HIS TENDERNESS.
Mr. Lincoln was one of the bravest men that ever lived, and one of the
gentlest. The instances in his earlier career in which he put his life
in peril to prevent injury to another are very numerous. I have often
thought that his interposition in behalf of the friendless Indian who
wandered into camp during the Black Hawk war and was about to be
murdered by the troops, was an act of chivalry unsurpassed in the whole
story of knighthood. So in the rough days of Gentryville and New Salem,
he was always on the side of the weak and the undefended; always daring
against the bully; always brave and tender; always invoking peace and
good-will, except where they could be had only by dishonor. He could not
endure to witness the needless suffering even of a brute. When riding
once with a company of young ladies and gentlemen, dressed up in his
best, he sprang from his horse and released a pig which was fast in a
fence and squealing in pain, because, as he said in his homely way, the
misery of the poor pig was more than he could bear.
Hon. I. N. Arnold tells of an incident in the early days of Mr.
Lincoln's practice at the Springfield bar. He was coming home from a
neighboring county seat, with a party of lawyers, riding two by two
along a country lane. Lincoln and a comrade brought up the rear, and
when the others stopped to water their horses his comrade came up alone.
"Where is Lincoln?" was the inquiry. "Oh," replied the friend, "when I
saw him last he had caught two young birds which the wind had blown out
of their nest, and was hunting up the nest to put them back into it."
How instinctively Mr. Lincoln turned from the deliberate, though lawful
and necessary, shedding of blood during the war is well known. His
Secretaries of War, his Judge-Advocate General, and generals in the
field, were often put to their wits' end to maintain the discipline of
the army against this constant softness of the President's good heart.
Upward of twenty deserters were sentenced at one time to be shot. The
warrants for their execution were sent to Mr. Lincoln for his approval;
but he refused to sign them. The commanding general to whose corps the
condemned men belonged was indignant. He hurried to Washington. Mr.
Lincoln had listened to moving petitions for mercy from humane persons
who, like himself, were shocked at the idea of the cold-blooded
execution of more than a score of misguided men. His resolution was
fixed, but his rule was to see every man who had business with him. The
irate commander, therefore, was admitted into Mr. Lincoln's private
office. With soldierly bluntness he told the President that mercy to
the few was cruelty to the many; that Executive clemency in such a case
would be a blow at military discipline; and that unless the condemned
men were made examples of, the army itself would be in danger.
"General," said Mr. Lincoln, "there are too many weeping widows in the
United States now. For God's sake don't ask me to add to the number;
for, I tell you plainly, _I won't do it_!" He believed that kind words
were better for the poor fellows than cold lead; and the sequel showed
that he was right.
Death warrants: execution of unfortunate soldiers,--how he dreaded and
detested them, and longed to restore every unfortunate man under
sentence to life and honor in his country's service! I had personally an
almost unlimited experience with him in this class of cases, and could
fill volumes with anecdotes exhibiting this trait in the most touching
light, though the names of the persons concerned--disgraced soldiers,
prisoners of war, civilian spies--would hardly be recognized by the
readers of this generation.
But it was the havoc of the war, the sacrifice of patriotic lives, the
flow of human blood, the mangling of precious limbs in the great Union
host that shocked him most,--indeed, on some occasions shocked him
almost beyond his capacity to control either his judgment or his
feelings. This was especially the case when the noble victims were of
his own acquaintance, or of the narrower circle of his familiar friends;
and then he seemed for the moment possessed of a sense of personal
responsibility for their individual fate, which was at once most
unreasonable and most pitiful. Of this latter class were many of the
most gallant men of Illinois and Indiana, who fell dead or cruelly
wounded in the early battles of the Southwest.
The "Black boys" were notable among the multitude of eager youths who
rushed to the field at the first call to arms. Their mother, the widow
of a learned Presbyterian minister, had married Dr. Fithian, of
Danville, Ill.; and the relations between Dr. Fithian and his stepsons
were of the tenderest paternal nature. His pride in them and his
devotion to them was the theme of the country side. Mr. Lincoln knew
them well. In his frequent visits to Danville on the circuit he seldom
failed to be the guest of their mother and the excellent Dr. Fithian.
They were studious and industrious boys, earning with their own hands at
least a part of the money required for their education. When Sumter was
fired upon they were at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Ind., and
immediately enlisted as privates in the Crawfordsville Guards. Their
career in the field needs no recital here. Mr. Lincoln watched it with
intense interest. At the battle of Pea Ridge, having reached high
rank,--each promotion for some special act of gallantry,--they both fell
desperately wounded within five minutes of each other, and only thirty
yards apart. Dr. Fithian hastened to them with a father's solicitude,
and nursed them back to life, through fearful vicissitudes. They had
scarcely returned to the army when the elder, John Charles Black, again
fell, terribly mangled, at Prairie Grove. He was hopelessly shattered;
yet he remained in the service and at the front until the last gun was
fired, and is now among the badly wounded survivors of the war. I shall
never forget the scene, when I took to Mr. Lincoln a letter written by
Dr. Fithian to me, describing the condition of the "Black boys," and
expressing his fears that they could not live. Mr. Lincoln read it, and
broke into tears: "Here, now," he cried, "are these dear, brave boys
killed in this cursed war! My God, my God! It is too bad! They worked
hard to earn money enough to educate themselves, and this is the end! I
loved them as if they were my own." I took his directions about my reply
to Dr. Fithian, and left him in one of the saddest moods in which I ever
saw him, burdened with an unreasonable sense of personal responsibility
for the lives of these gallant men.
Lieut.-Colonel William McCullough, of whom a very eminent gentleman said
on a most solemn occasion, "He was the most thoroughly courageous man I
have ever known," fell leading a hopeless charge in Mississippi. He had
entered the service at the age of fifty, with one arm and one eye. He
had been clerk of McLean County Circuit Court, Ill., for twenty years,
and Mr. Lincoln knew him thoroughly. His death affected the President
profoundly, and he wrote to the Colonel's daughter, now Mrs. Frank D.
Orme, the following peculiar letter of condolence:--
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
Dec. 23, 1862.
DEAR FANNY,--It is with deep regret that I learn of the death of
your kind and brave father, and especially that it is affecting
your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad
world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with
bitterer agony because it takes them unawares. The older have
learned ever to expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation
of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except
with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better.
Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy
again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some
less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I
say, and you need only to believe it to feel better at once. The
memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad,
sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you
have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. LINCOLN.
MISS FANNY MCCULLOUGH,
Bloomington, Ill.
Gen. W. H. L. Wallace, who fell at Shiloh, was a friend whom Lincoln
held in the tenderest regard. He knew his character as a man and his
inestimable value as a soldier quite as well as they are now known to
the country. Those who have read General Grant's "Memoirs" will
understand from that great general's estimate of him what was the loss
of the federal service in the untimely death of Wallace. Mr. Lincoln
felt it bitterly and deeply. But his was a public and a private grief
united, and his lamentations were touching to those who heard them, as
I did. The following account of General Wallace's death is taken from an
eloquent memorial address, by the Hon. Leonard Swett in the United
States Circuit Court, upon our common friend the late Col. T. Lyle
Dickey, who was the father-in-law of Wallace:--
"Mrs. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace, who was Judge Dickey's eldest daughter, as
the battle of Shiloh approached, became impressed with the sense of
impending danger to her husband, then with Grant's army. This impression
haunted her until she could stand it no longer; and in one of the most
severe storms of the season, at twelve o'clock at night, she started
alone for the army where her husband was. At Cairo she was told that no
women could be permitted to go up the Tennessee River. But affection has
a persistency which will not be denied. Mrs. Wallace finding a party
bearing a flag to the Eleventh Infantry from the ladies of Ottawa, to be
used instead of their old one, which had been riddled and was
battle-worn, got herself substituted to carry that flag: and thus with
one expedient and another she finally reached Shiloh, six hundred miles
from home and three hundred through a hostile country, and through the
more hostile guards of our own forces.
"She arrived on Sunday, the 6th of April, 1862, when the great
storm-centre of that battle was at its height, and in time to receive
her husband as he was borne from the field terribly mangled by a shot in
the head, which he had received while endeavoring to stay the retreat
of our army as it was falling back to the banks of the river on that
memorable Sunday, the first day of that bloody battle. She arrived in
time to recognize him, and be recognized by him; and a few days
afterward, saying, 'We shall meet again in heaven,' he died in the arms
of that devoted wife, surrounded by Judge Dickey and his sons and the
brothers of General Wallace."
These are but a few cases of death and mutilation in the military
service cited to show how completely Mr. Lincoln shared the sufferings
of our soldiers. It was with a weight of singular personal
responsibility that some of these misfortunes and sorrows seemed to
crowd upon his sympathetic heart.
Soon after his election in 1864, when any other man would have been
carried away on the tide of triumph and would have had little thought
for the sorrows of a stranger, he found time to write the following
letter:--
EXECUTIVE MANSION, Nov. 21, 1864.
DEAR MADAM,--I have been shown, in the files of the War
Department, a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts,
that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on
the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any
words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of
a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you
the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic
they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished
memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
TO MRS. BIXBY
BOSTON, MASS.
Once when Mr. Lincoln had released a prisoner at the request of his
mother she, in expressing her gratitude, said, "Good-bye, Mr. Lincoln. I
shall probably never see you again till we meet in heaven." She had the
President's hand in hers, and he was deeply moved. He instantly took her
hand in both of his and, following her to the door, said, "I am afraid
with all my troubles I shall never get to the resting place you speak
of, but if I do I am sure I shall find you. Your wish that you will meet
me there has fully paid for all I have done for you."
Perhaps none of Mr. Lincoln's ambitions were more fully realized than
the wish expressed to Joshua F. Speed: Die when I may, I want it said of
me by those who know me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted
a flower where I thought a flower would grow.