to plead
for certain political offenders. It is much to be feared that they were
more successful than they deserved, though Stanton intervened and Dennis,
when he had seen him, favoured his old companion, the President, with
advice to dismiss that minister. But the immense variety of puzzling
requests to be dealt with in such interviews must have made heavy demands
upon a conscientious and a kind man, especially if his conscience and his
kindness were, in small matters, sometimes at variance. Lincoln sent a
multitude away with that feeling, so grateful to poor people, that at
least they had received such hearing as it was possible to give them; and
in dealing with the applications which imposed the greatest strain on
himself he made an ineffaceable impression upon the memory of his
countrymen.

The American soldier did not take naturally to discipline. Death
sentences, chiefly for desertion or for sleeping or other negligence on
the part of sentries, were continually being passed by courts-martial.
In some cases or at some period these used to come before the President
on a stated day of the week, of which Lincoln would often speak with
horror. He was continually being appealed to in relation to such
sentences by the father or mother of the culprit, or some friend. At one
time, it may be, he was too ready with pardon; "You do not know," he
said, "how hard it is to let a human being die, when you feel that a
stroke of your pen will save him." Butler used to write to him that he
was destroying the discipline of the army. A letter of his to Meade
shows clearly that, later at least, he did not wish to exercise a merely
cheap and inconsiderate mercy. The import of the numberless pardon
stories really is that he would spare himself no trouble to enquire, and
to intervene wherever he could rightly give scope to his longing for
clemency. A Congressman might force his way into his bedroom in the
middle of the night, rouse him from his sleep to bring to his notice
extenuating facts that had been overlooked, and receive the decision,
"Well, I don't see that it will do him any good to be shot." It is
related that William Scott, a lad from a farm in Vermont, after a
tremendous march in the Peninsula campaign, volunteered to do double
guard duty to spare a sick comrade, slept at his post, was caught, and
was under sentence of death, when the President came to the army and
heard of him. The President visited him, chatted