Abraham Lincoln

“To Laugh at such Frivolous Jests”

Posted on April 20, 2016 Updated on May 12, 2018

On November 8th, election day, I went over to the War Department about half past eight o’clock in the evening, and found the President and Mr. Stanton together in the Secretary’s office. General Eckert, who then had charge of the telegraph department of the War Office, was coming in constantly 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 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 be quite 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 these proceedings 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 consider a new election telegram, and then open the book again and go ahead with a new passage. Finally, Mr. Chase came in, and presently somebody else, and then the reading was interrupted.

Mr. Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed to him to be mere nonsense. The idea that when the safety of the republic was thus at issue, when the control of an empire was to be determined by a few figures brought in by the telegraph, the leader, the man most deeply concerned, not merely for himself but for his country, could turn aside to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests was, to his mind, repugnant, even damnable. He could not understand, apparently, that it was by the relief which these jests afforded to the strain of mind under which Lincoln had so long been living, and to the natural gloom of a melancholy and desponding temperament — this was Mr. Lincoln’s prevailing characteristic — that the safety and sanity of his intelligence were maintained and preserved.

Quoted in Charles A. Dana,Recollections of the Civil War: With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1898), p.260

Dana’s recollection is that this episode occurred while Lincoln was waiting for the results of the November presidential election. Other sources, however, suggest that it probably occurred while a larger crowd waited in the telegraph office for results of the state elections in October. Given that Stanton was ill and remained at home during November elections, Dana has probably confused the two dates.
Doris Kearns Goodwin，“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”，pp. 661   Goodwin-661-450-02