LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF LINCOLN--THE
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES
RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE
RUSSIAN FLEET COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER.
Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done what
Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had
been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large
advantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he might
occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered
to go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, and
he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the
army-rolls as "missing." Would the President think of him as a truant,
who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him
was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up
into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted
with the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both on
his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally
getting back to the Union lines.
The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside
the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping,
her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were
nervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to present
to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he
turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's
entrance had interrupted.
"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he
asked.
"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the woman. "He said--he said it
was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and
would be shot at--at--sunrise tomorrow."
The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and
slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one
moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she a
widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before a
court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the
frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the
front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be
shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of
the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted
at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly
refused.
"The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her.
"We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life to that
of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew
softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate
that the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed
and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.
Good-day."
He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and
the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was
with Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for the
mother of a Union soldier.
When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the
President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a
child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs.
Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of
Mrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his
wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from
wreck and her life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition which
had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.
"Hand me that paper, Tom."
He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty
with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna
handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold
letters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the
petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as
she came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's
pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke
into a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.
"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keep
the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's
been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boy
baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to
give him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do
better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and
show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually
he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one
of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of
things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him.
Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a
bit. Good-by--and God bless you."
Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War
Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins
back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the
President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the
mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President
had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "money
talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last
cent on her journey to Washington and her six days' stay there. Abraham
Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once
again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears
were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of
the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander,
saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of
the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim
Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over
his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's
salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough
to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of his
life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous
consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long
afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.
Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody
hated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private
Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in
his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to take
some people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of a
smallpox hospital."
Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, but
he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by
mercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had been
sentenced to be shot for cowardice.
"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runs
away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a
coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."
The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and
had reached Mexico.
"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catch
him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana,
'as they run.'"
* * * * *
At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were
days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the
President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck
by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_ and the foremost
man in a group of great editors such as the country has never seen
since. They were Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_, Henry J. Raymond of
the _New York Times_, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)
_Republican_. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymond
demanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter
that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause,
said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."
In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three were household words and names
by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his
heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their
well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those
dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his
country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one
great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous
Emancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery
wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great
September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White
House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what
the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon.
It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude
of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he
called together his Cabinet, not to advise him about it, but to hear
from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the
Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle
Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for
freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick of
time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old
negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged
from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a
messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty
was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its
members when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but
majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing
a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very
different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in
the Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little
journeys, Tad Lincoln often went with him, his small white hand
clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knew
nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at
which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of
his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a
great event in the world's history.
"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with
ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he
came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet,
instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the
Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So
Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.
* * * * *
The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence
of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He
wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new
and exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation
had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called
themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of
appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable
to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it
succeeds.
* * * * *
The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has
made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in
bondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes
flew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow of
reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen
eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.
Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln
was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long
legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot
telescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He was
looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did
they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head,
called out: "Come in, Tommy."
Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a
telegram in his hand, saying:
"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is
behaving very badly."
"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy
to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll
never hear of it."
He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.
That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the
evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers
and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk
was the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when
the door opened quietly and the President slipped into the room. Never
had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short
nightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.
"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellow
Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee
words into Jeff Davis's mouth:
"'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over
Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
* * * * *
An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done
Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
* * * * *
An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day
Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of his
garb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the
'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:
"'An' why should we kick up a muss
About the Pres'dent's proclamation?
It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us
Ef we don't like emancipation.
The right to be a cussed fool
Is safe from all devices human.
It's common (ez a gin'l rule)
To every critter born o' woman.'"
Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay's
diary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and
setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was
infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."
"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet,
and essayist, later our Minister to England.
* * * * *
One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his
way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was.
The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope
Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the
envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's
eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln
family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to
his mother:
"See what Tommy has given me."
"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.
"My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming home
right away."
"Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of
the table.
"What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.
"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the
President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said
to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen
was to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can be
said of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Before
long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he
spoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."
This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or at
least all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had
done after Lincoln sent him abroad. The whole world saw the symbol of
his work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. That
symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in
September of 1863.
The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the
South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous
of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France
hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the
Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it
unless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of both
France and England had little to say as to what their governments would
do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of
Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the
grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief,
however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cotton
famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the fleecy
staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actual
starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas
Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the
Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the
heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising,
etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. It
was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything.
Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying
that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the
meeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over four
bushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire had
given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.
This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.
The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the great
French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to
have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade
and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposed
crime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead,
if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is
called a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his own
handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his
fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.
Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European
and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell
Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see
Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is a
contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread
through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St.
Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia
and of our extra-official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong,
Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperor
that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack upon
the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New
York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the
President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron
appeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.
This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and
Russia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in those
September days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russian
officers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deserved
well of the Republic."
* * * * *
It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:
"What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"
"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names his rather irreverent secretaries
had given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him.
Their nicknames for him were born of affection.
"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting
words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much
interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:
"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits here
and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A
backwoods Jupiter!"