He Knew Lincoln

by Ida M. Tarbell

“‘Was there much talk about his bein’ killed?’ Well, there’s an awful lot of fools in this world and when they don’t git what they want they’re always for killin’ somebody. Mr. Lincoln never let on, but I reckon his mail was pretty lively readin’ sometimes. He got pictures of gallows and pistols and other things and lots of threats, so they said. I don’t think that worried him much. He was more bothered seein’ old Buchanan givin’ the game away. ‘I wish I could have got down there before the horse was stole,’ I heard him say onct in here, talkin’ to some men. ‘But I reckon I can find the tracks when I do git there.’ It was his cabinet bothered him most, I always thought. He didn’t know the men he’d got to take well enough. Didn’t know how far he could count on ’em. He and Judge Gillespie and one or two others was in here one day sittin’ by the stove talkin,’ and he says, ‘Judge, I wisht I could take all you boys down to Washington with me, Democrats and all, and make a cabinet out of you. I’d know where every man would fit and we could git right down to work. Now, I’ve got to learn my men before I can do much.’ ‘Do you mean, Mr. Lincoln, you’d take a Democrat like Logan?’ says the Judge, sort of shocked. ‘Yes, sir, I would; I know Logan. He’s agin me now and that’s all right, but if we have trouble you can count on Logan to do the right thing by the country, and that’s the kind of men I want—them as will do the right thing by the country. ‘Tain’t a question of Lincoln, or Democrat or Republican, Judge; it’s a question of the country.’

“Of course he seemed pretty cheerful always. He wan’t no man to show out all he felt. Lots of them little stuck-up chaps that came out here to talk to him said, solemn as owls, ‘He don’t realize the gravity of the situation.’ Them’s their words, ‘gravity of the situation.’ Think of that, Mr. Lincoln not realizing. They ought to heard him talk to us the night he went away. I’ll never forgit that speech—nor any man who heard it. I can see him now just how he looked, standin’ there on the end of his car. He’d been shakin’ hands with the crowd in the depot, laughing and talking, just like himself, but when he got onto that car he seemed suddint to be all changed. You never seen a face so sad in all the world. I tell you he had woe in his heart that minute, woe. He knew he was leavin’ us for good, nuthin’ else could explain the way he looked and what he said. He knew he never was comin’ back alive. It was rainin’ hard, but when we saw him standin’ there in bare head, his great big eyes lookin’ at us so lovin’ and mournful, every man of us took off his hat, just as if he’d been in church. You never heard him make a speech, of course? You missed a lot. Curious voice. You could hear it away off—kind of shrill, but went right to your heart—and that night it sounded sadder than anything I ever heard. You know I always hear it to this day, nights when the wind howls around the house. Ma says it makes her nervous to hear me talk about him such nights, but I can’t help it; just have to let out.

“He stood a minute lookin’ at us, and then he began to talk. There ain’t a man in this town that heard him that ever forgot what he said, but I don’t believe there’s a man that ever said it over out loud—he couldn’t, without cryin’. He just talked to us that time out of his heart. Somehow we felt all of a suddint how we loved him and how he loved us. We hadn’t taken any stock in all that talk about his bein’ killed, but when he said he was goin’ away not knowin’ where or whether ever he would return I just got cold all over. I begun to see that minute and everybody did. The women all fell to sobbin’ and a kind of groan went up, and when he asked us to pray for him I don’t believe that there was a man in that crowd, whether he ever went to church in his life, that didn’t want to drop right down on his marrow bones and ask the Lord to take care of Abraham Lincoln and bring him back to us, where he belonged.

“He just talked to us that time out of his heart”

“‘Ever see him again?’ Yes, onct down in Washington, summer of ’64. Things was lookin’ purty blue that summer. Didn’t seem to be anybody who thought he’d git reëlected. Greeley was abusin’ him in The Tribune for not makin’ peace, and you know there was about half the North that always let Greeley do their thinkin’ fer ’em. The war wan’t comin’ on at all—seemed as if they never would do nuthin’. Grant was hangin’ on to Petersburg like a dog to a root, but it didn’t seem to do no good. Same with Sherman, who was tryin’ to take Atlanta. The country was just petered out with the everlastin’ taxes an’ fightin’ an’ dyin’. It wan’t human nature to be patient any longer, and they just spit it out on Mr. Lincoln, and then, right on top of all the grumblin’ and abusin’, he up and made another draft. Course he was right, but I tell you nobody but a brave man would ‘a’ done such a thing at that minute; but he did it. It was hard on us out here. I tell you there wan’t many houses in this country where there wan’t mournin’ goin’ on. It didn’t seem as if we could stand any more blood lettin.’ Some of the boys round the State went down to see him about it. They came back lookin’ pretty sheepish. Joe Medill, up to Chicago, told me about it onct. He said, ‘We just told Mr. Lincoln we couldn’t stand another draft. We was through sendin’ men down to Petersburg to be killed in trenches. He didn’t say nuthin’; just stood still, lookin’ down till we’d all talked ourselves out; and then, after a while, he lifted up his head, and looked around at us, slow-like; and I tell you, Billy, I never knew till that minute that Abraham Lincoln could get mad clean through. He was just white he was that mad. “Boys,” he says, “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re actin’ like a lot of cowards. You’ve helped make this war, and you’ve got to help fight it. You go home and raise them men and don’t you dare come down here again blubberin’ about what I tell you to do. I won’t stan’ it.” We was so scared we never said a word. We just took our hats and went out like a lot of school-boys. Talk about Abraham Lincoln bein’ easy! When it didn’t matter mebbe he was easy, but when it did you couldn’t stir him any more’n you could a mountain.’

“You’re actin’ like a lot of cowards. You’ve helped make this war, and you’ve got to help fight it”

“Well, I kept hearin’ about the trouble he was havin’ with everybody, and I just made up my mind I’d go down and see him and swap yarns and tell him how we was all countin’ on his gettin’ home. Thought maybe it would cheer him up to know we set such store on his comin’ home if they didn’t want him for president. So I jest picked up and went right off. Ma was real good about my goin’. She says, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if ’twould do him good, William. And don’t you ask him no questions about the war nor about politics. You just talk home to him and tell him some of them foolish stories of yourn.’

“Well, I had a brother in Washington, clerk in a department—awful set up ’cause he had an office—and when I got down there I told him I’d come to visit Mr. Lincoln. He says, ‘William, be you a fool? Folks don’t visit the President of the United States without an invitation, and he’s too busy to see anybody but the very biggest people in this administration. Why, he don’t even see me,’ he says. Well, it made me huffy to hear him talk. ‘Isaac,’ I says, ‘I don’t wonder Mr. Lincoln don’t see you. But it’s different with me. Him and me is friends.’