Tales of Tad Lincoln in the White House

Tales of Lieutenant Tad Lincoln in the White House

There was no more sturdy little patriot in the whole country than Lieutenant Tad Lincoln, "the child of the nation," nor had the President of the United States a more devoted admirer and follower than his own small son. A word from his father would melt the lad to tears and submission, or bring him out of a nervous tantrum with his small round face wreathed with smiles, and a chuckling in his throat of "Papa-day, my papa-day!" No one knew exactly what the boy meant by papa-day. It was his pet name for the dearest man on earth, and it was his only way of expressing the greatest pleasure his boyish heart was able to hold. It was the "sweetest word ever heard" by the war-burdened, crushed and sorrowing soul of the broken-hearted President of the United States.

Mr. Lincoln took his youngest son with him everywhere—on his great mission to Fortress Monroe, and they—"the long and the short of it," the soldiers said—marched hand in hand] through the streets of fallen Richmond. The understanding between the man and the boy was so complete and sacred, that some acts which seemed to outsiders absurd and ill-fitting, became perfectly right and proper when certain unknown facts were taken into account.

WAVING THE "STARS AND BARS" OUT OF A WHITE HOUSE WINDOW

For instance, one night, during an enthusiastic serenade at the White House, after a great victory of the northern armies, when the President had been out and made a happy speech in response to the congratulations he had received, everybody was horrified to see the Confederate "Stars and Bars" waving frantically from an upper window with shouts followed by shrieks as old Edward, the faithful colored servant, pulled in the flag and the boy who was guilty of the mischief.

"That was little Tad!" exclaimed some one in the crowd. Many laughed, but some spectators thought the boy ought to be punished for such a treasonable outbreak on the part of a President's boy in a soldier's uniform.

"If he don't know any better than that," said[250] one man, "he should be taught better. It's an insult to the North and the President ought to stop it and apologize, too."

"BOYS IN BLUE" AND "BOYS IN GRAY"

But little Tad understood his father's spirit better than the crowd did. He knew that the President's love was not confined to "the Boys in Blue," but that his heart went out also to "the Boys in Gray." The soldiers were all "boys" to him. They knew he loved them. They said among themselves: "He cares for us. He takes our part. We will fight for him; yes, we will die for him."

And a large part of the common soldier's patriotism was this heart-response of "the boys" to the great "boy" in the White House. That was the meaning of their song as they trooped to the front at his call:

"We are coming, Father Abraham;
Three hundred thousand more."

Little Tad saw plenty of evidences of his father's love for the younger soldiers—the real boys of the army. Going always with the President, he had heard his "Papa-day" say of several[251] youths condemned to be shot for sleeping at their post or some like offense:

"That boy is worth more above ground than under;" or, "A live boy can serve his country better than a dead one."

"Give the boys a chance," was Abraham Lincoln's motto. He hadn't had much of a chance himself and he wanted all other boys to have a fair show. His own father had been too hard with him, and he was going to make it up to all the other boys he could reach. This passion for doing good to others began in the log cabin when he had no idea he could ever be exercising his loving kindness in the Executive Mansion—the Home of the Nation. "With malice toward none, with charity for all," was the rule of his life in the backwoods as well as in the National Capital.

And "the Boys in Gray" were his "boys," too, but they didn't understand, so they had wandered away—they were a little wayward, but he would win them back. The great chivalrous South has learned, since those bitter, ruinous days, that Abraham Lincoln was the best friend the South then had in the North. Tad had seen his father show great tenderness to all the[252] "boys" he met in the gray uniform, but the President had few opportunities to show his tenderness to the South—though there was a secret pigeonhole in his desk stuffed full of threats of assassination. He was not afraid of death—indeed, he was glad to die if it would do his "boys" and the country any good. But it hurt him deep in his heart to know that some of his beloved children misunderstood him so that they were willing to kill him!

It was no one's bullet which made Abraham Lincoln a martyr. All his life he had shown the spirit of love which was willing to give his very life if it could save or help others.

All these things little Tad could not have explained, but they were inbred into the deep understanding of the big father and the small son who were living in the White House as boys together.

MR. LINCOLN'S LAST SPEECH AND HOW TAD HELPED

A few days after the war ended at Appomattox, a great crowd came to the White House to serenade the President. It was Tuesday evening, April 11, 1865. Mr. Lincoln had written a short address for the occasion. The times were[253] so out of joint and every word was so important that the President could not trust himself to speak off-hand.

A friend stepped out on the northern portico with him to hold the candle by which Mr. Lincoln was to read his speech. Little Tad was with his father, as usual, and when the President had finished reading a page of his manuscript he let it flutter down, like a leaf, or a big white butterfly, for Tad to catch. When the pages came too slowly the boy pulled his father's coat-tail, piping up in a muffled, excited tone:

"Give me 'nother paper, Papa-day."

To the few in the front of the crowd who witnessed this little by-play it seemed ridiculous that the President of the United States should allow any child to behave like that and hamper him while delivering a great address which would wield a national, if not world-wide influence. But little Tad did not trouble his father in the least. It was a part of the little game they were constantly playing together.

The address opened with these words:

"Fellow-Citizens: We meet this evening not in sorrow, but gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg[254] and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army (at Appomattox) give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call for national thanksgiving is being prepared and will be duly promulgated."

About Captain Abraham Lincoln

"ABOUT CAPTAIN LINCOLN"

Lincoln had hardly launched in his first political venture when, in April, 1832, a messenger arrived in New Salem with the announcement from Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, that the] Sacs and other hostile tribes, led by Black Hawk, had invaded the northern part of the State, spreading terror among the white settlers in that region. The governor called upon those who were willing to help in driving back the Indians to report at Beardstown, on the Illinois River, within a week.

Lincoln and other Sangamon County men went at once to Richmond where a company was formed. The principal candidate for captain was a man named Kirkpatrick, who had treated Lincoln shabbily when Abe, in one of the odd jobs he had done in that region, worked in Kirkpatrick's sawmill. The employer had agreed to buy his hired man a cant-hook for handling the heavy logs. As there was a delay in doing this, Lincoln told him he would handle the logs without the cant-hook if Kirkpatrick would pay him the two dollars that implement would cost. The employer promised to do this, but never gave him the money.

So when Lincoln saw that Kirkpatrick was a candidate for the captaincy, he said to Greene, who had worked with him in Offutt's store:

"Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook[ now. I guess I'll run against him for captain."

Therefore Abe Lincoln announced himself as a candidate. The vote was taken in an odd way. It was announced that when the men heard the command to march, each should go and stand by the man he wished to have for captain. The command was given. At the word, "March," three-fourths of the company rallied round Abe Lincoln. More than twenty-five years afterward, when Lincoln was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, he referred to himself in the third person in describing this incident, saying that he was elected "to his own surprise," and "he says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

IGNORANCE OF MILITARY TACTICS

But Lincoln was a "raw hand" at military tactics. He used to enjoy telling of his ignorance and the expedients adopted in giving his commands to the company. Once when he was marching, twenty men abreast, across a field it became necessary to pass through a narrow gateway into the next field. He said:

"I could not, for the life of me, remember the word for getting the company endwise so that it
 could go through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the fence.'"

A HISTORIC MYSTERY EXPLAINED

Captain Lincoln had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Many have wondered that a man of Lincoln's intelligence should have been guilty of this stupid infraction of ordinary army regulations. Biographers of Lincoln puzzled over this until the secret was explained by William Turley Baker, of Bolivia, Ill., at the Lincoln Centenary in Springfield. All unconscious of solving a historic mystery, "Uncle Billy" Baker related the following story which explains that the shooting was purely accidental:

"My father was roadmaster general in the Black Hawk War. Lincoln used to come often to our house and talk it all over with father, when I was a boy, and I've heard them laugh over their experiences in that war. The best joke of all was this: Father received orders one day to throw log bridges over a certain stream the army had to cross. He felled some tall, slim[ black walnuts—the only ones he could find there—and the logs were so smooth and round that they were hard to walk on any time. This day it rained and made them very slippery. Half of the soldiers fell into the stream and got a good ducking. Captain Lincoln was one of those that tumbled in. He just laughed and scrambled out as quick as he could. He always made the best of everything like that.

"Well, that evening when the company came to camp, some of them had dog tents—just a big canvas sheet—and the boys laughed to see Lincoln crawl under one of them little tents. He was so long that his head and hands and feet stuck out on all sides. The boys said he looked just like a big terrapin. After he had got himself stowed away for the night, he remembered that he hadn't cleaned his pistol, after he fell into the creek.

"So he backed out from under his canvas shell and started to clean it out. It was what was called a bulldog pistol, because it had a blunt, short muzzle. Abe's forefinger was long enough to use as a ramrod for it. But before he began operations he snapped the trigger and, to his astonishment, the thing went off!

"Pretty soon an orderly came along in great haste, yellin', 'Who did that?—Who fired that shot?' Some of the men tried to send the orderly along about his business, making believe the report was heard further on, but Lincoln he wouldn't stand for no such deception, spoken or unspoken. 'I did it,' says he, beginning to explain how it happened.

"You see, his legs was so blamed long, and he must have landed on his feet, in the creek, and got out of the water without his pistol getting wet, 'way up there in his weskit!

"But he had to pay the penalty just the same, for they took his sword away from him for several days. You see, he was a captain and ought to 'a' set a good example in military discipline."

HOW CAPTAIN LINCOLN SAVED AN INDIAN'S LIFE

One day an old "friendly Indian" came into camp with a "talking paper" or pass from the "big white war chief." The men, with the pioneer idea that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," were for stringing him up. The poor old red man protested and held the general's letter before their eyes.

"Me good Injun," he kept saying, "white war
 chief say me good Injun. Look—talking paper—see!"

"Get out! It's a forgery! Shoot him! String him up!" shouted the soldiers angrily.

This noise brought Captain Lincoln out of his tent. At a glance he saw what they were about to do. He jumped in among them, shouting indignantly:

"Stand back, all of you! For shame! I'll fight you all, one after the other, just as you come. Take it out on me if you can, but you shan't hurt this poor old Indian. When a man comes to me for help, he's going to get it, if I have to lick all Sangamon County to give it to him."

The three months for which the men were enlisted soon expired, and Lincoln's captaincy also ended. But he re-enlisted as a private, and remained in the ranks until the end of the war, which found him in Wisconsin, hundreds of miles from New Salem. He and a few companions walked home, as there were not many horses to be had. Lincoln enlivened the long tramp with his fund of stories and jokes.

It is sometimes asserted that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis met at this early day,] as offiers in the Black Hawk War, but this statement is not founded on fact, for young Lieutenant Davis was absent on a furlough and could not have encountered the tall captain from the Sangamon then, as many would like to believe.

Lincoln always referred to the Black Hawk War as a humorous adventure. He made a funny speech in Congress describing some of his experiences in this campaign in which he did not take part in a battle, nor did he even catch sight of a hostile Indian.