Helen Topping Miller

“ You have to get ’em, you can’t make ’em out of air. Hurry and open it, Papa. Don’t you want to see what’s in it?”
“I think I know what’s in it. Yes, Tad,” he went on musingly, as though he talked to himself. “I’m supposed to make soldiers out of air; anyway the New York newspapers seemed to think so. Make ’em out of air and feed ’em on air and give ’em air to shoot with.”
“And then if General Lee licks us you’re to blame!” cried Tad. “Oh, I know, John Hay and Mr. Nicolay hide the papers but I find ’em. Papa, I read where one New York paper called you a gorilla.” ”

“ Suspicion and distrust were rampant, and Mary harbored a constant, nervous fear that either she or Tad might be kidnapped by the Rebels and held as hostages.
She had wondered sometimes in moments of private bitterness just how much Abraham Lincoln would surrender to get his wife back, but Tad was the key to his heart. Lately Company K had had orders to keep close surveillance over the boy but Tad was quick and mobile as a flea. Less than a month before he had been brought back, shouting protests and struggling, from climbing the scaffolding of the half-finished Washington Monument. ”

“ To Milo Potter,” smiled Lincoln. “No harm done, Johnny.”
“Your son is waiting, sir. Shall I send him in?”
“Must be Bob. Tad would have already been in.”
Robert came in, took a chair, and folded his hands, his young mouth sober. “I had to know, sir,” he began, “have they been making attempts to kill you?”
“Bob, there are several million people who think that the man who kills me should wear a hero’s crown. And there are a lot of people who yearn to be heroes,” Lincoln said calmly.
“You should be better protected. You shouldn’t take risks!” ”

“ If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.”
“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up, Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. ”

“ The corporal obeyed, looking unhappy and ill at ease, handing the gold-fringed boards into the hands of the commander in chief.
“Private Thomas Lincoln, you will now escort the President of the United States back to the White House,” ordered Abraham Lincoln. “Forward march!”
Every man of Company K fell in, marched in grave formation, eyes straight ahead, chins set, weapons held ready, to the side door of the house. Lincoln entered first, turned on the doorstep, and soberly saluted the ranks. ”

“ Tad backed off and flattened himself against the wall. Mr. Stanton was running the war; he was tall and grim with a long gray beard but no mustache to soften a stern mouth, and his eyes could look very hard and coldly at a boy through his round spectacles. Behind Stanton marched Senator Sumner and Tad knew him too. Senator Sumner was always mad about something and now, as he strode past the boy, Tad heard him mutter angrily, “Amnesty! Amnesty! I’d give North Carolina amnesty at the end of a rope!” ”

“ Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.”
“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt. You, Joe—you’re on post!”
“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early train.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly. ”

“ Lincoln laughed loudly, lifted him, setting the lad on his knee, holding him close. “For a man wearing the Union uniform, you scare easy, Colonel,” he teased. “Remember this, Tad. Names never hurt anybody. And the gorilla is one beast that’s never been tamed and only a heavy chain can master him.”
“Open the box,” gulped Tad, scrubbing his eyes with the cuff of his blue Union coat. “If anybody sent me a Christmas present, I’d want to know what it was.”
Lincoln dug the last seal away, cut the cord, and tore off the heavy paper. “Now, John Hay would say I’m a fool to open this,” he remarked. ”

“ The election of 1864 was coming up and even in the Union states there was radical opposition so bold it verged on treason, not to overlook 43 the vicious attacks of the newspapers to the South. On those pages Abraham Lincoln was called everything from a degraded idiot to Mephistopheles reincarnate. The South, as Southern-bred Mary Lincoln knew well, was full of impetuous hotheads ready to dare or to do anything for their sacred Cause. There was that O’Neale Greenhow woman, arrested right here in sight of the White House—and even the Mayor of Washington temporarily lodged in jail. ”

“ Take credit for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.”
“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic, disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.”
“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is soft. I got toughened up back yonder.”
“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a railsplitter—and a yokel.” ”

“ A shadow of pain ran over his father’s gaunt face and the tears, always quick when any emotion stirred him, were bright in his sunken eyes. The agony of Willie’s untimely death was still raw and aching in his heart.
“Willie was twelve years old, Tad. When you are twelve you can have a vest.”
“And a watch?”
“And a watch. Not this one.” Lincoln clicked the fastening of the bright new timepiece and dropped it into his pocket, along with the key that wound it. “I guess Bob will have to have this old one. ”

“ And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires, slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all. ”

“ Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a 27 grim hand pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous.
“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president of this so-called Confederacy?” ”

“ The Company K boys.”
Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of them.”
“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.” ”

“ You want to walk, you need a couple of us boys along.”
“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” ”

“ If they’ve brought something for him it will sort of make up for this sorry Christmas he had.” Lincoln strode off up the stairs. All day since disciplining Tad his heart had ached in dull, heavy fashion. It was not easy, he was thinking, to be the son of a president. It was not even easy to be a president. He thought again wistfully of that white house in Springfield, of turkey wishbones hung to dry there above the kitchen stove when Tad and Willie were small. Honors came dear. Almost, he decided, a man could pay too much for them. ”

“ Lincoln admonished him. “Fine people most of them. Just mistaken, that’s all—just mistaken.”
12
“They fight good,” was Tad’s comment, as they went down the hall.
Abraham Lincoln always stepped carefully and quietly in this big house. He had never been at home in the White House. He always had a secret, haunting feeling of guilt as though he were a guest and a strange, uneasy, even an unworthy, guest. Mary, his wife, had no such inhibitions. ”

“ Come along, Bob.”
“At least let me help carry, sir,” argued Robert as they went down the stairs.
“Don’t touch it or you’ll get it unbalanced and spill all Company K’s Christmas. Little enough, but I had John Hay fetch me a roll of greenbacks. I’ll give every man a dollar. A dollar is a right substantial present, Bob, when you’re marching and fighting for thirteen dollars a month and what you can eat, when you get a chance to eat.” ”

“ Lincoln filled 22 a little following silence by pulling out the gold watch. “A gift I had today. From the Chicago Fair. Sort of a Christmas gift, I guess you’d call it.” He felt as young as Tad under those coldly scrutinizing eyes, and as naïve and awkward.
“Very fitting and well deserved, Mr. President. Now I must tell you that I have no business here whatsoever. I merely came here to tell you that I believe you are doing all for the good of the country that it is in the power of man to do. And I want to say to you, Mr. President—go ahead, do as you darned well please and I will support you.” ”

“ Mary remembered having once met Rose O’Neale Greenhow at a tea somewhere. A handsome and arrogant woman, too friendly with men. She was banished South of the lines now, but women like that always had impetuous friends.
“Get me out something plain, Lizzie,” she ordered now. “I have to shop again this afternoon. The President thinks every soldier in Company K must have a Christmas gift, and where I’ll find things the Lord only knows! ‘Socks,’ he said, ‘Wool socks.’ I doubt if any can 44 be found, and they’d be two dollars a pair if there are any. ”

“ There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe I’m doing right. 61 Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of them voted for me, remember.”
“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.”
“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.” ”

“ President, I can’t do it! I run off. They’ll put me in the guardhouse!”
Lincoln scratched his chin. “That was very unwise of you, soldier. But you can’t dodge your military responsibility. I reckon you’ll just have to go to the guardhouse. If you should try to hedge out of it you’d be as poor a soldier as that captain of B Company you complain about. It won’t be too bad. Good luck to you, son.”
The boy said, “Thank you, sir,” and backed out, twisting his cap in his hands.
“Stand up straight, look the captain in the eye, and admit you ran off, son,” advised Lincoln. ”

“ Stanton had detailed in New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to guard me, as though I 65 were a crown prince or something. A coward of a prince!”
“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another private in the army. ”

“ Tad looked up confidingly. “You know what Mama is worrying about, Papa? She owes an awful lot of money in New York. She’s afraid you’ll find it out. She said on the train when we came home that I mustn’t tell you all the things she bought because you had troubles enough to kill three men.”
Lincoln hunched a shoulder, stretching his lips into a dry smile. “See how my back is breaking down, Tad? That’s General Rosecrans. 11 And this side is General McClellan and General Meade made it worse when he let Lee get away across the river.”
“You cried then, I remember. Men don’t cry.” ”

“ Your friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.”
She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.”
“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. ”

“ A few thin flakes of snow lay white against the silk.
“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a corpse out of me?” he asked amiably.
“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier.
“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said. “Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?”
“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an hour.”
Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad for 51 Christmas. ”