A lady out of Tennessee, which was early to join secession, came to
Washington in search of her son, a youth enlisted in the Confederate
Army. She found him in the Fort Henry hospital, where, allowed to see
him, as she was loyal, in spite of regulations about prisoners of war,
she learned that he would recover. She induced him to recant and offer
his parole if he were allowed freedom. She called on Secretary Stanton,
but he was in one of his boorish moods--was he ever out of them?--and
repulsed her with rudeness. She finally appealed to the President, who
seemed very often balm to Stanton, "a fretful corrosive applied to a
deathly wound," and he gave her an order to receive the young man if he
swore off his pledge to the wrong side.
"To take the young man from the ranks of the rebellion," he said to
her, "and give him to a loyal mother is a better investment to this
government than to give him up to its deadly enemies."
The young man was enabled to resume his studies, but in a Northern
college!
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