Then, one morning, a strange thing happened, and, to Bob Bannister, as he thought of it in after years, the most beautiful thing that ever entered into his life. Into the far, south door of the hospital tent, accompanied only by a member of his staff and an assistant surgeon, came Abraham Lincoln.
A whisper ran down the rows of cots that the President was there, and every man who could do so, rose to his feet, or sat up in bed, and saluted as “Father Abraham” passed by. At many a cot he stopped to give greeting to maimed and helpless veterans of the war, to speak words of encouragement to the sick and wounded boys who had fought and suffered that the common cause might triumph, to bend over the prostrate form of some poor wreck tossed up from the awful whirlpool of battle. Soldiers who lived never forgot the benediction of his presence that beautiful day, and more than one fell into his last sleep with the vision of the fatherly and sympathetic face of the beloved President before his dim and closing eyes.
They came to the ward where lay the sick and wounded Southern prisoners.
“You won’t want to go in there, Mr. President,” said the young surgeon who was escorting him, “those are only rebels in there.”
The President turned and laid his large hand gently on the shoulder of his escort, and looked serenely and earnestly into his eyes.
“You mean,” he said, “that they are Confederates. I want to see them.”
And so, into the Confederate wards he went, greeting every sufferer as he passed, asking after their wants, bringing to all of them good cheer and hopefulness and helpfulness as he passed by. One boy of seventeen said to him:—
“My father knew you, Mr. Lincoln, before the war. He was killed at Chantilly. He said to me once: ‘Whatever happens, don’t you ever believe Abraham Lincoln guilty of harshness or cruelty.’ I am so glad to have told you that, Mr. Lincoln, before I die.”
And Lincoln, as he pushed back the damp hair from the boy’s forehead, and inquired the father’s name, and saw the death pallor already stealing into the young face, said:—
“Thank you, my son. If I know my own heart, there has never been harshness or cruelty in it; there is no malice or bitterness in it to-day. I sympathize with you. I sympathize with all of you—” he lifted his head and looked around on the rapt faces turned toward him—“the more because your cause is a lost cause, because you are suffering also the bitterness of defeat. And yet I feel that, under God, this very defeat will prove the salvation of your beloved South.”