Part 28 (1/2)

THAT KING LOST HIS HEAD.

In 1865 the President and his state secretary received as peace commissioners Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell. They wanted recognition of their President, Davis, as head of the Confederated States--an ent.i.ty. Without stultification, this was impossible. In the course of the discussion, reference was made to King Charles I. of England and his Parliament negotiating--so might the established Was.h.i.+ngton government treat with the rebel Davis. On Lincoln's features stole that grim smile foretelling his shaft ready to shoot, and he interjected:

”Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted on such things, and I do not profess to be; but my only distinct recollection of that matter is that Charles I. lost his head!”

SWEARING LIKE A CHURCHWARDEN.

To convey the President from General Hooker's camp to the review of General Reynolds' corps, a ride had to be taken in a six-mule ambulance. Either not knowing the rank of his pa.s.senger, or being a teamster, which in our army replaces the French sapper for rudeness, the driver showered as many oaths of the largest caliber--fire and fury signifying nothing--as snaps of the long cowhide. Lincoln, who had known the genus in the clay of the West, kept his eye on him while leaning out of the window. In an interval when the vociferator had to take breath, he asked quietly:

”Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?”

”N-no, Mr. President,” stammered the astonished jehu, ”I am a Methodist.”

”Well, I thought you must be an Episcopalian, for you swear like Secretary Seward, a warden of that church.”

(Seward was the great man of the Republican party, next to Lincoln only in some essentials for political success. While a church member, he was man of the world enough to give a backing to this jest of the President.)

”MY SPEECHES HAVE ORIGINALITY AS THEIR MERIT.”

Instead of believing that Lincoln's extraordinary experiences in the multifarious West produced a factotum, his revilers a.s.serted that he looked to one minister for financial instructions, to another for military guidance, etc. But it is true that by tradition, as the premier in fact, the secretary of state is supposed to write the first drafts at least of the presidential speeches to foreign ministers, and, as the secretary was Seward, a man of letters preeminently, he had Lincoln's addresses, even to home delegations, fathered upon him.

The President was chatting in his own study when a messenger ran in with a paper, explaining his haste with the words:

”Compliments of the secretary with the speech your excellency is to make to the Swiss minister.”

Anybody else would have been abashed by the seeming exposure, but the executive merely cried aloud as if to publish the facts to the auditory:

”Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me. I guess I will try it before these gentlemen, and see how it goes.” He read it in the burlesque manner with which he parodied circuit preachers in his boyhood and public speakers in his prime, and added at the close:

”There, I like that. It has the merit of originality!”

RIGHTING WRONG HURTS, BUT DOES GOOD.

In May, 1861, all looked with anxiety to the letter by which the United States of America should reply to Great Britain furnis.h.i.+ng the Confederated States with its first encouragement, the rights of belligerents. Without them their privateers were useless, as they could have gone into no ports and sold their prizes nowhere. Mr.

Seward was in touch with the New England school. It clamored for war with any friend to the revolting States. But Lincoln corrected what was provocative in the original advice to our minister, Adams, at St.

James'. The English were no longer held to have issued a proclamation without due grounds in usage or the law of nations. It became by the modification no more a proceeding about which we could warrantably go to war. For instance, the President changed the words ”wrongful” into ”hurtful.” According to Webster, wrongful means unjust, injurious, dishonest; while hurtful implies that the course will cause injury.