Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout Read online

  CHAPTER VIII

  LINCOLN SAVES JIM JENKINS'S LIFE--NEWSPAPER ABUSE OF LINCOLN--THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION--LINCOLN IN HIS NIGHT-SHIRT--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--"BARBARA FRIETCHIE"--MR. STRONG COMES HOME--THE RUSSIAN FLEET COMES TO NEW YORK--A BACKWOODS JUPITER.

  Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done whatLincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and hadbeen put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather largeadvantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he mightoccasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteeredto go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, andhe had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on thearmy-rolls as "missing." Would the President think of him as a truant,who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of himwas frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang upinto his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greetedwith the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both onhis bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finallygetting back to the Union lines.

  The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat besidethe desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping,her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands werenervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to presentto the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as heturned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom'sentrance had interrupted.

  "So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" heasked.

  "No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the woman. "He said--he said itwas time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot andwould be shot at--at--sunrise tomorrow."

  The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap andslid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained onemoment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she awidow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before acourt-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing thefrivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to thefront, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to beshot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom ofthe stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admittedat last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlesslyrefused.

  "The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her."We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life to thatof our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grewsofter at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunatethat the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is neededand an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise.Good-day."

  He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out andthe next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she waswith Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for themother of a Union soldier.

  When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but thePresident was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like achild and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs.Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge ofMrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not hiswife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason fromwreck and her life from long anguish. He pointed to the petition whichhad fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.

  "Hand me that paper, Tom."

  He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew mistywith the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandannahandkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in boldletters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held thepetition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw asshe came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins'spardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She brokeinto a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.

  "You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keepthe fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he'sbeen a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boybaby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better togive him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to dobetter after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary andshow him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usuallyhe has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be oneof those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots ofthings you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him.Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you abit. Good-by--and God bless you."

  Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the WarDepartment, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkinsback to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life thePresident had given him. Only when the order had been entered did themother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the Presidenthad given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "moneytalks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her lastcent on her journey to Washington and her six days' stay there. AbrahamLincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When onceagain she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tearswere those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death atGettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide ofthe Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander,saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks ofthe Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed JimJenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore overhis heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country'ssalvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enoughto write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of hislife to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrousconsolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not longafterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.

  Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybodyhated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when PrivateSecretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter inhis hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to takesome people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of asmallpox hospital."

  Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, buthe often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered bymercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had beensentenced to be shot for cowardice.

  "Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runsaway, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is acoward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."

  The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped andhad reached Mexico.

  "I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catchhim, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana,'as they run.'"

  * * * * *

  At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There weredays of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of thePresident sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struckby Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_ and the foremostman in a group of great editors such as the country has never seensince. They were Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_, Henry J. Raymond ofthe _New York Times_, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)_Republican_. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymonddemanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letterthat was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause,said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."

  In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three we
re household words and namesby which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced hisheart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with theirwell-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in thosedark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve hiscountry and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon onegreat duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famousEmancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the ThirteenthAmendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slaverywherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that greatSeptember, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the WhiteHouse that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just whatthe master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon.It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitudeof his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that hecalled together his Cabinet, not to advise him about it, but to hearfrom him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned theCabinet officials to that historic session was none other than UncleMoses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight forfreedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick oftime upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the oldnegro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emergedfrom that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made amessenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his dutywas to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon itsmembers when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly butmajestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearinga message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a verydifferent person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris inthe Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these littlejourneys, Tad Lincoln often went with him, his small white handclutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knewnothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting atwhich the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day ofhis life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of agreat event in the world's history.

  "I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say withever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, hecame to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet,instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which theProclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. SoUnk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.

  * * * * *

  The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residenceof Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. Hewrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of newand exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamationhad freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily calledthemselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation ofappropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectableto be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until itsucceeds.

  * * * * *

  The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man hasmade a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men inbondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripesflew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow ofreflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keeneye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.

  Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincolnwas stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his longlegs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foottelescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He waslooking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news didthey bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head,called out: "Come in, Tommy."

  Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, atelegram in his hand, saying:

  "Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He isbehaving very badly."

  "Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busyto quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'llnever hear of it."

  He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.

  That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend theevening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackersand cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talkwas the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck whenthe door opened quietly and the President slipped into the room. Neverhad Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a shortnightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.

  "Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellowLowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankeewords into Jeff Davis's mouth:

  "'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.

  * * * * *

  An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.

  * * * * *

  An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day Consists in triumphantly gettin' away!'

  And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of hisgarb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:

  "'An' why should we kick up a muss About the Pres'dent's proclamation? It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us Ef we don't like emancipation. The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human. It's common (ez a gin'l rule) To every critter born o' woman.'"

  Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay'sdiary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs andsetting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, wasinfinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."

  "That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet,and essayist, later our Minister to England.

  * * * * *

  One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on hisway home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was.The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelopeRussian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed theenvelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy'seager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincolnfamily that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying tohis mother:

  "See what Tommy has given me."

  "Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.

  "My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming homeright away."

  "Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head ofthe table.

  "What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.

  "You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to thePresident's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he saidto Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizenwas to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can besaid of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Beforelong, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as hespoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."

  This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or atleast all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong haddone after Lincoln sent him abroad. The whole world saw the symbol ofhis work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. Thatsymbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City inSeptember of 1863.

  The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of theSouth during ou
r Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealousof the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. Francehoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if theConfederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get itunless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of bothFrance and England had little to say as to what their governments woulddo. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass ofEnglishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in thegrip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief,however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cottonfamine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the fleecystaple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actualstarvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and ThomasBayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of theNorthern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in theheart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising,etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. Itwas objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything.Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards sayingthat anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of themeeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over fourbushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire hadgiven them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.

  This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.

  The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the greatFrench poet and novelist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England tohave the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockadeand in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposedcrime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead,if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what iscalled a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his ownhandwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of hisfleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.

  Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a Europeanand an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sellAlaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to seeLiberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is acontagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spreadthrough Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St.Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russiaand of our extra-official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong,Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperorthat the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack uponthe Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for NewYork in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of thePresident of the United States in case any Franco-English squadronappeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.

  This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America andRussia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in thoseSeptember days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russianofficers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deservedwell of the Republic."

  * * * * *

  It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:

  "What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"

  "Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were names his rather irreverent secretarieshad given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him.Their nicknames for him were born of affection.

  "Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fittingwords all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never muchinterested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:

  "I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits hereand wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. Abackwoods Jupiter!"