Tad Lincoln

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tom found the waiting not unpleasant. He had a good many unimportant things to do. "Tad" Lincoln, though younger, was a good playmate. The White House staff was kind to him. Even Hay found it difficult not to like him. Then there was the sensation of being at the center of things, big things. He saw men whose names were household words. Half a dozen times he lunched with the President's family, a plain meal with plain folks. Even the dinners at the White House, except the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lincoln drank little or no wine. He never used tobacco. ”

“ I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the corporal looked anxious.
“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr. Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!”
Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with undried paint. ”

“ One attack of indigestion should be enough this month." Tad's face fell; he had already planned how he would spend that fifty cents.
"Is anything much the matter with Tad, Doctor?" inquired the President, entering the bedroom. "Sit down," as Boyd rose. "I stole up from the levee to ask you how he is."
"Just a slight attack of indigestion, due to over-eating, Mr. President. He will be all right to-morrow."
"Poor Tad." Lincoln stroked the small, hot head. "It is my fault, Doctor. Mrs. Lincoln was out ”

“ The President was pleased with Tad's diplomacy, and often laughed at the incident as he told others of it. One day while caressing the boy, he asked him why he called those gentlemen "his friends." "Well," said Tad, "I had seen them so often, and they looked so good and sorry, and said they were from Kentucky, that I thought they must be our friends." "That is right, my son," said Mr. Lincoln; "I would have the whole human race your friends and mine, if it were possible." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just independent, like a lot of people.”
“People take whacks at you, don’t they? I hear about it,” Tad said.
“Yes, some of ’em do.” Lincoln picked up the knife again, poked at the stubborn seals. “But mostly afterwards they cooperate.”
“Those people in New York didn’t,” insisted Tad. “Mother was scared to death when those draft riots were on and people yelled at her in that store. The police had to stand all around us with guns and you know something? Bob was scared but I wasn’t. Ole Bob was plumb scared green.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know many full negro boys, able to read and write, who are not older than Tad Lincoln was when he persisted that A-p-e spelt monkey. Do not imagine that I desire to reflect upon the intellect of little Tad. Not at all; he is a bright boy, a son that will do honor to the genius and greatness of his father; I only mean to say that some incidents are about as damaging to one side of the question as to the other. If a colored boy appears dull, so does a white boy sometimes; and if a whole race is judged by a single example of apparent dulness, another race should be judged by a similar example. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Some of the office-seekers came day after day without ever obtaining an interview with Lincoln, and with these Tad grew quite intimate; some of them he shrewdly advised to go home and chop wood for a living, others he tried to dismiss by promising them that he would speak to his father of their case, if they would not come back again unless they were sent for, and with one and all he was a great favourite, he was so bright and cunning, and too, all were eager to have the good will of the little fellow, for motives not always the highest. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ A. Lincoln. “We burned it by order of the President.”
18
Tad looked a trifle shaken. He came close and leaned on the desk. “Why do people want to kill my father, Mr. Hay? They do. I know. That’s why we have Company K here in the house and all over the yard.”
John Hay shook his head. “This is war, Tad. You could ask, why is there a war? Why are there millions of people over there across the river who’d liked to blow up this town and kill everybody in it? Everybody who stands for the Union. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ In the midst of this conversation, "Tad" burst in, in a fearful passion. He laid all the blame upon me,—said that I had no right to use his room, and that the men should not go in even to get their things. He had locked the door, and they should not go there again—"they had no business in his room!" Mr. Lincoln had been sitting for a photograph, and was still in the chair. He said, very mildly, "Tad, go and unlock the door." Tad went off muttering into his mother's room, refusing to obey. ”

“ Lincoln could not bear to hear Tad cry, and when he would plead to her not to break his heart, she would calm herself with a great effort, and clasp her child in her arms.
Every room in the White House was darkened, and every one spoke in subdued tones, and moved about with muffled tread. The very atmosphere breathed of the great sorrow which weighed heavily upon each heart. Mrs. Lincoln never left her room, and while the body of her husband was being borne in solemn state from the Atlantic to the broad prairies of the West, she was weeping with her fatherless children in her private chamber. ”

“ Robert Lincoln, who was then at home, having discovered Tad's scheme, thought that the men who had been at work all day, ought to be free at night, and told Tad so, but Tad would not listen to him, so Robert appealed the case to his father, who only laughed, as he generally did at Tad's pranks, thought the whole thing a good joke, and gave no orders to the refractory young lieutenant. Tad, however, soon grew tired of being on watch himself, and went to bed, when his recruits were quietly relieved from duty, and there was no guard over the President's house that night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He moved across the yard, his escort keeping rigidly in 83 formation on either side. “Tad!” he shouted. “You, Tad—come back here!”
“He wanted to be a soldier, Mr. President,” put in one of the soldiers. “Tad was bound he was a soldier.”
“All my boys,” said Lincoln, “wanting to be soldiers!”
There was a shout presently from beyond the fenced in confines of the yard. Men started running.
“They’ve seen him,” cried Robert relieved. “The ornery little devil!” He began to run himself, and Lincoln trotted too, almost outstripping his guards. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ He said: ‘Has not the boy opened the door?’ I replied that we could do nothing with him—he had gone off in a great pet. Mr. Lincoln’s lips came together firmly, and then, suddenly rising, he strode across the passage with the air of one bent on punishment, and disappeared in the domestic apartments. Directly he returned with the key to the theater, which he unlocked himself.
“‘Tad,’ said he, half apologetically, ‘is a peculiar child. He was violently excited when I went to him. I said, “Tad, do you know that you are making your father a great deal of trouble?” ”

“ The death of Willie, who was nearly three years older than Tad, early in 1862, during their first year in the White House, nearly broke his father's heart. It was said that Mr. Lincoln never recovered from that bereavement. It made him yearn the more tenderly over his youngest son who sadly missed the brother who had been his constant companion.
It was natural for a lad who was so much indulged to take advantage of his freedom. ”