“You can’t make me believe it’s good policy to shoot these soldiers, anyhow. Seems to me one thing we’ve never taken into account as we ought to is that this is a volunteer army. These men came down here to put an end to this rebellion and not to get trained as soldiers. They just dropped the work they was doin’ right where it was—never stopped to fix up things to be away long. Why, we’ve got a little minister at the head of one company that was preachin’ when he heard the news of Bull Run. He shut up his Bible, told the congregation what had happened, and said: ‘Brethren, I reckon it’s time for us to adjourn this meetin’ and go home and drill,’ and they did it, and now they’re down with Grant. When the war’s over that man will go back and finish that sermon.
“That’s the way with most of ’em. You can’t treat such an army like you would one that had been brought up to soljerin’ as a business. They’ll take discipline enough to fight, but they don’t take any stock in it as a means of earnin’ a livin’.
“More’n that they’ve got their own ideas about politics and military tactics and mighty clear ideas about all of us that are runnin’ things. You can’t fool ’em on an officer. They know when one ain’t fit to command, and time and time again they’ve pestered a coward or a braggart or a bully out of the service. An officer who does his job best he can, even if he ain’t very smart, just honest and faithful, they’ll stand by and help. If he’s a big one, a real big man, they can’t do enough for him. Take the way they feel about Thomas, the store they set by him. I met a boy on crutches out by the White House the other day and asked him where he got wounded. He told me about the place they held. ‘Pretty hot, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Yes, but Old Pap put us there and he wouldn’t ’a’ done it if he hadn’t known we could ’a’ held it.’ No more question ‘Old Pap’ than they would God Almighty. But if it had been some generals they’d skedaddled.
“They ain’t never made any mistake about me just because I’m president. A while after Bull Run I met a boy out on the street here on crutches, thin and white, and I stopped to ask him about how he got hurt. Well, Billy, he looked at me hard as nails, and he says: ‘Be you Abe Lincoln?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘all I’ve got to say is you don’t know your job. I enlisted glad enough to do my part and I’ve done it, but you ain’t done yourn. You promised to feed me, and I marched three days at the beginning of these troubles without anything to eat but hardtack and two chunks of salt pork—no bread, no coffee—and what I did get wasn’t regular. They got us up one mornin’ and marched us ten miles without breakfast. Do you call that providin’ for an army? And they sent us down to fight the Rebs at Bull Run, and when we was doin’ our best and holdin’ ’em—I tell you, holdin’ ’em—they told us to fall back. I swore I wouldn’t—I hadn’t come down there for that. They made me—rode me down. I got struck—struck in the back. Struck in the back and they left me there—never came for me, never gave me a drink and I dyin’ of thirst. I crawled five miles for water, and I’d be dead and rottin’ in Virginia to-day if a teamster hadn’t picked me up and brought me to this town and found an old darkey to take care of me. You ain’t doin’ your job, Abe Lincoln; you won’t win this war until you learn to take care of the soldiers.’
“I couldn’t say a thing. It was true. It’s been true all the time. It’s true to-day. We ain’t takin’ care of the soldiers like we ought.
“You don’t suppose such men are goin’ to accept the best lot of regulations ever made without askin’ questions? Not a bit of it. They know when things are right and when they’re not. When they see a man who they know is nothing but a boy or one they know’s bein’ eat up with homesickness or one whose term is out, and ought to be let go, throwing everything over and desertin’, it don’t make them any better soldiers to have us shoot him. Makes ’em worse in my judgment, makes ’em think we don’t understand. Anyhow, discipline or no discipline, I ain’t goin’ to have any more of it than I can help. It ain’t good common sense.
“You can’t run this army altogether as if ’twas a machine. It ain’t. It’s a people’s army. It offered itself. It has come down here to fight this thing out—just as it would go to the polls. It is greater than its generals, greater than the administration. We are created to care for it and lead it. It is not created for us. Every day the war has lasted I’ve felt this army growin’ in power and determination. I’ve felt its hand on me, guiding, compelling, threatening, upholding me, felt its distrust and its trust, its blame and its love. I’ve felt its patience and its sympathy. The greatest comfort I get is when sometimes I feel as if mebbe the army understood what I was tryin’ to do whether Greeley did or not. They understood because it’s their war. Why, we might fail, every one of us, and this war would go on. The army would find its leaders like they say the old Roman armies sometimes did and would finish the fight.
“I tell you, Billy, there ain’t nuthin’ that’s ever happened in the world so far as I know that gives one such faith in the people as this army and the way it acts. There’s been times, I ain’t denyin’, when I didn’t know but the war was goin’ to be too much for us, times when I thought that mebbe a republic like this couldn’t stand such a strain. It’s the kind of government we’ve got that’s bein’ tested in this war, government by the people, and it’s the People’s Army that makes me certain it can’t be upset.”
I tell you it done me good to see him settin’ up straight there talkin’ so proud and confident, and as I was watchin’ him there popped into my head some words from a song I’d heard the soldiers sing:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more—
From Mississippi’s winding stream and from New England’s shore.