Part 33 (1/2)

”Well, gentlemen,” determined the President gravely, ”if that be so, and there is any way under heaven whereby the rebels can be saved, then, for G.o.d's sake and for their sakes, let the man be appointed.”

WHIPPING AROUND THE STUMP.

On New-year's morning, 1864, President Lincoln entered the War Department building. His sensitive nature, more than ever strained to the utmost tension, was irritated by hearing a woman wailing over a child in her arms at an office door. Major Eckert requested to ascertain the cause of the grief brought back the painful but not unexampled explanation. A soldier's wife had come to Was.h.i.+ngton with her babe, expecting to have no difficulty in going on under pa.s.s to the camp where her husband was under the colors. But she learned, to her dismay, that, while an officer's wife has few obstacles to meet in communing with her husband under like circ.u.mstances, the private's is dissimilarly situated. This poor soul, with little money anyway, was perplexed how to wait in the expensive city till her wish was granted.

”Come, Eckert,” blurted out the chief in his frank manner, ”let's send the woman down there!”

It was recited that the war office had strengthened the orders against women in camp.

”H'm!” coughed the other in his dry way, ominous of an alternative, ”let us whip the devil around the stump since he will not step right over! Send the woman's husband leave of absence to report _here_--to see his wife and baby!”

So the officer on duty wrote the order, and the couple were happily reunited.--(By A. B. Chandler, manager of postal telegraphs, attached to the War Department in the war.)

”LIFE TOO PRECIOUS TO BE LOST.”

Benjamin Owen, a young Vermont volunteer, was sentenced to the extremity for being asleep on post. Lincoln was especially lenient in these cases, as he held that a farm-boy, used to going to bed early, was apt to maintain the habit in later life. It came out that the youth had taken the place of a comrade the night before, as extra duty, and this overwork had fatigued him so that his succ.u.mbing was at least explicable. This clue being in a letter he wrote home, his sister journeyed to the capital with it and showed it to the President.

”Oh, that fatal sleep!” he exclaimed, ”thousands of lives might have been lost through that fatal sleep!”

He wrote out the pardon, and said to the girl:

”Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a youth like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life too precious to be lost.”

He went in his carriage to deliver the pardon to the proper authorities for its execution--and not the soldier's. Then, making out a furlough for the released volunteer, he saw him and the sister off on the homeward journey, pinning a badge on the former's arm with the words:

”The shoulder which should bear a comrade's burden, and die for it so uncomplainingly, must wear that strap!”

MERCY HAS PRECEDENCE OVER THE RIGID.

On the 9th of April, 1865, Lee accepted Grant's easy conditions, and practically everything was completed but the formal signing of the capitulation. The wide rejoicing covered the earth, the eye-witnesses may say, with one smile of relief and gladness. Was.h.i.+ngton looked gay with bunting, like New York City on the day of ”Show your flag!”

Above all, the President, whose words at Springfield, in 1860, to the Illinois school superintendent, Newton Bateman, were justified: ”I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be vindicated (in condemning slavery).”

It was, therefore, in a receptive mood that he was found by Senator J. B. Henderson, of Missouri. This gentleman came for the third time on an errand of pity.

At the close of the war, one Colonel Green, brother to United States Senator James S. Green, crossed into Mississippi with his friend and brother in arms, George E. Vaughan. He gave Vaughan letters for home and started him to carry news to his family. Captured within the Federal lines, he was held as a spy. Mr. Henderson succeeded in getting a retrial, and even a third hearing, but still the man was under sentence of death. On the afternoon of April 14, he called at the White House, and insisted that the pardon should be granted now if ever, ”in the interest of peace and consideration.”