The Reverend Doctor Bellows of New York, as chairman of the Sanitary Commission, called once during the Civil War to tell Lincoln of a number of things he ought to do. Lincoln listened with the most flattering attention, slightly inclining his head in recognition of every separate reminder of a duty left unperformed, and at the close of the catalogue remained a minute or two in silent meditation. Then, throwing one of his long legs over an arm of his chair, he looked up with a quizzical smile. “Dominie,” said he, “how much will you take to swap jobs with me?”
He could not always keep his humor out of his official communications, as in this despatch to General Hooker in Virginia: “If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be pretty slim somewhere. Couldn’t you break him?”
Indeed, it was his instinctive discernment of the ridiculous side of everything which, though it gave his enemies their chance to assail him as a mountebank and a jester, undoubtedly served as a buffer to many a heavy blow. Sometimes his laughs were at his own expense. About the middle of the war a young man from a distant State procured an interview with him, to expound a project for visiting Richmond in the disguise of a wandering organ-grinder and making drawings of the defenses of the city for the use of the Union commanders. Lincoln was so impressed that he contributed one hundred and fifty dollars or more to purchase the organ and pay other preliminary expenses. The young man disappeared for some weeks and then returned with a thrilling account of his adventures, and with plats and charts covering everything of military importance around Richmond and at various points on the way thither. As a reward, the President nominated him for a second lieutenancy in the army and spurred some other patriot into sending him a brand new uniform and sword. After a little, and by accident, it came out that the youth had never been anywhere near Richmond, but had spent the President’s money on a trip to his home, where, at his ease, he had prepared his fictitious report and maps. Of course his nomination was at once withdrawn; but Lincoln was so amused at his own childlike credulity that he could not bring himself to punish the offense as it deserved.
The Cabinet were often annoyed at the obtrusion of the President’s taste for a joke at what seemed to them inopportune moments—especially Secretary Stanton, whose sense of humor was not keen. On September 22, 1862, they were peremptorily summoned to a meeting at the White House. They found the President reading a book, from which he barely looked up till all were in their seats. Then he said: “Gentlemen, did you ever read anything from Artemus Ward? Let me read you a chapter which is very funny.” When the reading was finished, he laughed heartily, looking around the circle for a response, but nobody even smiled; if any countenance revealed anything, it was irritation. “Well,” said he, “let’s have another chapter;” and he suited action to word. Finding his listeners no more sympathetic than before, he threw the book down with a deep sigh and exclaimed: “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.” With that, he ran his hand down into his tall hat, which sat on the table near him, and drew forth a sheet of paper, from which he read aloud, with the most impressive emphasis, the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. “If any of you have any suggestions to make as to the form of this paper or its composition,” said he, “I shall be glad to hear them. But”—and the deliberateness with which he pronounced the next words left no doubt that the die had already been cast—“this paper is to issue!”
The Lincolns brought two young children with them into the White House, both boys. Of the elder, Willie, we hear little, except that he died there, and that his loss added one more to the many lines which the war had worn into the brow of his father. The younger boy, “Tad,” is better known to the public through the exploitation of his juvenile pranks by the newspapers and his appearance in some of the President’s portraits. Many stories are told of his fondness for bringing ragged urchins from the streets into the kitchen and feeding them, to the sore distress of the cook and sometimes to the disturbance of the domestic routine in other ways; but for whatever he wished to do in the charitable line he found his father a faithful ally. There is a pretty tale of his having espied in the lower corridor of the White House, one very rainy day, a young man and woman, rather shabbily dressed, who seemed depressed in spirits and anxious to consult with some one. Tad called his father’s attention to them, and the President went up and asked them what they wished. His sympathetic manner loosed their tongues and they told him their story.
It appeared that the girl was from Virginia and had run away from home to marry her lover, an honorably discharged soldier from Indiana. They had met by arrangement in Washington, but they were strangers there and very unsophisticated, and had little money to pay a minister or spend on hotel accommodations; so they had been wandering about the city for hours, not knowing where to go, and had taken refuge in the White House from the storm. They had no idea that they were talking to the President till he made himself known. With characteristic directness, he sent for a clergyman of his acquaintance and had the nuptial knot tied in his presence. Then he invited bride and groom to remain as his guests till the next day, when the weather cleared and they went their way rejoicing.
Although Mrs. Lincoln was the titular head of the President’s household, the woman recognized as the social leader of the administration was Kate Chase, daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. She was handsome, accomplished, and, after her marriage with William Sprague, the young War Governor of Rhode Island, rich as well. Mrs. Lincoln never liked her, but the President’s gift for peacemaking came into action here, and there was no public display of the coolness of feeling between them. Mrs. Sprague had a strong taste for politics, and her chief ambition was to see her father President; but Lincoln cut off that chance at the critical moment by making him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Among the young and rising Congressmen with whom Mrs. Sprague was brought into contact during this period was Roscoe Conkling, a Representative from New York, who later became a Senator. He was the pink of elegance in person and attire, of stately and somewhat condescending manners, and master of the arts of verbal expression. They formed a firm friendship which lasted as long as both lived. Edgewood, the Chase home on the northern border of the city, was for many years one of the show places of Washington, and after Chase’s death Conkling procured from Congress an act exempting it from taxation as a tribute to the public services of its former owner. Another young Representative of whom Mrs. Sprague saw almost as much as of Conkling, but liked less, was James G. Blaine of Maine, a brilliant orator who in after years became Conkling’s most powerful adversary.
A warm friend of Chase’s who used to drop in at Edgewood whenever he was in Washington was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. He was a quaint character, who wore his clothes awry and his hair long and always tousled. His face he kept clean shaven, but raised a heavy blond beard under his chin and jaws; and this, with his ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, beaming spectacles, and generally bland aspect, made him look like the typical back-country farmer of theatrical tradition. He accentuated the peculiarities of his appearance by affecting a large soft hat and not spotless white overcoat, the pockets of the latter habitually bulging with newspapers. His handwriting was as unconventional as his attire, and compositors in the Tribune office had to be specially trained in deciphering it, for Mr. Greeley was often unable to read it himself after the subject-matter had grown cold in his mind.
Greeley was an anti-slavery man, but not an aggressive abolitionist; nevertheless he smiled benignantly upon the work of the Hutchinson family and took some pains to introduce them in Washington wherever their music would be likely to meet with a cordial reception. The Hutchinsons were a Massachusetts family of sixteen brothers and sisters, nearly all of them bearing Bible names given them by a deeply religious mother. They learned as children to lead the singing in the Baptist church attended by their parents, and, as their musical fame spread, one of the
