Mr. Lincoln was very ingenious in finding reasons for being merciful. On one occasion, a young soldier who had shown himself very brave in war, and had been severely wounded, after a time deserted. Being re-captured, he was under sentence of death, and President Lincoln was of course petitioned for his pardon. It was a difficult case; the young man deserved to die, and desertion was sadly injuring the army. The President mused solemnly, until a happy thought struck him. “Did you say he was once badly wounded?” he asked of the applicant for a pardon. “He was.” “Then, as the Scripture says that in the shedding of blood is the remission of sins, I guess we’ll have to let him off this time.”
When Mr. Lincoln was grossly and foolishly flattered, as happened once in the case of a gushing “interviewer,” who naïvely put his own punishment into print, he could quiz the flatterer with great ingenuity by apparently falling into the victim’s humour. When only moderately praised, he retorted gently. Once, when a gentleman complimented him on having no vices, such as drinking or smoking, “That is a doubtful compliment,” answered Mr. Lincoln. “I recollect once being outside a stage-coach in Illinois, when a man offered me a cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, but smoked for some time, and then growled out, ‘It’s my opinion that people who have no vices have plaguy few virtues.’”
President Lincoln was not merely obliging or condescending in allowing every one to see him; in his simple Republicanism, he believed that the people who had made him President had a right to talk to him. One day a friend found him half-amused, half-irritated. “You met an old lady as you entered,” he said. “Well, she wanted me to give her an order for stopping the pay of a Treasury clerk who owes her a board-bill of seventy dollars.” His visitor expressed surprise that he did not adopt the usual military plan, under which every application to see the general commanding had to be filtered through a sieve of officers, who allowed no one to take up the chief’s time except those who had business of sufficient importance. “Ah yes,” the President replied, “such things may do very well for you military people, with your arbitrary rule. But the office of a President is a very different one, and the affair is very different. For myself, I feel, though the tax on my time is heavy, that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again into direct contact with the people. All serves to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which, at the end of two years, I must return.” To such an extreme did he carry this, and such weariness did it cause him, that, at the end of four years, he who had been one of the strongest men living, was no longer strong or vigorous. But he always had a good-natured story, even for his tormentors. Once, when a Kentucky farmer wanted him at a critical period of the Emancipation question to exert himself and turn the whole machinery of government to aid him in recovering two slaves, President Lincoln said this reminded him of Jack Chase, the captain of a western steamboat. It is a terrible thing to steer a boat down the roaring rapids, where the mistake of an inch may cause wreck, and it requires the extreme attention of the pilot. One day, when the boat was plunging and wallowing along the boiling current, and Jack at the wheel was using all care to keep in the perilous channel, a boy pulled his coat-tail and cried, “Say, Mister Captain! I wish you’d stop your boat a minute. I’ve lost my apple overboard.”
In self-conscious “deportment,” Mr. Lincoln was utterly deficient; in true unconscious dignity, he was unsurpassed. He would sit down on the stone-coping outside the White House to write on his card the directions by which a poor man might be relieved from his sorrow, looking as he did so as if he were sitting on the pavement; or he would actually lie down on the grass beside a common soldier, and go over his papers with him, while his carriage waited, and great men gathered around; but no man ever dared to be impertinent, or unduly familiar with him. Once an insolent officer accused him to his face of injustice, and he arose, lifted the man by the collar, and carried him out, kicking. But this is, I believe, the only story extant of any one having treated him with insolence.
Hunting popularity by means of petty benevolence is so usual with professional politicians, that many may suspect that Lincoln was not unselfish in his acts of kindness. But I myself know of one instance of charity exercised by him, which was certainly most disinterested. One night, a poor old man, whose little farm had been laid waste during the war, and who had come to Washington, hoping that Government would repay his loss, found himself penniless in the streets of the capital. A person whom I know very well saw him accost the President, who listened to his story, and then, writing something on a piece of paper, gave it to him, and with it a ten-dollar note. The President went his way, and my acquaintance going up to the old man, who was deeply moved, asked him what was the matter. “I thank God,” said the old man, using a quaint American phrase, “that there are some white people[36] in this town. I’ve been tryin’ to get somebody to listen to me, and nobody would, because I’m a poor foolish old body. But just now a stranger listened to all my story, and give me this here.” He said this, showing the money and the paper, which contained a request to Secretary Stanton to have the old man’s claim investigated at once, and, if just, promptly satisfied. When it is remembered that Lincoln went into office and out of it a poor man, or at least a very poor man for one in his position, his frequent acts of charity appear doubly creditable.
Whatever may be said of Lincoln, he was always simply and truly a good man. He was a good father to his children, and a good President to the people, whom he loved as if they had been his children. America and the rest of the world have had many great rulers, but never one who, like Lincoln, was so much one of the people, or who was so sympathetic in their sorrows and trials.
APPENDIX.
[FROM THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, AUGUST 16, 1867.]
HIS LECTURE AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE IN 1860.
To the Editor of The Evening Post: