"My old friend," replied the President, "I see you are not very well acquainted with me. If your son never dies till orders come from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than Methuselah."
One of the most famous cases of pardon was that of William Scott, a young boy from a Vermont farm, who, after marching forty-eight hours without sleep, volunteered to stand guard duty for a sick comrade in addition to his own. Nature overcame him, he was found asleep at his post within gunshot of the enemy, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be shot. A day or two before the execution Lincoln happened to visit that division of the army, and, learning of the case, asked permission to see the boy. He entered the tent that was used for a prison, talked to him kindly, inquired about his home, his parents, his schoolmates, and particularly about his mother, and how she looked. The boy had her photograph in his pocket and showed it to him, and Lincoln was very much affected. As he was leaving the tent, he put his hands on the lad's shoulders and said, with a trembling voice,—
"My boy, you are not going to be shot to-morrow. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep awake. I am going to trust you and send you back to the regiment. But I have been put to a great deal of trouble on your account. I have had to come here from Washington when I had a great deal to do. Now, what I want to know is, how are you going to pay my bill?"
In relating the story afterwards, Scott said, "I could scarcely speak. I had expected to die, you see, and had got kind of used to thinking that way. To have it all changed in a minute! But I got it crowded down and managed to say, 'I am grateful, Mr. Lincoln! I hope I am as grateful as ever a man can be to you for saving my life. But it comes upon me sudden and unexpected like. I didn't lay out for it at all; but there is something to pay you, and I will find it after a little. There is the bounty in the savings bank, and I guess we could borrow some money by a mortgage on the farm. Then my pay is something, and if you would wait until pay day I am sure the boys would help; so we could make it up if it isn't more than five or six hundred dollars.' 'But it is a great deal more than that,' he said. 'My bill is a very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your bounty, nor the farm, nor all your comrades! There is only one man in all the world who can pay it, and his name is William Scott! If from this day William Scott does his duty, so that, when he comes to die, he can look me in the face as he does now, and say, I have kept my promise, and I have done my duty as a soldier, then my debt will be paid. Will you make that promise and try to keep it?'"
The promise was gratefully given. It is too long a story to tell of the effect of this sympathetic kindness on Private William Scott. After one of the battles of the Peninsula he was found shot to pieces. He said, "Boys, I have tried to do the right thing! If any of you have the chance, I wish you would tell President Lincoln that I have never forgotten the kind words he said to me at the Chain Bridge; that I have tried to be a good soldier and true to the flag; that I should have paid my whole debt to him if I had lived; and that now, when I know I am dying, I think of his kind face, and thank him again, because he gave me the chance to fall like a soldier in battle and not like a coward by the hands of my comrades."
When Francis Kernan was a member of Congress during the war, a woman came to him one day and said that her husband had been captured as a deserter. The next morning he called at the White House and gave the President the facts. The man had been absent a year from his family, and, without leave, had gone home to see them. On his way back to the army he was arrested as a deserter and sentenced to be shot. The sentence was to be carried out that very day.
The President listened attentively, becoming more and more interested in the story. Finally he said, "Why, Kernan, of course this man wanted to see his family, and they ought not to shoot him for that." So he called his secretary and sent a telegram suspending the sentence. He exclaimed, "Get off that just as soon as you can, or they will shoot the man in spite of me!" The result was the man got his pardon and took his place again in the army.
A Congressman who had failed to move Secretary Stanton to grant a pardon, went to the White House late at night, after the President had retired, forced the way to his bedroom, and earnestly besought his interference, exclaiming, earnestly,—
"This man must not be shot, Mr. Lincoln."
"Well," said the President, coolly, "I do not believe shooting will do him any good," and the pardon was granted.