The Lincoln Story Book Part 31

A song ent.i.tled "Gideon's Band," introduced by the negro minstrels in New York, was popular on the streets and in the camps.

BLOOD-SHEDDING REMITS SINS.

Judge Kellogg, having an application for condoning a death sentence against a soldier, urged that he had served well hitherto, having been badly wounded under fire.

"Kellogg," remarked Lincoln quickly, "is there not something in the Bible about the shedding of blood for the remission of sins?"

As the judge was not familiar with ecclesiastical law, he merely bowed. In fact, the blood-offerings of the ancients was of animals, and it was deemed profane to offer one's own. Still, the offering of blood is dedication to a friend or the country. Lincoln had _the idea_ correctly.

"That's a good point," he brightly said, "and there is no going behind it!"

So saying, he wrote the pardon, which Kellogg transmitted to the gladdened father of the culprit.

Mr. Lincoln had no need to go back to Scripture for his defense. It is martial law, unwritten but valid, that if a delinquent soldier, fugitive from justice, or breaking prison, reaches the battle-field and takes his place gallantly, no more would be said about the hanging charge, even though it were literally a hanging one.

HIS "LEG CASES."

The judge advocate-general, Holt, as well as the military chiefs, were in despair at their superior trifling with the laws of war by suspending mortal decrees, and, in short, in hunting up excuses for delaying the blow of justice. Once the judge brought to the President a case so flagrant that he did not doubt that, for a rarity, the chief would sign without any cavil and hesitation. A soldier had demoralized his regiment in the nick of a battle by dashing down his rifle and hiding behind a tree. He had not a friend or relative to sue for him.

Despite all this, the Executive laid down the pen quivering between his long fingers, and said:

"Holt, I think I must, after all, file this away with my 'Leg Cases.'"

And thrust the paper in one of a series of pigeonholes already crammed with the like.

The judge was taken off his guard by the inconsistent levity, and demanded the meaning of the term with acerbity.

"Holt, were you ever in battle?" he counter queried.

The man of law was a man of peace; he had seen lead, but in seals, not bullets.

Secretary of War Stanton was spurring the military justice on, as often before.

"Did Stanton ever march in the first line, to be shot at like this man?"

Holt answered for his colleague in the negative.

"Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk War!" proceeded the Illinoisian, "and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the legs when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I should sink to the ground. I am opposed to having soldiers shot for not facing danger when it is not known that their legs would carry them into danger! Well, judge, you see the papers crowded in there?

You call them cases of 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy,' a long t.i.tle, but I call them my 'Leg Cases,' for short!--and I put it to you, Holt, and leave it to you to decide for yourself, if Almighty G.o.d gives a man a _cowardly pair of legs,_ how can he help them running away with him?"

HOW THE DELINQUENT SOLDIER PAID HIS DEBT.

There is a great similarity in the many stories of Lincoln's leniency to soldiers incurring the death-penalty according to the code of war, and no wonder, when they were so numerous that he often had four-and-twenty sentences to sign or ignore in a day.

A member of a Vermont regiment was so sentenced for sleeping at his post. The more than usual intercession made for him induced Lincoln to visit the culprit in his cell. He found him a simple country lad, impressing him as a reminder of himself at that age. In the like plain and rustic vein he discoursed with him.

"I have been put to a deal of bother on your account, Scott," he said paternally. "What I want to know is how are you going to pay _my_ bill?"

From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so the young man responded:

"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up--if it isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?"

With the same gravity, the intermediator reckoned the cost would be more.

"My son," said he, "the bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay it--nor your comrades, nor the farm, nor the pay! If from this day William Scott does his duty so that, if I were there when he came to die, he could look me in the face as now and say: 'I have kept my promise and have done my duty as a soldier,' then _my_ debt will be paid."

The boy made the promise, and was immediately restored to the regiment. He earned promotion, but refused it. At Lee's Mills, on the Warwick River, he was wounded while distinguishing himself in a grand a.s.sault. Mortally wounded in saving three lives, he was enabled with his dying breath to send a message to the President to the effect that he had redeemed his pledge. On his breast was found one of the likenesses of Lincoln with the motto, "G.o.d bless our President!" which the Grand Army men were given. He thanked the benefactor for having let him fall like a soldier, in battle, and not like a coward, by his comrades' rifles.

"THE SWEARING HAD TO BE DONE THEN, OR NOT AT ALL!"

An old man came from Tennessee to beg the life of his son, death-doomed under the military code. General Fiske procured him admittance to the President, who took the pet.i.tion and promised to attend to the matter. But the applicant, in anguish, insisted that a life was at stake--that to-morrow would not do, and that the decision must be made on the instant.

Lincoln a.s.sumed his mollifying air, and in a soothing tone brought out his universal soothing-sirup, the little story:

"It was General Fiske, who introduced you, who told me this. The general began his career as a colonel, and raised his regiment in Missouri. Having good principles, he made the boys promise then not to be profane, but let him do all the swearing for the regiment.

For months no violation of the agreement was reported. But one day a teamster, with the foul tongue a.s.sociated with their calling and mule-driving, as he drove his team through a longer and deeper series of mud-puddles than ever before, unable to restrain himself, turned himself inside out as a vocal Vesuvius. It happened, too, that this torrent was heard surging by the colonel, who called him to account.

"'Well, yes, colonel,' he acknowledged, 'I did vow to let you do all the swearing of the regiment; but the cold fact is, that the swearing _had_ to be done thar and then, or not at all, to do the 'casion justice--and you were not thar!'

"Now," summed up Mr. Lincoln to the engrossed and semiconsoled parent, "I may not be there, so do you take this and do the swearing him off!"

He furnished him with the release autograph, and sent another mourner on his way rejoicing.

DISPLACE THE THISTLES BY FLOWERS.

Two ladies called upon the President at the end of 1864, one the wife, the other the mother of western Pennsylvanians imprisoned for resisting the military draft. A number of other men were fellows in their durance on precisely the same grounds. Finding it meet to grant this dual relief sought, Lincoln directed the whole to be liberated, and signed the paper with one signature to cover the entire act of humanity. His old friend, Speed, was witness of this scene, and, knowing only too well the sensitive nature of the President, he spoke his wonder that such ordeals were not killing.

Lincoln mused, and agreed that such scenes were not to be wantonly undergone.

"But they do not hurt me. That is the only thing today to make me forget my condition, or give me any pleasure"--he was unwell, then; his feet and hands were always cold, and often when about he ought to have been abed. "I have in that order made two persons happy, and alleviated the distress of many a poor soul whom I never expect to see. It is more than one can often say that, in doing right, one has made two happy in one day. Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow."--(Vouched for by Joshua R. Speed, the first to be friend to Lincoln when he set out to become a lawyer, at Springfield, in 1837.)