“The President was at the White House, business hours were over, Lincoln was washing his hands. ‘Hallo, Dana,’ said he, as I opened the door, ‘what is it now?’ ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘here is the Provost Marshal of Portland, who reports that Jacob Thompson is to be in town to-night, and inquires what orders we have to give.’ ‘What does Stanton say?’ he asked. ‘Arrest him,’ I replied. ‘Well,’ he continued, drawling his words, ‘I rather guess not. When you have an elephant on your hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run.’”
GROTESQUE, YET FRIGHTFUL.
The nearest Lincoln ever came to a fight was when he was in the vicinity of the skirmish at Kellogg’s Grove, in the Black Hawk War. The rangers arrived at the spot after the engagement and helped bury the five men who were killed.
Lincoln told Noah Brooks, one of his biographers, that he “remembered just how those men looked as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay, heads toward us, on the ground. And every man had a round, red spot on the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over.”
Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat irrelevantly, “I remember that one man had on buckskin breeches.”
“ABE” WAS NO DUDE.
