Veterans will remember the peculiar effect, on a forced march, of the
younger or less-enduring comrade falling asleep as to all but his eyes
and the muscles employed, but stepping out and apparently sustained
only by the touching of elbows in the lurching from the ruts in the
obliterated road. On the night of the stunning news of the last
conflict at Chancellorsville, Lincoln could derive no comfort from
later intelligence. Late at night General Halleck, commanding the
capital, and Secretary Stanton left him unconsoled. Then his secretary,
as long as he stayed, heard the man on whom rested the national
hopes--her very future--pace his room without pause save to turn. It
was like the fisher on the banks who must keep awake for a chance at a
grab at the chains of the ship that may burst through the fog and crush
his smack like a coconut-shell. At midnight the chief may have stopped
to write, for there was a pause--but a breathing-spell. Then the pacing
again till the attaché left at 3 A.M. When he came in the morning, not
unanxious himself, he found his chief eating breakfast alone in the
unquitted room. On the table lay a sheet of written paper: instructions
for General Hooker to renew fighting although it only brought the slap
on the other cheek--at Winchester--and still Lee pressed on into
Pennsylvania till Harrisburg was menaced! But Meade supplanted
"Fighting Joe," and Gettysburg wiped out the shame of the later
repulses.
(The private secretary was W. O. Stoddard.)
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