“O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!”
NO one had suffered more deeply during the war than the President. His
purpose never faltered. Even at the moment when success seemed farthest
distant, his resolve stood firm; cost what it might the Union must be
preserved. When almost every other man despaired of the Northern cause,
Lincoln’s invincible faith in the right and justice of their purpose
sustained his country.
To attain that purpose thousands of lives had to be sacrificed; but the
purpose was worth the loss of thousands of lives. Yet Lincoln’s heart
bled for every one of them.
[Illustration: Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in turn]
All day long he received visits from distracted relations, mothers
and wives asking him to pardon their sons or husbands in prison
as deserters or captured from the enemy; asking for tidings of their
beloved ones at the front. His generals complained that he undermined
the discipline of the army by pardoning what he called his “leg”
cases--cases where men had run away before the enemy. “If Almighty God
gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away
with him?” said Lincoln.
The story of William Scott is a case which shows the way in which
Lincoln used to act. William Scott was a young boy from a Northern
farm, who, after marching for forty-eight hours without sleep, offered
to stand on guard duty for a sick comrade. Worn out, he fell asleep,
and was condemned to be shot for being asleep on duty in face of the
enemy. Lincoln made it his custom to visit all the divisions of his
army in turns, and, as it happened, two days before the execution he
was with the division in which Willie Scott was, and heard of the
case. He went to see the boy, and talked to him about his home and his
mother. As he was leaving the prison tent he put his hands on the lad’s
shoulders, and said--
“My boy, you are not going to be shot to-morrow.... I am going to trust
you and send you back to your regiment. But I have been put to a great
deal of trouble on your account. I have come here from Washington,
where I had a great deal to do. Now, what I want to know is, how are
you going to pay my bill?”
Willie did not know what to say: perhaps he could get his friends to
help him, he said at last.
“No,” said Lincoln, “friends cannot pay it; only one man in the world
can pay it, and that is William Scott. If from this day on William
Scott does his duty, my bill is paid.”
William Scott never forgot these words. Just before his death in one of
the later battles of the war, he asked his comrades to tell President
Lincoln that he had never forgotten what he had said.
All the time, people who did not know the President threw on his
shoulders all the blame for the long continuance of the war. Until
the last year of the war, the newspapers abused him continually. The
horrible loss of life in Grant’s last campaign was laid to his charge.
Only those who came to the President to ask his help in their own
suffering, understood what his suffering was; he suffered with each of
them--he suffered with the South as well as the North. After Antietam,
he had said, “I shall not live to see the end; this war is killing me.”
The crushing burden he had borne so long and patiently had bent even
his strong shoulders.
But it had not been borne in vain. The time seemed at last to have come
when all America would understand how much they owed to the patient
endurance of the President. And there was work still to be done which
needed all his wisdom. The South was conquered. It had to be made one
with the North. The pride of the conquerors had to be curbed, the
bitterness of the conquered softened.
Lincoln returned from Richmond to Washington, in his heart the profound
resolve “to bind up the nation’s wounds” as he, and only he, could do
it.
April 14 was Good Friday, and a day of deep thankfulness in the North.
In the morning Lincoln held a Cabinet meeting, at which General Grant
was present. The question of reconstruction, of making one whole
out of the divided halves, was discussed. Some of the Cabinet were
anxious to wreak vengeance on the South, to execute the leaders of the
rebellion. Such was not Lincoln’s view.
“Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments
if we expect harmony and union.”
His noble patriotism could still say to the South, “We are not enemies,
but friends.” His life was now even more precious to the South than to
the North.
After the Cabinet meeting, Lincoln spent some time in talking with his
son Robert, who had returned from the field with General Grant, under
whom he had served as a captain. In the afternoon he went for a drive
with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood was calm and happy: for the first time for
four years he could look forward peacefully to the future, and to the
great tasks still before him.
In the evening he went to the theatre with his wife and two young
friends: the play was “Our American Cousin.” The President was fond of
the theatre--it was one of his few recreations: his appearance on this
night was something of a public ceremony; therefore, although he was
tired when evening came, he went because he knew that many people would
be disappointed if he did not. The President had a box to the left of
the stage. Suddenly, about the middle of the last act, a man appeared
at the back of the box, a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other,
put the pistol to the President’s head and fired; then wounding Major
Rathbone, the only other man in the box, with his knife, he vaulted on
to the stage. As he leapt his spur caught the flag hanging from the
box and he fell, breaking his leg. Nevertheless he rose instantly, and
brandishing his knife and crying, “_Sic semper tyrannis!_”--“The South
is avenged!” fled across the stage and out of sight.
The horrified audience was thunderstruck. The President lay quite
still: the bullet had passed right through his head. The wound was
mortal. He was carried to a house across the street, where he lay,
quite unconscious, till the morning, surrounded by his friends,
their faces as pale and haggard as his own. About seven, “a look of
unspeakable peace came upon his worn features.” Stanton, the War
Secretary, rose from his knees by his side, saying, “Now he belongs to
the ages.”
There was profound sorrow through the whole of America; sorrow that
checked all rejoicings over the victory of the North. Thus, indirectly,
Lincoln’s death helped the reconciliation between North and South,
though nothing could counterbalance the loss of his wise guidance.
Washington was shrouded in black: even the poorest inhabitants showing
their sorrow in their dress. The body was taken to Springfield,
Illinois, to be buried; and all the towns on the way showed their deep
mourning and respect. Now, and not till now, did Americans begin to
understand what a man they had lost.
“He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains with their guns and drums
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes:
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.”
So James Russell Lowell wrote of Lincoln when the celebration of
Independence Day in the year of his death revived the vivid sense of
loss.
The passage of years have only made clearer how great he was. Perfectly
simple, perfectly sincere, he thought out for himself an ideal, and
spent the whole of his life and all his strength in pursuing it.
He loved America, not because it was powerful and strong, but because
it had been based on a great idea--the idea of liberty: his work for
America was to realise that idea. He never thought of his own personal
success: he wanted to be President because he saw a great work to be
done and believed that he could do it. He never became rich: his own
tastes remained entirely simple. He was said to have worn the same
top-hat all his life.
The first thing that struck any one about Lincoln was his extraordinary
appearance. He always dressed in black, with a big black tie, very
often untied, or in the wrong place: his clothes looked as if they had
been made to fit some one else, and had never been new. His feet were
enormous; so were his hands, covered on state occasions with white kid
gloves.
In cold weather he used to wear a large grey shawl instead of an
overcoat. One day, before he was made President, some friends were
discussing Lincoln and Douglas, and comparing their heights. When
Lincoln came into the room some one asked him, “How long ought a man’s
legs to be?”
“Long enough to reach from his body to the ground,” said Lincoln coolly.
Lincoln might look uncouth or even grotesque, but he did not look weak:
he was the most striking figure wherever he went. No one who saw him
often, no one who went to him in trouble, or to ask his advice, thought
long of his appearance. Those who had once felt the sympathy of his
wonderful, sad eyes, thought of that only. Those who really knew him,
knew him to be the best man they had ever met.
Lincoln was often profoundly sad, and then suddenly boisterously gay.
He enjoyed a joke or a funny story immensely: he often used to shock
thoughtless people by telling some comic story on what they thought
an unsuitable occasion; but he told it so well that however much they
might disapprove they were generally forced to laugh.
Always rather a dreamer, he was fond of poetry. He knew long passages
of Shakespeare by heart, especially Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III.
The Bible he had known from his childhood; of Burns he was very fond.
Lincoln’s rise to power, as even so short an account as this will
have shown you, was not due to any extraordinary good fortune or any
advantages at start. He taught himself all that he knew; he made
himself what he was.
It was his character more than anything else that made him great. His
early struggles had taught him that self-reliance which enabled him to
persevere in a course which he thought right in spite of opposition,
disloyalty, and abuse; they taught him the toleration which made him
slow to judge others, generous to praise them, little apt to expect
them to understand or praise him. He stood alone.
Not till he had gone did his people realise how much he had given
them; how much they had lost in him. He gave them, indeed, the most
priceless gift a patriot can give his country--the example of sincere,
devoted, and unselfish service.
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph have been moved to
avoid interrupting the paragraph flow.
On page 65, “yes,” has been changed to ‘yes,’ to conform to standard
usage.
All other variant spellings, punctuation and hyphenation have been left
as typeset.