Part 54 (2/2)
”Do you think that they would like to have Hannibal Hamlin--his first vice-president--here any better than myself?”
The story is repeated with his second Vice subst.i.tuted for the first, with the more justification, as ”Andy” Johnson was impeached for his incompetency. Detective Baker put it this way: ”As to the crazy folks, I must take my chances. The most crazy people being, I fear, some of my own too zealous adherents.”
(He had the same idea as in an ancient Chinese proverb: ”You may steal the captain out of his castle, but you cannot steal the castle.”)
”I am but a single individual, and it would not help their cause, or make the least difference in the progress of the war.” [Footnote: He might have said, as truly as his predecessor, John Tyler, reproached also for going about unguarded: ”My body-guard is the people who elected me.”]--(Cited by F. B. Carpenter.)
THE FEARLESSNESS OF THE G.o.d-FEARING.
Lincoln said that by the death of his son Willie he was touched; by the victory of Gettysburg made a believer. It is plain that, after this, a fort.i.tude replaced the despondency stamping him. It may be due to this conviction of being one of the chosen, like Cromwell and Gordon, soldiers of Christ, that he met all adjurations for him to take care of his precious life with fanatical unconcern. He communicated to the Cabinet, at the close of the conflict, how he had appointed to confer alone and without guards to terrify the emissary, a noted Confederate. They were to discuss peace--and by that word, Lincoln was drawn to any one. He answered the cautions with the simple saying:
”I am but an individual, and my removal will not in any way advance the other folks in their endeavors.”
In fact, it was so--the misdeed was a double-edged blade which cut both ways. It will never be known, probably, how near a ma.s.sacre followed the explosion of indignation at that maniac's murder of the Emanc.i.p.ator. Fortunately for the unsullied robe of Columbia, a hundred advocates of leaving retribution to Heaven echoed Garfield's appeasing address.
Lincoln met the intermediator, but the ultimate negotiation fell through, like the others all. He came home from City Point with sadness, but from his seed has outcome the Universal Peace Tribunal of The Hague. Professor Martens based his original plea of the czar's on the Lincolnian guide for the soldiers in our war.
THE POISONING PLOT.
A servant at the White House testifies that he was approached by emissaries who offered him a sum almost preposterously large to put a powder in the milk for the Lincoln family's table. The agents knew that they were temperance followers, milk being as common as wine at previous tenants' table. This was laughed at before the shadow of Booth's patricide was cast ahead. But the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher publicly declares--and he was in the state secrets as deeply as any layman--that President-General Harrison, ”Tippecanoe,” was poisoned that Tyler might fulfil the plan to annex Texas as a slave State.
”With even stronger convictions is it affirmed that President-General Taylor was poisoned, that a less stern successor might give a suppler instrument to manage. Who doubts now that it was attempted Breckenridge in his room?”
NOTHING LIKE GETTING USED TO THINGS!
The more evident it grew that the President, at whom the stupid jeers persisted through incurable density of his enemies, was the vital motor of the Union cause, than threats of violently removing him were continually sent him. So many such letters acc.u.mulated that he grimly packeted them together and labeled the ma.s.s: ”a.s.sa.s.sination Papers.”
It was a Damoclesian dagger of which he spoke lightly, because fear of death never awed him. When a man walks in the manifest path traced out for him by Heaven, he does not tremble. But friends, more concerned by the strain in watching over his safety, expressing surprise at his indifference, he tried to rea.s.sure them:
”Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things!”
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