President Lincoln formally disavowed the desire erroneously attributed
to him by military critics that he wished to die "with soldiers'
harness on his back." To quote General Grant, to whom he said in their
first interview when the victor of the West was summoned to Washington
to be made lieutenant-general, and given full command over all the
national forces:
"Mr. Lincoln stated to me that he had never professed to be a military
man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to
interfere with them; but that procrastination on the part of his
commanders, and the pressure of people at the North, and of Congress,
had forced him into issuing the 'executive orders.' He did not know but
that they were all wrong, and did not know that some of them were."
* * * * *
"ROOT, HOG, OR DIE!"
In February, 1865, permission was requested from the National
Government for three appointees on a peace commission to confer with
the Executive. It was granted, but the parties were not allowed to
enter Washington, as they wanted to do, to give more luster to the
course. The interview of the President, Mr. Seward the
"bottle-holder"--as it was facetiously said about this sparring-match
for breath--was with Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, of
Alabama, on board of the _River Queen_, off Fort Monroe. The discussion
lasted four hours, but, though on friendly terms, as "between
gentlemen," resulted in nothing. For the President held that the first
step which must be taken was the recognition of the Union. As was his
habit, he rounded off the parley with one of his stories apropos.
Mr. Hunter, a Virginian, had assumed that, if the South consented to
peace on the basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves would
precipitate ruin on not only themselves, but the entire Southern
society.
Mr. Lincoln said to Henry J. Raymond, of the _Times_, New York, that:
"I waited for Seward to answer that argument, but, as he was silent, I
at length said: 'Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better
about that than I, for you have always lived under the slave system. I
can only say in reply to your statement of the case that it reminds me
of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook to raise a
very large herd of hogs. It was a great trouble to feed them, and how
to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit upon a plan of
planting a great field of potatoes, and, when they were sufficiently
grown, turned the whole herd into the field and let them have full
swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but also
that of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one
day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came
along.
"'Well, well,' said he; 'this is all very fine, Mr. Case. Your hogs are
doing very well just now, but, you know, out here in Illinois the frost
comes early, and the ground freezes for a foot deep. Then, what are you
going to do?'
"This was a view of the matter Mr. Case had not taken into account.
Butchering time for hogs was 'way on in December or January! He
scratched his head, and at length stammered:
"'Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I don't see but it
will be "Root, hog, or, die!"'"
The speaker had no need to draw this moral as to the fate of the South
after the war, for black or white, from a _Case_ in Illinois; the negro
minstrel song was current then which supplied the apt allusion, and was
called "Root, Hog, or Die." It may well be that the sailors conveying
the baffled commissioners to Richmond, or the soldiers about the "other
government," were chanting the instructive and prophetic chorus: "It
doan' make a bit of difference to either you or I, but Big Pig or
Little Pig, it is Root, Hog, or Die."
Mr. Raymond, in chronicling this anecdote, tells of the New York
_Herald_ giving the story in a mangled and pointless copy. But it was
current in conversation. Mr. Lincoln was in hopes that "it would not
leak out lest some oversensitive people should imagine there was a
degree of levity in the intercourse between us."
Quite otherwise, for the majority thought the illustration as good as
any argument, and would have deemed the speaker prophet if they could
have foreseen that the South would have to buckle down to hard work to
redeem the losses.
* * * * *