“Your Experience Will Help Me To Bear My Afflictions”

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In this gloomy period of the war, when he was exposed to politi- cal onslaughts from both sides, an object of derision for society people, despised by his generals, uncertain how and when the whole terrible business would end, groping his way forward toward light and knowledge amid a crowd of warring counselors – his two younger sons, infected at a hospital they had visited, fell sick, and Willie, the twelve-year-old boy to whom he was devotedly attached, succumbed within a few days. Lincoln watches with the nurse at the ailing children’s bedside. He ques- tions this nurse, a sincere Christian, as to her own situation ; she tells him she is a widow, her husband and two children are in heaven, she is reconciled to her afflictions, and has learned to love God even more ardently than in happier days. How has that been brought about? By trusting in Him, and believing that all He ordained was for the best.
“Did you submit fully under the first loss?”
“Only oy degrees. As blow followed blow, I learned better how to submit.”
“I am glad to hear you say that. Your experience will help me to bear my afflictions. . . . This is the hardest trial of my life. Why is it? Why is it?”
When he is told that many Christians are praying for him, he says, “I am glad to hear that. … I need their prayers. . . . I wish I had that childlike faith you speak of, and I trust God will give it to me.” He goes on to speak of his mother, buried so many years before in the wilds of Indiana. “I remember her prayers, and they have always followed me.”
Nocturnal conversations, in the half light of a sickroom lamp, while the lean and careworn man stretches his legs towards the wall, and, as part of his personality escapes from its habitual restraints, his skepticism passes for a time into abeyance. His wife, being hysterically inclined, prowls restlessly up and down, on the verge of madness. But Lincoln sits quiet, thinking about his mother’s prayers; asks the stranger whether it takes long before one can submit to affliction ; and as soon as he goes out of the room it is to find Seward waiting for him with a menacing telegram from Europe, or Stanton with bad news from the front, or an unhappy woman who wants to save her son from the clutches of martial law, and at the same moment his own son’s life is being cut short prematurely in consequence of the war.

By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” , Ludwig-301-11


At 5 p.m. on Thursday, February 20, Willie died. Minutes later, Lincoln burst into Nicolay’s office. “Well, Nicolay,” he said, “my boy is gone-he is actually gone!” He began to sob. According to Elizabeth Keckley, when Lincoln came back into the room after Willie’s body had been washed and dressed, he “buried his head in his hands, and his tall frame was convulsed with emotion.” Though Keckley had observed Lincoln more intimately than most, she “did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved.”

Asked to recommend a nurse, Dix chose Rebecca Pomroy, a young widow who had worked on typhoid wards in two Washington hospitals. Introducing Nurse Pomroy to Lincoln, Dix assured the president that she had “more confidence” in her than any other nurse, even those twice her age. Lincoln took Pomroy’s hand and smiled, saying: “Well, all I want to say is, let her turn right in.”

While Willie’s body lay in the Green Room and Mary remained in bed under sedation, Nurse Pomroy tended Tad. Whenever possible, the president brought his work into Tad’s room and sat with his son, who was “tossing with typhoid.” Always curious and compassionate about other people’s lives, Lincoln asked the new nurse about her family. She explained that she was a widow and had lost two children. Her one remaining child was in the army. Hearing her painful story, he began to cry, both for her and for his own stricken family. “This is the hardest trial of my life,” he said. “Why is it? Oh, why is it?” Several times during the long nights Tad would awaken and call for his father. “The moment [the president] heard Taddie’s voice he was at his side,” unmindful of the picture he presented in his dressing gown and slippers.

Goodwin-409-278-47

3 thoughts on ““Your Experience Will Help Me To Bear My Afflictions”

    Words : Moderate « Abraham Lincoln said:
    April 5, 2016 at 16:23

    […] “Your Experience Will Help Me To Bear My Afflictions” […]

    Words : pressure « Abraham Lincoln said:
    April 5, 2016 at 19:49

    […] “Your Experience Will Help Me To Bear My Afflictions” […]

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    June 2, 2016 at 10:58

    […] “His Personality Escapes From Its Habitual Restraints” […]

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