“He was Playful and Sportive as a Child”
“About one week after the battle of Bull Run,” relates another old friend-Whitney-from Illinois, “I made a call on Mr. Lincoln, having no business except to give him some presents which the nuns at the Osage Mission school in Kansas had sent to him through me. A Cabinet meeting had just adjourned, and I was directed to go at once to his room. He was keeping at bay a throng of callers, but, noticing me enter, arose and greeted me with his old-time cordiality. After the room had been partially cleared of visitors Secretary Seward came in and called up a case which related to the territory of New Mexico. ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lincoln; ‘they have neither Governor nor Government. Well, you see Jim Lane; the secretary is his man, and he must hunt him up,’ Seward then left, under the impression, as I then thought, that Lincoln wanted to get rid of him and diplomacy at the same time. Several other persons were announced, but Lincoln notified them all that he was busy and could not see them. He was playful and sportive as a child, told me all sorts of anecdotes, dealing largely in stories about Charles James Fox, and enquired after several odd characters whom we both knew in Illinois. While thus engaged General James was announced. This officer had sent in word that he would leave town that evening, and must confer with the President before going. ‘Well, as he is one of the fellows who make cannons,’ observed Lincoln, ‘I suppose I must see him. Tell him when I get through with Whitney I’ll see him.’ No more cards came up, and James left about five o’clock, declaring that the President was closeted with ‘an old Hoosier from Illinois, and was telling dirty yarns while the country was quietly going to hell.’
Quoted in Herndon’s Lincoln: A True Story of a Great Life Written by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, ed. Herndon-325-12
On Friday, July 26, 1861, being a few days after the first battle at Bull Eun, I reached Washington from the West, and called on the President, the Cabinet meeting having just broken up.
Stackpole, the messenger, carried my name in, and I was immediately admitted, when I found the President writing a brief note on a card, which, when completed, he read aloud, and handed to an old gentleman who was waiting for it. It read thus (in substance) : “Mr. Chase — The bearer, Mr. , wants in the Custom House, at Baltimore.
If his recommendations are satisfactory (and I recollect them to have been so) the fact that he is urged by the Methodists should be in his favor, as they complain of us some. A. Lincoln.”
I remarked, jocularly, that by that philosophy he should treat the rebels better than he did, as they complained of us some ; to which he replied, drily, that they complained the wrong way. Stackpole, who had come in for something, took occasion to make hay while the sun shone, by observing that his people were Quakers (I believe), and they had received fewer offices than the people of any other denomination ; but Lincoln paid no attention to the remark, and the old gentleman, after thanking him warmly, withdrew with the messenger.
I had no business at all with the President, except to pay my respects to him after a three months’ absence fromWashington on official business ; but he evidently was very glad to see me, and appeared as if he designed to appropriate me for the time being, in order to secure some needed rest and recreation from burdensome cares, by talking with me about the light and trivial matters we had experienced and seen together in his happier days ; so I remained with him the entire afternoon, entirely alone, except a chance call from Secretary Seward, on a brief errand.
As the Secretary came in the President hailed him in a somewhat peremptory but good-natured manner: “Well, Govern-nwer, what is it now?” The Secretary seemed a mere trifle nettled, but still amused, at this abrupt greeting. His ostensible business related to some needed thing about New Mexico ; the President interrupted him by remarking: “In other words. New Mexico has no govern-or nor gov era- merit. ” He then gave the Secretary the instructions needed, when the latter immediately withdrew, fully impressed with the belief that the President had banished care and burdensome business, including consultations with his constitutional advisers, for the remainder of that day.
Later in the afternoon Stackpole brought in word that General, formerly Senator, James, of Rhode Island, was anxious to see the President, and that he must leave town that very afternoon.
The President said, carelessly: “Well, as James makes canning (cannon), I reckon I must see him.” Then to Stackpole : “Tell him when I get through with Whitney I will see him.” But he didn’t mention the subject afterward (I expect James had got to be a great bore) : and as I left, just before six o’clock, Stackpole told me that James waited till just before train time, and then left, soundly abusing the President and me, whom (having heard that I was from Illinois) he averred was some backwoods rail-splitter whom he was amusing with stories. The only work the President did on that afternoon was to sign his name to a mass of commissions for navy officers, talking all the while in a style that ranged “From grave to gay, from lively to severe.”
Conversation could not have taken a wider range than ours did, embracing his view of the crisis we were then in his estimate of several of the leading men of the day ; his description of the cabinet councils preceding and concerning the ill-fated battle of Bull Eun ; his anxieties for the future ; interspersed with stories and random talk about characters we had jointly met, and incidents we had encountered together. I Will venture to say that a faithful report of our tete-a-tete would have astonished the nation : so curious a melange of statesman-like expressions and opinions, and “Smalltalk” — the sublime and the ridiculous so interwoven and blended — has rarely been known ; and I will venture to say further that if one of his monologues on the crisis could have been authoritatively repeated in Richmond, it would have been reproduced in every newspaper — in every political speech — in official documents — at the head of brigades on the eve of battle — and in every household, throughout Dixie.
He was apparently devoid of care for the time being ; I remarked this with gratulation, to which he replied, his face becoming sad for a moment : “I have trouble enough ; when T last saw you I was having little troubles ; they filled my mind full: since then I have big troubles, and they can do no more.” Said he : “What do you think has annoyed me more than any one thing?” I replied: “Bull Run, of course.” “I don’t mean,” said he, “an affair which is forced by events, and which a single man cannot do much with, but I mean of matters, wholly mine to manage. Now, I will tell you ; the fight over two post-offices — one at our Bloomington, and the other at , in Pennsylvania (I think),”and he told me at length of the various elements in those struggles — being quite equally balanced — which had disturbed him so much.
I remarked that some of the politicians had already set McClellan up as his successor ; to which he replied, with complete indifference, that he was perfectly willing if he, McClellan, would but push the war vigorously, and win. This was just after the young Napoleon had taken hold.
He asked me in detail about many of our mutual friends in Illinois, of both high and low degree : of Judge Davis I said,: “You ought to make him a Supreme Jadge.” To this bit of vicarious electioneering, Lincoln vouchsafed no response at all, but was thoughtful and silent for a few moments, when he started out on a new subject : thus clearly rebuking me for obtruding office-seeking politics on his social pastime. We spoke of Douglas, and of the joint debate of 1858, and he chuckled over the trap he had set for Douglas at Freeport, by which he was caught in the springes of “unfriendly legislation,” and lost his hope of the Presidency. The simile which was used to illustrate the subject was more pertinent than classical. I referred to a bombastical, florid and pathetic account I had read in some paper of the parting between them, when Douglas left for Illinois, to which he replied: “All there was of it, Douglas bustled in here one day, in a great hurry, saying that and wanted him to come to Illinois and malce some speeches, and see the party leaders there, and he would do just as I said about it : and I told him I thought he had better go, and he said goodbye, and rushed out m a hurry to get ready for the train : and that is all there was about it.” A man Avhom we both knew, and who was then living in a Border slave state, was referred to by Mr. Lincoln as seeking an appointment as quartermaster, and he asked my advice about it. It so happened that this person and his associates in a business matter had employed us both as lawyers in connection with it, and then had cheated us both out of our fees. It had been a flagrant case of outrage, inasmuch as Lincoln, at my request, had made elaborate research and an extensive brief in the case, and I reminded him of it, remarking warmly that a man who would cheat a lawyer out of pay for actual services, would doubtless cheat the government, if he got a chance. Lincoln reflected for perhaps a minute over this proposition, and then said, slowly : “I rather reckon that is so.” I incline to think he was intending to make the appointment, and would have done so but for this reminder. As he was signing commissions, I said : “Everything is drifting into the army, and I guess you will have to put me in.” He at once said : “I’m making generals now, but I’ll get to making quartermasters in a day or two, then I’ll attend to you,” and he did so, without further request.
The then recent disaster at Bull Eun was necessarily mentioned, and I said to him : “I heard Eichardson say in Congress that General Scott had told him that Bull Eun was not his battle, the innuendo being that it was forced on him by the administration.” Lincoln at once went to another part of the room and brought a hand-made ma]p of the battlefield and surrounding country, and said : ‘Here is the topographical engineers’ map that we planned the battle by. I gave Scott my views ; I showed him the enemies’ forces, their positions and entrenchments — their railway facilities — capacities for reinforcing and what Johnson might do ; I particularly tried to impress on him the disadvantage Patterson’s forces labored under of having no communication but by a common road ; but to all I could urge, or suggest, or doubt, Scott would not reply in detail or specifically, but would scout the idea that we could be defeated ; and I really could not get him down to a consideration of the subject in a practical way; he would insist that we couldn’t be beat, no how, and that was all there was of it.”
The gravity of the situation as it then existed was spoken of, and Lincoln thus expressed himself: “I intend to make and keep the blockade as effective as I can ; that is very difficult to do, and it gives me a great deal of trouble, as the line of coast is long ; but I attach great importance to that measure, and I mean to do the best I can about it; then I want to move a column of the army into East Tennessee, to liberate the luiion sentiment there ; I want to press them here in Virginia, and keep them away from Washington ; I want to hem in those who are fighting us, and make a feint against Eichmond, and drive them away from Manassas ; I hope ultimately they will get tired of it, and arouse and say to their leaders, and to their politicians, ‘This thing has got to stop !’ That is our only chance. It is plain to me that it’s no use of trying to subdue those people if they remain united, and bound they wont be subdued.” As I have never heard of these sentiments being expressed to any one else, I have endeavored to be very accurate about my statements, as I am very positive about my recollection. I have given the substance, certainly, and almost the very language used.
One might naturally suppose that enough incident for our afternoon talk existed on this hemisphere, but he gave me an humorous account of the various shifts of Charles James Fox to elude his creditors.
The ideal moral philosopher will probably be shocked to learn that the President of this nation, in the day of its sternest trial, while Congress was in session concerting measures to confront the rebellion, should be idling away his time as I have described it ; but a practical philosopher, possessed of all the facts, can readily see the absolute need of these hours of respite from anxiety — the necessity of this mental relaxation — the great importance of taking his mind away from the tread-mill which was wearing his spirits out.
I do not in the least doubt that our tired, jaded and wretched President did more good to the nation by taking this afternoon of relief from labor and anxiety than if he had steeped his soul in misery in some way for the good of the cause, according to the most approved style of the dilletante paragraphers and reviewers, who think that a statesman, like a blind horse in a tread-mill, needs no rest, or that, like the conventional whitewashed statue of justice, he must always pose for dignified effect.
In June or July, 1853, one year before I saw Lincoln under similar circumstances, while riding toward Bangor, with a friend, we encountered, in the dusty road, an ordinary buggy drawn by an ordinary horse, and having for a driver an ordinary, farmer-like man, clad in a severely plain manner, having on a broad-brimmed straw hat ; swart of visage, and slovenly in style. But it was Hannibal Hamlin, then the leading Senator from the state of Maine, near his home.
A few moments later, we passed his law-office in the little settlement of Hampden. It was located away from all other buildings, and on the edge of the village. It was a one-story building, and while having the appearance of, at some period, having had a coat of paint, it was so dilapidated and weather-beaten as to afford little trace thereof, then. The windows were cracked and broken, and a mud-hole at the front door, gave evidence that the building was in a state of desuetude. The sign “H. Hamlin, Attorney,” was still in place ; but the storms of — probably — a quarter of a century had pretty well obliterated the inscription.
On the succeeding Sabbath, at the village church, I saw Senator Hamlin among his neighbors ; and his general appearance and deportment, gave no evidence of his political exaltation. He appeared very much like the average farmer or mechanic, with the single exception that he wore the swallow-tail coat of two decades previously, and the neck stock which had gone out of general use for nearly as long.
At this time, Senator Hamlin was in full and regular standing in the Democratic party, with probably no expectation of ever severing his connection therefrom. He was in full political accord with Jeff. Davis — Franklin Pierce — Eobert Toombs, and the rest ; but within eight months from the day I encountered him on the dusty road, he arose in his seat in the Senate, and asking the Senate to receive his resignation as Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, conferred by the Democratic party, he withdrew forever therefrom. It had joined itself to its pro-slavery idol, and he let it alone.
By Henry C. Whitney:Life on the circuit with Lincoln
April 20, 2016 at 08:46
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