“If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say that I was often very hungry.”
Lincoln concluded by saying that if he ever turned Democrat and should run for the Presidency, he hoped they would not make fun of him by attempting to make him a military hero.
“SURRENDER NO SLAVE.”
About March, 1862, General Benjamin F. Butler, in command at Fortress Monroe, advised President Lincoln that he had determined to regard all slaves coming into his camps as contraband of war, and to employ their labor under fair compensation, and Secretary of War Stanton replied to him, in behalf of the President, approving his course, and saying, “You are not to interfere between master and slave on the one hand, nor surrender slaves who may come within your lines.”
This was a significant milestone of progress to the great end that was thereafter to be reached.
CONSCRIPTING DEAD MEN.
Mr. Lincoln being found fault with for making another “call,” said that if the country required it, he would continue to do so until the matter stood as described by a Western provost marshal, who says:
“I listened a short time since to a butternut-clad individual, who succeeded in making good his escape, expatiate most eloquently on the rigidness with which the conscription was enforced south of the Tennessee River. His response to a question propounded by a citizen ran somewhat in this wise: