Part 25 (2/2)
The horse he rode was a very spirited one, and was Mr. Lincoln's favorite saddle-horse. As horse and rider approached the gate, I noticed that the President was bareheaded. As soon as I had a.s.sisted him in checking his steed, the President said to me: 'He came pretty near getting away with me, didn't he? He got the bit in his teeth before I could draw the rein.' I then asked him where his hat was; and he replied that somebody had fired a gun off down at the foot of the hill, and that his horse had become scared and had jerked his hat off. I led the animal to the Executive Cottage, and the President dismounted and entered.
Thinking the affair rather strange, a corporal and myself started off to investigate. When we reached the place whence the sound of the shot had come--a point where the driveway intersects, with the main road--we found the President's hat. It was a plain silk hat, and upon examination we discovered a _bullet-hole_ through the crown. We searched the locality thoroughly, but without avail. Next day I gave Mr. Lincoln his hat, and called his attention to the bullet-hole. He made some humorous remark, to the effect that it was made by some foolish marksman and was not intended for him; but added that he wished nothing said about the matter. We all felt confident it was an attempt to kill the President, and after that he never rode alone.”
Amidst his terrible trials, Lincoln often exhibited a forced and sorrowful serenity, which many mistook for apathy. Even his oldest and best friends were sometimes deceived in this way. Hon. Leonard Swett relates a touching instance: ”In the summer of 1864, when Grant was pounding his way toward Richmond in those terrible battles of the Wilderness, myself and wife were in Was.h.i.+ngton trying to do what little two persons could do toward alleviating the sufferings of the maimed and dying in the vast hospitals of that city. We tried to be thorough and systematic. We took the first man we came to, brought him delicacies, wrote letters to his friends, or did for him whatever else he most needed; then the next man, and so on. Day after day cars and ambulances were coming in, laden with untold sorrows for thousands of homes. After weeks of this kind of experience my feelings became so wrought up that I said to myself: The country cannot long endure this sacrifice. In mercy, both to North and South, every man capable of bearing arms must be hurried forward to Grant to end this, fearful slaughter at the earliest possible moment. I went to President Lincoln at the White House, and poured myself out to him. He was sitting by an open window; and as I paused, a bird lit upon a branch just outside and was twittering and singing most joyously. Mr. Lincoln, imitating the bird, said: '_Tweet, tweet, tweet_; isn't he singing sweetly?' I felt as if my legs had been cut from under me. I rose, took my hat, and said, 'I see the country is safer than I thought.' As I moved toward the door, Mr. Lincoln called out, in his hearty, familiar way, 'Here, Swett, come back and sit down.'
Then he went on: 'It is impossible for a man in my position not to have thought of all those things. Weeks ago every man capable of bearing arms was ordered to the front, and everything you have suggested has been done.'”
The burdens borne by Lincoln seemed never to tell so seriously on his strength and vitality as in this terrible battle-summer of 1864. For him there had been no respite, no holiday. Others left the heat and dust of Was.h.i.+ngton for rest and recuperation; but he remained at his post. The demands upon him were incessant; one anxiety and excitement followed another, and under the relentless strain even his st.u.r.dy strength began to give way. ”I sometimes fancy,” said he, with pathetic good-humor, ”that every one of the numerous grist ground through here daily, from a Senator seeking a war with France down to a poor woman after a place in the Treasury Department, darted at me with thumb and finger, picked out _their especial piece of my vitality_, and carried it off. When I get through with such a day's work there is only one word which can express my condition, and that is _flabbiness_.” Once Mr. Brooks ”found him sitting in his chair so collapsed and weary that he did not look up or speak when I addressed him. He put out his hand, mechanically, as if to shake hands, when I told him I had come at his bidding. Presently he roused a little, and remarked that he had had '_a mighty hard day_.'”
Mr. Riddle, who saw him at this period, after some months' absence, says he was shocked, on gaining admission to the President, ”by his appearance--that of a _baited, cornered man_, always on the defense against attacks that he could not openly meet and defy or punish.” Mr.
Carpenter, an inmate of the White House, says: ”Absorbed in his papers, he would become unconscious of my presence, while I intently studied every line and shade of expression in that furrowed face. There were days when I could scarcely look into it without crying. During the first week of the battles of the Wilderness he scarcely slept at all. Pa.s.sing through the main hall of the domestic apartment on one of these days, I met him, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow pa.s.sage leading to one of the windows, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast,--altogether such a picture of the effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have melted the hearts of the worst of his adversaries, who so mistakenly applied to him the epithets of tyrant and usurper.”
Mr. Edward Dicey, the English historian, says: ”Never in my knowledge have I seen a sadder face than that of the late President during the time his features were familiar to me. It is so easy to be wise after the event; but it seems to me now that one ought somehow to have foreseen that the stamp of a sad end was impressed by nature on that rugged, haggard face. The exceeding sadness of the eyes and their strange sweetness were the one redeeming feature in a face of unusual plainness, and there was about them that odd, weird look, which some eyes possess, of seeming to see more than the outer objects of the world around.”
Lincoln's family and friends strove to beguile him of his melancholy.
They took him to places of amus.e.m.e.nt; they walked and drove with him in the pleasantest scenes about the capital; and above all, they talked with him of times past, seeking to divert his mind from its present distress by reviving memories of more joyous days. His old friends were, as Mr. Arnold states, ”shocked with the change in his appearance. They had known him at his home, and at the courts in Illinois, with a frame of iron and nerves of steel; as a man who hardly knew what illness was, ever genial and sparkling with frolic and fun, nearly always cheery and bright. Now they saw the wrinkles on his face and forehead deepen into furrows; the laugh of old days was less frequent, and it did not seem to come from the heart. Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, disasters, defeats, the injustice of friends, wore upon his giant frame, and his nerves of steel became at times irritable. He said one day, with a pathos which language cannot describe, 'I feel as though I shall _never be glad again_.'”
Hon. Schuyler Colfax repeats a similarly pathetic expression which fell from the lips of the afflicted President. ”One morning,” says Mr.
Colfax, ”calling upon him on business, I found him looking more than usually pale and careworn, and inquired the reason. He replied with the bad news he had received at a late hour the previous night, which had not yet been communicated to the press, adding that he had not closed his eyes or breakfasted; and, with an expression I shall never forget, he exclaimed, 'How willingly would I exchange places today with the soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac!'”
A lady who saw Lincoln in the summer of 1864 for the first time, and who had expected to see ”a very homely man,” says: ”I was totally unprepared for the impression instantly made upon me. So bowed and sorrow-laden was his whole person, expressing such weariness of mind and body, as he dropped himself heavily from step to step down to the ground. But his face!--oh, the pathos of it!--haggard, drawn into fixed lines of unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. I was so penetrated with the anguish and settled grief in every feature, that I gazed at him through tears, and felt I had stepped upon the threshold of a sanctuary too sacred for human feet. The impression I carried away was that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as _the saddest man in the world_.”
The changes in Lincoln's appearance were noted in the subdued, refined, purified expression of his face, as of one struggling almost against hope, but still patiently enduring. Mr. Brooks says, ”I have known impressionable women, touched by his sad face and his gentle bearing, to go away in tears.” Another observer, Rev. C.B. Crane, wrote at the time: ”The President looks thin and careworn. His form is bowed as by a crus.h.i.+ng load; his flesh is wasted as by incessant solicitude; and his face is thin and furrowed and pale, as though it had become spiritualized by the vicarious pain which he endured in bearing on himself all the calamities of his country.” Truly it might be said of him, in the words of Matthew Arnold:
With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 't were done.
Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.
In the tragic experiences of Lincoln in these dark days, the outlook was less gloomy than it had seemed to his tortured soul. He was even then, as Mr. John Bigelow puts it, ”making for himself a larger place in history than he had any idea of.” He ”builded better than he knew”; and the ”hours of light” were soon to come when he would know what he had built and see the signs that promised better things. The Presidential election of 1864 demonstrated the abiding confidence of the people in him and his administration. Every loyal State but three--New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky--gave him its electoral vote; and his popular majority over McClellan, the Democratic candidate, was upwards of 400,000. Lincoln was cheered but not exultant at the news. Late in the evening of election day (November 8, 1864) he said, in response to public congratulations: ”I am thankful to G.o.d for this approval of the people. But while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my own heart my grat.i.tude is free from any taint of personal triumph. It is not in my nature to triumph over anyone; but I give thanks to Almighty G.o.d for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity.”
While the election returns were coming in, early in the evening, Lincoln was at the War Department with a little group a.s.sembled to hear them read. How different the scene from that in the quiet country town where he had waited for the returns on a similar occasion four years before!
Then all was peace--the lull before the storm. Now the storm had broken, and its greatest fury was raging about that patient and devoted man who waited to hear the decision of the nation's supreme tribunal--the voice of the people whose decree would settle the fate of himself and of the country. Mr. Charles A. Dana, a.s.sistant Secretary of War, who was in the group, gives this description of the scene: ”General Eckert was coming in continually with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton would read them, and the President would look at them and comment upon them. Presently there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called me up to a place by his side. 'Dana,' said he, 'have you ever read any of the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby?' 'No, sir,' I said, 'I have only looked at some of them, and they seemed to me funny.' 'Well,' said he, 'let me read you a specimen,' and pulling out a thin yellow-covered pamphlet from his breast pocket he began to read aloud. Mr. Stanton viewed this proceeding with great impatience, as I could see; but Mr.
Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or a story, pause to con a new election telegram, and then open the book again and go ahead with a new pa.s.sage. Finally Mr. Chase came in; and presently Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never forget his indignation at what seemed to him disgusting nonsense.”
The morning following the election one of his private secretaries, Mr.
Neill, coming to the Executive office earlier than usual, found Lincoln at his table engaged in his regular routine of official work. ”Entering the room,” says Mr. Neill, ”I took a seat by his side, extended my hand, and congratulated him upon the vote, for the country's sake and for his own sake. Turning away from the papers which had been occupying his attention, he spoke kindly of his compet.i.tor, the calm, prudent General, and great organizer.”
The importance of Lincoln's re-election, to the country and to himself, is forcibly stated by General Grant and Secretary Seward. The former telegraphed from City Point, the day following: ”The victory is worth more to the country than a battle won.” And the same evening, at a public gathering held to celebrate the event, Mr. Seward said: ”The election has placed our President beyond the pale of human envy or human harm, as he is above the pale of human ambition. Henceforth all men will come to see him as we have seen him--a true, loyal, patient, patriotic, and benevolent man. Having no longer any motive to malign or injure him, detraction will cease, and Abraham Lincoln will take his place with Was.h.i.+ngton and Franklin and Jefferson and Adams and Jackson--among the benefactors of the country and of the human race.”
Lincoln evidently felt greatly rea.s.sured by the result of what had seemed to him a very doubtful contest; but with the return of cheerfulness came also the dread of continuing his official labors. He began to long and plan for that happy period at the end of the second term when he should be free from public burdens. ”Mrs. Lincoln desired to go to Europe for a long tour of pleasure,” says Mr. Brooks. ”The President was disposed to gratify her wish; but he fixed his eyes on California as a place of permanent residence. He had heard so much of the delightful climate and the abundant natural productions of California that he had become possessed of a strong desire to visit the State and remain there if he were satisfied with the results of his observations. 'When we leave this place,' he said, one day, 'we shall have enough, I think, to take care of us old people. The boys must look out for themselves. I guess mother will be satisfied with six months or so in Europe. After that I should really like to go to California and take a look at the Pacific coast.'”
After the Baltimore Convention, Mr. Chase proposed to resign his position as Secretary of the Treasury, but he was persuaded by influential friends of himself and Lincoln to reconsider his determination. Chief among these friends was Hon. John Brough, the st.u.r.dy ”War Governor” of Ohio. Later in the summer of 1864 the relations between the President and Secretary Chase again became inharmonious; the latter determined a second time to resign, and communicated that fact in a confidential letter to Governor Brough. Hon. Wm. Henry Smith, at that time Ohio's Secretary of State, and intimately acquainted with the circ.u.mstances as they occurred, says: ”Mr. Brough went directly to Was.h.i.+ngton to bring about another reconciliation. After talking the matter over with Mr. Chase and Mr. Stanton, he called on the President and urged a settlement that would retain the services of Mr. Chase in the Treasury Department. Mr. Lincoln was very kind, and admitted the force of all that was urged; but finally said, with a quiet but impressive firmness, 'Brough, I think you had better _give up the job_ this time.' And thereupon he gave reasons why it was unwise for Mr.
Chase to continue longer in the Cabinet.”
In the autumn, the Chief-Justices.h.i.+p became vacant by the death of Judge R.B. Taney (October 11, 1864), and the friends of Mr. Chase, who was then in retirement, desired his elevation to that honorable seat.
Congressman Riddle, who was designated to present the matter to the President, says: ”After hearing what I had to say, Mr. Lincoln asked, 'Will this content Mr. Chase?' 'It is said that those bitten of the Presidency die of it,' I replied. His smile showed he would not take that answer. I added: 'Mr. Chase is conscious of ability to serve the country as President. We should expect the greatest from him.' 'He would not disappoint you, were it in his reach. But I should be sorry to see a Chief-Justice anxious to _swap_ for it.' I said then what I had already said to Mr. Chase: that I would rather be the Chief Justice than the President. I urged that the purity and elevation of Mr. Chase's character guaranteed the dignity of the station from all compromise; that momentous questions must arise, involving recent exercises of power, without precedents to guide the court; that the honor of the Government would be safe in the hands of Mr. Chase. 'Would you _pack_ the Supreme Court?' he asked, a little sharply. 'Would you have a Judge with no preconceived notions of law?' was my response. 'True, true,' was his laughing reply; 'how could I find anyone, fit for the place, who has not some definite notions on all questions likely to arise?'”
The proposed appointment of Mr. Chase as Chief-Justice was severely criticized by certain friends of Lincoln, who believed Mr. Chase was personally hostile to the President, and could not understand the latter's magnanimity in thus ignoring personal considerations. When told of these criticisms, Lincoln said: ”My friends all over the country are trying to put up the bars between me and Governor Chase. I have a vast number of messages and letters from men who think they are my friends, imploring and warning me not to appoint him. Now I know more about Governor Chase's hostility to me than any of these men can tell me; but _I am going to nominate him_.” Which he did, and Chase became Chief-Justice in December, 1864.
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