There is a great similarity in the many stories of Lincoln's leniency
to soldiers incurring the death-penalty according to the code of war,
and no wonder, when they were so numerous that he often had
four-and-twenty sentences to sign or ignore in a day.
A member of a Vermont regiment was so sentenced for sleeping at his
post. The more than usual intercession made for him induced Lincoln to
visit the culprit in his cell. He found him a simple country lad,
impressing him as a reminder of himself at that age. In the like plain
and rustic vein he discoursed with him.
"I have been put to a deal of bother on your account, Scott," he said
paternally. "What I want to know is how are you going to pay _my_ bill?"
From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so
the young man responded:
"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his
life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have
my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some
money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the
regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up--if it
isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?"
With the same gravity, the intermediator reckoned the cost would be
more.
"My son," said he, "the bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay
it--nor your comrades, nor the farm, nor the pay! If from this day
William Scott does his duty so that, if I were there when he came to
die, he could look me in the face as now and say: 'I have kept my
promise and have done my duty as a soldier,' then _my_ debt will be
paid."
The boy made the promise, and was immediately restored to the regiment.
He earned promotion, but refused it. At Lee's Mills, on the Warwick
River, he was wounded while distinguishing himself in a grand assault.
Mortally wounded in saving three lives, he was enabled with his dying
breath to send a message to the President to the effect that he had
redeemed his pledge. On his breast was found one of the likenesses of
Lincoln with the motto, "God bless our President!" which the Grand Army
men were given. He thanked the benefactor for having let him fall like
a soldier, in battle, and not like a coward, by his comrades' rifles.
* * * * *
"THE SWEARING HAD TO BE DONE THEN, OR NOT AT ALL!"
An old man came from Tennessee to beg the life of his son, death-doomed
under the military code. General Fiske procured him admittance to the
President, who took the petition and promised to attend to the matter.
But the applicant, in anguish, insisted that a life was at stake--that
to-morrow would not do, and that the decision must be made on the
instant.
Lincoln assumed his mollifying air, and in a soothing tone brought out
his universal soothing-sirup, the little story:
"It was General Fiske, who introduced you, who told me this. The
general began his career as a colonel, and raised his regiment in
Missouri. Having good principles, he made the boys promise then not to
be profane, but let him do all the swearing for the regiment. For
months no violation of the agreement was reported. But one day a
teamster, with the foul tongue associated with their calling and
mule-driving, as he drove his team through a longer and deeper series
of mud-puddles than ever before, unable to restrain himself, turned
himself inside out as a vocal Vesuvius. It happened, too, that this
torrent was heard surging by the colonel, who called him to account.
"'Well, yes, colonel,' he acknowledged, 'I did vow to let you do all
the swearing of the regiment; but the cold fact is, that the swearing
_had_ to be done thar and then, or not at all, to do the 'casion
justice--and you were not thar!'
"Now," summed up Mr. Lincoln to the engrossed and semiconsoled parent,
"I may not be there, so do you take this and do the swearing him off!"
He furnished him with the release autograph, and sent another mourner
on his way rejoicing.
* * * * *