''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Alexander Kelly McClure [suggested reading TXT] 📗

all my fears and set me perfectly at ease. I have often said since that meeting that it was much easier to see and converse with a great man than it was with a small man.

“On that occasion he said:

“‘Douglass, you need not tell me who you are. Mr. Seward has told me all about you.’

“I then saw that there was no reason to tell him my personal story, however interesting it might be to myself or others, so I told him at once the object of my visit. It was to get some expression from him upon three points:

“1. Equal pay to colored soldiers.

“2. Their promotion when they had earned it on the battlefield.

“3. Should they be taken prisoners and enslaved or hanged, as Jefferson Davis had threatened, an equal number of Confederate prisoners should be executed within our lines.

“A declaration to that effect I thought would prevent the execution of the rebel threat. To all but the last, President Lincoln assented. He argued, however, that neither equal pay nor promotion could be granted at once. He said that in view of existing prejudices it was a great step forward to employ colored troops at all; that it was necessary to avoid everything that would offend this prejudice and increase opposition to the measure.

“He detailed the steps by which white soldiers were reconciled to the employment of colored troops; how these were first employed as laborers; how it was thought they should not be armed or uniformed like white soldiers; how they should only be made to wear a peculiar uniform; how they should be employed to hold forts and arsenals in sickly locations, and not enter the field like other soldiers.

“With all these restrictions and limitations he easily made me see that much would be gained when the colored man loomed before the country as a full-fledged United States soldier to fight, flourish or fall in defense of the united republic. The great soul of Lincoln halted only when he came to the point of retaliation.

“The thought of hanging men in cold blood, even though the rebels should murder a few of the colored prisoners, was a horror from which he shrank.

“‘Oh, Douglass! I cannot do that. If I could get hold of the actual murderers of colored prisoners I would retaliate; but to hang those who have no hand in such murders, I cannot.’

“The contemplation of such an act brought to his countenance such an expression of sadness and pity that it made it hard for me to press my point, though I told him it would tend to save rather than destroy life. He, however, insisted that this work of blood, once begun, would be hard to stop—that such violence would beget violence. He argued more like a disciple of Christ than a commander-in-chief of the army and navy of a warlike nation already involved in a terrible war.

“How sad and strange the fate of this great and good man, the saviour of his country, the embodiment of human charity, whose heart, though strong, was as tender as a heart of childhood; who always tempered justice with mercy; who sought to supplant the sword with counsel of reason, to suppress passion by kindness and moderation; who had a sigh for every human grief and a tear for every human woe, should at last perish by the hand of a desperate assassin, against whom no thought of malice had ever entered his heart!”

 

“LINCOLN GOES IN WHEN THE QUAKERS ARE OUT”

One of the campaign songs of 1860 which will never be forgotten was Whittier’s “The Quakers Are Out:—”

“Give the flags to the winds! Set the hills all aflame! Make way for the man with The Patriarch’s name! Away with misgivings—away With all doubt, For Lincoln goes in when the Quakers are out!”

Speaking of this song (with which he was greatly pleased) one day at the White House, the President said: “It reminds me of a little story I heard years ago out in Illinois. A political campaign was on, and the atmosphere was kept at a high temperature. Several fights had already occurred, many men having been seriously hurt, and the prospects were that the result would be close. One of the candidates was a professional politician with a huge wart on his nose, this disfigurement having earned for him the nickname of ‘Warty.’ His opponent was a young lawyer who wore ‘biled’ shirts, ‘was shaved by a barber, and had his clothes made to fit him.

“Now, ‘Warty’ was of Quaker stock, and around election time made a great parade of the fact. When there were no campaigns in progress he was anything but Quakerish in his language or actions. The young lawyer didn’t know what the inside of a meeting house looked like.

“Well, the night before election-day the two candidates came together at a joint debate, both being on the speakers’ platform. The young lawyer had to speak after ‘Warty,’ and his reputation suffered at the hands of the Quaker, who told the many Friends present what a wicked fellow the young man was—never went to church, swore, drank, smoked and gambled.

“After ‘Warty’ had finished the other arose and faced the audience. ‘I’m not a good man,’ said he, ‘and what my opponent has said about me is true enough, but I’m always the same. I don’t profess religion when I run for office, and then turn around and associate with bad people when the campaign’s over. I’m no hypocrite. I don’t sing many psalms. Neither does my opponent; and, talking about singing, I’d just like to hear my friend who is running against me sing the song—for the benefit of this audience—I heard him sing the night after he was nominated. I yield the floor to him:

“Of course ‘Warty’ refused, his Quaker supporters grew suspicious, and when they turned out at the polls the following day they voted for the wicked young lawyer.

“So, it’s true that when ‘the Quakers are out’ the man they support is apt to go in.”

 

HAD CONFIDENCE IN HIM—“BUT—.”

“General Blank asks for more men,” said Secretary of War Stanton to the President one day, showing the latter a telegram from the commander named appealing for re-enforcements.

“I guess he’s killed off enough men, hasn’t he?” queried the President.

“I don’t mean Confederates—our own men. What’s the use in sending volunteers down to him if they’re only used to fill graves?”

“His dispatch seems to imply that, in his opinion, you have not the confidence in him he thinks he deserves,” the War Secretary went on to say, as he looked over the telegram again.

“Oh,” was the President’s reply, “he needn’t lose any of his sleep on that account. Just telegraph him to that effect; also, that I don’t propose to send him any more men.”

 

HOW HOMINY WAS ORIGINATED.

During the progress of a Cabinet meeting the subject of food for the men in the Army happened to come up. From that the conversation changed to the study of the Latin language.

“I studied Latin once,” said Mr. Lincoln, in a casual way.

“Were you interested in it?” asked Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State.

“Well, yes. I saw some very curious things,” was the President’s rejoinder.

“What?” asked Secretary Seward.

“Well, there’s the word hominy, for instance. We have just ordered a lot of that stuff for the troops. I see how the word originated. I notice it came from the Latin word homo—a man.

“When we decline homo, it is:

“‘Homo—a man.

“‘Hominis—of man.

“‘Homini—for man.’

“So you see, hominy, being ‘for man,’ comes from the Latin. I guess those soldiers who don’t know Latin will get along with it all right—though I won’t rest real easy until I hear from the Commissary Department on it.”

 

HIS IDEA’S OLD, AFTER ALL.

One day, while listening to one of the wise men who had called at the White House to unload a large cargo of advice, the President interjected a remark to the effect that he had a great reverence for learning.

“This is not,” President Lincoln explained, “because I am not an educated man. I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books.”

“Men of force,” the visitor answered, “can get on pretty well without books. They do their own thinking instead of adopting what other men think.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lincoln, “but books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new, after all.”

This was a point the caller was not willing to debate, and so he cut his call short.

 

LINCOLN’S FIRST SPEECH.

Lincoln made his first speech when he was a mere boy, going barefoot, his trousers held up by one suspender, and his shock of hair sticking through a hole in the crown of his cheap straw hat.

“Abe,” in company with Dennis Hanks, attended a political meeting, which was addressed by a typical stump speaker—one of those loud-voiced fellows who shouted at the top of his voice and waved his arms wildly.

At the conclusion of the speech, which did not meet the views either of “Abe” or Dennis, the latter declared that “Abe” could make a better speech than that. Whereupon he got a dry-goods box and called on “Abe” to reply to the campaign orator.

Lincoln threw his old straw hat on the ground, and, mounting the dry-goods box, delivered a speech which held the attention of the crowd and won him considerable applause. Even the campaign orator admitted that it was a fine speech and answered every point in his own “oration.”

Dennis Hanks, who thought “Abe” was about the greatest man that ever lived, was delighted, and he often told how young “Abe” got the better of the trained campaign speaker.

 

“ABE WANTED NO SNEAKIN’ ‘ROUND.”

It was in 1830, when “Abe” was just twenty-one years of age, that the Lincoln family moved from Gentryville, Indiana, to near Decatur, Illinois, their household goods being packed in a wagon drawn by four oxen driven by “Abe.”

The winter previous the latter had “worked” in a country store in Gentryville and before undertaking the journey he invested all the money he had—some thirty dollars—in notions, such as needles, pins, thread, buttons and other domestic necessities. These he sold to families along the route and made a profit of about one hundred per cent.

This mercantile adventure of his youth “reminded” the President of a very clever story while the members of the Cabinet were one day solemnly debating a rather serious international problem. The President was in the minority, as was frequently the case, and he was “in a hole,” as he afterwards expressed it. He didn’t want to argue the points raised, preferring to settle the matter in a hurry, and an apt story was his only salvation.

Suddenly the President’s fact brightened. “Gentlemen,” said he, addressing those seated at the Cabinet table, “the situation just now reminds me of a fix I got into some thirty years or so ago when I was peddling ‘notions’ on the way from Indiana to Illinois. I didn’t have a large stock, but I charged large prices, and I made money. Perhaps you don’t see what I am driving at?”

Secretary of State Seward was wearing a most gloomy expression of countenance; Secretary of War Stanton was savage and inclined to be morose; Secretary of the Treasury Chase was indifferent and cynical, while the others of the Presidential advisers resigned themselves to the hearing of the inevitable “story.”

“I don’t propose to argue this matter,” the President went on to say, “because arguments have no effect upon men whose opinions are fixed and whose minds are made up. But this little story of mine will make some