General Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant

“ [388] applied a remedial agency which is in entire accord with the best medical practice. Charleston was suffering from the disease known as secession, and he got control of it by means of counter-irritation.” Wilmington was captured on the 22d of February.

An addition was now made to our staff in the person of Captain Robert T. Lincoln, the President's eldest son. He had been graduated at Harvard University in 1864, and had at once urged his father to let him enter the army and go to the front; but Mr. Lincoln felt that this would only add to his own personal anxieties, and Robert was persuaded to remain at Harvard and take a course of study in the law-school. The fact is not generally known that Mr. Lincoln already had a personal representative in the army. He had procured a man to enlist early in the war, whom he always referred to as his “substitute.” This soldier served in the field to the end with a good record, and the President watched his course with great interest, and took no little pride in him.

In the spring of 1865 Robert renewed his request to his father, who mentioned the subject to General Grant. The general said to the President that if he would let Robert join the staff at headquarters, he would be glad to give him a chance to see some active service in the field. The President replied that he would consent to this upon one condition: that his son should serve as a volunteer aide without pay or emoluments; but Grant dissuaded him from adhering to that determination, saying that it was due to the young man that he should be regularly commissioned, and put on an equal footing with other officers of the same grade. So it was finally settled that Robert should receive the rank of captain and assistant adjutant-general; and on February 23 he was attached to the staff of the general-in-chief. The