The way Mr. Lincoln signed this most important state paper was
thoroughly in keeping with his nature. He hated all shams and show and
pretense, and being absolutely without affectation of any kind, it
would never have occurred to him to pose for effect while signing
the Emancipation Proclamation or any other paper. He never thought of
himself as a President to be set up before a multitude and admired,
but always as a President charged with duties which he owed to every
citizen. In fulfilling these he did not stand upon ceremony, but took
the most direct way to the end he had in view.
It is not often that a President pleads a cause before Congress. Mr.
Lincoln did not find it beneath his dignity at one time to go in
person to the Capitol, and calling a number of the leading senators and
representatives around him, explain to them, with the aid of a map, his
reasons for believing that the final stand of the Confederates would be
made in that part of the South where the seven States of Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia
come together; and strive in this way to interest them in the sad
plight of the loyal people of Tennessee who were being persecuted by
the Confederate government, but whose mountainous region might, with a
little help, be made a citadel of Union strength in the very heart of
this stronghold of rebellion.
In his private life he was entirely simple and unaffected. Yet he had
a deep sense of what was due his office, and took part with becoming
dignity in all official or public ceremonies. He received the diplomats
sent to Washington from the courts of Europe with a formal and quiet
reserve which made them realize at once that although this son of the
people had been born in a log cabin, he was ruler of a great nation, and
more than that, was a prince by right of his own fine instincts and good
breeding.
He was ever gentle and courteous, but with a few quiet words he could
silence a bore who had come meaning to talk to him for hours. For his
friends he had always a ready smile and a quaintly turned phrase. His
sense of humor was his salvation. Without it he must have died of the
strain and anxiety of the Civil War. There was something almost pathetic
in the way he would snatch a moment from his pressing duties and gravest
cares to listen to a good story or indulge in a hearty laugh. Some
people could not understand this. To one member of his cabinet, at
least, it seemed strange and unfitting that he should read aloud to
them a chapter from a humorous book by Artemus Ward before taking up
the weighty matter of the Emancipation Proclamation. From their point
of view it showed lack of feeling and frivolity of character, when, in
truth, it was the very depth of his feeling, and the intensity of his
distress at the suffering of the war, that led him to seek relief in
laughter, to gather from the comedy of life strength to go on and meet
its sternest tragedy.
He was a social man. He could not fully enjoy even a jest alone. He
wanted somebody to share the pleasure with him. Often when care kept him
awake late at night he would wander through the halls of the Executive
Mansion, and coming to the room where his secretaries were still at
work, would stop to read to them some poem, or a passage from Shakspere,
or a bit from one of the humorous books in which he found relief. No
one knew better than he what could be cured, and what must be patiently
endured. To every difficulty that he could remove he gave cheerful and
uncomplaining thought and labor. The burdens he could not shake off he
bore with silent courage, lightening them whenever possible with the
laughter that he once described as the "universal joyous evergreen of
life."
It would be a mistake to suppose that he cared only for humorous
reading. Occasionally he read a scientific book with great interest, but
his duties left him little time for such indulgences. Few men knew
the Bible more thoroughly than he did, and his speeches are full of
scriptural quotations. The poem beginning "Oh, why should the spirit of
mortal be proud?" was one of his favorites, and Dr. Holmes's "Last Leaf"
was another. Shakespere was his constant delight. A copy of Shakespere's
works was even to be found in the busy Executive Office, from which
most books were banished. The President not only liked to read the great
poet's plays, but to see them acted; and when the gifted actor Hackett
came to Washington, he was invited to the White House, where the two
discussed the character of Falstaff, and the proper reading of many
scenes and passages.
While he was President, Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to read the
newspapers. His days were long, beginning early and ending late, but
they were not long enough for that. One of his secretaries brought him
a daily memorandum of the important news they contained. His mail was so
enormous that he personally read only about one in every hundred of the
letters sent him.
His time was principally taken up with interviews with people on matters
of importance, with cabinet meetings, conferences with his generals,
and other affairs requiring his close and immediate attention. If he had
leisure he would take a drive in the late afternoon, or perhaps steal
away into the grounds south of the Executive Mansion to test some new
kind of gun, if its inventor had been fortunate enough to bring it to
his notice. He was very quick to understand mechanical contrivances, and
would often suggest improvements that had not occurred to the inventor
himself.
For many years it has been the fashion to call Mr. Lincoln homely. He
was very tall, and very thin. His eyes were deep-sunken, his skin of a
sallow pallor, his hair coarse, black, and unruly. Yet he was neither
ungraceful, nor awkward, nor ugly. His large features fitted his large
frame, and his large hands and feet were but right on a body that
measured six feet four inches. His was a sad and thoughtful face, and
from boyhood he had carried a load of care. It was small wonder that
when alone, or absorbed in thought, the face should take on deep lines,
the eyes appear as if seeing something beyond the vision of other men,
and the shoulders stoop, as though they too were bearing a weight. But
in a moment all would be changed. The deep eyes could flash, or twinkle
merrily with humor, or look out from under overhanging brows as they
did upon the Five Points children in kindliest gentleness. In public
speaking, his tall body rose to its full height, his head was thrown
back, his face seemed transfigured with the fire and earnestness of his
thought, and his voice took on a high clear tenor tone that carried his
words and ideas far out over the listening crowds. At such moments, when
answering Douglas in the heat of their joint-debate, or later, during
the years of war, when he pronounced with noble gravity the words of his
famous addresses, not one in the throngs that heard him could say with
truth that he was other than a handsome man.
It has been the fashion, too, to say that he was slovenly, and careless
in his dress. This also is a mistake. His clothes could not fit smoothly
on his gaunt and bony frame. He was no tailor's figure of a man; but
from the first he clothed himself as well as his means allowed, and in
the fashion of the time and place. In reading the grotesque stories of
his boyhood, of the tall stripling whose trousers left exposed a length
of shin, it must be remembered not only how poor he was, but that he
lived on the frontier, where other boys, less poor, were scarcely
better clad. In Vandalia, the blue jeans he wore was the dress of his
companions as well, and later, from Springfield days on, clear through
his presidency, his costume was the usual suit of black broadcloth,
carefully made, and scrupulously neat. He cared nothing for style. It
did not matter to him whether the man with whom he talked wore a coat of
the latest cut, or owned no coat at all. It was the man inside the coat
that interested him.
In the same way he cared little for the pleasures of the table. He ate
most sparingly. He was thankful that food was good and wholesome and
enough for daily needs, but he could no more enter into the mood of the
epicure for whose palate it is a matter of importance whether he eats
roast goose or golden pheasant, than he could have counted the grains of
sand under the sea.
In the summers, while he was President, he spent the nights at a cottage
at the Soldiers' Home, a short distance north of Washington, riding or
driving out through the gathering dusk, and returning to the White House
after a frugal breakfast in the early morning. Ten o'clock was the hour
at which he was supposed to begin receiving visitors, but it was often
necessary to see them unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their
way to his bedroom before he had quite finished dressing. Throngs of
people daily filled his office, the ante-rooms, and even the corridors
of the public part of the Executive Mansion. He saw them all, those he
had summoned on important business, men of high official position who
came to demand as their right offices and favors that he had no right to
give; others who wished to offer tiresome if well-meant advice; and the
hundreds, both men and women, who pressed forward to ask all sorts of
help. His friends besought him to save himself the weariness of seeing
the people at these public receptions, but he refused. "They do not want
much, and they get very little," he answered. "Each one considers his
business of great importance, and I must gratify them. I know how I
would feel if I were in their place." And at noon on all days except
Tuesday and Friday, when the time was occupied by meetings of the
cabinet, the doors were thrown open, and all who wished might enter.
That remark of his, "I know how I would feel if I were in their place,"
explained it all. His early experience of life had drilled him well for
these ordeals. He had read deeply in the book of human nature, and could
see the hidden signs of falsehood and deceit and trickery from which the
faces of some of his visitors were not free; but he knew, too, the
hard, practical side of life, the hunger, cold, storms, sickness and
misfortune that the average man must meet in his struggle with the
world. More than all, he knew and sympathized with that hope deferred
which makes the heart sick.
Not a few men and women came, sad-faced and broken-hearted, to plead
for soldier sons or husbands in prison, or under sentence of death by
court-martial. An inmate of the White House has recorded the eagerness
with which the President caught at any fact that would justify him
in saving the life of a condemned soldier. He was only merciless when
meanness or cruelty were clearly proved. Cases of cowardice he disliked
especially to punish with death. "It would frighten the poor devils
too terribly to shoot them," he said. On the papers in the case of one
soldier who had deserted and then enlisted again, he wrote: "Let him
fight, instead of shooting him."
He used to call these cases of desertion his "leg cases," and sometimes
when considering them, would tell the story of the Irish soldier,
upbraided by his captain, who replied: "Captain, I have a heart in me
breast as brave as Julius Caesar, but when I go into battle, Sor, these
cowardly legs of mine will run away with me."
As the war went on, Mr. Lincoln objected more and more to approving
sentences of death by court-martial, and either pardoned them outright,
or delayed the execution "until further orders," which orders were never
given by the great-hearted, merciful man. Secretary Stanton and certain
generals complained bitterly that if the President went on pardoning
soldiers he would ruin the discipline of the army; but Secretary Stanton
had a warm heart, and it is doubtful if he ever willingly enforced the
justice that he criticized the President for tempering with so much
mercy.
Yet Mr. Lincoln could be sternly just when necessary. A law declaring
the slave trade to be piracy had stood on the statute books of the
United States for half a century. Lincoln's administration was the
first to convict a man under it, and Lincoln himself decreed that the
well-deserved sentence be carried out.
Mr. Lincoln sympathized keenly with the hardships and trials of the
soldier boys, and found time, amid all his labors and cares, to visit
the hospitals in and around Washington where they lay ill. His afternoon
drive was usually to some camp in the neighborhood of the city; and when
he visited one at a greater distance, the cheers that greeted him as he
rode along the line with the commanding general showed what a warm place
he held in their hearts.
He did not forget the unfortunate on these visits. A story is told of
his interview with William Scott, a boy from a Vermont farm, who, after
marching forty-eight hours without sleep, volunteered to stand guard for
a sick comrade. Weariness overcame him, and he was found asleep at his
post, within gunshot of the enemy. He was tried, and sentenced to be
shot. Mr. Lincoln heard of the case, and went himself to the tent where
young Scott was kept under guard. He talked to him kindly, asking about
his home, his schoolmates, and particularly about his mother. The lad
took her picture from his pocket, and showed it to him without speaking.
Mr. Lincoln was much affected. As he rose to leave he laid his hand on
the prisoner s shoulder. "My boy," he said, "you are not going to be
shot to-morrow. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep
awake. I am going to trust you, and send you back to your regiment. Now,
I want to know what you intend to pay for all this?" The lad, overcome
with gratitude, could hardly say a word, but crowding down his emotions,
managed to answer that he did not know. He and his people were poor,
they would do what they could. There was his pay, and a little in the
savings bank. They could borrow something by a mortgage on the farm.
Perhaps his comrades would help. If Mr. Lincoln would wait until pay day
possibly they might get together five or six hundred dollars. Would that
be enough? The kindly President shook his head. "My bill is a great deal
more than that," he said. "It is a very large one. Your friends cannot
pay it, nor your family, nor your farm. There is only one man in the
world who can pay it, and his name is William Scott. If from this day he
does his duty so that when he comes to die he can truly say 'I have kept
the promise I gave the President. I have done my duty as a soldier,'
then the debt will be paid." Young Scott went back to his regiment, and
the debt was fully paid a few months later, for he fell in battle.
Mr. Lincoln's own son became a soldier after leaving college. The letter
his father wrote to General Grant in his behalf shows how careful he was
that neither his official position nor his desire to give his boy the
experience he wanted, should work the least injustice to others:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, January 19th, 1865.
Lieutenant-General Grant:
Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but
only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated
at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not
wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to
which those who have already served long are better entitled, and better
qualified to hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment
to the service, go into your military family with some nominal rank, I
and not the public furnishing the necessary means? If no, say so without
the least hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply interested
that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.
Yours truly,
A. Lincoln.
His interest did not cease with the life of a young soldier. Among his
most beautiful letters are those he wrote to sorrowing parents who
had lost their sons in battle; and when his personal friend, young
Ellsworth, one of the first and most gallant to fall, was killed at
Alexandria, the President directed that his body be brought to the White
House, where his funeral was held in the great East Room.
Though a member of no church, Mr. Lincoln was most sincerely religious
and devout. Not only was his daily life filled with acts of forbearance
and charity; every great state paper that he wrote breathes his faith
and reliance on a just and merciful God. He rarely talked, even with
intimate friends, about matters of belief, but it is to be doubted
whether any among the many people who came to give him advice and
sometimes to pray with him, had a better right to be called a Christian.
He always received such visitors courteously, with a reverence for their
good intention, no matter how strangely it sometimes manifested itself.
A little address that he made to some Quakers who came to see him in
September, 1862, shows both his courtesy to them personally, and his
humble attitude toward God.
"I am glad of this interview, and glad to know that I have your sympathy
and prayers. We are indeed going through a great trial, a fiery trial.
In the very responsible position in which I happen to be placed, being a
humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father as I am, and as
we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my
works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so
I have sought His aid; but if, after endeavoring to do my best in the
light which he affords me, I find my efforts fail, I must believe that
for some purpose unknown to me, He wills it otherwise. If I had had my
way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my
way, this war would have been ended before this; but we find it still
continues, and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose
of His own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited
understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but
believe that He who made the world still governs it."
Children held a warm place in the President's affections. He was not
only a devoted father; his heart went out to all little folk. He had
been kind to babies in his boyish days, when, book in hand, and the
desire for study upon him, he would sit with one foot on the rocker of a
rude frontier cradle, not too selfishly busy to keep its small occupant
lulled and content, while its mother went about her household tasks.
After he became President many a sad-eyed woman carrying a child in her
arms went to see him, and the baby always had its share in gaining her a
speedy hearing, and if possible a favorable answer to her petition.
When children came to him at the White House of their own accord, as
they sometimes did, the favors they asked were not refused because of
their youth. One day a small boy, watching his chance, slipped into the
Executive Office between a governor and a senator, when the door was
opened to admit them. They were as much astonished at seeing him there
as the President was, and could not explain his presence; but he spoke
for himself. He had come, he said, from a little country town, hoping to
get a place as page in the House of Representatives. The President began
to tell him that he must go to Captain Goodnow, the doorkeeper of the
House, for he himself had nothing to do with such appointments. Even
this did not discourage the little fellow. Very earnestly he pulled his
papers of recommendation out of his pocket, and Mr. Lincoln, unable
to resist his wistful face, read them, and sent him away happy with a
hurried line written on the back of them, saying: "If Captain Goodnow
can give this good little boy a place, he will oblige A. Lincoln."
It was a child who persuaded Mr. Lincoln to wear a beard. Up to the
time he was nominated for President he had always been smooth-shaven. A
little girl living in Chautauqua County, New York, who greatly admired
him, made up her mind that he would look better if he wore whiskers,
and with youthful directness wrote and told him so. He answered her by
return mail:
Springfield, ILL., Oct. 19, 1860.
Miss Grace Bedelt,
My dear little Miss: Your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is
received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have
three sons, one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They,
with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, never
having worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly
affectation if I were to begin now?
Your very sincere well-wisher,
A. Lincoln.
Evidently on second thoughts he decided to follow her advice. On his way
to Washington his train stopped at the town where she lived. He asked if
she were in the crowd gathered at the station to meet him. Of course she
was, and willing hands forced a way for her through the mass of people.
When she reached the car Mr. Lincoln stepped from the train, kissed her,
and showed her that he had taken her advice.
The Secretary who wrote about the President's desire to save the lives
of condemned soldiers tells us that "during the first year of the
administration the house was made lively by the games and pranks of Mr.
Lincoln's two younger children, William and Thomas. Robert the eldest
was away at Harvard, only coming home for short vacations. The two
little boys, aged eight and ten, with their western independence and
enterprise, kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor wild
with their good-natured disobedience. They organized a minstrel show in
the attic; they made acquaintance with the office-seekers and became
the hot champions of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish
frolic, a child of great promise, capable of close application and
study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would
conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect
precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the
unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle and studious child
sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was profoundly moved by
his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble, but kept about
his work, the same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards to pour
out its fulness on his youngest child. 'Tad' was a merry, warm-blooded,
kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and
inventions, the 'chartered libertine' of the Executive Mansion." He ran
constantly in and out of his father's office, interrupting his gravest
labors. Mr. Lincoln was never too busy to hear him, or to answer his
bright, rapid, imperfect speech, for he was not able to speak plainly
until he was nearly grown. "He would perch upon his father's knee, and
sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were
going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would
take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep
at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up, and carry
him tenderly to bed."
The letters and even the telegrams Mr. Lincoln sent his wife had always
a message for or about Tad. One of them shows that his pets, like their
young master, were allowed great liberty. It was written when the family
was living at the Soldiers' Home, and Mrs. Lincoln and Tad had gone away
for a visit. "Tell dear Tad," he wrote, "that poor Nanny Goat is lost,
and Mrs. Cuthbert and I are in distress about it. The day you left,
Nanny was found resting herself and chewing her little cud on the middle
of Tad's bed; but now she's gone! The gardener kept complaining that she
destroyed the flowers, till it was concluded to bring her down to the
White House. This was done, and the second day she had disappeared and
has not been heard of since. This is the last we know of poor Nanny."
Tad was evidently consoled by, not one, but a whole family of new goats,
for about a year later Mr. Lincoln ended a business telegram to his
wife in New York with the words: "Tell Tad the goats and Father are very
well." Then, as the weight of care rolled back upon this greathearted,
patient man, he added, with humorous weariness, "especially the goats."
Mr. Lincoln was so forgetful of self as to be absolutely without
personal fear. He not only paid no attention to the threats which
were constantly made against his life, but when, on July 11, 1864, the
Confederate General Early appeared suddenly and unexpectedly before
the city with a force of 17,000 men, and Washington was for two days
actually in danger of assault and capture, his unconcern gave his
friends great uneasiness. On the tenth he rode out, as was his custom,
to spend the night at the Soldiers' Home, but Secretary Stanton,
learning that Early was advancing, sent after him, to compel his return.
Twice afterward, intent upon watching the fighting which took place near
Fort Stevens, north of the city, he exposed his tall form to the gaze
and bullets of the enemy, utterly heedless of his own peril; and it was
not until an officer had fallen mortally wounded within a few feet of
him, that he could be persuaded to seek a place of greater safety.