On the morning of Mr. Lincoln’s arrival in Washington, just before
his inauguration, it will be remembered that the Peace Convention
was in session. Among those who were earliest to call upon him was
a gentleman from Pennsylvania, who had been in Congress with him,
and who was a member of the Peace Convention. He at once commenced
plying the President elect with urgent reasons for _compromising_
matters in dispute, saying, “It must be done sooner or later, and
that this seemed the propitious moment.” Listening attentively to all
that was said, Mr. Lincoln finally replied: “Perhaps your reasons for
compromising the alleged difficulties are correct, and that now is the
favorable time to do it; still, if I remember correctly, _that_ is not
what _I_ was elected for!”
The same day, at Willard’s Hotel, a gentleman from Connecticut was
introduced, who said he wanted nothing but to take the incoming
President by the hand. Mr. Lincoln surveyed him from head to foot, and
giving him a cordial grasp, replied: “You are a _rare_ man.”
During the brief period that the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was
editor-in-chief of the “Independent,” in the second year of the war,
he felt called upon to pass some severe strictures upon the course of
the administration. For several weeks the successive leaders of the
editorial page were like bugle-blasts, waking the echoes throughout
the country. Somebody cut these editorials out of the different
numbers of the paper, and mailed them all to the President under one
envelope. One rainy Sunday he took them from his drawer, and read them
through to the very last word. One or two of the articles were in Mr.
Beecher’s strongest style, and criticized the President in no measured
terms. As Mr. Lincoln finished reading them, his face flushed up with
indignation. Dashing the package to the floor, he exclaimed, “Is thy
servant a _dog_, that he should do this thing?”
The excitement, however, soon passed off, leaving no trace behind of
ill-will toward Mr. Beecher; and the impression made upon his mind by
the criticism was lasting and excellent in its effects.
Mr. Lincoln’s popularity with the soldiers and the people is well
illustrated in the following incidents.
Just after the presidential nominations had been made in 1864, a
discussion arose in a certain regiment in the Army of the Potomac as
to the merits of the two candidates. Various opinions had been warmly
expressed, when at length a German spoke. “I goes,” said he, “for Fader
Abraham. Fader Abraham, he likes the soldier-boy. Ven he serves tree
years he gives him four hundred tollar, and reënlists him von veteran.
Now Fader Abraham, he serve four years. We reënlist him four years
more, and make _von veteran of him_.”
The night following the election, a clergyman of Middletown, Conn., at
a torchlight display, exhibited a transparency over his door, with a
quotation from Genesis xxii. 15,--“The angel of the Lord called unto
Abraham out of heaven a second time.”
A few days before the reinauguration of Mr. Lincoln, my picture was
placed temporarily on exhibition in the Rotunda of the Capitol. As the
workmen were raising it to its place, over the northern door leading
to the Senate Chamber, a group gathered in front of it, among whom was
policeman R----, of the Capitol squad. As the painting reached its
position, a wandering sunbeam crept in from the top of the great dome
and settled full upon the head of Mr. Lincoln, leaving all the rest of
the picture in shadow. The effect was singular and wonderful. “Look!”
exclaimed the enthusiastic R----, pointing to the canvas; “that is as
it should be. God bless him; may the sun shine upon his head forever.”