"Then, by God, you must be right.You are the bravest man in this land, sir, and I will follow you to the other side of perdition."
III
The time is two years later--a warm evening in early May.There had been no rain for a week in Washington, and the President, who had ridden in from his summer quarters in the Soldiers' Home, had his trousers grey with dust from the knees down.He had come round to the War Department, from which in these days he was never long absent, and found the Secretary for War busy as usual at his high desk.There had been the shortest of greetings, and, while Lincoln turned over the last telegrams, Stanton wrote steadily.
Stanton had changed much since the night in the Springfield store.A square beard, streaked with grey, covered his chin, and his face had grown heavier.There were big pouches below the short-sighted eyes, and deep lines on each side of his short shaven upper lip.His skin had an unheathly pallor, like that of one who works late and has little fresh air.The mouth, always obstinate, was now moulded into a settled grimness.The ploughs of war had made deep furrows on his soul.
Lincoln, too, had altered.He had got a stoop in his shoulders as if his back carried a burden.A beard had been suffered to grow in a ragged fringe about his jaw and cheeks, and there were silver threads in it.His whole face seemed to have been pinched and hammered together, so that it looked like a mask of pale bronze--a death mask, for it was hard to believe that blood ran below that dry tegument.But the chief change was in his eyes.
They had lost the alertness they once possessed, and had become pits of brooding shade, infinitely kind, infinitely patient, infinitely melancholy.
Yet there was a sort of weary peace in the face, and there was still humour in the puckered mouth and even in the sad eyes.He looked less harassed than the Secretary for War.He drew a small book from his pocket, at which the other glanced malevolently.
I give you fair warning, Mr.President," said Stanton."If you've come here to read me the work of one of your tom-fool funny men, I'll fling it out of the window.
"This work is the Bible," said Lincoln, with the artlessness of a mischievous child.I looked in to ask how the draft was progressing.""It starts in Rhode Island on July 7, and till it starts I can say nothing.
We've had warning that there will be fierce opposition in New York.It may mean that we have a second civil war on our hands.And of one thing I am certain--it will cost you your re-election."The President did not seem perturbed."In this war we've got to take one step at a time," he said."Our job is to save the country, and to do that we've got to win battles.But you can't win battles without armies, and if men won't enlist of their own will they've got to be compelled.What use is a second term to me if I have no country....You're not weakening on the policy of the draft, Mr.Stanton?"The War Minister shrugged his shoulders."No.In March it seemed inevitable.I still think it is essential, but I am forced to admit the possibility that it may be a rank failure.It is the boldest step you have taken, Mr.President.Have you ever regretted it?"Lincoln shook his head."It don't do to start regretting.This war is managed by the Almighty, and if it's his purpose that we should win He will show us how.I regard our fallible reasoning and desperate conclusions as part of His way of achieving His purpose.But about that draft.I'll answer you in the words of a young Quaker woman who against the rules had married a military man.The elders asked her if she was sorry, and she replied that she couldn't truly say that she was sorry, but that she could say she wouldn't do it again.I was for the draft, and I was for the war, to prevent democracy making itself foolish.""You'll never succeed in that," said Stanton gravely.
"If Congress is democracy, there can't be a more foolish gathering outside a monkey-house."The President grinned broadly.He was humming the air of a nigger song, "The Blue-tailed Fly," which Lamon had taught him.
"That reminds me of Artemus Ward.He observes that at the last election he voted for Henry Clay.It's true, he says, that Henry was dead, but Since all the politicians that he knew were fifteenth-rate he preferred to vote for a first-class corpse."Stanton moved impatiently.He hated the President's pocket humorists and had small patience with his tales."Was ever a great war fought," he cried, with such a camp-following as our Congressmen?"Lincoln looked comically surprised.
"You're too harsh, Mr.Stanton.I admit there are one or two rascals who'd be better hanged.But the trouble is that most of them are too high-principled.They are that set on liberty that they won't take the trouble to safeguard it.They would rather lose the war than give up their little notions.I've a great regard for principles, but I have no use for them when they get so high that they become foolishness.""Every idle pedant thinks he knows better how to fight a war than the men who are labouring sixteen hours a day at it," said Stanton bitterly.
don't altogether blame them either, for I'm mortally impatient myself.But it s no good thinking that saying a thing should be so will make it so.
We're not the Creator of this universe.You've got to judge results according to your instruments.Horace Greeley is always telling me what Ishould do, but Horace omits to explain how I am to find the means.You can't properly manure a fifty-acre patch with only a bad smell."Lincoln ran his finger over the leaves of the small Bible he had taken from his pocket "Seems to me Moses had the same difficulties to contend with.
Read the sixteenth chapter of the book of Numbers at your leisure, Mr.
