Abraham Lincoln

“The President had some Quaint Remarks”

Posted on June 16, 2016 Updated on May 15, 2018

The President had originally proposed to come up on horseback, but I told him that “there was not a particle of danger from torpedoes; that I would have them all taken up.” When he saw them all on the bank he turned to me and said, “You must have been awful afraid of getting on that sergeant’s old horse again to risk all this.” We got down safe, however; there was not enough danger to make it interesting. The President had some quaint remarks about everything we saw, particularly about Dutch Gap, which, he said, “ought to have been commenced before the war – at least ten years. Then,” he said, “you might have had a chance of getting your gun-boats up that way. By the way, your friend the general wasn’t a ‘boss’ engineer. He was better at running cotton-mills. How many people did it cost for that jetty?” he asked. “One hundred and forty killed there as far as I can learn,” I answered. Then he went into a discussion of the generals of the war – what diflEiculties he had in making appointments, etc. He illustrated each case with a story.

Quoted in David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1886), p. 309.