Ida M. Tarbell

“ Now, I’ve got to learn my men before I can do much.’ ‘Do you mean, Mr. Lincoln, you’d take a Democrat like Logan?’ says the Judge, sort of shocked. ‘Yes, sir, I would; I know Logan. He’s agin me now and that’s all right, but if we have trouble you can count on Logan to do the right thing by the country, and that’s the kind of men I want—them as will do the right thing by the country. Tain’t a question of Lincoln, or Democrat or Republican, Judge; it’s a question of the country.’
“Of course he seemed pretty cheerful always. He wan’t no man to show out all he felt. ”

“ More than one clue must be unravelled to reach an understanding of Abraham Lincoln. Among them there surely must be reckoned his capacity for companionship. None more catholic in his selections ever lived. All men were his fellows. ”

“ We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in [167] peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. ”

“ Seems to me that must be God’s way, but if we don’t, and the Union is broken and slavery goes on, well, all it means accordin’ to my way of seein’ things is that the laws ain’t satisfied yet, that we ain’t done our part. There’ll be more trouble until the reason of trouble ends.
“‘But I don’t lay it up against God, Billy. What it seems to me He’s tryin’ [175] to do is to get men to see that there can’t be any peace or happiness in this world so long as they ain’t fair to one another. You can’t have a happy world unless you’ve got a just world, and slavery ain’t just. ”

“ Sometimes it seems to me that nobody sees it quite right. It’s in war as it is in life—a whole raft of men work day and night and sweat and die to get in the crops and mine the ore and build the towns and sail the seas. ”

“ Lincoln began talkin’, more to himself than to me.
“A million men, a mighty host—and one word of mine would bring the million sleeping boys to their feet—send them without a word to their guns—they would fall in rank—regiment on regiment, brigade on brigade, corps on corps, a word more and they would march steady, quiet, a million men in step straight ahead, over fields, through forests, across rivers. ”

“ Lincoln pointed out the Capitol and the White House and Arlington and the Long Bridge, showin’ me the lay of the land.
“And it’s nuthin’ but one big hospital, Billy,” he said after a while. “You wouldn’t think, would you, lookin’ down on it so peaceful and quiet, that there’s 50,000 sick and wounded soldiers there? Only Almighty God knows how many of ’em are dyin’ this minute; only Almighty God knows how many are sufferin’ so they’re prayin’ to die. They are comin’ to us every day now—have been ever since the Wilderness, 50,000 here and 150,000 scattered over the country. ”

“ Still things have to be worse than they generally are anywhere to keep a boy down-hearted right along—specially a boy like Mr. Lincoln, with an investigatin’ turn of mind like his, so many new things comin’ along to surprise you. Why it was almost like Robinson Crusoe out there—wild land, havin’ to make everything for yourself—hunt your meat and grow your cotton, mighty excitin’ life for a boy—lots to do—lots of fun, too, winter and summer. Somehow when you grow up in the country you can’t make out that God ain’t kind, if he is severe. ”

“ When you know what the wounded have been through—how they have laid on the battlefields for hours and hours uncared for, how they’ve suffered bein’ hauled up here, there ain’t nuthin’ consoles you like knowin’ that their wounds have been dressed and that they are clean and fed, and looked after. Then they are so thankful to be here—to have some one to see to ’em. I remember one day a boy who had been all shot up but was gettin’ better sayin’ to me: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I can’t sleep nights thinkin’ how comfortable I am.’ It’s so good to find ’em realizin’ that everybody cares—the whole country. ”

“ Lord, it makes you sick, and then every now and then right out of a clear sky there’d be a murder somewhere in the country. Nobody would talk of anything else for days. People who hardly ever opened their mouths would find their tongues and tell the durnedest things. ”

“ Think Abraham Lincoln prayed?” Billy’s eyes were stern, and his voice full of reproachful surprise.
“I know he did. You wouldn’t ask that question if you could have heard him that night he left here for Washington sayin’ good-by to us in the rain, tellin’ us that without God’s help he could not succeed in what he was goin’ into—that with it, he could not fail; tellin’ us he was turnin’ us over to God, and askin’ us to remember him in our prayers. Why, a man can’t talk like that that don’t pray, leastwise an honest man like Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ They’re good people, and they’ve been in a bad fix for they don’t believe in slavery, and they don’t believe in war, and yet it seems to have come to the point that out of this war started to save free government, we’re going to get rid of slavery. ”

“ I waked up about daylight and there he was settin' on the side of the bed with nuthin' on but his shirt, and when he see my eyes was open he sings out, 'I tell you, Judge, this country can't last much longer half-slave and half-free.' Bin thinkin' all night far's I know."
Now, sir, that was much as three years before Mr. Lincoln said them self-same words in a speech right in this town. Seems to me I can hear him now singin' it out shrill and far-soundin'. "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. ”

“ There wa’n’t any reason why he should spend his time that way. He ought to give orders and let other folks see they’re carried out. That’s what I’d do if I was president.”
That riled me. “I reckon there ain’t any need to worry about that, Isaac,” I says. “You won’t never be president. Mr. Lincoln’s got too many folks around him now that don’t do nuthin’ but give orders. That’s one reason he has to do his own executin’.”
But ’twas just like him to go and do it himself. ”

“ I don’t believe a man ever lived who’d rather seen everybody happy and peaceable than Abraham Lincoln. He never could stand it to have people sufferin’ or not gettin’ what they wanted. Time and time again I’ve seen him go taggin’ up street here in this town after some youngster that was blubberin’ because he couldn’t have what wa’n’t good for him. Seemed as if he couldn’t rest till that child was smilin’ again. You can go all over Springfield and talk to the people who was boys and girls when he lived here and every blamed one will tell you something he did for ’em. ”

“ Lincoln we couldn’t stand another draft. We was through sendin’ men down to Petersburg to be killed in trenches. He didn’t say nuthin’; just stood still, lookin’ down till we’d all talked ourselves out; and then, after a while, he lifted up his head, and looked around at us, slow-like; and I tell you, Billy, I never knew till that minute that Abraham Lincoln could get mad clean through. He was just white he was that mad. “Boys,” he says, “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re actin’ like a lot of cowards. You’ve helped make this war, and you’ve got to help fight it. ”

“ I tell you nobody that didn't see him often them days, and didn't care enough about him to feel bad when he felt bad, can ever understand what Abraham Lincoln went through before his debates with Douglas. He worked his head day and night tryin' to git that slavery question figured out so nobody could stump him. Greatest man to think things out so nobody could git around him I ever see. ”

“ I contended that most likely Lincoln did write just what Mentor Graham said he did, and that the brethren thought it was dangerous doctrine to make out God was that good, and so they called him an infidel. Nothin’ riled those old fellows religiously like tryin’ to make out God didn’t damn everybody that didn’t believe according to the way they read the Scriptures. Seemed to hate to think about Mr. Lincoln’s God. I almost felt sometimes as if they’d rather a man would say there wa’n’t no God than to make him out a God of Mercy. ”

“ What’s important now in this country is makin’ people feel that slavery is wrong, that the South is bent on spreadin’ it and that we’ve got to stop ’em. Slavery is wrong, Billy, if it ain’t wrong nuthin’ is. We’ve got to fight against its spreadin’, and it’s goin’ to be a durable struggle. It don’t make no difference who gits office or who don’t. All that’s important is keepin’ on fightin’. ”

“ Lincoln didn't know how they was talkin'. He never made no mistake about himself, Mr. Lincoln didn't. He knew he wa'n't a big gun like Douglas. I could see he was blue as a whetstone sometimes, thinkin' of the difference between 'em. "What's ag'in us in this campaign, boys," I heard him say one day, "is me. There ain't no use denyin' that Douglas has always been a big success and I've always been a flat failure. Everybody expects him to be President and always has and is actin' accordin'. Nobody's ever expected anything from me. I tell you we've got to run this campaign on principle. ”

“ They’ll take discipline enough to fight, but they don’t take any stock in it as a means of earnin’ a livin’.
“More’n that they’ve got their own ideas about politics and military tactics and mighty clear ideas about all of us that are runnin’ things. You can’t fool ’em on an officer. They know when one ain’t fit to command, and time and time again they’ve pestered a coward or a braggart or a bully out of the service. An officer who does his job best he can, even if he ain’t very smart, just honest and faithful, they’ll stand by and help. ”

“ How do you suppose a man—just a common man, like Abraham Lincoln, could ever have risen up to say anything like he did in ’65 in his Inaugural if he hadn’t known God:
“‘With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds ”

“ God bless the women, Billy. We can’t save the Union without ’em.
“It makes a difference to the boys in a hospital havin’ ’em. People don’t realize how young this army is. Half the wounded here in Washington to-day are children—not twenty yet—lots of ’em under eighteen. Children who never went to sleep in their lives before they went into the army without kissin’ their mothers good-night. You take such a boy as that and let him lie in camp a few months gettin’ more and more tired of it and he gets homesick—plain homesick—he wants his mother. ”

“ Well, I had a brother in Washington, clerk in a department—awful set up ’cause he had an office—and when I got down there I told him I’d come to visit Mr. Lincoln. He says, ‘William, be you a fool? Folks don’t visit the President of the United States without an invitation, and he’s too busy to see anybody but the very biggest people in this administration. Why, he don’t even see me,’ he says. Well, it made me huffy to hear him talk. ‘Isaac,’ I says, ‘I don’t wonder Mr. Lincoln don’t see you. ”

“ Lincoln, can’t, goin’ back to Springfield to-morrow. Ma don’t like to have me away and my boy ain’t no great shakes keepin’ store.’ ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘what did you come down here for?’ ‘I come to see you, Mr. Lincoln.’ ‘But you ain’t asked me for anything, Billy. What is it? Out with it. Want a post-office?’ he said, gigglin’, for he knowed I didn’t. ‘No, Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see you—felt kind a lonesome—been so long since I’d seen you, and I was afraid I’d forgit some of them yarns if I didn’t unload soon.’
“Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me. ”

“ That was what he was, the Father of the Army, Father Abraham, and somehow the soldiers had found it out. Curious how a lot of people who never see a man in their lives will come to understand him exact. ”

“ I’ll have to go on fightin’ slavery. I know God means I should.
“‘It takes God a long time to work out His will with men like us, Billy, bad men, stupid men, selfish men. But even if we’re beat, there’s a gain. There are more men who see clear now how hard it is for people to rule themselves, more people [176] determined government by the people shan’t perish from the earth, more people willin’ to admit that you can’t have peace when you’ve got a thing like slavery goin’ on. ”

“ A long spell, but folks tell me it ain’t nothin’ to what is bein’ estimated now.
“Makes men seem pretty small, don’t it? God seems to wipe ’em out as careless like as if He were cleanin’ a slate. How could He care and do that? It made such a mite of a man, no better’n a fly. That’s what bothered Mr. Lincoln. I know how he felt. That’s the way it hit me when I first began to understand all the stars were worlds like ours. What I couldn’t see and can’t now is how we can be so blame sure ours is the only world with men on. ”

“ You never see anything so funny in a court-room as that big fellow standin’ there in one stockin’ foot, a shoe in his hand, talking so earnest. No, sir, he couldn’t stand a lie.
“‘Think he was a big man, then?’ Nope—never did. Just as I said, we all thought Douglas was our big man. You know I felt kind of sorry for Lincoln when they began to talk about him for President. It seemed almost as if somebody was makin’ fun of him. He didn’t look like a president. ”