A MISSIVE AND A MISSION.
Soon after the people had returned to such homes as were left them, I
received a letter from General Lowrie, who was then in an insane asylum
in Cincinnati. I caught his humor and answered as carefully as if he had
been a sick brother, gave an extract in the _Democrat_, accompanied by a
notice, and sent him a copy; after which he wrote frequently, and I
tried earnestly to soothe him. In one of his letters was this passage:
"Your quarrel and mine was all wrong. There was no one in that upper
country capable of understanding you but me, no one capable of
understanding me, but you. We should have been friends, and would have
been, if we had not each had a self which we were all too anxious to
defend."
After the Sioux had finished their work of horror, Minnesota men, aided
by volunteers from Iowa and Wisconsin, pursued and captured the
murderers of one thousand men, women and children; tried them, found
them guilty, and proposed to hang them just as if they had been white
murderers. But when the general government interfered and took the
prisoners out of the hands of the State authorities, and when it became
evident that Eastern people endorsed the massacre and condemned the
victims as sinners who deserved their fate, one of the State officers
proposed that I should go East, try to counteract the vicious public
sentiment, and aid our Congressional delegation in their effort to
induce the Administration either to hang the Sioux murderers, or hold
them as hostages during the war.
To me this was a providential call, for I had been planning to make a
home in the East, that our daughter, then old enough to live without me,
might spend a portion of her time with her father.
With letters from all our State officers, I left my Minnesota home at
four o'clock A.M., January 2nd, '63, leaving the _Democrat_ in charge of
my first apprentice, William B. Mitchell.
In Washington, the Minnesota delegation secured the use of Dr.
Sutherland's church, and a packed audience for my lecture on Indians. It
was enthusiastically applauded, and for a time I did hope for some
security for women and children on the frontier; but the Secretary of
the Interior assured me it was not worth while to see the President, for
"Mr. Lincoln will hang nobody!" and our Minnesota delegation agreed with
him. Indeed, there was such a _furor_ of pious pity for the poor injured
Sioux, such admiration for their long suffering patience under wrong,
and final heroic resistance, that I might about as well have tried to
row myself from the head of Goat Island up the rapids of Niagara, as
stem that current. The ring which makes money by caudling Indians, had
the ear of both President and people, and the Bureau had a paying
contract in proving Little Crow's sagacity. The Sioux never were so well
supplied with blankets and butcher-knives, as when they received their
reward for that massacre; never had so many prayers said and hymns sung
over them, and their steamboat ride down the Minnesota and Mississippi
and up the Missouri, to a point within two days' walk of the scene of
their exploits, furnished them an excursion of about two thousand miles,
and left them well prepared for future operations. They appreciated
their good fortune, have been a terror to United States troops and
Western settlers ever since, and have enjoyed their triumph to the full.
One morning Senator Wilkinson and I went to see the President, and in
the vestibule of the White House met two gentlemen whom he introduced as
Sec. Stanton and Gen. Fremont. The first said he needed no introduction,
and I said I had asked Senator Wilkinson to see him on my account. He
replied:
"Do not ask any one to see me! If you want anything from me, come
yourself. No one can have more influence."
Gen. Fremont inquired where I was staying, and said he would call on me.
This frightened me, and I felt like running away. But they were so kind
and cordial that our short chat is a pleasant memory; but Mr. Wilkinson
and I failed to see Mr. Lincoln. Next day Sec. Stanton gave me an
appointment in the Quarter Master General's office, but there was no
place for me to go to work.
Gen. Fremont called at the houses of two friends where I was visiting,
but both times I was absent. In 1850 I had also missed the calls of his
wife and sister, and so I seemed destined never to meet the people I
admired above all others.
My friends wished me to attend a Presidential reception; but it was
useless to see Mr. Lincoln on the business which brought me to
Washington, and I did not care to see him on any other. He had proved an
obstructionist instead of an abolitionist, and I felt no respect for
him; while his wife was every where spoken of as a Southern woman with
Southern sympathies--a conspirator against the Union. I wanted nothing
to do with the occupants of the White House, but was told I could go and
see the spectacle without being presented. So I went in my broadcloth
traveling dress, and lest there should be trouble about my early
leave-taking, would not trust my cloak to the servants, but walked
through the hall with it over my arm. I watched the President and Mrs.
Lincoln receive. His sad, earnest, honest face was irresistible in its
plea for confidence, and Mrs. Lincoln's manner was so simple and
motherly, so unlike that of all Southern women I had seen, that I
doubted the tales I had heard. Her head was not that of a conspirator.
She would be incapable of a successful deceit, and whatever her purposes
were, they must be known to all who knew her.
Mr. Lincoln stood going through one of those, dreadful ordeals of
hand-shaking, working like a man pumping for life on a sinking vessel,
and I was filled with indignation for the selfish people who made this
useless drain on his nervous force. I wanted to stand between him and
them, and say, "stand back, and let him live and do his work." But I
could not resist going to him with the rest of the crowd, and when he
took my hand I said:
"May the Lord have mercy on you, poor man, for the people have none."
He laughed heartily, and the men around him, joined in his merriment.
When I came to Mrs. Lincoln, she did not catch the name at first, and
asked to hear it again, then repeated it, and a sudden glow of pleasure
lit her face, as she held out her hand and said how very glad she was to
see me. I objected to giving her my hand because my black glove would
soil her white one; but she said:
"Then I shall preserve the glove to remember a great pleasure, for I
have long wished to see you."
My escort was more surprised than I by her unusual cordiality, and said
afterwards:
"It was no polite affectation. I cannot understand it from her."
I understood at once that I had met one with whom I was in sympathy. No
politeness could have summoned that sudden flash of pleasure. Her manner
was too simple and natural to have any art in it; and why should she
have pretended a friendship she did not feel? Abolitionists were at a
discount. They had gone like the front ranks of the French cavalry at
Waterloo, into the sunken way, to make a bridge, over which moderate men
were rushing to honors and emoluments. Gideon's army had done its work,
and given place to the camp followers, who gathered up the spoils of
victory. None wore so poor that they need do them reverence, and I
recognized Mrs. Lincoln as a loyal, liberty-loving woman, more staunch
even than her husband in opposition to the Rebellion and its cause, and
as my very dear friend for life.