ts place on your personal
book shelf._

_Reprinted by permission from_

LINCOLN'S OWN STORIES

_told by Anthony Gross_

VI

THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

Delegations from Baltimore called to protest against the "pollution" of
the soil of Maryland by the feet of the soldiers marching across it to
fight against the South. They had no difficulty in understanding the
President's reply:

"We must have troops; and, as they can neither crawl _under_ Maryland
nor fly _over_ it, they must come across it."

When the war had actually begun he delighted in the soldiers' grim
humor in the face of death. He told story after story about the
"boys," laughing, with tears in his gray eyes, at their heroism in
danger. He never laughed at the private soldier, except in the pride
of his hearty patriotism. But he made constant fun of the assumptions
of generals and other high officials. The stories he most enjoyed
telling were of the soldiers' scoffing at rank and pretension. He
delighted in the following:

A picket challenged a tug going up Broad River, South Carolina, with:

"Who goes there?"

"The Secretary of War and Major-General Foster," was the pompous reply.

"Aw! We've got major-generals enough up here--why don't you bring us
up some hardtack?"

On another occasion a friend burst into his room to tell him that a
brigadier-general and twelve army mules had been carried off by a
Confederate raid.

"How unfortunate! Those mules cost us two hundred dollars apiece!" was
the President's only reply.

Mr. Lincoln was a very abstemious man, ate very little and drank
nothing but water, not from principle, but because he did not like wine
or spirits. Once, in rather dark days early in the war, a temperance
committee came to him and said that the reason we did not win was
because our army drank so much whisky as to bring the curse of the Lord
upon them. He said, in reply, that it was rather unfair on the part of
the aforesaid curse, as the other side drank more and worse whisky than
ours did.

Some one urged President Lincoln to place General Fremont in command of
some station. While the President did not want to offend his friend at
a rather critical time of the war, he pushed him gently and firmly
aside in this wise: He said he did not know where to place General
Fremont, and it reminded him of an old man who advised his son to take
a wife, to which the young man responded, "Whose wife shall I take?