III. EXPERIENCES DEMANDING MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE
The kindness so exemplified throughout his life never failed on the side of mercy, as shown in many an incident of the war.
In one case a woman, whose son had run away from home at the age of seventeen and joined the Confederacy, sought to have him released from Fort McHenry, where he was in the hospital, a wounded prisoner.
She applied to Stanton, Secretary of War. He refused to listen to her, saying, “I have no time to waste on you. If you have raised up a son to rebel against the best Government under the sun, you and he must take the consequences.”
She attempted to plead with him, but he very peremptorily ordered her to go, saying that he could do nothing for her.
Friends asked her to go to see Lincoln, but, sharing in the Southern prejudice or misunderstanding of the President, she refused in despair, believing him to be more fierce than Stanton. But she was at last persuaded to try.
With fear and trembling she came into his presence, and in the greatest joy any woman can have she came away.
“When I was permitted to go in to see him,” she said, in describing the scene, “he was alone. He immediately arose, with the most reassuring respect, and, pointing to a chair by his side, said, ‘Take this seat, Madam, and tell me what I can do for you.’”
She handed him, without speaking, a letter telling the truth about her son. He read it thoughtfully.
“Do you believe he will honor his parole if I permit him to go with you,” he said, with great kindness in his voice.
“I am ready, Mr. President,” she replied, “to peril my personal liberty that he will keep his parole.”
“You shall have your boy, my dear Madam,” he said. “To take him from the ranks of rebellion and give him to a loyal mother is the best investment that can be made by this government.”
He handed her an order to give to the commanding officer at Fort McHenry.
“May God grant,” he fervently added, “that your boy may prove a blessing to you and an honor to his country.”
Lincoln’s interest in the lowly and their sacrifices for the Union has become classic in his letter to a Boston mother. A copy of this letter hangs on the wall in Brasenose College, Oxford University, England, as a model of pure and exquisite diction, which has never been excelled.
“Dear Madam:
“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
“Yours sincerely and respectfully,
“A. Lincoln.”