Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

[174] “Why, they told me he was an ugly looking man,” she replied, with vehemence. “He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life!” And surely for that mother, and for many another throughout the land, no carved statue of ancient or modern art, in all its symmetry, can have the charm which will for evermore encircle that careworn but gentle face, expressing as lineaments of ruler never expressed before, “Malice towards none -charity for all.”

Though kind-hearted almost to a fault, nevertheless Mr. Lincoln always endeavored to be just. The Hon. S. F. Miller, of New York, called upon him one day with the brother of a deserter who had been arrested. The excuse was that the soldier had been home on a sick-furlough, and that he afterwards became partially insane, and had consequently failed to return and report in proper time. He was on his way to his regiment at the front to be tried. The President at once ordered him to be stopped at Alexandria and sent before a board of surgeons for examination as to the question of insanity. “This seemed to me so proper,” said the representative, “that I expressed myself satisfied. But on going out, the brother, who was anxious for an immediate discharge, said to me, ‘The trouble with your President is, that he is so afraid of doing something wrong.’ ”

A young man, connected with a New York regiment, had become to all appearance a hardened