He Knew Lincoln, and Other Billy Brown Stories

by Ida M. Tarbell

“A million men, a mighty host—and one word of mine would bring the million sleeping boys to their feet—send them without a word to their guns—they would fall in rank—regiment on regiment, brigade on brigade, corps on corps, a word more and they would march steady, quiet, a million men in step straight ahead, over fields, through forests, across rivers. Nothing could stop them—cannons might tear holes in their ranks, and they would fill them up, a half million might be bled out of them, and a word of mine would bring a half million more to fill their place. Oh, God, my God,” he groaned, under his breath, “what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me! What am I that Thou shouldst trust me so!”

Well, I just dropped my head in my hands—seemed as if I oughten to look at him—and the next thing I knew Mr. Lincoln’s arm was over my shoulder and he was saying in that smilin’ kind of voice he had: “Don’t mind me, Billy. The Lord generally knows what He’s about and He can get rid of me quick enough if He sees I ain’t doin’ the job—quicker than the Copperheads can.”

Just like him to change so. Didn’t want anybody to feel bad. But I never forgot that, and many a time in my sleep I’ve heard Abraham Lincoln’s voice crying out: “Oh, God, my God, what am I that Thou shouldst ask this of me!” and I’ve groaned to think how often through them four awful years he must have lifted up his face with that look on it and asked the Lord what in the world he was doing that thing for.

“After all, Billy,” he went on, “it’s surprisin’ what a happy army it is. In spite of bein’ so dead in earnest and havin’ so much trouble of one kind and another, seems sometimes as if you couldn’t put ’em anywhere that they wouldn’t scare up some fun. Greatest chaps to sing on the march, to cut up capers and play tricks you ever saw. I reckon the army’s a little like me, it couldn’t do its job if it didn’t get a good laugh now and then—sort o’ clears up the air when things are lookin’ blue. Anyhow the boys are always gettin’ themselves into trouble by their pranks. Jokin’ fills the guard-house as often as drunkenness or laziness. That and their bein’ so sassy. A lot of ’em think they know just as much as the officers do, and I reckon they’re right pretty often. It takes some time to learn that it ain’t good for the service for them to be speakin’ their minds too free. At the start they did it pretty often—do now sometimes. Why, only just this week Stanton told me about a sergeant, who one day when the commanding officer was relieving his mind by swearing at his men, stepped right out of the ranks and reproved him and said he was breaking the law of God. Well, they clapped him in the guard-house and now they want to punish him harder—say he ain’t penitent—keeps disturbin’ the guard-house by prayin’ at the top of his voice for that officer. I told Stanton we better not interfere, that there wasn’t nothing in the regulations against a man’s prayin’ for his officers.

“Yes, it’s a funny army. There don’t seem to be but one thing that discourages it, and that’s not fightin’. Keep ’em still in camp where you’d think they’d be comfortable and they go to pieces every time. It’s when they’re lyin’ still we have the worst camp fever and the most deserters. Keep ’em on the move, let ’em think they’re goin’ to have a fight and they perk up right off.

“We can’t fail with men like that. Make all the mistakes we can, they’ll make up for ’em. The hope of this war is in the common soldiers, not in the generals—not in the War Department, not in me. It’s in the boys. Sometimes it seems to me that nobody sees it quite right. It’s in war as it is in life—a whole raft of men work day and night and sweat and die to get in the crops and mine the ore and build the towns and sail the seas. They make the wealth but they get mighty little of it. We ain’t got our values of men’s work figured out right yet—the value of the man that gives orders and of the man that takes ’em. I hear people talkin’ as if the history of a battle was what the generals did. I can’t help thinkin’ that the history of this war is in the knapsack of the common soldier. He’s makin’ that history just like the farmers are makin’ the wealth. We fellows at the top are only usin’ what they make.

“At any rate that’s the way I see it, and I’ve tried hard ever since I’ve been down here to do all I could for the boys. I know lots of officers think I peek around camp too much, think ’tain’t good for discipline. But I’ve always felt I ought to know how they was livin’ and there didn’t seem to be no other sure way of findin’ out. Officers ain’t always good housekeepers, and I kinda felt I’d got to keep my eye on the cupboard.

“I reckon Stanton thinks I’ve interfered too much, but there’s been more’n enough trouble to go around in this war, and the only hope was helpin’ where you could. But ’tain’t much one can do. I can no more help every soldier that comes to me in trouble than I can dip all the water out of the Potomac with a teaspoon.

“Then there’s that pardoning business. Every now and then I have to fix it up with Stanton or some officer for pardoning so many boys. I suppose it’s pretty hard for them not to have all their rules lived up to. They’ve worked out a lot of laws to govern this army, and I s’pose it’s natural enough for ’em to think the most important thing in the world is havin’ ’em obeyed. They’ve got it fixed so the boys do everything accordin’ to regulations. They won’t even let ’em die of something that ain’t on the list—got to die accordin’ to the regulations. But by jingo, Billy, I ain’t goin’ to have boys shot accordin’ to no dumb regulations! I ain’t goin’ to have a butcher’s day every Friday in the army if I can help it. It’s so what they say about me, that I’m always lookin’ for an excuse to pardon somebody. I do it every time I can find a reason. When they’re young and when they’re green or when they’ve been worked on by Copperheads or when they’ve got disgusted lyin’ still and come to think we ain’t doin’ our job—when I see that I ain’t goin’ to have ’em shot. And then there’s my leg cases. I’ve got a drawerful. They make Holt maddest—says he ain’t any use for cowards. Well, generally speakin’ I ain’t, but I ain’t sure what I’d do if I was standin’ in front of a gun, and more’n that as I told Holt if Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?