Nobody who met Secretary Stanton--the Carnot of the war--would give him
credit for joking, but Mr. Lincoln's example that way was infectious.
The eldest son, Robert, was at college, but a captaincy was awaiting
him when he could enter the army. So the war secretary for a pleasantry
issued a mock commission to Tad, ranking him as a regular lieutenant.
As long as he confined his supposed duties to arming the under servants
and drilling the more or less fantastically, as well as he remembered,
evolutions on the parade-grounds, where he accompanied his father, all
was amusing. But he terminated his first steps in the school of
"Hardee's Tactics," the standard text-book of the period, by bringing
his awkward squad from the servants' hall, and, relieving the sentries,
replaced the genuine with these tyros. For the sake of the vacation
they, the regulars, bowed to the commission with its potent Stanton and
Lincoln, and United States Army seal. His brother, startled,
intervened, but the cadet vowed he would put him in "the black hole,"
presumably the coal-shed. The President laughed, and when he went to
check the usurpation he found the little lieutenant, overpowered by his
brief authority, asleep. So he removed him from the service, put aside
his commission, and, when he woke to the situation, made it plain that,
being a real soldier and officer, he had forfeited his title by falling
asleep on post! He went then and formally discharged the sham sentinels
placed by the boy's orders and replaced them by the "simon pures."
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