[178]
That it was the President's fault, I do not believe.
When the reports, in an authentic form, first reached Washington of the sufferings of the Union prisoners, I know he was greatly excited and overcome by them.
He was told that justice demanded a stern retaliation.
He said to his friend Mr. Odell with the deepest emotion: “I can never, never starve men like that!”
“Whatever others may say or do, I never can, and I never will, be accessory to such treatment of human beings!”
And although he spoke with the deepest feeling at the Baltimore Fair of the Fort Pillow massacre, and pledged retaliation, yet that pledge was never carried into execution.
It was simply impossible for Mr. Lincoln to be cruel or vindictive, no matter what the occasion.
In the serene light of history, when party strife and bitterness shall have passed away, it will be seen that, if he erred at all, it was always on the side of mercy and magnanimity.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.