“For Each One a Cordial Greeting and a Pleasant Word”
Accompanied by Tad and Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, Lincoln left the Washington Navy Yard aboard the river steamerBaltimore in the early evening of June 20. The journey to City Point, which was about 180 miles farther south by water than Aquia Creek, took more than sixteen hours. Horace Porter, Grant’s aide-de-camp, recalled that when the steamer arrived at the wharf, Lincoln “came down from the upper deck…and reaching out his long, angular arm, he wrung General Grant’s hand vigorously, and held it in his for some time,” as he expressed great appreciation for all that Grant had been through since they last met in Washington. Introduced to the members of Grant’s staff, the president “had for each one a cordial greeting and a pleasant word. There was a kindliness in his tone and a hearty manner of expression which went far to captivate all who met him.”
Over a “plain and substantial” lunch, typical of “the hero of Vicksburg,” noted the Herald correspondent, Lincoln conversed entertainingly and delivered “three capital jokes” that provoked hilarity. When the meal was finished, Grant suggested a ride to the front ten miles away. Porter noted that Lincoln made an odd appearance on his horse as his “trousers gradually worked up above his ankles, and gave him the appearance of a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes.” The sight “bordered upon the grotesque,” but the troops he passed along the way “were so lost in admiration of the man that the humorous aspect did not seem to strike them…cheers broke forth from all the commands, and enthusiastic shouts and even words of familiar greeting met him on all sides.”
Reaching the front, the president took “a long and lingering look” at the sights of Petersburg, where Lee’s armies were gathered behind formidable earthworks. On the return trip, they passed a brigade of black soldiers, who rushed forward to greet the president, “screaming, yelling, shouting: ‘Hurrah for the Liberator; Hurrah for the President.’” Their “spontaneous outburst” moved Lincoln to tears, “and his voice was so broken by emotion” that he could hardly reply.
That evening, Porter recalled, as Lincoln sat for hours with General Grant and his staff, “we had an opportunity of appreciating his charm as a talker, and hearing some of the stories for which he had become celebrated.” The young aide-de-camp observed what so many others had seen before, that Lincoln “did not tell a story merely for the sake of the anecdote, but to point a moral or clench a fact.” Seated on “a low camp-chair,” with his long legs wrapped around each other “as if in an effort to get them out of the way,” he used his arms to accompany his words and “joined heartily with the listeners in the laugh which followed.” Discussion of a new form of gunpowder prompted a story of two competing powder merchants in Springfield. The sight of a newly patented artillery trace led to the recitation of a line from a poem: “Sorrow had fled, but left her traces there.” Reference to the electoral college brought forth the quaint observation that “the Electoral College is the only one where they choose their own masters.” When the convivial evening came to a close, the president walked with Porter to his tent, taking a peek inside, “from curiosity, doubtless, to see how the officers were quartered,” before returning to his stateroom on the Baltimore.
By Doris Kearns Goodwin，“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”，Goodwin-627-428 008-011
April 20, 2016 at 19:59
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