The Lincoln Story Book Part 32

"YOU HAVE ONE, AND I HAVE ONE--THAT IS RIGHT!"

An elderly woman was among the suitors of the President, when the commander-in-chief by virtue of office was besought to release her eldest son of three, her husband and two younger sons having been slain in action.

"Certainly," returned the chief, "if you have given us all, and your prop has been taken away, you are justly ent.i.tled to one of your boys."

The woman took the discharge, and gratefully went away. But she was compelled to return more grieved than before, as she had found the son she sought dying in a hospital at the front. The surgeon made a note of the fatality, with which, unable to speak, she presented herself to the President. He knew what she wished this time, and proceeded to write out the release of the second son. On handing her the paper, he said--a new judgment of a kinder judge than Solomon:

"Now, you have one, and I the other of the two left; that is no more than right!"

"SHOOTING A MAN DOES HIM NO GOOD!"

Judge Kellogg, of New York, begged off the son of a voter in his district, condemned for military infraction; in fact, the judge did not know much of the case, but his insistence prevailed over the rectifier of the law and articles of war. Lincoln dryly remarked, as he appended his signature to the pardon:

"I do not believe that shooting a man does him any good!"

BENEVOLENCE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Thaddeus Stevens accompanied a lady of his const.i.tuents to beg a pardon of the President, her son being under death sentence of a court-martial. The senator backing up the pet.i.tion, it was granted.

The grateful woman was choking, and was led away by her escort, without speaking in thankfulness. But at the exit she found her voice, and burst forth feelingly:

"Mr. Stevens, they told me that the President was homely looking!

It is a lie! He is the handsomest man I ever saw!"

"IT WAS THE BABY THAT DID IT."

A young mother came to Washington to sue for the life of her husband, a deserter, condemned to die. Such was the crowd of besiegers for grace, offices, and simple greeting by the host of the White House that she was kept out in the hall. But one day, the master pa.s.sing through the corridor "to hold the show," heard a baby's pitiful wail. He halted, listened again to make sure, and on entering his reception-parlor asked his favorite usher if he had not heard that odd thing--there--an infant's cry.

The attendant promptly related that a woman with a babe was without, who had been losing her time three days.

"Go at once, and send her to me," he ordered, expressing regret that she should have been overlooked.

As there were several extenuating points in her plea, or the benign official leaned that way, he wrote his pardon and gave it to the woman, whose still plaintive smile shone through tears of grat.i.tude.

"Take that, my poor woman, and it will bring you back your husband,"

he said, going so far as to direct her to what authority to apply for the action.

In showing her forth, the old usher, who knew his employer's tender heart where children were concerned, whispered:

"It was the baby that did it!"--(Told by "Old Dan'el," the good-natured Irish usher.)

"IT RESTS ME TO SAVE A LIFE!"

Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House, pleaded with Lincoln for the life of an elector's son, sentenced to be shot. Though he intruded on the arbiter very late after a long spell of official duties, Lincoln accorded the boon.

"Colfax," explained he, "it makes me rested after a hard day's work, if I can find some good excuse for saving a man's life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him, and his family, and his friends."

"A FAMILY MAN WANTS TO SEE HIS FAMILY."

Superintendent Tinker, of the Western Union Telegraph Company, vouches for the following:

A woman came to the Honorable Francis Kernan, member of Congress, with a pitiful tale, with which he went to the President. Her husband was a soldier who had been away from home a year. He deserted in order to have a glance at the family, and was captured on his way back to the front. But the rules of war are imperative, and without compa.s.sion.

The President was interested, as in all such cases where a deserving life and a sorrowing woman were at stake. He said:

"Of course, this man wanted to see his family! They ought not to shoot him for that!" He telegraphed for action in the matter to cease, and finally pardoned the deserter.

"A fellow-feeling"--for all his thoughts reverted to _his_ family life at Springfield.

A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation, issued in December, 1863, exemplifies the perpetual attempt to infuse mercy into that intestine warfare, which always grows more fierce by oil thrown on the flames, and only once, in our case, terminated in the brothers becoming brothers again.

He replied thus to a public criticizer of the doc.u.ment:

"When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there is no exception to the rule."

EVEN REBELS MIGHT BE SAVED.

A Mr. Shrigley, of Philadelphia, having been appointed hospital chaplain, the President sent in his name to the Senate, and his confirmation was imminent. A deputation came on to protest on the grounds that he was a Universalist, a large-minded man, who did not believe in endless punishment. Logically, he believed that "even the rebels will be saved," concluded the opposition, horrified.