Lxii.
The President's friend,
the Hon. H. C. Deming of
Connecticut, once ventured to ask him “if he had ever despaired of the country?”
“When the
Peninsula campaign terminated suddenly at
Harrison's Landing,” rejoined
Mr. Lincoln, “I was as nearly inconsolable as I could be and live.”
In the same connection
Colonel Deming inquired if there had ever been a period in which he thought that better management upon the part of the
commanding general might have terminated the war?
“Yes,” answered the
President, “there were three: at ‘
Malvern Hill,’ when
McClellan failed to command an immediate advance upon
Richmond; at ‘Chancellorville,’ when
Hooker failed to reenforce
Sedgwick, after hearing his cannon upon the extreme right; and at ‘
Gettysburg,’ when
Meade failed to attack
Lee in his retreat at the bend of the
[
220]
Potomac.”
After this commentary, the
Congressman waited for an outburst of denunciation — for a criticism, at least — upon the delinquent officers; but he waited in vain.
So far from a word of censure escaping
Mr. Lincoln's lips, he soon added, that his first remark might not appear uncharitable: “I do not know that I could have given any different orders had I been with them myself.
I have not fully made up my mind how I should behave when minie-balls were whistling, and those great oblong shells shrieking in my ear. I might run away.”
The interview at which this conversation took place, occurred just after
General Fremont had declined to run against him for the presidency.
The magnificent Bible which the negroes of
Baltimore had just presented to him lay upon the table, and while examining it,
Colonel Deming recited the somewhat remarkable passage from the Chronicles: “Eastward were six Levites, northward four a day, southward four a day, and toward Assuppim, two and two.
At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.”
The President immediately challenged his friend to find any such passage in his Bible.
After it was pointed out to him, and he was satisfied of its genuineness, he asked the
Congressman if he remembered the text which his friends had recently applied to
Fremont, and instantly turned to a verse in the first of Samuel, put on his spectacles, and read in his slow, peculiar, and waggish tone: “And every one that was in distress,
[
221]
and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men.”
