Rebels! ’tis our fighting name!
For peace rules o’er the land,
Until they speak of craven woe—
Until our rights received a blow,
From foes’ or brother’s hand.
Rebels! ’tis our dying name!
For although life is dear,
Yet freemen born and freemen bred,
We’d rather live as freemen dead
Than live in slavish fear.
Then call us Rebels if you will—
We glory in the name;
For bending under unjust laws,
And swearing faith to an unjust cause.
We count a greater shame.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MR. LINCOLN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
And thus commenced the great war of the Rebellion—a war which in some respects has never had its parallel. Commencing but a few weeks after Mr. Lincoln’s administration began, it was at its last gasp when upon the 4th of March, 1865, he was for the second time inaugurated.
If I were to write a full account of Mr. Lincoln’s administration, it must include a history of the war. I propose to do neither. As my title imports, I have aimed only to show by what steps a backwoods boy, born and brought up on the Western prairies, with the smallest possible advantages of education and fortune, came to stand in the foremost place among his fellow-citizens. I might, therefore, consider my task accomplished; but, if I should stop here, I should have failed to set forth fully the character and traits of this remarkable man; for it was only in the years of his Presidency that the world, and, I may add, his friends, came to know him as he was. I doubt even if he knew himself until the responsibilities of office fell upon him; and, under the burden, he expanded to the full stature of a providential man. There are some aspects in which I shall consider him, and, in the incidents and anecdotes I may have to relate, I shall not attempt to preserve the order of time.
First, then, the consciousness of official rank never appeared present to Mr. Lincoln. In the White House, as in his modest Western home, he was the same plain, unpretending Abraham Lincoln. Nor did he lose his sympathy for the humble class from which he had himself sprung. Upon this point I quote from Mr. F. B. Carpenter’s very interesting volume, already referred to:
“The Hon. Mr. Odell gave me a deeply interesting incident which occurred in the winter of 1864 at one of the most crowded of the Presidential levees, illustrating very perfectly Mr. Lincoln’s true politeness and delicacy of feeling.
“On the occasion referred to the pressure became so great that the usual ceremony of hand-shaking was for once discontinued. The President had been standing for some time, bowing his acknowledgments to the thronging multitude, when his eye fell upon a couple who had entered unobserved—a wounded soldier and his plainly-dressed mother. Before they could pass out he made his way to where they stood, and, taking each of them by the hand, with a delicacy and cordiality which brought tears to many eyes, he assured them of his interest and welcome. Governors, Senators, and diplomats passed with simply a nod; but that pale, young face he might never see again. To him and to others like him did the nation owe his life; and Abraham Lincoln was not the man to forget this, even in the crowded and brilliant assembly of the distinguished of the land.”