attle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which
should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.
But I can not refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be
found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our
heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave
you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn
pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the
altar of freedom."(19)

All these innumerable instances of his sympathy passed from mouth to
mouth; became part of a floating propaganda that was organizing the
people in his support. To these were added many anecdotes of his mercy.
The American people had not learned that war is a rigorous thing.
Discipline in the army was often hard to maintain. Impulsive young men
who tired of army life, or who quarreled with their officers, sometimes
walked away. There were many condemnations either for mutiny or
desertion. In the stream of suppliants pouring daily through the
President's office, many were parents imploring mercy for rash sons. As
every death-warrant had to be signed by the President, his generals
were frequently enraged by his refusal to carry out their decisions.
"General," said he to an angry commander who charged him with destroying
discipline, "there are too many weeping widows in the United States
now.-For God's sake don't ask me to add to the number; for I tell you
plainly I won't do it."(20)

Here again, kindness was blended with statecraft, mercy with shrewdness.
The generals could not grasp the political side of war. Lincoln tried
to make them see it. When they could not, he quietly in the last resort
counteracted their influence. When some of them talked of European
experience, he shook his head; it would not do; they must work with
the tools they had; first of all with an untrained people, intensely
sensitive to the value of human life, impulsive, quick to forget
offenses, ultra-considerate of youth and its rashness. Whatever else the
President did, he must not allow the country to think of the army as an
ogre devouring its sons because of technicalities. The General saw only
the discipline, the morale, of the soldiers; the President saw the
far more difficult, the more roundabout matter, the discipline and the
morale of the citizens. The one believed that he could compel; the other
with his finger on the nation's pulse,