LINCOLN (Vol. 1-7). Theodore RooseveltЧитать онлайн книгу.
now, I am happy to say, I have something that everybody can take."
Among the innumerable nuisances and "cranks" who called on Lincoln at the White House, were the many who sought to win his favor by claiming to have been the first to suggest his nomination as President. One of these claimants, who was the editor of a weekly paper published in a little village in Missouri, called one day, and was admitted to Lincoln's presence. He at once began explaining that he was the man who first suggested Lincoln's name for the Presidency, and pulling from his pocket an old, worn, defaced copy of his paper, exhibited to the President an item on the subject. "Do you really think," said Lincoln, "that announcement was the occasion of my nomination?" "Certainly," said the editor, "the suggestion was so opportune that it was at once taken up by other papers, and the result was your nomination and election." "Ah, well," said Lincoln, with a sigh, and assuming a rather gloomy countenance, "I am glad to see you and to know this; but you will have to excuse me, I am just going to the War Department to see Mr. Stanton." "Well," said the editor, "I will walk over with you." The President, with that apt good nature so characteristic of him, took up his hat and said, "Come along." When they reached the door of the Secretary's office, Mr. Lincoln turned to his companion and said, "I shall have to see Mr. Stanton alone, and you must excuse me," and taking him by the hand he continued, "Good-bye. I hope you will feel perfectly easy about having nominated me; don't be troubled about it; I forgive you."
A gentleman who, after the dreadful disaster at Fredericksburg, called at the White House with news direct from the front, says that Lincoln appeared so overwhelmed with grief that he was led to remark, "I heartily wish I might be a welcome messenger of good news instead,—that I could tell you how to conquer or get rid of these rebellious States." Looking up quickly, with a marked change of expression, Lincoln said: "That reminds me of two boys in Illinois who took a short cut across an orchard, and did not become aware of the presence of a vicious dog until it was too late to reach either fence. One was spry enough to escape the attack by climbing a tree; but the other started around the tree, with the dog in hot pursuit, until by making smaller circles than it was possible for his pursuer to make, he gained sufficiently to grasp the dog's tail, and held with desperate grip until nearly exhausted, when he hailed his companion and called to him to come down. 'What for?' said the boy. 'I want you to help me let this dog go.' If I could only let them go!" said the President, in conclusion; "but that is the trouble. I am compelled to hold on to them and make them stay."
In speaking of Lincoln's fortitude under his trials and sufferings, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: "Although we believe he has never made any religious profession, we see evidence that in passing through this dreadful national crisis he has been forced by the very anguish of the struggle to look upward, where any rational creature must look for support. No man has suffered more and deeper, albeit with a dry, weary, patient pain, that seemed to some like insensibility. 'Whichever way it ends,' he said to the writer, 'I have the impression that I sha'n't last long after it's over.' After the dreadful repulse of Fredericksburg, his heavy eyes and worn and weary air told how our reverses wore upon him; and yet there was a never-failing fund of patience at bottom that sometimes rose to the surface in some droll, quaint saying or story, that forced a laugh even from himself."
The care and sorrow which Lincoln was called upon to endure in the responsibilities of his high position graved their melancholy marks on each feature of his face. He was a changed man. A pathetic picture of his appearance at this time is given by his old friend, Noah Brooks, whose description of him as he appeared in 1856, on the stump in Ogle County, has already been given a place in these pages. "I did not see Lincoln again," says Mr. Brooks, "until 1862, when I went to Washington as a newspaper correspondent from California. When Lincoln was on the stump in 1856, his face, though naturally sallow, had a rosy flush. His eyes were full and bright, and he was in the fulness of health and vigor. I shall never forget the shock which the sight of him gave me six years later in 1862, I took it for granted that he had forgotten the young man whom he had met five or six times during the Frémont and Dayton Campaign. He was now President, and was, like Brutus, 'vexed with many cares.' The change which a few years had made was simply appalling. His whiskers had grown and had given additional cadaverousness to his face as it appeared to me. The light seemed to have gone out of his eyes, which were sunken far under his enormous brows. But there was over his whole face an expression of sadness, and a far-away look in the eyes, which were utterly unlike the Lincoln of other days. I was intensely disappointed. I confess that I was so pained that I could almost have shed tears."
Chapter XXIII
Of the two sons left to Lincoln after the death of Willie in 1862, Robert, the older, was a student in Harvard College until appointed to service on the staff of General Grant; and "Little Tad," or Thomas, the youngest, was the only one remaining in the White House during the last hard years. He was ten years old in 1863, a bright and lovable child, with whom his father was associated in constant and affectionate companionship. The boy was much with him in his walks and journeys about Washington, and even in his visits to the army in the field. The father would often gain a brief respite from his heavy cares by sharing in the sports and frolics of the light-hearted boy, who was a general favorite at the White House, where he was free to go and come at will. No matter who was with the President, or how intently he might be absorbed, little Tad was always welcome. "It was an impressive and affecting sight," says Mr. Carpenter, an inmate of the White House for several months, "to see the burdened President lost for the time being in the affectionate parent, as he would take the little fellow in his arms upon the withdrawal of visitors, and caress him with all the fondness of a mother for the babe upon her bosom." Hon. W.D. Kelley, a member of Congress at that time, says: "I think no father ever loved his children more fondly than he. The President never seemed grander in my sight than when, stealing upon him in the evening, I would find him with a book open before him, with little Tad beside him. There were, of course, a great many curious books sent to him, and it seemed to be one of the special delights of his life to open those books at a time when his boy could stand beside him, and they could talk as he turned over the pages, the father thus giving to the son a portion of that care and attention of which he was ordinarily deprived by the heavy duties pressing upon him." Tad lived to be eighteen years old, dying in Chicago in 1871. It was well said of him that he "gave to the sad and solemn White House the only comic relief it knew."
When President Lincoln visited General Hooker's headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, just before the battle of Chancellorsville, little Tad went with him, and rode with his father and General Hooker through the grand reviews that were held. "Over hill and dale," says a member of the Presidential party, "dashed the brilliant cavalcade of the General-in-Chief, surrounded by a company of officers in gay attire and sparkling with gold lace, the party being escorted by the Philadelphia Lancers, a showy troop of soldiers. In the midst, or at the head, rose and fell, as the horses galloped afar, the form of Lincoln, conspicuous by his height and his tall black hat. And ever on the flanks of the hurrying column flew, like a flag or banneret, Tad's little gray riding-cloak. The soldiers soon learned of Tad's presence in the army, and wherever he went on horseback he easily divided the honors with his father. The men cheered and shouted and waved their hats when they saw the dear face and tall figure of the good President, then the best-beloved man in the world; but to these men of war, far away from home and children, the sight of that fresh-faced and laughing boy seemed an inspiration. They cheered like mad."
There were various phases of Lincoln's character, as manifested during his life in the White House, that afford material for an interesting study. It has been said of him that he lacked imagination. This was certainly not one of the faculties of his mind which had been largely cultivated. He relied more upon the exercise of reason and logic, in all his intellectual processes, than upon fancy or imagination. Still, there are often striking figures of speech to be met with in his writings, and he had a great fondness for poetry and music. He had studied Shakespeare diligently in his youth, and portions of the plays he repeated with singular accuracy. He had a special liking for the minor poems of Thomas Hood and of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes, writing in July, 1885, says that of all the tributes received by him, the one of which he was most proud was from