“Mr. President, I am deeply grateful to you. I came here distrusting and disliking you. I shall leave here—well—I—from to-day I am a Lincoln conscript.”
In the telegraph office the President stopped for a few moments to look over late dispatches, and then went out, back through the park and across the lawn, to the treadmill of the White House, there to wear his own life out that the nation which he loved might live.
While Bannister was waiting for his guard, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, stern, spectacled, heavy-bearded, came bustling in.
“Well,” he said as he espied Bannister in his room, “what is it? What do you want?”
“I am waiting for Lieutenant Forsythe,” replied Bannister, who at once recognized the great War Secretary. “Mr. Lincoln has given me this order.”
As he spoke, he handed the letter to the Secretary, who took it and read it carefully through.
“Another one of the President’s interferences!” he exclaimed impatiently. “He has enough to do at the White House. I wish he would let this department alone. His orders for suspension of sentence, and honorable discharge, and all that, in defiance of the regulations, are absolutely subversive of discipline. They are demoralizing the entire army.”
A young officer had entered while the testy Secretary was voicing his annoyance, and now stood at attention in the doorway.
“Here’s another order of the President’s,” continued the Secretary, addressing the officer. “He wants you to take this man down to Meade. I don’t know anything about the case. It ought to have gone through this department. I suppose I’ll have to back it.”