Abraham Lincoln

“This was a Step from the Sublime”

Posted on June 15, 2016 Updated on May 15, 2018

There were three little kittens running about the hut in which the telegraph-office was situated. Mr. Lincoln picked them all up and put them on his little chart on the table. This was a step from the sublime, it is true, but it showed the feelings of the man at a moment when the fate of a nation was hanging in the scales. He could find time to look at God’s creatures and be solicitous for their comfort.

“There,” he said, “you poor, little, miserable creatures, what brought you into this camp of warriors? Where is your mother?”

“The mother is dead,” said the colonel.

“Then she can’t grieve for them as many a poor mother is grieving for the sons who have fallen in battle, and who will still grieve if this surrender does not take place without bloodshed. Ah, kitties, thank God you are cats, and can’t understand this terrible strife that is going on. There, now, go, my little friends,” he continued, wiping the dirt from their eyes with his handkerchief; “that is all I can do for you. Colonel, get them some milk, and don’t let them starve; there is too much starvation going on in this land anyhow; mitigate it when we can,”

Quoted in David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1886), p. 286.