University of Virginia Library

RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN.

A VERY CURIOUS CONVERSATION: WHAT HE THOUGHT
ABOUT CONSPIRACIES TO ASSASSINATE HIM, THREE
YEARS AGO.

In the fall of 1862 the writer of this article,
being then a member of the staff of General Halleck,
had frequent occasion to wait upon our
recently deceased President, both during official
hours and at other times.

Once—on what was called “a public day,”
when Mr. Lincoln received all applicants in their
turn—the writer was much struck by observing,
as he passed through the corridor, the heterogeneous
crowd of men and women, representing all
ranks and classes, who were gathered in the large
waiting-room outside the presidential suite of
offices.

Being ushered into the President's chamber by
Major Hay, the first thing he saw was Mr. Lincoln
bowing an elderly lady out of the door—the
President's remarks to her being, as she still lingered
and appeared reluctant to go: “I am
really very sorry, madam; very sorry. But your
own good sense must tell you that I am not here

to collect small debts. You must appeal to the
courts in regular order.”

When she was gone Mr. Lincoln sat down,
crossed his legs, locked his hands over his knees,
and commenced to laugh—this being his favorite
attitude when much amused.

“What odd kinds of people come in to see me,”
he said; “and what odd ideas they must have
about my office! Would you believe, Major, that
the old lady who has just left came in here to get
from me an order for stopping the pay of a Treasury
clerk, who owes her a board-bill of about
seventy dollars?” And the President rocked himself
backward and forward, and appeared intensely
amused.

“She may have come in here a loyal woman,”
continued Mr. Lincoln; “but I'll be bound she
has gone away believing that the worst pictures
of me in the Richmond press only lack truth in
not being half black and bad enough.”

This led to a somewhat general conversation, in
which I expressed surprise that he did not adopt
the plan in force at all military headquarters,
under which every applicant to see the General
Commanding had to be filtered through a sieve of
officers—assistant adjutant-generals, and so forth;
who allowed none in to take up the general's time
save such as they were satisfied had business of
sufficient importance, and which could be transacted

in no other manner than by a personal
interview.

“Of every hundred people who come to see
the General-in-chief daily,” I explained, “not ten
have any sufficient business with him, nor are they
admitted. On being asked to explain for what
purpose they desire to see him, and stating it, it is
found, in nine cases out of ten, that the business
properly belongs to some one or other of the subordinate
bureaux. They are then referred, as the
case may be, to the quartermaster, commissary,
medical, adjutant-general, or other departments,
with an assurance that—even if they saw the
General-in-chief—he could do nothing more for
them than give them the same direction. With
these points courteously explained,” I added,
“they go away quite content, although refused
admittance.”

“Ah, yes!” said Mr. Lincoln, gravely—and his
words on this matter are important as illustrating
a rule of his action, and to some extent, perhaps,
the essentially representative character of his
mind and of his administration: “Ah, yes! such
things do very well for you military people, with
your arbitrary rule, and in your camps. But the
office of President is essentially a civil one, and
the affair is very different. For myself, I feel—
though the tax on my time is heavy—that no
hours of my day are better employed than those

which thus bring me again within the direct contact
and atmosphere of the average of our whole
people. Men moving only in an official circle are
apt to become merely official—not to say arbitrary
—in their ideas; and are apter and apter, with
each passing day, to forget that they only hold
power in a representative capacity. Now this is
all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions
of all who claim to have business with me twice
each week, and every applicant for audience has
to take his turn as if waiting to be shaved in a
barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to
my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of
more or less importance; and all serve to renew
in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great
popular assemblage out of which I sprang, and to
which at the end of two years I must return. I
tell you, Major,” he said—appearing at this point
to recollect I was in the room, for the former part
of these remarks had been made with half-shut
eyes, as if in soliloquy—“I tell you that I call
these receptions my public-opinion baths—for I
have but little time to read the papers and gather
public opinion that way; and, though they may
not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect
as a whole is renovating and invigorating to my
perceptions of responsibility and duty. It would
never do for a President to have guards with
drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were,
or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an
emperor.”

This remark about “guards with drawn sabres
at his door” called my attention afresh to what I
had remarked to myself almost every time I
entered the White House, both then and since;
and to which I had very frequently called the
attention both of Major Hay and General Halleck:
—the utterly unprotected condition of the President's
person, and the fact that any assassin or
maniac, seeking his life, could enter his presence
without the interference of a single armed man to
hold him back. The entrance-doors, and all doors
on the official side of the building, were open at
all hours of the day and very late into the evening;
and I have many times entered the mansion
and walked up to the rooms of the two private
secretaries, as late as nine or ten o'clock at night,
without seeing or being challenged by a single
soul. There were, indeed, two attendants—one
for the outer door, and the other for the door of
the official chambers; but these, thinking, I suppose,
that none would call after office-hours save
persons who were personally acquainted, or had
the right of official entry—were, not unfrequently,
somewhat remiss in their duties.

To this fact I now ventured to call the President's
attention, saying that to me—perhaps
from my European education—it appeared a deliberate

courting of danger, even if the country
were in a state of the profoundest peace, for the
person at the head of the nation to remain so
unprotected.

“Even granting, Mr. Lincoln,” I said, “that no
assassin should seek your life, the large number
of lunatics always in a community, and always
larger in times like these, and the tendency which
insanity has to strike at shining objects, or whomsoever
is most talked about, should lead—I submit—to
some guards about the place, and to some
permanent officers with the power and duty of
questioning all who seek to enter.” To this I
added some brief sketch of the all but innumerable
crazy letters and projects which were continually
being received at General Halleck's headquarters,
and which he had one day laughingly
turned over to me, on the ground that I now and
then wrote verses.

“There are two dangers, therefore,” I wound
up by saying; “the danger of deliberate political
assassination, and the mere brute violence of insanity.”

Mr. Lincoln had heard me with a smile, his
hands still locked across his knees, and his body
still rocking back and forth—the common indication
that he was amused.

“Now, as to political assassination,” he said,
“do you think the Richmond people would like

to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than
myself? In that one alternative, I have an insurance
on my life worth half the prairie-land of
Illinois? And besides”—this more gravely—“if
there were such a plot, and they wanted to get at
me, no vigilance could keep them out. We are
so mixed up in our affairs, that—no matter what
the system established—a conspiracy to assassinate,
if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to
see me for any one or more of its instruments.
To betray fear of this, by placing guards, and so
forth, would only be to put the idea into their
heads, and perhaps lead to the very result it was
intended to prevent. As to the crazy folks,
Major, why I must only take my chances—the
worst crazy people I at present fear being some of
my own too zealous adherents. That there may
be such dangers as you and many others have
suggested to me, is quite possible; but I guess it
wouldn't improve things any, to publish that we
were afraid of them in advance.”

At this point the President turned to the papers
I had brought over for his signature, and signing
them handed them to me with some message for
General Halleck. Whereupon I bowed myself
out, and the stream of omnium-gatherum humanity
from the waiting-rooms again commenced flowing
in upon him—sometimes in individual, sometimes
in deputational or collective waves.

The whole interview I have here narrated,
though taking so much longer to tell, had probably
not endured over ten or fifteen minutes; and
it was the first, although not the only time, that
I heard Mr. Lincoln discuss the possibility of an
attempt to assassinate him.

The second time was when he came over one
evening after dinner to General Halleck's private
quarters to protest—half jocularly, half in earnest—
against a small detachment of cavalry which had
been detailed without his request, and partly
against his will, by the lamented General Wads-worth,
as a guard for his carriage in going to and
returning from the Soldiers' Home. The burden
of his complaint was that he and Mrs. Lincoln
“couldn't hear themselves talk” for the clatter of
their sabres and spurs; and that, as many of them
appeared new hands and very awkward, he was
more afraid of being shot by the accidental discharge
of one of their carbines or revolvers, than
of any attempt upon his life, or for his capture, by
the roving squads of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, then
hovering all round the exterior earth-works of
the city.

This conversation is related, as reproduced by
a memory of perhaps more than average tenacity,
precisely as the writer would re-word the matter
if called upon to give evidence thereanent in a
court of justice. Nothing has been added to it,

nor anything suppressed, that I can recollect.
The President's remarks—perhaps soliloquy were
the better term—relative to the necessity of constant
intercommunication with the average people
of the country, made a deep impression on me;
and his calling these general receptions his “public-opinion
baths,” was a phrase not soon to be
forgotten.

From the 25th of August, 1862, until relieved
from General Halleck's staff—late in December
of the same year—the writer had the good fortune
of enjoying frequent opportunities of seeing
and hearing Mr. Lincoln; and more especially
during the dark days from General Pope's disastrous
defeats at the second Bull Run and Chantilly
until after the enemy, beaten by McClellan at
Antietam, had again been driven south. During
all this period the President, accompanied by
either Major Hay or Mr. Nicolay, spent some
hours several evenings in each week at General
Halleck's private quarters; and it certainly is not
too much to say that the more any candid mind
saw of Mr. Lincoln—even if opposed to his political
views—the more deeply must it have become
impressed by the homely honesty, kindliness,
force, shrewdness, originality, humor, and self-sacrificing
patriotism of that great and good man's
character.