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On the 21st July he wrote, "A few days having passed, I am now profoundly grateful for what was done, without criticism for what was not done." And Gettysburg was accompanied by even better news from Grant, who had taken the seemingly impregnable Vicksburg on the 4th of July. Lincoln thanked him in a cordial letter: ending with a generous confession of his own erroneous views as to Grant's actions, and the sentence, "I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong." Vicksburg was the key to the Mississippi River, and a few days later this was once more an open highway for American vessels.

After Vicksburg and Gettysburg, though there was still cause enough for anxiety, the steadier minds began to feel assured of ultimate success. And, realising the extraordinary perils through which the ship had passed, they were thankful that it still rode "safe and sound at all." Like Whitman at this time,1 they saw that "it has been a big thing to have just kept the United States from being thrown down and having its throat cut"; and in his quaint colloquial phrase they were finally making up their minds "that Mr Lincoln has done as good as a human man could do."

In August, Lincoln wrote a long letter in excellent spirits, addressed to his old friends at Springfield, in lieu of a stump speech. People everywhere, he said, were urging him to bring about a cessation of the War. Now the rebellion was military in its whole character, and peace was only possible when the leaders of the rebel army should ask for it. None

1 October 27th, 1863. Letters to his mother in Wound-Dresser.

of them had yet shown any signs of doing this. As the rebellion was military, so the means taken to overthrow it had been military also; the Proclamation of Emancipation had been justified to the nation by the verdict of men like Grant, who regarded it as the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebels. That Proclamation could never now be retracted; its promise must be kept.

Then followed a racy, irresistible paragraph in Lincoln's inimitable vernacular: "The signs look better. The Father of Waters [the Mississippi] again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great NorthWest for it. Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more colours than one, also lent a hand. On the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one, and let none be banned who bore an honourable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all: for the great Republic-for the principle it lives by and keeps alive -for man's vast future-thanks to all."

He continued: "Peace does not appear so distant

as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. . . Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let

us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will give us the rightful result."

It would be a mistake to think that even at this wholly immersed in the He was perhaps never

time of stress Lincoln was labours of the Presidency. more ready to abandon himself to anecdote, or laughter, and this we can understand the more readily, if we recall his saying, “I laugh because I must not cry; that's all—that's all.”

His laughter was original, perfectly spontaneous, and very infectious. He had an actual dread of persons who were without humour. As the strain of the war grew sterner, this must have increased. And the reason is not difficult to guess. It is suggested in an incident related by Mr F. B. Carpenter. An Ohio Congress-man called on the President immediately after a military disaster. Lincoln did not want to discuss it. He contrived instead to introduce an anecdote. His visitor broke in severely, " Mr President, I did not come here this morning to hear stories; it is too serious a time." With that rebuke he was going, when Lincoln, preventing him, said sadly, "Ashley, sit down. I respect you as an earnest, sincere man. You cannot be more anxious than I have been constantly since the beginning of the War; and I say to you now, that were it not for this occasional vent, I should die."

The uses which Lincoln found for his gift of anecdote, were very many. As the special corres

pondent of The Times pointed out to his English readers, the President's honesty was not altogether an advantage to him in matters requiring diplomacy, and where others would employ subterfuge, Lincoln fell back upon "a story."

This gift of the President's had other values.

Whitman quotes a good example of the anecdote as used for emphasis. Some pessimistic bank-presidents asked him, one dark day, if he were not beginning to lose his faith in the Union: by way of reply, he said, "When I was a young man in Illinois, I boarded for a time with a deacon of the Presbyterian Church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, and I heard the deacon's voice exclaiming, Arise, Abraham! the Day of Judgment has come!' I sprang from my bed and rushed to my window, and saw the stars falling in great showers; but looking back of them in the heavens, I saw the grand old constellations, with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then nor will the Union now." 1

The late Mr John Hay, one of his secretaries, has described the usual course of Lincoln's days at the White House. He rose early, especially in summer, when he made his quarters at the Soldiers' Home-taking a light breakfast and riding into Washington by eight o'clock. Official business began nominally at ten, but long before that hour the halls and ante-rooms were filled by callers. In the middle of the day he took a little fruit, or in winter a biscuit and glass of milk. He was supposed to dine between five and six, but usually, as he told Mrs Stowe, he just browsed round

1 Whitman, Complete Prose, 331.

a little now and then. Indeed he ate less than other men, and disliking intoxicants, did not use them at all. After dinner the evening would be filled by Members of Congress, Senators, and other political visitors; but occasionally he would escape, shutting himself up, or going to some theatre, concert, or lecture for an hour's breathing space. Between ten and eleven he would go to bed carrying off Tad who was probably asleep on his couch. This would be in winter at the White House. But there he slept badly. Often he sat up late at the War Department waiting for telegrams from the front, and consequently he would be later in rising.

Other accounts, show him, in the closing years, risen at four in the morning, reading his Bible and offering prayer in his room, and ready to receive a visitor at five. All authorities unite in declaring him the least methodical of men, who yet saved himself unnecessary labour, entrusting much of his official work to his secretaries -young men worthy of the trust-and signing their letters without reading them. His physical constitution and his temperament seem to have been economical, and capable of performing the maximum of labour with the minimum of friction, so long as they were given free play. As a subordinate, confined and restricted by rules, Lincoln could never have achieved a fraction of what, as a chief, he accomplished.

Though now only a small reader-his mind like his body seeming to require but little of the usual stimulants-he had been a devoted Shakespearian since his New Salem days, and had always carried a copy of the plays with him on circuit. He had an extraordinarily accurate verbal memory, and his mind

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