As men wining with Mars expect to sup with Pluto, the drinking at the
capital during the war was horrifying. The bars were overflowing with
officers, and while, as "Orpheus C. Kerr" was saying of the
civil-service corps, that spilling red ink was very different from
spilling red blood, the novices in uniform were staining their new
coats with port. Coming out of the West with the unique recommendation,
"This gentleman from Kentucky never drinks," President Lincoln had only
the American standby, the ice-water pitcher, on his sideboard. And up
to the last, even when the jubilation upon the war's close made many a
stopper fly out of the tabooed bottle, he could say: "My example never
belied the position I took when I was a young man." So he could reply
to a New England women's temperance deputation, probably believing the
caricaturists who pictured "Old Abe" mint-juleping with the eagle.
"They would be rejoiced if they only knew how much I have tried to
remedy this great evil." Indeed, he was still "meddling" when he wrote
and spoke against drunken habits in the army, especially among the
officers.
* * * * *
"BREAK THE CRITTER WHERE SLIM!"
Lincoln's letters to his generals would be a revelation of character if
it were not already famed. He warns "Fighting Joe" Hooker, in June,
1863, "not to get entangled on the Rappahannock, like an ox jumped half
over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a
fair chance to give one way or kick the other." Later: "Fight Lee, too,
when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him--and fret
him!" Finally: "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the
tail on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the
critter must be slim _somewhere_; could you not break him there?"
* * * * *