Many of the volunteer officers developed a liking for the new profession, and to secure a permanency obtained entrance into the established army. Among these was one Lieutenant Ben Tappan. Secretary Stanton being his uncle, no difficulty offered but this autocrat ought to remove, but unfortunately Stanton was a stickler for forms, and the relationship looked like nepotism to the world. Tappan particularly wished to stay on the staff on account of the privileges. His stepfather, Frank Wright, induced their congressman, Judge Shellabarger, to accompany him to the presidential mansion to obtain the boon. Lincoln was lukewarm, and told a story about the army being all staff and no strength, saying that, if one rolled a stone in front of Willard's Hotel, the military rendezvous for those officers off duty and on (dress) parade, it must knock over a brigadier or two, but suddenly wrote a paper to this novel effect:
"Lieutenant Ben Tappan, of ---, etc., desires transfer to --- Regiment, regular service, and is assigned to staff duty with present rank. If the only objection to this transfer is Lieutenant Tappan's relationship to the secretary of war, that objection is hereby overruled.
"A. LINCOLN."
This threw the responsibility upon the secretary.
NO MAN IS INDISPENSABLE.
One of the Cabinet ministers disagreed with the majority on a vital question, and rose with a threat to resign. One of his friends advised the chairman to do anything to recover his aid, whereupon he sagely said:
"Our secretary a national necessity?--how mistaken you are! Yet it is not strange--I used to have similar notions. No, if we should all be turned out to-morrow, and could come back here in a week, we should find our places filled by a lot of fellows doing just as well as we did, and in many instances better! It was truth that the Irishman uttered when he answered the speaker: 'Is not one man as good as another?' with 'He is, sure, and a deal betther!' No, sir, this government does not depend on the life of any man!"
SLEEPING ON POST CANCELS A COMMISSION.
Nobody who met Secretary Stanton--the Carnot of the war--would give him credit for joking, but Mr. Lincoln's example that way was infectious. The eldest son, Robert, was at college, but a captaincy was awaiting him when he could enter the army. So the war secretary for a pleasantry issued a mock commission to Tad, ranking him as a regular lieutenant. As long as he confined his supposed duties to arming the under servants and drilling the more or less fantastically, as well as he remembered, evolutions on the parade-grounds, where he accompanied his father, all was amusing. But he terminated his first steps in the school of "Hardee's Tactics," the standard text-book of the period, by bringing his awkward squad from the servants' hall, and, relieving the sentries, replaced the genuine with these tyros. For the sake of the vacation they, the regulars, bowed to the commission with its potent Stanton and Lincoln, and United States Army seal. His brother, startled, intervened, but the cadet vowed he would put him in "the black hole," presumably the coal-shed. The President laughed, and when he went to check the usurpation he found the little lieutenant, overpowered by his brief authority, asleep. So he removed him from the service, put aside his commission, and, when he woke to the situation, made it plain that, being a real soldier and officer, he had forfeited his title by falling asleep on post! He went then and formally discharged the sham sentinels placed by the boy's orders and replaced them by the "simon pures."