“Whereas, Franklin W. Smith had transactions with the Navy Department to the amount of one million and a quarter of a million of dollars; and whereas, he had the chance to steal a quarter of a million, and was only charged with stealing twenty-two hundred dollars—and the question now is about his stealing a hundred—I don’t believe he stole anything at all. Therefore, the record and findings are disapproved—declared null and void, and the defendants are fully discharged.”
“It would be difficult,” says the New York “Tribune,” “to sum up the rights and wrongs of the business more briefly than that, or to find a paragraph more characteristically and unmistakably Mr. Lincoln’s.”
A gentleman was pressing very strenuously the promotion of an officer to a “Brigadiership.” “But we have already more generals than we know what to do with,” replied the President. “But,” persisted the visitor, “my friend is very strongly recommended.” “Now, look here,” said Mr. Lincoln, throwing one leg over the arm of his chair, “you are a farmer, I believe; if not, you will understand me. Suppose you had a large cattle-yard full of all sorts of cattle,—cows, oxen, bulls,—and you kept killing and selling and disposing of your cows and oxen, in one way and another,—taking good care of your bulls. By-and-by you would find that you had nothing but a yard full of old bulls, good for nothing under heaven. Now, it will be just so with the army, if I don’t stop making brigadier-generals.”
Captain Mix, the commander, at one period, of the President’s body-guard, told me that on their way to town one sultry morning, from the “Soldiers’ Home,” they came upon a regiment marching into the city. A “straggler,” very heavily loaded with camp equipage, was accosted by the President with the question: “My lad, what is that?” referring to the designation of his regiment. “It’s a regiment,” said the soldier, curtly, plodding on, his gaze bent steadily upon the ground. “Yes, I see that,” rejoined the President, “but I want to know what regiment.” “—— Pennsylvania,” replied the man in the same tone, looking neither to the right nor the left. As the carriage passed on, Mr. Lincoln turned to Captain Mix and said, with a merry laugh, “It is very evident that chap smells no blood of ‘royalty’ in this establishment.”
Captain Mix was frequently invited to breakfast with the family at the “Home” residence. “Many times,” said he, “have I listened to our most eloquent preachers, but never with the same feeling of awe and reverence, as when our Christian President, his arm around his son, with his deep, earnest tone, each morning read a chapter from the Bible.”
Some one was discussing, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, the character of a time-serving Washington clergyman. Said Mr. Lincoln to his visitor:—
“I think you are rather hard upon Mr. ——. He reminds me of a man in Illinois, who was tried for passing a counterfeit bill. It was in evidence that before passing it he had taken it to the cashier of a bank and asked his opinion of the bill, and he received a very prompt reply that it was a counterfeit. His lawyer, who had heard of the evidence to be brought against his client, asked him, just before going into court, ‘Did you take the bill to the cashier of the bank and ask him if it was good?’ ‘I did,’ was the reply. ‘Well, what was the reply of the cashier?’ The rascal was in a corner, but he got out of it in this fashion: ‘He said it was a pretty tolerable, respectable sort of a bill.’”
Mr. Lincoln thought the clergyman was “a pretty tolerable, respectable sort of a clergyman.”
A visitor, congratulating Mr. Lincoln on the prospects of his reëlection, was answered with an anecdote of an Illinois farmer who undertook to blast his own rocks. His first effort at producing an explosion proved a failure. He explained the cause by exclaiming, “Pshaw, this powder has been shot before!”
An amusing, yet touching instance of the President’s preoccupation of mind, occurred at one of his levees, when he was shaking hands with a host of visitors passing him in a continuous stream. An intimate acquaintance received the usual conventional hand-shake and salutation, but perceiving that he was not recognized, kept his ground instead of moving on, and spoke again; when the President, roused to a dim consciousness that something unusual had happened, perceived who stood before him, and seizing his friend’s hand, shook it again heartily, saying, “How do you do? How do you do? Excuse me for not noticing you. I was thinking of a man down South.” He afterward privately acknowledged that the “man down South” was Sherman, then on his march to the sea.