity of Slavery.
Those who did not witness it will never comprehend the universal and
intense horror at every thing looking toward "negro equality" which
then prevailed in southern Illinois. Republican politicians succumbed
to it. In their journals and platforms they sometimes said distinctly:
"We care nothing for the negro. We advocate his exclusion from our
State. We oppose Slavery in the Territories only because it is a curse
to the white man." Mr. Lincoln never descended to this level. In his
plain, moderate, conciliatory way, he would urge upon his simple
auditors that this matter had a Right and a Wrong--that the great
Declaration of their fathers meant something. And--always his strong
point--he would put this so clearly to the common apprehension, and
so touch the people's moral sense, that his opponents found their old
cries of "Abolitionist" and "Negro-worshiper" hollow and powerless.
His defeat, by a very slight majority, proved victory in disguise. The
debates gave him a National reputation. Republican executive committees
in other States issued verbatim reports of the speeches of both
Douglas and Lincoln, bound up together in the order of their delivery.
They printed them just as they stood, without one word of comment, as
the most convincing plea for their cause. Rarely, if ever, has any man
received so high a compliment as was thus paid to Mr. Lincoln.
[Sidenote: HIS VISIT TO KANSAS.]
In Kansas his stories began to stick like chestnut-burrs in the
popular ear--to pass from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The
young lawyers, physicians, and other politicians who swarm in the new
country, began to quote from his arguments in their public speeches,
and to regard him as the special champion of their political faith.
Late in the Autumn of 1859 he visited the Territory for the first and
last time. With Marcus J. Parrott, Delegate in Congress, A. Carter
Wilder, afterward Representative, and Henry Villard, a Journalist,
I went to Troy, in Doniphan County, to hear him. In the imaginative
language of the frontier, Troy was a "town"--possibly a city. But, save
a shabby frame court-house, a tavern, and a few shanties, its urban
glories were visible only to the eye of faith. It was intensely cold.
The sweeping prairie wind rocked the crazy buildings, and cut the faces
of travelers like a knife. Mr. Wilder froze his hand during our ride,
and Mr. Lincoln's party arrived wrapped in buffalo-robes.
[Sidenote: HIS MANNER OF PUBLIC SPEAKING.]
Not more than forty people assembled in that little, bare-walled
court-house. There was none of the magnetism of a multitude to inspire
the long, angular, ungainly orator, who rose up behind a rough table.
With little gesticulation, and that little ungraceful, he began, not to
declaim, but to talk. In a conversational tone, he argued the question
of Slavery in the Territories, in the language of an average Ohio or
New York farmer. I thought, "If the Illinoisans consider this a great
man, their ideas must be very peculiar."
But in ten or fifteen minutes I was unconsciously and irresistibly
drawn by the clearness and closeness of his argument. Link after
link it was forged and welded like a blacksmith's chain. He made few
assertions, but merely asked questions: "Is not this true? If you admit
that fact, is not this induction correct?" Give him his premises, and
his conclusions were inevitable as death.
His fairness and candor were very noticeable. He ridiculed nothing,
burlesqued nothing, misrepresented nothing. So far from distorting the
views held by Mr. Douglas and his adherents, he stated them with more
strength probably than any one of their advocates could have done.
Then, very modestly and courteously, he inquired into their soundness.
He was too kind for bitterness, and too great for vituperation.
His anecdotes, of course, were felicitous and illustrative. He
delineated the tortuous windings of the Democracy upon the Slavery
question, from Thomas Jefferson down to Franklin Pierce. Whenever
he heard a man avow his determination to adhere unswervingly to the
principles of the Democratic party, it reminded him, he said, of a
"little incident" in Illinois. A lad, plowing upon the prairie, asked
his father in what direction he should strike a new furrow. The parent
replied, "Steer for that yoke of oxen standing at the further end of
the field." The father went away, and the lad obeyed. But just as he
started, the oxen started also. He kept steering for them; and they
continued to walk. He followed them entirely around the field, and came
back to the starting-point, having furrowed a circle instead of a line!
[Sidenote: HIGH PRAISE FROM AN OPPONENT.]
The address lasted for an hour and three-quarters. Neither rhetorical,
graceful, nor eloquent, it was still very fascinating. The people of
the frontier believe profoundly in fair play, and in hearing both
sides. So they now called for an aged ex-Kentuckian, who was the
heaviest slaveholder in the Territory. Responding, he thus prefaced his
remarks:--
"I have heard, during my life, all the ablest public speakers--all the
eminent statesmen of the past and the present generation. And while I
dissent utterly from the doctrines of this address, and shall endeavor
to refute some of them, candor compels me to say that it is the most
able and the most logical speech I ever listened to."
I have alluded in earlier pages, to remarks touching the reports that
Mr. Lincoln would be assassinated, which I heard in the South, on the
day of his first inauguration. Afterward, in my presence, several
persons of the wealthy, slaveholding class, alluded to the subject,
some having laid wagers upon the event. I heard but one man condemn the
proposed assassination, and he was a Unionist. Again and again, leading
journals, which were called reputable, asked: "Is there no Brutus to
rid the world of this tyrant?" Rewards were openly proposed for the
President's head. If Mr. Lincoln had then been murdered in Baltimore,
every thorough Secession journal in the South would have expressed its
approval, directly or indirectly. Of course, I do not believe that the
masses, or all Secessionists, would have desired such a stain upon the
American name; but even then, as afterward, when they murdered our
captured soldiers, and starved, froze, and shot our prisoners, the men
who led and controlled the Rebels appeared deaf to humanity and to
decency. Charity would fain call them insane; but there was too much
method in their madness.
[Sidenote: A DEED WITHOUT A NAME.]
Their last, great crime of all was, perhaps, needed for an eternal
monument of the influence of Slavery. It was fitting that they who
murdered Lovejoy, who crimsoned the robes of young Kansas, who aimed
their gigantic Treason at the heart of the Republic, before the
curtain went down, should crown their infamy by this deed without a
name. It was fitting that they should seek the lives of President
Lincoln, General Grant, and Secretary Seward, the three officers most
conspicuous of all for their mildness and clemency. It was fitting
they should assassinate a Chief Magistrate, so conscientious, that his
heavy responsibility weighed him down like a millstone; so pure, that
partisan rancor found no stain upon the hem of his garment; so gentle,
that e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side; so merciful, that he
stood like an averting angel between them and the Nation's vengeance.
The Rebel newspapers represented him--a man who used neither spirits
nor tobacco--as in a state of constant intoxication. They ransacked
the language for epithets. Their chief hatred was called out by his
origin. He illustrated the Democratic Idea, which was inconceivably
repugnant to them. That a man who sprang from the people, worked with
his hands, actually split rails in boyhood, should rise to the head
of a Government which included Southern gentlemen, was bitter beyond
description!
[Sidenote: SHERMAN'S QUARREL WITH THE PRESS.]
On the 28th of December, 1862, Sherman fought the battle of Chickasaw
Bayou, one of our first fruitless attempts to capture Vicksburg.
Grant designed to co-operate by an attack from the rear, but his long
supply-line extended to Columbus, Kentucky, though he might have
established a nearer base at Memphis. Van Dorn cut his communications
at Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Grant was compelled to fall back.
Sherman's attack proved a serious disaster. Our forces were flung upon
an almost impregnable bluff, where we lost about two thousand five
hundred men, and were then compelled to retreat.
In the old quarrel between Sherman and the Press, as usual, there was
blame upon both sides. Some of the correspondents had treated him
unjustly; and he had not learned the quiet patience and faith in the
future which Grant exhibited under similar circumstances. At times he
manifested much irritation and morbid sensitiveness.
[Sidenote: AN ARMY CORRESPONDENT COURT-MARTIALED.]
A well-known correspondent, Mr. Thomas W. Knox, was present at the
battle, and placed his report of it, duly sealed, and addressed to a
private citizen, in the military mail at Sherman's head-quarters. One
"Colonel" A. H. Markland, of Kentucky, United States Postal Agent, on
mere surmise about its contents, took the letter from the mail and
permitted it to be opened. He insisted afterward that he did this by
Sherman's express command. Sherman denied giving any such order, but
said he was satisfied with Markland's course.
Markland should have been arrested for robbing the Government mails,
which he was sworn to protect. There was no reasonable pretext for
asserting that the letter would give information to the enemy;
therefore it did not imperil the public interest. If General Sherman
deemed it unjust to himself individually, he had his remedy, like any
other citizen or soldier, in the courts of the country and the justice
of the people.
The purloined dispatch was left for four or five days lying about
Sherman's head-quarters, open to the inspection of officers. Finally,
upon Knox's written request, it was returned to him, though a map which
it contained was kept--as he rather pungently suggested, probably for
the information of the military authorities!
Knox's letter had treated the generalship of the battle very tenderly.
But after this proceeding he immediately forwarded a second account,
which expressed his views on the subject in very plain English. Its
return in print caused great excitement at head-quarters. Knox was
arrested, and tried before a military tribunal on these charges:--
I. Giving information to the enemy.
II. Being a spy.
III. Violating the fifty-seventh Article of War, which forbids the
writing of letters for publication from any United States army without
submitting them to the commanding general for approval.
The court-martial sat for fifteen days. It acquitted Knox upon the
first and second charges. Of course, he was found guilty of the third.
After some hesitation between sentencing him to receive a written
censure, or to leave Grant's department, the latter was decided upon,
and he was banished from the army lines.
When information of this proceeding reached Washington, the members
of the press at once united in a memorial to the President, asking
him to set aside the sentence, inasmuch as the violated Article of
War was altogether obsolete, and the practice of sending newspaper
letters, without any official scrutiny, had been universal, with the
full sanction of the Government, from the outset of the Rebellion.
It was further represented that Mr. Knox was thoroughly loyal, and
the most scrupulously careful of all the army correspondents to write
nothing which, by any possibility, could give information to the enemy.
Colonel John W. Forney headed the memorial, and all the journalists in
Washington signed it.
[Sidenote: A VISIT TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]
One evening, with Mr. James M. Winchell, of _The New York Times,_ and
Mr. H. P. Bennett, Congressional Delegate from Colorado, I called upon
the President to present the paper.
After General Sigel and Representative John B. Steele had left, he
chanced to be quite at liberty. Upon my introduction, he remarked:--
"Oh, yes, I remember you perfectly well: you were out on the prairies
with me on that winter day when we almost froze to death; you were then
correspondent of _The Boston Journal_. That German from Leavenworth was
also with us--what was his name?"
[Sidenote: TWO "LITTLE STORIES."]
"Hatterscheit?" I suggested. "Yes, Hatterscheit! By-the-way"
(motioning us to seats, and settling down into his chair, with one
leg thrown over the arm), "that reminds me of a little story, which
Hatterscheit told me during the trip. He bought a pony of an Indian,
who could not speak much English, but who, when the bargain was
completed, said: 'Oats--no! Hay--no! Corn--no! Cottonwood--yes! very
much!' Hatterscheit thought this was mere drunken maundering; but a
few nights after, he tied his horse in a stable built of cottonwood
logs, fed him with hay and corn, and went quietly to bed. The next
morning he found the grain and fodder untouched, but the barn was quite
empty, with a great hole on one side, which the pony had gnawed his way
through! Then he comprehended the old Indian's fragmentary English."
This suggested another reminiscence of the same Western trip. Somewhere
in Nebraska the party came to a little creek, the Indian name of
which signified weeping water. Mr. Lincoln remarked, with a good
deal of aptness, that, as laughing water, according to Longfellow,
was "Minne-haha," the name of this rivulet should evidently be
"Minne-boohoo."
These inevitable preliminaries ended, we presented the memorial asking
the President to interpose in behalf of Mr. Knox. He promptly answered
he would do so if Grant coincided. We reminded him that this was
improbable, as Sherman and Grant were close personal friends. After a
moment's hesitancy he replied, with courtesy, but with emphasis:--
"I should be glad to serve you or Mr. Knox, or any other loyal
journalist. But, just at present, our generals in the field are more
important to the country than any of the rest of us, or all the rest
of us. It is my fixed determination to do nothing whatever which can
possibly embarrass any one of them. Therefore, I will do cheerfully
what I have said, but it is all I can do."
There was too much irresistible good sense in this to permit any
further discussion. The President took up his pen and wrote, reflecting
a moment from time to time, the following:--
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, _March 20, 1863_.
_Whom it may concern_:
_Whereas_, It appears to my satisfaction that Thomas W.
Knox, a correspondent of _The New York Herald_, has been,
by the sentence of a court-martial, excluded from the
military department under command of Major-General Grant,
and also that General Thayer, president of the court-martial
which rendered the sentence, and Major-General McClernand,
in command of a corps of the department, and many other
respectable persons, are of the opinion that Mr. Knox's
offense was technical, rather than wilfully wrong, and that
the sentence should be revoked; Now, therefore, said sentence
is hereby so far revoked as to allow Mr. Knox to return to
General Grant's head-quarters, and to remain if General
Grant shall give his express assent, and to again leave the
department, if General Grant shall refuse such assent.
A. LINCOLN.
[Illustration]
Reading it over carefully, he handed it to me, and gave a little sigh
of relief. General conversation ensued. Despondent and weighed down
with his load of care, he sought relief in frank speaking. He said,
with great earnestness: "God knows that I want to do what is wise and
right, but sometimes it is very difficult to determine."
[Sidenote: MR. LINCOLN'S FAMILIAR CONVERSATION.]
He conversed freely of military affairs, but suddenly remarked: "I am
talking again! Of course, you will remember that I speak to you only as
friends; that none of this must be put in print."
Touching an attack upon Charleston which had long been contemplated, he
said that Du Pont had promised, some weeks before, if certain supplies
were furnished, to make the assault upon a given day. The supplies were
promptly forwarded; the day came and went without any intelligence.
Some time after, he sent an officer to Washington, asking for three
more iron-clads and a large quantity of deck-plating as indispensable
to the preparations.
"I told the officer to say to Commodore Du Pont," observed Mr. Lincoln,
"that I fear he does not appreciate at all the value of time."
[Sidenote: OPINIONS ABOUT MCCLELLAN AND VICKSBURG.]
The Army of the Potomac was next spoken of. The great Fredericksburg
disaster was recent, and the public heart was heavy. In regard to
General McClellan, the President spoke with discriminating justice:--
"I do not, as some do, regard McClellan either as a traitor or an
officer without capacity. He sometimes has bad counselors, but he is
loyal, and he has some fine military qualities. I adhered to him after
nearly all my Constitutional advisers lost faith in him. But do you
want to know when I gave him up? It was after the battle of Antietam.
The Blue Ridge was then between our army and Lee's. We enjoyed the
great advantage over them which they usually had over us: we had the
short line, and they the long one, to the Rebel Capital. I directed
McClellan peremptorily to move on Richmond. It was eleven days before
he crossed his first man over the Potomac; it was eleven days after
that before he crossed the last man. Thus he was twenty-two days in
passing the river at a much easier and more practicable ford than that
where Lee crossed his entire army between dark one night and daylight
the next morning. That was the last grain of sand which broke the
camel's back. I relieved McClellan at once. As for Hooker, I have
told _him_ forty times that I fear he may err just as much one way
as McClellan does the other--may be as over-daring as McClellan is
over-cautious."
We inquired about the progress of the Vicksburg campaign. Our armies
were on a long expedition up the Yazoo River, designing, by digging
canals and threading bayous, to get in the rear of the city and cut off
its supplies. Mr. Lincoln said:--
"Of course, men who are in command and on the spot, know a great deal
more than I do. But immediately in front of Vicksburg, where the river
is a mile wide, the Rebels plant batteries, which absolutely stop our
entire fleets. Therefore it does seem to me that upon narrow streams
like the Yazoo, Yallabusha, and Tallahatchie, not wide enough for a
long boat to turn around in, if any of our steamers which go there ever
come back, there must be some mistake about it. If the enemy permits
them to survive, it must be either through lack of enterprise or lack
of sense."
A few months later, Mr. Lincoln was able to announce to the nation:
"The Father of Waters again flows unvexed to the sea."
Our interview left no grotesque recollections of the President's
lounging, his huge hands and feet, great mouth, or angular features.
We remembered rather the ineffable tenderness which shone through his
gentle eyes, his childlike ingenuousness, his utter integrity, and his
absorbing love of country.
[Sidenote: OUR BEST CONTRIBUTION TO HISTORY.]
Ignorant of etiquette and conventionalities, without the graces of form
or of manner, his great reluctance to give pain, his beautiful regard
for the feelings of others, made him
"Worthy to bear without reproach The grand old name of
Gentleman."
Strong without symmetry, humorous without levity, religious without
cant--tender, merciful, forgiving, a profound believer in Divine love,
an earnest worker for human brotherhood--Abraham Lincoln was perhaps
the best contribution which America has made to History.
His origin among humble laborers, his native judgment, better than the
wisdom of the schools, his perfect integrity, his very ruggedness and
angularities, made him fit representative of the young Nation which
loved and honored him.
[Sidenote: A NOBLE LIFE AND HAPPY DEATH.]
No more shall sound above our tumultuous rejoicing his wise caution,
"Let us be very sober." No more shall breathe through the passions
of the hour his tender pleading that judgment may be tempered with
mercy. His work is done. Nothing could have assured and enlarged his
posthumous fame like this tragic ending. He goes to a place in History
where his peers will be very few. The poor wretch who struck the blow
has gone to be judged by infinite Justice, and also by infinite Mercy.
So have many others indirectly responsible for the murder, and directly
responsible for the war. Let us remember them in no Pharisaic spirit,
thanking God that we are not as other men--but as warnings of what a
race with many generous and manly traits may become by being guilty of
injustice and oppression.
Some of the President's last expressions were words of mercy for his
enemies. A few hours before his death, in a long interview with his
trusted and honored friend Schuyler Colfax, he stated that he wished to
give the Rebel leaders an opportunity to leave the country and escape
the vengeance which seemed to await them here.
America is never likely to feel again the profound, universal grief
which followed the death of Abraham Lincoln. Even the streets of her
great Metropolis "forgot to roar." Hung were the heavens in black.
For miles, every house was draped in mourning. The least feeling was
manifested by that sham aristocracy, which had the least sympathy with
the Union cause and with the Democratic Idea. The deepest was displayed
by the "plain people" and the poor.
What death is happier than thus to be wept by the lowly and oppressed,
as a friend and protector! What life is nobler than thus to be filled,
in his own golden words, "with charity for all, with malice toward
none!"