Part 46 (1/2)
BRIGADIERS CHEAP--CHARGERS COSTLY.
The news was transmitted to the Executive that a brigadier-general and his escort of cavalry had been ”gobbled up,” the current and expressive term, by rebel raiders, near Fairfax Court-house, close enough to resound the echoes of the affray.
”I am sorry of the loss of the horses,” deplored the President. ”I mean that I can make a brigadier-general any day--but those horses cost the government a hundred and twenty-five to fifty dollars a head!”
TO CURE SINGING IN THE HEAD.
The key to the trammels which bore upon the several generals of the Army of the Potomac is found in the fears of the inhabitants of the capital that at the least weakness in its defenders, there would be a s.h.i.+fting of the two governments, and the Richmond one would replace that at Was.h.i.+ngton. [Footnote: This seems unlikely now, but General Lee and many competent judges clung to the belief that, had his General Early held his position at Gettysburg, Jefferson Davis, and not Abraham Lincoln, would have occupied Was.h.i.+ngton's seat--for a time, anyway! But IF--the story of the Civil War is studded with ”Ifs.”] But the navy was not considered in this relation. Hence, there was a proposition to draw the rebel forces from the North, by threatening the Southern seaports with naval attacks, and descents of the tars and marines. A deputation visited the President with this project. He listened to its unfolding with his proverbial patient attention, and rejoined:
”This reminds me of the case of a girl out our way, troubled with a singing in the head. All the remedies having been uselessly tried, a plain, common horse-sense sort of a fellow (he bowed to the deputation) was called in.
”'The cure is simple,' he said; 'what is called by sympathy--make a plaster of psalm tunes and apply to the feet; it will draw the singing down and out!'”--(Repeated by Frank Carpenter's ”Recollections.”)
BOWING TO THE BOY OF BATTLES.
Congressman W. D. Kelley wished to procure the admittance of a youth into the Naval School. Though a lad he had ”shown the mettle of a man” on two serious occasions, while belonging to the gunboat _Ottawa_. The President has the right to send three candidates to the school yearly, who have served a year in the naval service.
Thrilled by the recital of the youth's heroic conduct, the President wrote to the secretary of the navy to have the boy put on the list of his appointees. But the subject was found short of the age required.
He would not be fourteen until September of that year, and it was but July.
Lincoln had the hero appear before him. He admired him frankly and altered the order so as to suit the later date. He bade the boy go home and have ”a good time” during the two months, as about the last holiday he would get. The President had reconsidered his first impression that the ”disturbance” was but ”an artificial excitement.”
”And that's the boy who did so gallantly in those two great battles!”
he mused; ”why, I feel that I should bow to him, and not he to me.”--(Authority: Congressman W. D. Kelley; the person was Willie Bladen, U. S. N.)
WHEN WAs.h.i.+NGTON WAS ALL ONE TAVERN.
As men wining with Mars expect to sup with Pluto, the drinking at the capital during the war was horrifying. The bars were overflowing with officers, and while, as ”Orpheus C. Kerr” was saying of the civil-service corps, that spilling red ink was very different from spilling red blood, the novices in uniform were staining their new coats with port. Coming out of the West with the unique recommendation, ”This gentleman from Kentucky never drinks,” President Lincoln had only the American standby, the ice-water pitcher, on his sideboard. And up to the last, even when the jubilation upon the war's close made many a stopper fly out of the tabooed bottle, he could say: ”My example never belied the position I took when I was a young man.”
So he could reply to a New England women's temperance deputation, probably believing the caricaturists who pictured ”Old Abe”
mint-juleping with the eagle.