HOW THE DELINQUENT SOLDIER PAID HIS DEBT.
There is a great similarity in the many stories of Lincoln's leniency to soldiers incurring the death-penalty according to the code of war, and no wonder, when they were so numerous that he often had four-and-twenty sentences to sign or ignore in a day.
A member of a Vermont regiment was so sentenced for sleeping at his post. The more than usual intercession made for him induced Lincoln to visit the culprit in his cell. He found him a simple country lad, impressing him as a reminder of himself at that age. In the like plain and rustic vein he discoursed with him.
"I have been put to a deal of bother on your account, Scott," he said paternally. "What I want to know is how are you going to pay my bill?"
From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so the young man responded:
"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up--if it isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?"
With the same gravity, the intermediator reckoned the cost would be more.
"My son," said he, "the bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay it--nor your comrades, nor the farm, nor the pay! If from this day William Scott does his duty so that, if I were there when he came to die, he could look me in the face as now and say: 'I have kept my promise and have done my duty as a soldier,' then my debt will be paid."
The boy made the promise, and was immediately restored to the regiment. He earned promotion, but refused it. At Lee's Mills, on the Warwick River, he was wounded while distinguishing himself in a grand assault. Mortally wounded in saving three lives, he was enabled with his dying breath to send a message to the President to the effect that he had redeemed his pledge. On his breast was found one of the likenesses of Lincoln with the motto, "God bless our President!" which the Grand Army men were given. He thanked the benefactor for having let him fall like a soldier, in battle, and not like a coward, by his comrades' rifles.