The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln : Chapter 10 - The Man Who Was President

None

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter ten of the Boy's Life of Abraham Lincoln by
Helen Nicolay. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks dot Com. Chapter ten
The man who was President. The way mister Lincoln signed
this most important state paper was thoroughly in keeping with

(00:23):
his nature. He hated all shams and show and pretense,
and being absolutely without affectation of any kind, it would
never have occurred to him to pose for effect while
signing the Emancipation Proclamation or any other paper. He never
thought of himself as a president to be set up
before a multitude and admired, but always as a president

(00:43):
charged with duties which he owed to every citizen. In
fulfilling these, he did not stand upon ceremony, but took
the most direct way to the end he had in view.
It is not often that a president pleads a cause
before Congress. Mister Lincoln and did not find it beneath
his dignity at one time to go in person to

(01:03):
the capital, and, calling a number of the leading senators
and representatives around him, explained to them with the aid
of a map, his reasons for believing that the final
stand of the Confederates would be made in that part
of the South, or the seven states of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia come together

(01:26):
and strive in this way to interest them in the
sad plight of the loyal people of Tennessee, who were
being persecuted by the Confederate government, but whose mountainous region might,
with a little help, be made a citadel of Union
strength in the very heart of this stronghold of rebellion.
In his private life he was entirely simple and unaffected.

(01:48):
Yet he had a deep sense of what was due
to his office, and took part with becoming dignity in
all official or public ceremonies. He received the diplomats sent
to Washington from the courts of Europe with a formal
and quiet reserve, which made them realize at once that
although this son of the people had been born in
a log cabin, he was ruler of a great nation,

(02:09):
and more than that, was a prince by right of
his own fine instincts and good breeding. He was ever
gentle and courteous, but with a few quiet words he
could silence abore who had come meaning to talk to
him for hours. For his friends, he had always a
ready smile and a quaintly turned phrase. His sense of
humor was his salvation. Without it, he must have died

(02:33):
of the strain and anxiety of the Civil War. There
was something almost pathetic in the way he would snatch
a moment from his pressing duties in greatest cares to
listen to a good story or indulge in a hearty laugh.
Some people could not understand this. To one member of
his cabinet, at least, it seemed strange and unfitting that

(02:54):
he should read aloud to them a chapter from a
humorous book by Artemus Ward before taking up the way
matter of the Emancipation Proclamation. From their point of view,
it showed lack of feeling and frivolity of character, when
in truth, it was the very depth of his feeling
and the intensity of his distress at the suffering of
the war that led him to seek releaf and laughter,

(03:16):
to gather from the comedy of life strength to go
on and meet its sternest tragedy. He was a social man.
He could not fully enjoy a just alone. He wanted
somebody to share the pleasure with him. Often, when care
kept him awake late at night, he would wander through
the halls of the executive mansion, and, coming to the

(03:38):
rum where his secretaries were still at work, would stop
to read them some poem or a passage from Shakespeare,
or a bit from one of the humorous books in
which he found relief. No one knew better than he
what could be cured and what must be patiently endured.
To every difficulty that he could remove, he gave cheerful
and uncomplaining thought, and lefe The burdens he could not

(04:02):
shake off, he bore with silent courage, lightening them whenever possible,
with the laughter that he once described as the universal, joyous,
evergreen of light. It would be a mistake to suppose
that he cared only for humorous reading. Occasionally he read
a scientific book with great interest, but his duties left
him little time for such indulgences. Few men knew the

(04:26):
Bible more thoroughly than he did, and his speeches are
full of scriptural quotations. The poem beginning, Oh, why should
the Spirit of Mortal be Proud? Was one of his favorites,
and Doctor Holmes's Last Leaf was another Shakespeare was his
constant delight. A copy of Shakespeare's works was even to

(04:46):
be found in the busy executive office, from which most
books were banished. The president not only liked to read
the great poet's plays, but to see them active, and
when the gifted actor Hackett came to Washington, he was
invited to the White House, where the two discussed the
character of false staff and the proper reading of many
scenes and passages. While he was president, Lincoln did not

(05:11):
attempt to read the newspapers. His days were long, beginning
early and ending late, but they were not long enough
for that one of his secretaries brought him a daily
memorandum of the important news they contained. His mail was
so numerous that he personally read only about one in
every hundred of the letters sent him. His time was

(05:31):
principally taken up with interviews with people on matters of importance,
with cabinet meetings, conferences with his generals, and other affairs
requiring his close and immediate attention. If he had leisure,
he would take a drive in the late afternoon, or
perhaps steal away into the grounds south of the Executive
Mansion to test some new kind of gun. If its

(05:52):
inventor had been fortunate enough to bring it to his notice.
He was very quick to understand mechanical contrivances, and would
often suggest improvements that had not occurred to the inventor himself.
For many years, it had been the fashion to call
mister Lincoln homely. He was very tall and very thin.
His eyes were deep sunken, his skin of a sallow pallor,

(06:15):
his hair coarse, black and unruly. Yet he was neither ungraceful,
nor awkward, nor ugly. His large features fitted his large frame,
and his large hands and feet were but right on
a body that measured six feet four inches. His was
a sad and thoughtful face, and from boyhood he had

(06:35):
carried a load of pear. It was small wonder that,
when alone or absorbed in thought, the face should take
on deep lines. The eyes of heear as if seeing
something beyond the vision of other men, and the shoulders
stooped as though they too were bearing a weight. But
in a moment all would be changed. The deep eyes

(06:56):
could flash or twinkle merrily with humor, or look out
from under overhanging brows, as they did upon the Five points.
Children in kindliest gentleness in public speaking, his tall body
rose to its full height, his head was thrown back,
his face seemed transfigured with the fire and earnestness of
his thought, and his voice took on a high, clear,

(07:18):
tenored tone that carried his words and ideas far out
over the listening crowns. At such moments, when answering Douglas
in the heat of their joint debate, or later, during
the years of the war, when he pronounced with noble
gravity the words of his famous addresses, not one in
the throngs that hurt him could say with truth that
he was other than a handsome man. It had been

(07:41):
the fashion, too, to say that he was slovenly and
careless in his dress. This is also a mistake. His
clothes could not fit smoothly on his gaunt and bony frame.
He was no tailor's figure of a man. But from
the first he clothed himself as well as his means allowed,
and in the fashion of the time and place. In

(08:02):
reading the grotesque stories of his boyhood, of the tall
stripling whose trousers left exposed a length of shin, it
must be remembered not only how poor he was, but
that he lived on the frontier, where other boys less
poor were scarcely better clad in Vandalia. The blue jeans
he wore was the dress of his companions as well,

(08:24):
and later, from Springfield days on clear through his presidency,
his costume was the usual suit of black broadcloth, carefully
made and scrupulously neat. He cared nothing for style. It
did not matter to him whether the man with whom
he talked wore a coat of the latest cut or
owned no coat at all. It was the man inside

(08:46):
the coat that in arrested him. In the same way,
he cared little for pleasures of the table. He ate
most sparingly. He was thankful that food was good and wholesome,
and enough for daily needs. But he could no more
enter into the mood of the epicure, for whose palate
it is a matter of importance whether he eats roast
goose or golden pheasant. Then he could have counted the

(09:07):
grains of sand under the sea. In the summers, while
he was president, he spent the nights at a cottage
at the soldier's home a short distance north of Washington,
riding or driving out through the gathering dust, and returning
to the White House after a frugal breakfast in the
early morning. Ten o'clock was the hour at which he
was supposed to begin receiving visitors, but it was often

(09:30):
necessary to see them unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their
way to his bedroom before he had quite finished dressing.
Throngs of people daily filled his office, the abbey rooms,
and even the corridors of the public part of the
executive mansion. He saw them, all those he had summoned
on important business men of high official position, who came

(09:52):
to demand as their right offices in favors that he
had no right to give. Others who wished to whoper
tiresome if well men advice, and the hundreds both men
and women, who pressed forward to ask all sorts of help.
His friends besought him to save himself the weariness of
seeing the people at these public receptions, but he refused.

(10:14):
They do not want much, and they get very little,
he answered. Each one considers his business of great importance,
and I must gratify them. I know how I would
feel if I were in their place. And at noon
on all days except Tuesday and Friday, when the time
was occupied by meetings of the cabinet, the doors were
thrown open, and all who wished might enter. That remark

(10:38):
of his I know how I would feel if I
were in their place, explained it. All His early experience
of life had drilled him well for these ordeals. He
had read deeply in the book of human Nature, and
could see the hidden signs of falsehood and deceit and
trickery from which the faces of some of his visitors
were not free. But he knew too the hard practical

(11:01):
side of life, the hunger, cold storms, sickness, and misfortune
that the average man must meet in his struggle with
the world. More than all, he knew and sympathized with
that hope deferred, which makes the heart sick. Not a
few men and women came sad faced and broken hearted
to plead for soldier sons or husbands in prison or

(11:22):
other sentence of death by court martial. An inmate of
the White House has recorded the eagerness with which the
President caught at any fact that would justify him in
saving the life of a condemned soldier. He was only
merciless when meanness or cruelty were clearly proved. Cases of cowardice.
He disliked, especially to punish with death. It would frighten

(11:45):
the poor devils too terribly to shoot them, he said
on the papers. In the case of one soldier who
had deserted and then enlisted again, he wrote, let him
fight instead of shooting him. He used to call these
cases of desertion his leg cases, and sometimes, when considering them,
would tell the story of the Irish soldier upbraided by

(12:06):
his captain, who replied, Captain, I have a heart in
me breast, as brave as Julius Caesar. But when I
go into battle sore, these cowardly legs of mine will
run away with me. As the war went on, mister
Lincoln objected more and more to approving sentences of death
by court martial, and either pardoned them outright or delayed

(12:26):
the execution until further orders, which orders were never given
by the great hearted, merciful man Secretary Stantman. Certain generals
complained bitterly that if the President went on pardoning soldiers,
he would ruin the discipline of the army. But Secretary
Stanton had a warm heart, and it is doubtful if
he ever willingly enforced the justice that he criticized the

(12:47):
President for tempering with so much mercy yet mister Lincoln
could be sternly just when necessary. A law declaring the
slave trade to be piracy had stood on the statute
books of the United States for half a century. Lincoln's
administration was the first to convict a man under it,
and Lincoln himself decreed that the well deserved sentence be

(13:08):
carried out. Mister Lincoln sympathized keenly with the hardships and
trials of the soldier boys, and found time amid all
his labors and cares to visit the hospitals in and
around Washington where they lay ill. His afternoon drive was
usually to some camp in the neighborhood of the city,
and when he visited one at a greater distance, the

(13:29):
cheers that greeted him as he rode along the line
with the commanding general showed what a warm place he
held in their hearts. He did not forget the unfortunate
on these visits. A story is told of his interview
with William Scott, a boy from a Vermont farm, who,
after marching forty eight hours without sleep, volunteered to stand

(13:50):
guard for a sick comrade. Weariness overcame him, and he
was found asleep at his post within gunshot of the enemy.
He was tried and sentenced to be shot. Mister Lincoln
heard of the case and went himself to the tent
where young Scott was kept under guard. He talked to
him kindly, asking about his home, his schoolmates, and particularly

(14:12):
about his mother. The lad took her picture from his
pocket and showed it to him without speaking. Mister Lincoln
was much affected. As he rose to leave, he laid
his hand on the prisoner's shoulder, and my boy, he said,
you are not going to be shot tomorrow. I believe
you when you tell me that you could not keep awake.

(14:33):
I am going to trust you and send you back
to your regiment. Now I want to know what you
intend to pay for all this. The lad, overcome with gratitude,
could hardly say a word, but, crowding down his emotions,
managed to answer that he did not know. He and
his people were poor. They would do what they could.
There was his pay and a little in the savings bank.

(14:56):
They could borrow something by a mortgage on the farm.
Perhaps his comrades would help. If mister Lincoln would wait
until pay day, possibly they might get together five or
six hundred dollars. Would that be enough. The kindly President
shook his head. My bill is a great deal. More
than that, he said, it is a very large one.

(15:18):
Your friends cannot pay it, nor your family, nor your farm.
There is only one man in the world who can
pay it. And his name is William Scott. If from
this day he does his duty, so that when he
comes to die, he can truly say I have kept
the promise I gave the President. I have done my
duty as a soldier, then the debt will be paid.

(15:41):
Young Scott went back to his regiment, and the debt
was fully paid a few months later, for he fell
in battle. Mister Lincoln's own son became a soldier after
leaving college. The letter his father wrote to General Grant
in his behalf shows how carefully he was that neither
his official position nor what is desired to give his
boy the experience he wanted, should work the least injustice

(16:04):
to others. Executive Mansion, Washington, January nineteenth, eighteen sixty five.
Lieutenant General Grant, please read and answer this letter as
though I was not President, but only a friend. My son,
now in his twenty second year, having graduated at Harvard,

(16:24):
wishes to see something of the war before it ends.
I do not wish to put him in the ranks,
nor yet to give him a commission to which those
who have already served long are better entitled and better
qualified to hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you or
detriment to the service, go into your military family, with
some nominal rank. I am not the public furnishing the

(16:47):
necessary means. If no, say so without the least hesitation,
because I am as anxious and as deeply interested that
you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself
yours truly a Lincoln. His interest did not cease with
the life of a young soldier. Among his most beautiful
letters are those he wrote to sorrowing parents who had

(17:10):
lost their sons in battle. And when his personal friend,
young Ellsworth, one of the first and most gallant of fall,
was killed at Alexandria, the President directed that his body
be brought to the White House, where his funeral was
held in the Great East Room. Though a member of
no church, mister Lincoln was most sincerely religious and devout.

(17:31):
Not only was his daily life filled with acts of
forbearance and charity, every great state paper that he wrote
breathes his faith and reliance on a just and merciful God.
He rarely talked, even with intimate friends about matters of belief.
But it is to be doubted whether any among the
many people who came to give him advice and sometimes

(17:51):
to pray with him, had a better right to be
called a Christian. He always received such visitors courteously, with
a reverence for their good intentions, no matter how strangely
it sometimes manifested itself. A little address that he made
to some Quakers who came to see him in September
eighteen sixty two shows both his courtesy to them personally

(18:12):
and his humble attitude toward God. I am glad of
this interview, and glad to know that I have your
sympathy and prayers. We are indeed going through a great trial,
a fiery trial, in the very responsible position in which
I happened to be placed, Being a humble instrument in
the hands of our heavenly Father, as I am and

(18:33):
as we all are, to work out his great purposes,
I have desired that all my works and acts may
be according to His will, and that it might be so.
I have sought his aid. But if after endeavoring to
do my best in the light which he affords me,
I find my efforts fail. I must believe that, for
some purpose unknown to me, he wills it. Otherwise, if

(18:57):
I had had my way, this war would never have
been commenced. If I had been allowed my way, this
war would have been ended before this. But we find
it still continues, and we must believe that he permits
it for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and
unknown to us. And though with our limited understandings we

(19:18):
may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot
but believe that he who made the world still governs it.
Children had a warm place in the President's affections. He
was not only a devoted father. His heart went out
to all little folk. He had been kind to babies.
In his voyage days, when book in hand and the

(19:38):
desire for study upon him, he would sit with one
foot on the rocker of a rude frontier cradle, not
too selfishly busy to keep its small occupant lull the contempt,
while its mother went about her household tasks. After he
became president, many a sad eyed woman carrying a child
in her arms went to see him, and the baby
always had its share in gaining her a speedy hearing, and,

(20:01):
if possible, a favorable answer to a petition. When children
came to him at the White House of their own accord,
as they sometimes did, the favors they asked were not
refused because of their youth. One day, a small boy,
watching his chance, slipped into the executive office between a
governor and a senator. When the door was opened to

(20:22):
admit them, they were as much astonished at seeing him
there as the President was, and could not explain his presence.
But he spoke for himself. He had come, he said,
from a little country town, hoping to get a place's
page in the House of Representatives. The President began to
tell him that he must go to Captain Goodnow, the

(20:42):
doorkeeper of the house, for he himself had nothing to
do with such appointments. Even this did not discourage the
little fellow. Very earnestly, he pulled his papers of recommendation
out of his pocket, and mister Lincoln, unable to resist
his wistful face, read them and sent him away, with
a hurried line written on the back, saying, if Captain

(21:03):
Goodnow can give this good little boy a place, he
will oblige A. Lincoln. It was a child who persuaded
mister Lincoln to wear a beard. Up to that time
he was nominated for president, he had always been smooth shaven.
A little girl living in Chautauqua County, New York, who
greatly admired him, made up her mind that he would

(21:24):
look better if he wore whiskers, and with youthful directness,
wrote and told himself. He answered her by return mail, Springfield, Illinois,
October nineteenth, eighteen sixty. Miss Grace de Belle, my dear
little miss, your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is received.

(21:45):
I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter.
I have three sons, one seventeen, one nine, and one
seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my
whole family. As to the whiskers, never having Warninny, do
you not think people would call it a piece of
silly affectation if I were to begin now? Your very

(22:07):
sincere well wisher A. Lincoln. Evidently, on second thoughts, he
decided to follow her advice. On his way to Washington,
his train stopped at a town where she lived. He
asked if she were in the crowd gathered at the
station to meet him. Of course she was, and willing
hands forced away for her through the mass of people.

(22:29):
When she reached the car, mister Lincoln stepped from the train,
kissed her, and showed her that he had taken her advice.
The secretary, who wrote about the President's desire to save
the lives of condemned soldiers, tells us that during the
first year of the administration, the house was made lively
by the games and pranks of mister Lincoln's two younger children,

(22:49):
William and Thomas. Robert, the eldest, was away at Harvard,
only coming home for short vacations. The two little boys,
aged eight and ten, with their Western independence and enterprise,
kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor
wild with their good natured disobedience. They organized a minstrel
show in the attic. They made acquaintance with the office seekers,

(23:12):
and became the hot champions of the distressed. William was,
with all his boyish frolic, a child of great promise,
capable of close application and study. He had a fancy
for drawing up railway time tables, and would conduct an
imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision.
He wrote childish verses which sometimes attained the unmerited honors

(23:36):
of print. But this bright, gentle and studious child sickened
and died in February eighteen sixty two. His father was
profoundly moved by his death, though he gave no outward
sight of his trouble, but kept about his work the
same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards to pour
out its fullness on his youngest child. Tad was a merry,

(23:59):
warm black, but a kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and
full of odd fancies and inventions. The chartered libertine of
the Executive Mansion, he ran constantly in and out of
his father's office, interrupting his gravest labors. Mister Lincoln was
never too busy to hear him or to answer his bright, rapid,
imperfect speech, for he was not able to speak plainly

(24:21):
until he was nearly grown. He would perch upon his
father's knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the
most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes escaping from the
domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for
the whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the
floor when the President would pick him up and carry

(24:42):
him tenderly to bed. The letters and even the telegrams
mister Lincoln sent his wife had always a message for
or about Tad. One of them shows that his pets,
like their young master, were allowed great liberty. It was
written when the family was living at the soldier's home
and Missus Lincoln and Tad had gone away for a visit.

(25:02):
Tell dear Tad. He wrote that poor Nanny Goat as lost,
and Missus Cuthbert and I are in distress about it.
The day you left, Nannie was found resting herself and
chewing her little cud on the middle of Tad's bed.
But now she's gone. The gardener kept complaining that she
destroyed the flowers till it was concluded to bring her
down to the White House. This was done, and the

(25:24):
second day she had disappeared and has not been heard
of since. This is the last we know of poor Nanny.
Tad was evidently consoled by not one, but a whole
family of new goats for about a year later, mister
Lincoln ended a business telegram to his wife in New
York with the words, tell Tad, the goats and father
are very well. Then, as the weight of care rolled

(25:47):
back upon this great hearted, patient man, he added with
humorous weariness, especially the goats. Mister Lincoln was so forgetful
of self as to be absolutely without personal fear. He
not only paid no attention to the threats which were
constantly made against his life. But when on July eleventh,
eighteen sixty four, the Confederate General Early appeared suddenly and

(26:11):
unexpectedly before the city with a force of seventeen thousand men,
and Washington was for two days actually in danger of
a sulten capture, his unconcern gave his friends great uneasiness.
On the tenth he rode out, as was his custom,
to spend the night at the soldier's home, but Secretary Stanton,
learning that Early was advancing, sent after him to compel

(26:33):
his return. Twice afterward, intent upon watching the fighting, which
took place near Fort Stephens, north of the city, he
exposed his tall form to the gaze and bullets of
the enemy, utterly heedless of his own peril, and it
was not until an officer had fallen mortally wounded within
a few feet of him that he could be persuaded
to seek a place of greater safety. End of Chapter

(26:57):
ten recording by Tom Weiss, Tom's audiobooks dot com