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Title: Christmas for Tad
       A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln

Author: Helen Topping Miller

Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65810]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS FOR TAD ***




                           CHRISTMAS FOR TAD
                  A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln


                                   BY
                          HELEN TOPPING MILLER


                      LONGMANS, GREEN AND COMPANY
                      NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO
                                  1956

                     LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC.
                      55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 3

                      LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd.
                   6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1

                        LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
                     20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16

                           CHRISTMAS FOR TAD

                            COPYRIGHT · 1956
                        BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY
                      PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM

         PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
                    LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO

                             FIRST EDITION

            LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 56-10108

                Printed in the United States of America




                                   1


The package was very tightly sealed.

There was a heavy cord around it fastened with thick blobs of wax and
Tad Lincoln, who had been christened Thomas, stood fidgeting while his
father worked at it patiently, with the old horn-handled knife that
opened and shut with a sharp click.

Outside was the gloom of late December. That December of 1863, when the
fortunes of the Federal armies had taken a little swing upward, but when
war still lay like a poisonous, tragic, and heartbreaking shadow over a
whole country. But to Tad Lincoln December meant Christmas, and packages
meant surprises, important to a ten-year-old boy.

Tad stood first on one foot, then the other, impatiently, because Papa
was so slow in opening this package. A round-faced boy, with his
mother’s brown eyes and hair, he was a sturdy figure in the miniature
uniform of a Union colonel that his father had had made for him. The
coat fitted him jauntily, all the brass buttons fastened up in
regulation fashion; there were epaulets and braid and long trousers
lying properly over his toes, so that the copper toes of his boots
showed. He had a belt and a sword, but he was not wearing them now.
Swords were for engagements, reviews, and parades, the officers of
Company K had instructed him. Among friends indoors an officer took off
his belt and hung it in a safe place.

His father’s fingers were mighty long and bony, Tad was thinking, and
awkward, too. One thumbnail was thicker and darker than the other nails
and Tad touched it gently with his forefinger.

“What makes your thumb like that, Papa?” he asked.

The long yellowed hand put down the knife and the deep-set, steel-gray
eyes of Abraham Lincoln studied the thumb intently as though he had
never seen it before.

“Once there was an ax, Tad,” he drawled, his heavy eyebrows flicking up
and down, his long mouth quirked up at one corner. “It didn’t want to go
where I aimed it, so I said, says I, now who is boss here, Mister Ax,
you or Abe Lincoln? You chop where I aim for you to chop, Mister Ax. So
I made it hit where I wanted it to hit but it jumped back and took a
whack at me just to show me that it could be the boss if it wanted to.”

“It might have cut your hand off,” worried Tad, still rubbing the dark
nail.

“It might—but it didn’t. It was a well-meaning ax. Just independent,
like a lot of people.”

“People take whacks at you, don’t they? I hear about it,” Tad said.

“Yes, some of ’em do.” Lincoln picked up the knife again, poked at the
stubborn seals. “But mostly afterwards they cooperate.”

“Those people in New York didn’t,” insisted Tad. “Mother was scared to
death when those draft riots were on and people yelled at her in that
store. The police had to stand all around us with guns and you know
something? Bob was scared but I wasn’t. Ole Bob was plumb scared green.”

“That was a bad time, son.” A seal came loose at last and fell in
scarlet fragments to the rug. He attacked a second one, gripping the
knife, the skin stretched tight over his fleshless knuckles. “It was bad
because people weren’t mad at you. They were mad at me, not at Bob or
your mother. They didn’t want to be drafted to fight in this war and I
said they had to be drafted.”

“Well, golly, you’ve got to have soldiers! General Grant and General
Rosecrans and everybody are yelling for more troops. You have to get
’em, you can’t make ’em out of air. Hurry and open it, Papa. Don’t you
want to see what’s in it?”

“I think I know what’s in it. Yes, Tad,” he went on musingly, as though
he talked to himself. “I’m supposed to make soldiers out of air; anyway
the New York newspapers seemed to think so. Make ’em out of air and feed
’em on air and give ’em air to shoot with.”

“And then if General Lee licks us you’re to blame!” cried Tad. “Oh, I
know, John Hay and Mr. Nicolay hide the papers but I find ’em. Papa, I
read where one New York paper called you a gorilla.”

“What do you think, Tad? Don’t I look like one a little?” Lincoln
dropped the knife, shambled bent across the room, his long arms
dangling, his hands almost touching the floor. As the boy drew back
aghast he bared his long teeth and snarled and Tad began to cry
suddenly.

“No—no! Don’t do it!”

Lincoln laughed loudly, lifted him, setting the lad on his knee, holding
him close. “For a man wearing the Union uniform, you scare easy,
Colonel,” he teased. “Remember this, Tad. Names never hurt anybody. And
the gorilla is one beast that’s never been tamed and only a heavy chain
can master him.”

“Open the box,” gulped Tad, scrubbing his eyes with the cuff of his blue
Union coat. “If anybody sent me a Christmas present, I’d want to know
what it was.”

Lincoln dug the last seal away, cut the cord, and tore off the heavy
paper. “Now, John Hay would say I’m a fool to open this,” he remarked.
“He’ll say there could be something in it to blind or cripple me.”

“Maybe you’d better not, Papa,” Tad cried anxiously. “Let me call
somebody.”

“No, Tad. I trust the man who brought it and I know what’s in it. It
isn’t a Christmas present exactly. I earned it in a kind of a way.
Look!” He opened the heavy box and the smaller one inside that was
covered with gold-colored plush.

“A watch!” exclaimed the boy.

“A solid gold watch.” Lincoln held it out carefully on his big palm.
“From Mr. James Hoes, Esquire, of Chicago. I won it, Tad. Mr. Hoes
offered the watch as a prize for the one making the biggest contribution
of funds to their Sanitary Commission fair. I sent them a copy of the
Emancipation Proclamation and they auctioned it off for three thousand
dollars, so I won the watch.”

“You’ve already got a watch, Papa, but I haven’t got one,” said Tad
eagerly.

Lincoln drew his old watch from his pocket, loosed it from the chain and
seals. “I don’t have a solid gold watch. This old turnip is sort of
worn. I guess I timed too many speeches and juries with it. But you’re
not big enough for a watch, Tad. Not till you can wear a vest and have
enough stomach to hold up a chain.”

“Willie had a vest and he wasn’t so very much bigger than me,” argued
Tad.

A shadow of pain ran over his father’s gaunt face and the tears, always
quick when any emotion stirred him, were bright in his sunken eyes. The
agony of Willie’s untimely death was still raw and aching in his heart.

“Willie was twelve years old, Tad. When you are twelve you can have a
vest.”

“And a watch?”

“And a watch. Not this one.” Lincoln clicked the fastening of the bright
new timepiece and dropped it into his pocket, along with the key that
wound it. “I guess Bob will have to have this old one. Bob’s a man now
and a man needs a watch.”

“He thinks he’s a man just because he can shave,” Tad scoffed. He
studied his father’s face for a moment. “Why did you grow a beard, Papa?
You didn’t have a beard when I was a little boy.”

“You’re still a little boy, fellow.” Lincoln gave him a poke in ribs.
“Maybe I raised these whiskers because a little girl in New York asked
me to. Maybe I just did it to keep my chin warm.”

“All Bob has is little patches in front of his ears. They look silly.”

Lincoln lifted his long body erect and walked to the window.

“You’d better be respectful to your big brother, Tad,” he said dryly.
“Some of the newspapers that don’t like me are printing that Bob Lincoln
has made a million dollars out of this war. For a young fellow still in
Harvard only twenty years old, I’d say he had uncanny perspicacity.”

Tad frowned thoughtfully. “It’s a lie, ain’t it, Papa?” In his agitation
the boy’s tricky palate betrayed him as it often did. “It’s big, dirty
_rie_!”

Lincoln’s bony shoulders twitched upward, sagged with resignation. “Son,
if all the lies that have been printed about the Lincolns were piled up
in a heap, they’d reach near to the top of that monument out yonder.”

Tad came to stand beside him and looked out of the half-finished shaft
that would some day honor Washington. Now it was only a beginning, lost
in a spidery web of scaffolding.

“Be plenty tall,” he observed. “If Bob had all that money, would it
reach to the top, Papa? He could buy everything he wanted, couldn’t he?
Horses and carriages and gold watches and everything. Can’t you put
people in jail for telling such lies? You’re the president.”

Lincoln stood still, looking down on the trampled mall where a herd of
cattle pastured, beef animals gathered to feed the Army of the Potomac.
His eyes took on the faraway inscrutable look that so often baffled his
intimates and infuriated his enemies; the look that lost itself on the
horizon of a great land torn by hate and drenched in an anguish of blood
and fire. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, had deepened that hurt in
his eyes and cut new lines about his mouth and brooding brows. Three
years of war, and in the nation there seethed a dozen angry factions.
Copperheads, only by a miracle defeated in Ohio; furious mobs resisting
conscription in the cities; even in the Congress, oppositionists,
critics, outright enemies.

Only a few weeks since, he had stood facing that raw November wind on
the Gettysburg hill, speaking that little piece that now he was
embarrassed to remember, the speech that the papers had dismissed as
insignificant, dedicating the ground where slept more than sixty
thousand Union and Confederate dead. The dull ache in Abraham Lincoln’s
heart turned bitter as he thought of his own son, who should be in
uniform and who was growing restless and unhappy at being the one young
man of army age who was not permitted to fight for his country. Yet he
dared not let Robert enlist. The President’s son would be a prime
hostage should he be captured, and used no doubt to wring concessions
from his father.

“Let’s go show Mama the watch.” He shook off his dismal musings and
scrubbed Tad’s brown head with the flat of his palm, straightening the
collar of the uniform that was Tad’s pride and glory.

Tad looked up confidingly. “You know what Mama is worrying about, Papa?
She owes an awful lot of money in New York. She’s afraid you’ll find it
out. She said on the train when we came home that I mustn’t tell you all
the things she bought because you had troubles enough to kill three
men.”

Lincoln hunched a shoulder, stretching his lips into a dry smile. “See
how my back is breaking down, Tad? That’s General Rosecrans. And this
side is General McClellan and General Meade made it worse when he let
Lee get away across the river.”

“You cried then, I remember. Men don’t cry.”

Strong men had wept enough tears to put the Potomac in flood these last
years, Lincoln was thinking. “When will it end?” he said aloud, with a
groan. John Hay, his faithful secretary, looked up quickly from his desk
in the outer room.

“When we’ve killed all the Rebs, I reckon,” said Tad complacently. “But
if we killed ’em all I’d have a lot of uncles killed, wouldn’t I? I had
one killed at Chickamauga already, my uncle Helm.—He was a general,” he
told John Hay.

“It’s happened in a good many families, Tad,” Hay said. “That’s because
we’re all Americans.”

“Well, my mother was Southern to begin with,” declared Tad, “so I’m kind
of half Southern but I got over it.”

“Southerners are good folks, son,” Lincoln admonished him. “Fine people
most of them. Just mistaken, that’s all—just mistaken.”

“They fight good,” was Tad’s comment, as they went down the hall.

Abraham Lincoln always stepped carefully and quietly in this big house.
He had never been at home in the White House. He always had a secret,
haunting feeling of guilt as though he were a guest and a strange,
uneasy, even an unworthy, guest. Mary, his wife, had no such
inhibitions. She loved to sweep down the wide stairway, her widely
flounced skirts moving elegantly over her hoops, her tight small bosom,
her round white arms and her round white chin held proudly and
complacently. All this was her due, her manner said, and her husband’s
humility and trick of effacing himself occasionally irked and angered
her.

She was writing a letter at a desk when they entered her sitting room.
The intent creases in her brow softened as the boy ran to her.

“Look Mama—look at Papa’s new solid gold watch! He got it for the
’Mancipation Proclamation.”

Lincoln pulled out the watch, grinning boyishly. Mary’s eyes brightened
as she fingered the handsomely engraved case.

“Why, it must be terribly expensive,” she approved. “What does Tad mean
about the Proclamation?”

“I sent a copy to Chicago. They auctioned it off.”

“For three thousand dollars,” added Tad.

“My Heaven, you mean they got three thousand dollars just for that piece
of paper?” exclaimed Mary.

“It was a pretty important paper, Mary, to a million or so poor black
people anyway. A copy would be a historic memento a hundred years from
now. Understand—” he fended off the small glint of avidity that so often
troubled him in Mary Lincoln’s pale gray eyes “—this was a charity
thing. For their fair out there in Chicago.”

“You only made one copy?” She turned the watch in her small, plumb
fingers.

He hedged uneasily sensing the trend of her thinking. “I made one or two
for old friends. No—” he raised a hand “—I’m not making any more, so put
that idea out of your mind.”

She flared. “Why do you always accuse me of things I’m not even
thinking?” she cried angrily.

“Maybe because I know you better than you know yourself, my dear,” he
said gently. “You were thinking that this is a nice watch but that three
thousand dollars is three thousand dollars.”

“Well, it is a nice watch but it never cost that much money,” she
admitted grudgingly.

“Mary, this watch was a prize. It was competition. Anybody else could
have won it, anybody who contributed more to their fair than I did.” He
took the watch from her hands and slid it back to his pocket. “Here—” he
handed her the old one—“put this away. You can give it to Bob when he
comes home. Run along now, Tad, I’ve got work to do.”

Tad slipped out of the room a bit disconcerted. Mama ought not to have
got mad. She was trying not to get mad so often, his father assured him.
They had to help her, be careful not to provoke her. Tad skittered down
the long stairs almost colliding with a workman who carried a
stepladder, with a long wreath of greenery hung over his shoulder.

“What’s that for?” the boy demanded.

“For the Christmas receptions and things. Decorations. Don’t know how
I’ll get it hung. Can’t drive no nails in this wall. Hard as rock. Nails
just bends double.”

“You could glue it,” suggested Tad helpfully.

“Yah!” scorned the workman. “Get along out of my way, boy.”

“My father is the President!” stated Tad, sternly, drawing himself up in
his uniform.

“He is that, but you ain’t—nor no colonel either.”

“I am so. I’m an honorary colonel.”

“Call it ornery and I’ll agree. Now quit bothering me. I’ve got to
figure where to put up two Christmas trees.”

“Two?” Tad’s eyes widened.

“One down here and one up yonder—private, for you I reckon. So everybody
wants to get a favor out of your Pa can send you a present.”

“All I want,” sighed Tad, backing off to watch the man ascend the
ladder, “is my nanny goat back.”

“Your nanny goat has likely been made into stew by this time. You won’t
be driving a goat team through this house any more, busting up things
and ruinin’ the floors.”

“I bet I get her back,” bragged Tad. “All Company K is helping me look
for her.”

“Soldiers have got more important things to do than hunt goats,” stated
the man from his perch. “They got to find out who put that bullet
through your old man’s hat.”

Tad was galvanized with excitement. “Hey! He never told me.” He tore
back up the stairs.

Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, was just coming out of his father’s
office. Tad backed off and flattened himself against the wall. Mr.
Stanton was running the war; he was tall and grim with a long gray beard
but no mustache to soften a stern mouth, and his eyes could look very
hard and coldly at a boy through his round spectacles. Behind Stanton
marched Senator Sumner and Tad knew him too. Senator Sumner was always
mad about something and now, as he strode past the boy, Tad heard him
mutter angrily, “Amnesty! Amnesty! I’d give North Carolina amnesty at
the end of a rope!”

Tad wriggled behind the visitor and slipped in before anyone closed the
door. He marched straight to the desk where John Hay was putting papers
in envelopes and licking the flaps.

“Who shot a bullet through my father’s hat?” he demanded.

Hay pressed down the flap with a fist. “Who told you that, Colonel
Thomas Lincoln?” he inquired with careful unconcern.

“You never told me,” stormed Tad, “nor my father—nor Mama.”

“Your mother doesn’t know about it. We hope she’ll never know. Also we
hope your father won’t ride alone out there at the Soldier’s Home any
more.”

“Cavalry ride with him. With drawn sabers.”

“Now they do. But he rode alone out there and somebody shot a bullet
through the top of his high silk hat. He doesn’t want his family or
anybody worried about it, so I wouldn’t mention it if I were you,
Colonel.”

“I won’t.” Tad was flattered by being addressed as colonel, and he liked
his father’s grave secretary. He obeyed John Hay more readily than any
one else. “But I want to see the hat.”

“We burned the hat. Too bad—it was a good eight-dollar hat.” Hay folded
another sheet after verifying the scrawled signature: _A. Lincoln_. “We
burned it by order of the President.”

Tad looked a trifle shaken. He came close and leaned on the desk. “Why
do people want to kill my father, Mr. Hay? They do. I know. That’s why
we have Company K here in the house and all over the yard.”

John Hay shook his head. “This is war, Tad. You could ask, why is there
a war? Why are there millions of people over there across the river
who’d liked to blow up this town and kill everybody in it? Everybody who
stands for the Union. Give me an answer to that and I’ll answer your
why. It’s a black cloud of hate, Colonel, smothering everything decent
in the country. Maybe it will lift some day. Meanwhile there’s not much
sense to it.”

“Maybe some of those mean Secesh over there stole my nanny goat! I have
to go out and see if the boys have heard anything about her. She was a
nice goat. She liked me; she licked my fingers. She wouldn’t just run
off like Papa said.”

“Maybe,” remarked Hay, “she went over to see why General Meade let Lee’s
army get away from him. Go hunt your goat and don’t bother your father.
He’s had people swarming in there for the last hour.”

“All the women,” observed Tad, wise beyond his years, “have got a boy
they want to be a colonel or a captain. And all the men want to know why
Papa doesn’t take Richmond.”

“Get on out of here, Tad, or I won’t give you any Christmas present.”

“You know what I want,” stated Tad at the door. “My nanny goat back.”




                                   2


The man in the armchair across the desk looked formidable and expensive.
Abraham Lincoln looked down at his own long, dusty, and wrinkled black
breeches and unconsciously gave a hitch to his sagging coat, to his
crooked black satin tie that had a perverse tendency to sidle around
under his ear.

The visitor’s swallow-tailed coat was pressed and elegant; his shirt was
crisp with ruffles, his heavy watch chain held a jeweled seal. He rested
plump white hands, covered with yellow gloves, on the gold head of a
cane. His homely face was cold-eyed and stern. He had refused to state
his errand to the people in the outer office and Lincoln knew how
thoroughly they deplored his stubborn insistence on seeing as many who
called as possible.

“Some day,” prophesied Nicolay gloomily, “you’re going to admit the man
with the little derringer hid inside a boot, Mr. President.”

“With the fences down all around, Nicolay, why put a bar over the one
door,” Lincoln had argued calmly. “If they want to kill me they will
unless you bolt me inside an iron box. I’m the people’s hired man. They
put me here. I must listen to what they want to say.”

But obviously the portly stranger in the flamboyant apparel had little
to say. He remarked about the weather, the unfinished Capitol dome, and
the trampled mall where army beef grazed. His chilly visage did not
soften or show animation or interest. Momentarily Lincoln expected him
to announce icily, as had happened before, “Mr. Lincoln, your wife owes
me a large account on which no payment has been made for some time.”

If this visitor’s errand was financial he made no mention of it. He
stated that he was a friend of Secretary Seward and that he had attended
the Convention at which Lincoln had been nominated.

“But I did not vote for you, sir,” he added.

“Your privilege and right, sir.” Lincoln filled a little following
silence by pulling out the gold watch. “A gift I had today. From the
Chicago Fair. Sort of a Christmas gift, I guess you’d call it.” He felt
as young as Tad under those coldly scrutinizing eyes, and as naïve and
awkward.

“Very fitting and well deserved, Mr. President. Now I must tell you that
I have no business here whatsoever. I merely came here to tell you that
I believe you are doing all for the good of the country that it is in
the power of man to do. And I want to say to you, Mr. President—go
ahead, do as you darned well please and I will support you.”

Lincoln’s rare laughter whooped. He sprang up and pumped the hand of the
startled stranger. John Hay put an inquiring head in at the door.

“This man,” chortled the President, “came here deliberately and on
purpose to tell me that I was running this country right—and all the
while I thought he’d come to tell me how to take Richmond. Sit down,
sir, sit down! I have not seen enough of you.”

“My dear Mr. President,” protested the visitor, “are words of approval
so rare and exciting to the President of the United States?”

“Rare?” Lincoln dropped back to his chair, his face collapsing into a
sudden, melancholy mask. “John, show this man that copy of the New York
_Herald_—the one where they call me a fiend and a disgrace to humanity
because I set human beings free from slavery.”

“I destroyed it, Mr. President,” Hay said. “I was afraid that the
infamous thing might be seen by some of your family.”

“Useless precaution, Johnny. I have a son in Boston, and I suspect that
he keeps his mother supplied with interesting clippings. My friend, if
to be the big boss of Hell is as tough as what I have to undergo here, I
can feel mighty sorry for Satan. Come along and have lunch with me, if
you will, sir. I reckon they’ve put the big pot in the little one by
this time. John, will you see if Mrs. Lincoln is ready for lunch?”

“I believe Mrs. Lincoln went out, Mr. President. Mr. Nicolay ordered out
the carriage and the black team.”

“And an escort?”

“Oh, yes, sir—the lieutenant arranged an escort.”

Mary would like that, Abraham Lincoln was thinking as they went down the
chilly stairs. Fires burned in all the rooms but the ceilings were high
and the walls cold and this was a bleak day with the lowering chill of
late December. A few snowflakes timidly rode down the icy air, but Mary
would wrap herself in rich furs, her round pink face nestled in a deep
collar, a stylish bonnet perched on her smooth dark hair.

With white-gloved hands—smooth now, but once they had known a time of
rough domestic toil—she would wave brief salutes to the people in the
street. He hoped she wouldn’t be haughty about it. He knew her shyness
and uncertainty, her feeling of insecurity in a high place for which she
had had so little training, and that too often she hid this uncertainty
behind a too glib, too tart attitude of arrogance. To Abraham Lincoln’s
eyes, to his sensitive insight, it was like seeing a nervous little hen
strut and bridle surrounded by the cold angry eyes of foxes and the
sharp talons of hawks. There were, unhappily, too many people who
misunderstood Mary Todd Lincoln.

Even John Hay had little sympathy for the President’s wife. There had
been a scrap of paper that Lincoln had found once, part of a letter Hay
had begun and discarded calling Mary a “Hellcat” and adding dryly that
she was lately more “hellcatical” than usual.

Too bad Mary occasionally indulged in temper tantrums in the executive
offices. Her small explosions, her husband knew, were a form of relief
for the eternally seething doubts of herself that tormented her. She
adored her husband and the two boys that had been spared to them, but
this love was fiercely jealous and possessive and not always wise or
controlled.

Christmas would be a sad time for Mary. Last year Willie had been here,
the gentle, quiet brown-haired boy who spent so many hours curled up in
a chair with a book. Willie had known every railroad line, every station
on every line. He had learned timetables by heart and drawn up schedules
of his own. It had been just such a raw, dreary day as this last
February when Willie had gone riding out on his pony. He had come home
soaked and chilled and the nightmare of those next days would haunt
Abraham Lincoln as long as he lived—Willie, burning with fever, babbling
incoherencies; Mary sobbing and moaning, pacing the floor, her hands in
taut, agonized fists, her smooth hair wild over her tear-streaked
cheeks; and that ghastly night of the White House ball, with the Marine
Band playing, he himself having to shake hands endlessly at the door of
the East Room while Willie fought for breath upstairs.

After that, the end. The blue eyes closed and sunken, fading flowers
pressed by Mary into the small cold hands, senators, generals, foreign
ministers, pressing the numb hand of the President of the United States,
while upstairs on her bed Mary writhed and wailed in uncontrolled grief.

Now Christmas would bring it all back. He was glad that Mary could
forget for a little while, shopping, buying gifts for Tad who had too
much already, who was in a fair way to be badly spoiled.

Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the
land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a grim hand
pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the
White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining
room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to
wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous.

“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach
between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president
of this so-called Confederacy?”

“That,” said Lincoln, “turned out not too well. Gilmore, of the New York
_Tribune_, wrote too much and prematurely. Those fellows across the
river got riled up and a Georgia regiment started a riot in Raleigh in
September and burned the Raleigh _Standard_. So the citizens of Raleigh
who didn’t have faith in Jeff Davis rose up and burned the Confederate
newspaper, the _State Journal_. That widened the breach and Vance has
already told Jeff Davis that he would welcome reunion with the Union
states and any peace compatible with honor.”

He caught John Hay’s warning look then and said no more. He would not
reveal that his agents has just brought in a letter sent by the Governor
of North Carolina to Jefferson Davis—a bold and open plea for
negotiation with the enemy.

“If North Carolina would make the break it would be a long step toward
peace,” said his guest.

“It could also mean anarchy, outrages, and destruction in that state,
calling for more Union troops,” Hay reminded them. “So far we have
pushed back the borders of this rebellion, opened the Mississippi, and
our Navy has tightened the blockade of all the Southern ports.”

“You will not, even under pressure, revoke the Emancipation
Proclamation, Mr. President?” The visitor was anxious.

“I shall never revoke that Proclamation, sir.”

When the meal ended and the guest had taken an obsequious departure,
Lincoln stopped at Hay’s desk.

“What was that fellow sent here to find out, Johnny? Was he sent by
Sumner, you think, to put in a word against my idea of amnesty for any
Southern state that wants to come back into the Union? Sumner wants ’em
all hung down there and he has some powerful newspapers behind him. Some
of ’em are saying I’m having my salary raised to a hundred thousand
dollars a year, that I’m drawing it in gold while the Army gets paid in
greenbacks, and that I’ve cooked up a scheme to have Congress declare me
perpetual president for the rest of my life.”

“Why do you let such fantastic rumors disturb you, Mr. Lincoln?” Hay
protested. “That New York _World_ editorial saying you’ve done a fine
job and that your death would only prolong the war has been reprinted
all over the country.”

“If my death would end this war, John, I’d give my life gladly,” Lincoln
declared solemnly. “That would be a fine Christmas gift for this
country.”




                                   3


The soldiers of Company K One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania
Volunteers had become practically a part of the White House family.
Abraham Lincoln treated them as though they were his own sons, called
most of them by their first names, personally arranged for their passes
and furloughs.

So when Mary Todd Lincoln had all her shopping purchases carried up to
the family sitting room and displayed, Lincoln’s face wore a sober look
of disappointment. Mary was tired and on edge but she excitedly showed
him, one after another, the toys she had bought for Tad, the gifts for
Robert, and a few items for members of the household staff.

“Look, Abraham, this gun—it fires like a real cannon! With smoke.”

“Nothing for the boys?” he asked, rubbing his long hands over his knees,
a characteristic nervous gesture.

“Why, I’ve just showed you—the wallet and cuff buttons for Bob and all
these—”

“I mean _my_ boys. The Company K boys.”

Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas
presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of
them.”

“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army
was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There
are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and
Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.”

“They could be worse off,” she snapped. “They could be out there along
the Rappahannock or down in those marshes of Mississippi. Pennsylvania’s
not so far. Lord knows you’re always fixing up furloughs for them so
they can go home. Why, it would cost a fortune to give gifts to all that
company—and anyway, what can you give a soldier?”

“Some warm socks might come in good. That ground’s frozen out there and
it’s likely to snow hard any day now.”

“The commissary should keep them in socks.” She was testy as always in
the face of criticism. “Don’t I do enough—going out to those horrid
hospitals twice a week—carrying things—this house is practically
stripped of bed linen, all torn up for bandages.” She fluttered about
her purchases, flushed and breathless, her hands making little snatching
gestures, picking up things, putting them down again, twisting string
around her fingers.

“Very noble of you, indeed,” he approved. “I’m proud of what you do but
I’m still thinking about Joe and Nate and those other boys. They curry
horses and clean harness and saddles; they look after Tad and his
goat—and of course they’re always on guard for fear I’ll get shot,
though I can’t figure any place where I could be where nobody could get
at me, unless they buried me.”

“That man, that one-eyed man, you’re crazy to let him come here!” Mary
cried. “Mr. Nicolay says so.”

“Gurowski? I know.” He smiled patiently. “If anybody does the Democrats
a favor by putting a bullet in my head it might very well be Gurowski.
He croaks that the country is marching to it’s tomb and that Seward and
McClellan and I are the gravediggers.”

“They’ll be digging your grave if you don’t have a care for yourself!”
Her volatile mood had shifted; she was almost in tears. “That horrible
creature with those old green goggles, that silly red vest and that big
hat and cape—he looks like Satan himself, yet you listen to him!”

“I’m his hired man, Mary,” Lincoln repeated. “The bald-headed old
buzzard is smart enough. He had a good job working under Horace Greeley
on the _Tribune_, but they had to let him go because he couldn’t
distinguish truth from slander. Then Seward put him in the State
Department as a translator but he published so many slurs about Seward
and me that they dismissed him from that job. He started as a
revolutionary in Europe; now he thinks he can save this nation. Maybe by
eliminating me. He’s written down now as a dangerous character. He won’t
be allowed in here again, so don’t worry.”

Mary would never worry long, he knew. She was too mercurial, too easily
diverted by trifles. What troubled Lincoln most was her impulsive
inclination to meddle. She took a hand in decisions, was always writing
indiscreet letters to newspaper editors, discussing national affairs too
brashly; she interfered in decisions over post offices and appointments
to military academies. When New York papers printed long items about her
travels, her clothes, her bonnets and baggage, she was flattered and
excited, unaware that her husband was unhappily reading into some of
these accounts an amused note of criticism and contempt. She was as much
a child as Tad, he told himself often, but unlike Tad she could not be
controlled.

All through the evening she busied herself happily over her gifts,
wrapping them in white paper, fetching bits of ribbon from her dozens of
bandboxes for bows and decorations. Abraham Lincoln slipped off his
elastic-sided shoes and stretched his bony feet to the fire. He dozed a
little and had to be warned sharply by Mary when his gray wool socks
began to smoke a little.

“I declare, Abraham, you’d burn yourself to a cinder if I didn’t look
after you! You’ve even scorched your pantaloons. Yes, you have. I can
see where the broadcloth is singed on that right leg. It’s like putting
ribbons on a pig to try to dress you up decently. Sometimes I despair of
ever making you into a real gentleman!”

Lincoln smacked absently at the hot fabric of his breeches. “In this
town, Mary, gentlemen are as thick as fleas in a dog pound. Take credit
for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.”

“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how
you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic,
disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose
your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.”

“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is
soft. I got toughened up back yonder.”

“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a
railsplitter—and a yokel.”

“Well, I know I was a good railsplitter. If they called me a sorry
railsplitter I’d resent it.” He was unperturbed. “What is a yokel? A
fellow from the country. So I must be a yokel for I sprung from about as
deep in the country as you can get air to breathe, so deep there wasn’t
even a road there, just an old trace that meandered up the bed of the
crick part of the way. America’s made of yokels. Our side, anyway. Your
friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them
lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried
right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.”

She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.”

“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim
Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side
like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance
to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the
country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t
want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I
commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can
still lick salt off the top of your head.”

She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The
cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over,
pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She
clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms.

“Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.”

He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You
having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.”

“I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear
you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something
warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering.

He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much
syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one
of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and
rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like
Steve Douglas.”

“I didn’t want him. I wanted you.”

“Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set
you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some
place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all
drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I
wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S.
Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put
her gently aside, letting care return to possess him.

“He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed
Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.”

“He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve
got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it
won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his
wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.”

“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and
distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty
clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up,
Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a
little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently.

He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of
papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for
this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that
remoteness that always baffled her.




                                   4


Desperately she wanted to be liked and admired. She did not even know
that this desire tormented her like a hidden thorn. It was lost under
the surface imperiousness that she had put on defensively, as a child
might dress up in a trailing robe and play at being queen. She had no
talent for adjustment or reconciliation and her husband’s propensity for
seeing the best in people, even his bitterest enemies, puzzled and
irritated her. In her mind she put this down as weakness. When she
disliked anyone, it was done with vigor and she made no secret of it.
When she was displeased she let the whole world know, yet she could not
understand why it was that she felt always alone.

The Christmas party at the White House had to be important, if not gay.
State Department people, Supreme Court people, senators, generals and
their wives, would not expect hilarity. Not with Lee’s menacing army so
near, the carnage of Chickamauga so recent, all the factional strife in
New York and Missouri and Ohio only temporarily lulled, and definitely,
Mary suspected, not defeated.

She had two dresses spread out on her bed, and Elizabeth Heckley, the
mulatto seamstress, pinned bits of lace and ribbon bows here and there
over the voluminous folds of coral-colored satin and purple velvet. The
satin had wide bands of heavy embroidery touched with gold around the
skirt and the folds that draped low over the shoulders. Elizabeth
fastened a garland of roses at the bosom of that dress and let it trail
down the side of the skirt.

“Needs a gold breastpin right there,” she indicated the fastening place
of the flowers. “What Mrs. President goin’ to wear on her head?”

“A turban, Lizzie, of this same satin with some pale blue feathers in
front and the roses hanging down over my chignon. This dress will have
to be for the Christmas party and I know it’s too gay and likely I’ll be
criticized for putting off my mourning for poor little Willie. Good
gracious, down home where I was raised, I’d wear black for three solid
years for a child and for a husband it was forever. But I look awful in
black and I know it. It makes me dumpy and sallow and I do owe something
to the people. There’s too much crepe already in Washington. It
depresses people and hurts the war.”

“This other one would look mighty fine on you, Mrs. President.” The
seamstress lovingly stroked the folds of violet velvet. “This dress look
like it was made for a queen.” There were bands of embroidery on this
gown too, but the embroidery was all gold cord and beads and there was a
light overskirt of draped tulle in shades of lilac, lavender, and
purple, caught up with little knots of gold leaves.

A queen! Abraham had called her a queen. Mary could see herself trailing
a long robe of crimson with a border of gold and ermine. Too bad
democracies did not favor such ornate display by their rulers—but the
purple velvet did have a regal look. She would wear plumes in her
headdress, three of them in the three shades of the overskirt.

“I’ll wear this at the New Years’ reception, though it is a pity to
waste anything so handsome on a company of just anybody. See about some
feathers and gold trimmings for my headdress, Lizzie, and plenty of
white gloves. Last year I ruined four pairs.”

She must see to it that Abraham had plenty of gloves, too. He hated
them; he was always pulling them off and stuffing them untidily into a
pocket. He was always bursting them, too, and she kept spare pairs
handy. His hands had a tendency to swell from prolonged handshaking and
inevitably the buttons popped off or the seams split. A pair would be
soiled in half an hour too from all those hands, some calloused, some
grimy, some too hot and eager.

The New Year’s reception was a great nuisance in Mary’s book—those
tramping feet scuffing the floors and the carpets and almost invariably
it snowed. And in spite of the vigilance of the guards she knew there
was danger. Lately danger had become a haunting oppression to Mary Todd
Lincoln.

The election of 1864 was coming up and even in the Union states there
was radical opposition so bold it verged on treason, not to overlook the
vicious attacks of the newspapers to the South. On those pages Abraham
Lincoln was called everything from a degraded idiot to Mephistopheles
reincarnate. The South, as Southern-bred Mary Lincoln knew well, was
full of impetuous hotheads ready to dare or to do anything for their
sacred Cause. There was that O’Neale Greenhow woman, arrested right here
in sight of the White House—and even the Mayor of Washington temporarily
lodged in jail. And they said that people right in the Provost Office
had supplied the Greenhow woman with information that had brought on so
many Union defeats at Manassas and other battles. Mary remembered having
once met Rose O’Neale Greenhow at a tea somewhere. A handsome and
arrogant woman, too friendly with men. She was banished South of the
lines now, but women like that always had impetuous friends.

“Get me out something plain, Lizzie,” she ordered now. “I have to shop
again this afternoon. The President thinks every soldier in Company K
must have a Christmas gift, and where I’ll find things the Lord only
knows! ‘Socks,’ he said, ‘Wool socks.’ I doubt if any can be found, and
they’d be two dollars a pair if there are any. Anyway, cakes and candy
and tobacco—and all those getting harder and harder to get. The crowds
in the streets are getting so rough, too, with all these soldiers coming
in.”

“I could go, Mrs. Lincoln,” offered Elizabeth, “if you’d tell me what to
buy and give me an order to have it charged—and send somebody to help
carry.”

“Would you, Lizzie?” Mary was eager with relief. “I’ll send you in a
carriage and a boy with you. I have to make a list. I think we’ll forget
the socks—there might not be any and anyway their mothers ought to knit
socks for them. We wouldn’t know sizes anyway.” Mary fluttered, hunting
pen and paper, sending a maid to order the carriage, getting out a heavy
cape of her own to keep the sewing woman warm. “You go down to the
market, Lizzie, away down on D Street. Things will be cheaper there.
There are thirty-three of those men. Just so each one had some little
remembrance the President will be satisfied.”

She was grateful not to have to brave again the streets of Washington
that were becoming more horrible every day. Deep mud, which Army wagons
were churning up, caissons pounding by, cavalry splashing everybody, and
soldiers crowding everywhere. The shops were always crowded with the
impatient, pushing military and Negroes, and more colored people were
thronging into the capital every day, homeless and bewildered. Some of
the Negro men were being integrated into the Army but most were a
problem that the provosts and police were coping with in desperate
confusion.

It all made for discomfort and danger. No real indignity had as yet been
offered to her personally since those grim days in New York in July,
when she had been hooted in the streets and followed into a shop by a
jeering mob of ruffians. Here in Washington her greatest cross was the
thinly veiled contempt of the women, formerly socially important, the
women the President called “those Secesh dames.” Very boldly they let it
be known that their sympathies were with the South.

Washington, Mr. Seward said, and Mr. Stanton agreed with him, was a nest
of spies. In spite of imprisonment, grim guards, and ceaseless
precautions, messages still went through the lines to Robert E. Lee and
Jefferson Davis. It was said that Fontaine Maury, the Confederate
admiral, had a direct pipeline into the very heart of the Capitol.
Suspicion and distrust were rampant, and Mary harbored a constant,
nervous fear that either she or Tad might be kidnapped by the Rebels and
held as hostages.

She had wondered sometimes in moments of private bitterness just how
much Abraham Lincoln would surrender to get his wife back, but Tad was
the key to his heart. Lately Company K had had orders to keep close
surveillance over the boy but Tad was quick and mobile as a flea. Less
than a month before he had been brought back, shouting protests and
struggling, from climbing the scaffolding of the half-finished
Washington Monument.

She must go out and appear at the receptions and teas planned by wives
of officials, but with Christmas at hand now there would be a hiatus in
festivities until after the New Year reception at the White House. There
was that tiresome affair to plan for, then this Christmas party; it was
all hard work and expensive too, and that aspect practical Mary Lincoln
always considered seriously. She never saw an elaborate collation spread
without secretly adding up in her mind how many bonnets, bracelets, and
yards of silk could have been bought with the money.

The Christmas tree in the private sitting room upstairs had been set up
and Tad put to work stringing popcorn and bits of bright metal for
decorations. A corporal had brought in a sackful of scraps of brass
discarded by a cartridge manufacturer and these Tad was tying to lengths
of his mother’s red wool. He insisted on doing all this in his father’s
office, stepped over by the endless streams of officials and callers,
and Mary found him there, squatting behind Lincoln’s desk, surrounded by
the litter of his festive preparations.

She entered as usual without knocking, made a brief stiff bow to Noah
Brooks, the correspondent from the West Coast, and puckered her brows at
the small woman with curling grayish hair and unfashionable bonnet who
occupied the one comfortable chair in the room.

The President unlimbered his long legs and jumped up, as did Brooks.

“Come in, come in, my dear!” he greeted his wife. “You know Mr.
Brooks—and Mary, this is Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little woman
who wrote the book that started a big war.”

Mrs. Stowe held out a gloved hand. “I am happy to be privileged to meet
Mrs. Lincoln.”

“I read your book, Ma’am.” Mary was gracious. “I cried over it, some
parts—but part of it made me mad, too. My family owned slaves, Mrs.
Stowe, but they never did beat them or set dogs on them—never!”

“One must emphasize the wrong sometimes, Mrs. Lincoln, to bring about
what is right,” said Mrs. Stowe. “Undoubtedly your family were Christian
people, and exceptional.”

“Mama!” wailed Tad. “You’re standing on my yarn!”

“I only came,” Mary was flustered, “to report to my husband that I have
arranged Christmas gifts for his soldiers—as he requested,” she added.

“Sit here, Mrs. Lincoln,” Brooks offered his chair.

“No—no, you have business here. Happy to have met you, Ma’am. You must
stay and have dinner with us.” Mary bowed again and hoped she had made a
graceful exit as became a queen.

She wondered, as she went down the hall, why women with brains always
looked a little frumpy. That dress—homemade, probably, and it didn’t fit
anywhere! It was, she decided, safe to leave a woman of as few charms as
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe in the office, especially chaperoned by Noah
Brooks. But Mary Lincoln knew well that if Mrs. Stowe had been young and
pretty she herself would never have walked out of that office.




                                   5


The boy who jumped out of the dark shadow of the bushes slapped his
rifle hard, brought it to port sharply.

“Mr. President,” he gasped, “if I had been an assassin you’d be dead by
now!”

Abraham Lincoln stopped, shifted his high hat. A few thin flakes of snow
lay white against the silk.

“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a
corpse out of me?” he asked amiably.

“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s
powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier.

“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said.
“Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?”

“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an
hour.”

Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad
for Christmas. You boys keeping warm in those tents?”

“Well, the way I figure, sir, we’re just as warm as those men of General
Meade’s over across the river. And there ain’t nobody shooting at us,
sir—I mean, Mr. President. The lieutenant ain’t going to like it, Mr.
President, you walking out here alone. You want to walk, you need a
couple of us boys along.”

“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like
a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it
this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after
me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon
alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy
goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and
the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” Joe trotted a little to
keep up with the long stride of Lincoln.

“Better anchor it tight or the goat will eat his headgear,” remarked
Lincoln. “Mrs. Lincoln sent Tad to bed so she could fix up his Christmas
presents. Tad always sleeps with me but when I went to my room he wasn’t
there, so I decided he’d slipped down here.”

“That goat sure means a lot to Tad, Mr. President. Tad treats him like
he was folks. Nobody ever has found out what happened to the she-goat,
sir. Last pass you give me I went all over that skinny town back yonder
where the trash and niggers live but I never seen a sign of any
goat—hide neither.”

“Tad misses his brother. Christmas will be a sad time for all of us, but
we’ll try to make it happy for Tad.”

“Just about a year ago you lost your boy, wasn’t it, Mr. President?”

“Last February. Lung fever. He got wet and took a cold. Mrs. Lincoln
hasn’t gotten over it at all. She idolized her sons. We lost another
one, you know, in Springfield. Little Eddie. But we have company, Joe. A
great sorrowful company of people who have lost their sons.”

Lincoln sighed heavily as he strode up to the lighted tent where a group
of men hunkered down around Tad and his goat.

The corporal dropped his awl and leather and jumped up, eyes bulging.

“Attention!” he barked.

Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the
goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.”

“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt.
You, Joe—you’re on post!”

“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from
assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to
bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early
train.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly.
“Lieutenant detailed me and three of the boys to meet that train. We was
just helping the boy here to pretty up his goat, sir, asking your pardon
and meaning no offense.”

“No offense taken, Corporal. I appreciate your taking care of my boys.”

“Look, Papa,” shrilled Tad, “lookit Billy’s horns.” The animal’s rough
pointed horns had been painted a bright scarlet and tipped with circles
of brass. He shook them impatiently while Tad clung to his neck.

“Mighty pretty,” approved his father, “but you’re getting paint on your
uniform jacket. Your mama will have something to say about that.”

“She’ll have a duck fit,” stated Tad disrespectfully; then his voice
sank to a whimper. “Billy’s pretty but he’s not as pretty as a nanny
goat, Papa. I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the
corporal looked anxious.

“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint
will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off
on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr.
Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the
time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man
might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!”

Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with
undried paint. Behind them the goat blatted forlornly.

“He wants me,” mourned Tad. “I feed him biscuits and all the boys have
got is hardtack.”

“Maybe we can find some biscuits,” suggested Lincoln. “Mr. Bullitt and
Mr. Gibson can carry them back to him. Come along in, boys, and report
back to your corporal that I’m much obliged for everything.”

He had never set foot in the White House kitchen. Now Abraham Lincoln
walked timidly there as though he were an intruder who might be ordered
out indignantly at any moment.

The long room, still odorous with baking bread and roasting meat, was
warm, the huge ranges clinking as they cooled, water dripping from the
spout of a pump. The cooks’ white aprons and caps hung from pegs on the
wall and one long table was covered with trays spread over with white
cloths. Lincoln lifted a corner of a covering. Beneath was a great array
of small colored cakes obviously baked for the Christmas party.

“Have one, boys.” He took a pink dainty himself and bit into it. “Pretty
good.”

Tad wolfed down two and the privates nervously accepted one each.

“Wonder where they keep the biscuits?” Tad began to explore.

“You ought to know,” said his father. “You snoop everywhere.”

Tad scurried about, opening ovens and cupboards, lifting lids of boxes
and the great copper pots.

“Bread,” he uncovered a stack of loaves, “but no biscuits.”

“Your billy will eat bread, sir,” suggested Private Bullitt. “He eats
hardtack. He’ll eat anything, Mr. President. He ate Sergeant Whipple’s
box from home. Had a cake in it. Et box and all, sir.”

“Well have to see to it that Sergeant Whipple gets another cake.”
Lincoln took down a long knife from a rack on the wall and whacked off
the end of a loaf of fresh bread. “Good bread.” He tasted a crumb. “Go
good if we had some jam to put on it.”

“There’s jampots up there, Papa.” Tad pointed to a high shelf.

“So there are.” Lincoln reached a long arm, slit the paper that covered
the top of a jar, dipped in a knife. “Blackberry.” He sliced off a hunk
of bread, spread it thickly with jam, handed it to Private Bullitt.
“Have some, boys.” He spread another slice for Gibson and one for Tad
and himself. Perched on the edge of a table he ate, wiped his beard and
fingers on a handy towel, passed the towel around. “Some drizzled on
your jacket, Tad. Wipe it off. Now, I reckon somebody will get blamed
for this piece of larceny, so I’d better take care of that.”

The cooks’ pad and pencil lay on a shelf and Lincoln tore off a sheet
and wrote rapidly: _All provisions missing from this kitchen
requisitioned by order of the undersigned. A. Lincoln._

“That will fix it. You boys take this bread back to that billy goat and
tell your sergeant I’ll see that he’s recompensed for his lost cake,” he
said. “Now Tad, you come along to bed.”

The wreaths of greenery were in place in the hall and up the stairs, and
in the East Room a tall spruce tree awaited the lighting of the candles.
Festival! And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like
Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires,
slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in
the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all.

The great bed in his room with its huge, soft bolster and tufted
counterpane, its enormous headboard shutting off drafts and elaborately
carved and scrolled, suddenly wore the aspect of sinful luxury. He would
gladly have taken a blanket and gone out to join his men, but he knew
sadly that that would not do. He had known the ground for a bed many
times—in the Black Hawk War and on expeditions into the wilds—but now he
was growing old and he had to uphold the dignity of high office.

He pulled off Tad’s clothes, buttoned him into a long nightshirt, and
tucked him into the big bed. Almost instantly the boy was asleep.
Lincoln was struggling with his own boots when the door opened and Mary
came in, buttoned into a vast blue wrapper, a ruffled cap on her head.

“Forevermore!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I looked for you to
help me with the Christmas things and couldn’t find a hair of you or Tad
either. Has that child been out in this cold wind?”

“We were having a little Christmas party with some of the boys, Mary.
Tad’s all right. Don’t start scolding tonight; it’s already Christmas
morning now.”

“You know how delicate he is. It will be just like Willie all over again
and I can’t bear any more sorrow, Abraham. I’ll lose my mind if I have
another grief to live through,” she cried.

“Tad’s tough, Mama. Not frail like Willie. We were in the kitchen
anyway,” he evaded. “It was warm down there.”

“You didn’t eat up my cakes?” she demanded. “I had trouble enough
getting them baked. The cook says the blockade is to blame for making
sugar so scarce and high. They ought to know we have to have sugar.
There’s no coconut either, nor nutmegs nor cinnamon.”

“It’s war, Mary. Some good people haven’t even got bread,” he reminded
her.

She began to whimper, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Maybe I won’t need any cakes for my party. I’ve had at least a dozen
regrets already. An invitation from the wife of the President should be
like a command from the queen,” she declared, grimly. “I’m saving all
those insulting notes and I think the people who wrote them should be
properly dealt with.”

Lincoln sighed as he hung up his coat and untied his lumpy satin cravat.
The starched collar rasped his neck. He was glad to be rid of it. “Don’t
you cry now for Christmas, Mary,” he pleaded. “We have to keep things
happy for the boys. Bob will be here in the morning.”

She dried her eyes on the ruffle of her sleeve. “I can’t help
remembering that I’ve lost my son.”

“You’re one of a vast company, Mary. If all the tears that will be shed
by bereaved mothers tomorrow were drained into one river we could float
a gunboat on it. If only I could see a way so there would be no more—no
more killing, no more graves, no more sorrowing women!” he cried,
desolately.

It was a cry of anguish and Mary Lincoln felt a surge of terrible
compassion for this gaunt, lonely man who was her love. She put her arms
around him, standing on tiptoe, her cheek pressing the buttons of his
shirt.

“You didn’t make this war. You’re doing all any man could do to end it!”
she cried. “We could have ignored the country—we could have stayed in
Springfield where nobody hated us. Here they all hate us. The ones who
come to our party tomorrow will smirk and fawn to our faces and then
sneer at our backs.”

“Not all, Mary. There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe
I’m doing right. Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of
them voted for me, remember.”

“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants
something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you
for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.”

“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no
soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if
I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.”

“Slink home like beaten dogs!” she exclaimed, her mercurial mood
shifting again. “Well, we’ll not do it. They’re not going to get us
down, Abraham Lincoln! Democrats nor Black Republicans either. And
they’d better show up at my party if they want any more favors from
you!”

“You tear up those regrets, Mary,” he said soberly. “Tear up every
single one of ’em. And forget the names of the people who wrote them.
That,” he added very solemnly, “is an order from the President.”




                                   6


Robert Todd Lincoln was a young man trying sincerely not to be a snob,
not to be blasé or obviously aware that his father was President of the
United States. A medium tall, erect lad, Robert’s dark hair was sleeked
down over a head rounded like his mother’s, but his long arms and still
growing legs and feet he had from his father.

That long-tailed coat with braided collar was too old for Bob, Abraham
Lincoln was thinking. So was his manner too old, a boyish kind of
gravity that obviously he strove to keep from being condescending. His
mother fluttered about him adoringly as they sat at the family breakfast
table. She was continually straightening his cravat, feeling his brow
anxiously, smoothing his hair. Lincoln, shrewdly sensitive, could see
that his older son was a trifle annoyed by his mother’s solicitous
attentions.

“Bob hasn’t got a fever, Mama,” he interposed cheerfully. “He’s the
healthiest human being I’ve seen in a long time. Why don’t we all go and
see what Tad got for Christmas?” He pushed back his chair.

“Robert must get some sleep,” argued his mother. “He says he didn’t get
a wink on that train.”

“The cars were cold and smelly and they were jammed with soldiers, all
of them cold and miserable,” stated Robert. “Most of them coming South
to join Pope’s army and all sulky because they had to be away from home
for Christmas. One chap sat with me—couldn’t have been any older than I
am and he had been home to Rhode Island to bury his wife. They all
talked and they were plenty bitter against the bounty boys—those fellows
who bought their way out of the draft for three hundred dollars.”

“That was a compromise and an evil one, I fear,” said his father.
“Everything about war is evil. You can only contrive and pray for ways
to make it a little less evil.”

Robert stood up. His face was very white. “Pa—and Mama—I told lies
coming down on that train. I told them I was coming home to enlist. I’ve
got to get into the Army—I’ve got to! Those men on that train, they were
dirty and shabby and some hadn’t shaved or washed in a long time, and
most of them were rough and some ignorant but every one of them was a
better man than I was! I could feel them looking at me—with contempt at
first. It was in every man’s mind that I was a bounty boy. A shirker.
Hiding behind a screen of cash! I was thankful nobody knew my name.”

“You could have told them your name,” insisted his mother. “You could
have made them respect you as the son of the President.”

“No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect,
Abraham Lincoln!”

“You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d
been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in
New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody.
Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to
guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a
prince!”

“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must
finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much
more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another
private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—”

“I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert
cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces
if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.”

Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older
son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart
sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that
always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her
point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with
which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long
ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The
boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary
had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all
Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have
pride and perhaps a mind of his own.

Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the
shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt
into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back
of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension,
gain a postponement of a crisis.

“Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas
morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?”

“No, he didn’t.” Mary got her control back with a gusty breath. “He
wouldn’t even take time to drink his milk. He took it with him and
likely he’s upset the glass all over the carpet by this time.”

“Well, let’s go and see what he found under the Christmas tree.”

Robert followed them, silently, up the stairs to the sitting room,
strewn now with paper wrappings and a confusion of toys. Tad was
standing in the middle of the floor buckling on a wide military belt
trimmed with metal. Hanging from it was a small sword. Tad worked
awkwardly because his hands were lost in great white gauntlet gloves
that reached almost to his elbows.

“From Mr. Stanton,” he grinned, patting the belt. “I thought he didn’t
like me. I thought he didn’t like boys.”

“He likes being Secretary of War,” said Robert dryly. He reached for a
small package. “This is for you, Mama. The man said these things were
real jade from China.”

Mary took the parcel eagerly, kissed Robert, undid the wrapping,
exclaimed over the necklace, pin, and earbobs.

“Oh, Bob, they’re so pretty! I can wear them with my green taffeta.”

She was a child for trinkets, Lincoln was thinking indulgently. He was
glad that he had given her the big white muff. She would love carrying
it to parties and on their carriage drives, nestling her two little
round chins into the delicate fur. He thanked Robert for a pair of gold
cuff links and there was laughter when they discovered that his gift to
Robert had been an almost identical pair.

“At least,” said Robert, “I shall have the distinction of imitating the
President of the United States.”

“Well, they’ll fasten your shirt sleeves anyway,” drawled Lincoln.
“That’s all a man can ask of them.”

Tad strutted around the room flourishing his sword. He gulped the last
of his milk hastily at his mother’s command, put on his uniform cap, and
swished a shine on the toes of his boots with his cuff.

“Now I have to show these to the boys,” he announced.

“But son,” protested his mother, “aren’t you going to play with all your
pretty toys? Look—this little cannon. It shoots!”

“Yeh—shoots a cork!” Tad dismissed the weapon indifferently, “A ole
Rebel would sure laugh if you shot him with that. Papa, I want a real
gun. One with bullets in it.”

“My Heaven, Tad, you’re too little to have a gun,” declared Mary.

“If I had a gun I could ride with Papa and perteck him,” argued Tad.
“Then nobody would dare shoot holes in his hat.”

Lincoln caught the startled look on Mary’s face, got his son hastily by
the elbow. “Come along, Tad. Go show off your finery. And I’ve got work
to do.” He hustled the boy down the hall. “Who told you somebody shot a
hole in my hat?” he demanded, when they were out of earshot.

Tad grinned. “Oh, I get information,” he said blandly, “but if I had
been along with a good ole gun nobody would have dared do it.”

“Don’t mention it again in front of your mother, you hear?” Lincoln
seldom spoke sharply to the boy and Tad looked scared briefly.

“No, sir—no, sir, I won’t,” he stammered, his palate tripping him again.

“Mind now! And get along with you!” His father gave him a little shove,
as he entered the office door.

Even on a holiday he was not free from intrusion, of being faced with
the woeful problems of the people. A lad of about seventeen, in the
faded uniform of a private, was standing, twisting thin hands together,
his face scared and anxious.

“Sit down, son,” ordered Lincoln, closing the door. “How did you get in
here and what did you want to see me about?”

The boy dropped on the edge of a chair, twisted his legs about each
other nervously.

“Nobody let me in, sir,” he stammered. “I just told the man downstairs
that I had to see the President and he searched me, and I didn’t have no
gun or nothing so he told me to come on up here and wait. And what I
wanted to see you about, Mr. President—I want to be a captain.”

Lincoln’s long lips drew back and quirked up a little at one corner. “I
see. And what military organization did you want to be captain of?”

“No organization, Mr. President, but I been a private in the Sixty-third
Ohio a long time, sir—”

“How long a time?”

“Four months, Mr. President.”

“And you have a company organized, maybe, that you want me to make you
captain of?”

“No, sir—I haven’t got any company organized. But I just want to be a
captain. My mother says I should be a captain. She told me to see you
about it.”

Lincoln clasped his bony hands around a knee. “What’s your name,
soldier?”

“Milo, sir. Milo Potter.”

“Milo, did you ever hear the story about the farmer out in Illinois,
where I was raised? Well, this fellow he was a good farmer and a dutiful
son to his mother but he got up towards forty years old and he’d never
married a wife. So his mother fretted at him, said she was getting too
old to churn and milk and he ought to fetch a wife home to take some of
the work off of her. So this farmer, call him Jim, he goes down to the
church and hunts up the preacher. ‘Preacher’, says Jim ‘I got to get
married. Mammy says so.’ ‘All right, Jim,’ agrees the preacher, ‘I’ll be
proud to marry you. You go get your license and bring the woman here
with you and I’ll give you a real good marrying.’ ‘But I haven’t got any
woman, Preacher,’ Jim argues kind of dashed. ‘Well, you can’t get
married without a woman, Jim’, the preacher tells him. That’s your
problem, Milo. You want to be a captain and you haven’t got any
organization to captain. What made you think you could be a captain,
anyway?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the boy flushed unhappily, “it was that captain
we got in B Company. That last battle—he made us retreat. And right
there in front of us there was a hole in that Rebel line I could have
drove four wagons through. There wasn’t no sense in that retreat, Mr.
President. All of us boys said so. All of us was mad. So I thought I can
be a better captain than that.”

“Maybe you can, Milo. You go on back to B Company and be a good soldier
and likely you’ll make captain before this war is over.”

“Mr. President, I can’t do it! I run off. They’ll put me in the
guardhouse!”

Lincoln scratched his chin. “That was very unwise of you, soldier. But
you can’t dodge your military responsibility. I reckon you’ll just have
to go to the guardhouse. If you should try to hedge out of it you’d be
as poor a soldier as that captain of B Company you complain about. It
won’t be too bad. Good luck to you, son.”

The boy said, “Thank you, sir,” and backed out, twisting his cap in his
hands.

“Stand up straight, look the captain in the eye, and admit you ran off,
son,” advised Lincoln. “You needn’t tell him you came here to get his
job away from him.”

“No, sir, I sure won’t.”

John Hay came in when the young trooper had gone. “I shouldn’t have let
him in perhaps, Mr. President,” he explained, “but he said he had an
important message for you.”

“It was important. To Milo Potter,” smiled Lincoln. “No harm done,
Johnny.”

“Your son is waiting, sir. Shall I send him in?”

“Must be Bob. Tad would have already been in.”

Robert came in, took a chair, and folded his hands, his young mouth
sober. “I had to know, sir,” he began, “have they been making attempts
to kill you?”

“Bob, there are several million people who think that the man who kills
me should wear a hero’s crown. And there are a lot of people who yearn
to be heroes,” Lincoln said calmly.

“You should be better protected. You shouldn’t take risks!”

“They’re trying to protect me now, Bob, till I can’t hardly draw my own
breath.”

“That fellow who just went out. Did you even know him?” persisted the
boy.

“He was harmless. I reckon Johnny even took his jackknife away from him.
I have to see ’em, son. I have to hear their story. That’s why they put
me here,” declared his father.

“About the Army, Papa—I’m deadly serious.”

“The trouble is, Bob, that your mother is deadly serious, too. She’s
lost two boys,” Lincoln reminded him.

“So have other women.”

“I know. Give her a little more time, Bob. Till the end of this year
anyway. The war isn’t going to end before New Years’ Day.”

“I shan’t wait much longer, I promise you,” threatened Robert, standing
tall.

“Just promise me to the end of this school year. Then we’ll talk about
it again.”

“And you’ll talk to Mama? Make her see that it’s something I have to
do?”

“I’ll talk to Mama,” agreed Abraham Lincoln. “I’ll do my best, son.”

But when, he was thinking wearily after the boy had gone, had his best
ever been good enough to prevail against Mary’s ready tears?




                                   7


“Bob,” Abraham Lincoln said, when he went back to the family rooms, “I
need some help. Your mother has very graciously provided some little
Christmas cheer for those boys out there of Company K. The things are
all here in this big box. I’ll need you to help pass ’em out.”

He bent and shouldered the heavy box that Mary had packed with small,
paper-wrapped bundles.

“Oh, Papa, let me call somebody! You shouldn’t carry that,” protested
Robert.

“Little enough to do for those boys.” Lincoln bent under the burden. “It
will mean more to them if I fetch it to them personally.”

“Ridiculous!” fumed Mary. “It’s beneath your dignity to lug that heavy
box.”

“Put my hat on, Mary, and put it on tight so I won’t knock it off.” He
ignored her protest calmly.

She jammed the high hat down over his rough hair, the bony knobs of his
head. “You—the President of the United States!” she exploded. “With a
house full of help and you lug that heavy thing!”

“He who would be greatest among you, let him seek out the lowest place,”
quoted Lincoln, solemnly and a bit inaccurately. “Not near so heavy as a
good stout oak rail and I’ve shouldered many of them in my day. Come
along, Bob.”

“At least let me help carry, sir,” argued Robert as they went down the
stairs.

“Don’t touch it or you’ll get it unbalanced and spill all Company K’s
Christmas. Little enough, but I had John Hay fetch me a roll of
greenbacks. I’ll give every man a dollar. A dollar is a right
substantial present, Bob, when you’re marching and fighting for thirteen
dollars a month and what you can eat, when you get a chance to eat.”

“I would do it gladly,” insisted Robert. “All I ask is a chance.”

“I know, son. Maybe we can talk your mother around by spring. I did some
better in the Black Hawk War.” Lincoln went on, stepping heavily down
the outer steps and across the rutted yard. “They paid me eighty-five
dollars for ninety days fighting in that war but part of the time I
ranked a captain. We had to shoot hogs to eat, though, and then fight
the farmers that owned ’em. Swampy country, too. Like Grant’s army
fought over around Vicksburg.”

“But you captured Black Hawk.”

“The regular Army said they did that. I got put in the guardhouse for
two days for firing a pistol in camp and they made me carry a wooden
sword after that. Discipline. You couldn’t make any worse record in the
army, Bob, than your father did before you.”

“You couldn’t call that a real war, Papa,” Robert said.

“It was real enough to the men who got their scalps peeled off. I helped
bury twelve of them. Now, look at that lieutenant! Sending an escort up
here on the double and putting all those boys in line at attention, when
I just came out here on a friendly visit.”

“Even Tad!” laughed Robert. “Even the confounded goat!”

The goat wore his military hat and Tad was holding him grimly into line
by his horns. Lincoln let the two soldiers who came trotting up help him
ease the box down to the ground.

“At ease, men,” he ordered. “This is old Father Christmas, not the
commander in chief. File by, one at a time, and get your Christmas
cheer.”

Robert passed out the packages one by one while Lincoln stood thumbing
bills off a roll of money, stopping to wet his thumb occasionally,
saying, “Here, son, spend this on some foolishness next time you get a
pass into town.”

There were yells of thanks and a lined-up cheer for the President, the
goat blatting an obligato. But Tad, who had straggled at the end of the
line and received nothing, glared down into the empty box, whimpering.

“I’m a soldier. I didn’t get any present,” he complained.

“You got plenty of presents at the house, Tad,” said his father. “You’ve
got candy there, too. Don’t you go bumming off these boys now. You have
more Christmas than any of them.”

“But I want a soldier Christmas,” persisted Tad, “and I want my nanny
goat back!”

“You’ve got a goat,” scolded Robert, “a blamed nuisance of a goat.
You’re getting so you even smell like him.”

“He’s clean,” fumed Tad. “Joe washed him and curried him and the
corporal even put hair oil on his whiskers. Can I take Billy in the
house, Papa? Can I? I want him to have some candy.”

“No, Tad, no more goats in the house. That’s your mother’s order. Last
time,” Lincoln explained to Robert, “Tad drove two of them, hitched to a
chair, right through the middle of one of your mother’s social shindigs.
Upset a couple of ladies and spilled claret punch on their dresses.
Disgraced the whole Lincoln family and busted some good crockery too.”

“It’s cold out here! Billy’s cold.” Tad hung to his father’s coattail
but refused to let go the goat. “Billy will catch cold.”

“Private Bullitt,” ordered Lincoln, “will you tie up this goat in a
sheltered place? Tad, you come along inside. You’ll get the sniffles and
your mother will scold all of us. Corporal, if you must provide escort
for this family to their door, line ’em up. We’re ready to march.”
Lincoln took a military stance, between two privates, who were very
rigid with importance. Tad pulled back till Robert gave him a gentle,
brotherly cuff.

“You act more like a baby than a colonel,” he said. “If you want to cry,
hand over that sword. You’ll disgrace the army, bawling on the march.”

“Let loose of me!” shrilled Tad, jerking away. Turning he ran pelting
back to the circle of tents, dove into one and vanished.

“You’d better go after him, Bob,” worried the President. “Your Mama will
worry if he’s out in this cold too long.”

“Yes, sir,” said Robert, unenthusiastically, “but If I may make a
suggestion, sir, that boy needs discipline. He’s getting out of hand.”

“Yes, sir, I stand reproved, sir,” said Lincoln meekly. “Just fetch him
along in. I’ll wait here,” he told the escorting privates. “Stand at
ease.”

“Mr. President, I hope Tad don’t run off again,” worried one soldier.
“We try not to take our eyes off him when he’s out here with us. Could
be some Rebel sympathizers hangin’ round that would think it was a smart
move to catch up Tad and hold him. Know you’d be mighty near be willing
to surrender Washington to get that boy back, your pardon, sir, for
speaking so bold.”

Panic stiffened Abraham Lincoln’s long body. He broke into a long-legged
trot back toward the tents, the escort panting after him. Robert
emerged, pale-faced, from one tent and, with a dozen soldiers charging
after him, hurried into another. He came out again, his hands outspread,
helplessly.

“He’s hiding somewhere, Papa,” he said. “We can’t find him.”

“Spread out, men!” shouted the lieutenant. “Comb the area. Six of you
guard the President. Corporal Barnes, form a guard detail.”

The corporal hustled Robert into the middle of the protecting group, who
faced outward bayonets alerted. Robert was angry and full of
expostulations.

“I don’t have to be guarded like a prisoner,” he protested. “I want to
go and help search for Tad.”

“Private Bullitt, here, has just made a rather startling suggestion,
Bob,” said Lincoln worriedly. “He thinks that if some Rebel sympathizer
should catch up Tad and hold him I might be pressured into surrendering
Washington to get the boy back. And it might be,” he added sadly, “that
I would be weak enough to do it!”

“You never would! You couldn’t—with honor!” explained Robert. “But it
would be a mighty tough decision, sir. Is that,” he asked sharply, “why
you won’t let me go into the Army? For fear I might be captured and held
as a hostage to force some concessions out of you? I want to tell you,
sir, that if I can get into the Army—and no matter how I’m treated there
or what happens to me, I’ll be a United States soldier, Mr. Lincoln—you
can forget that I ever was your son.”

“Very nobly said, son,” Lincoln patted his shoulder. “I’ll try to abide
by your decision if the occasion ever arises. But Tad is my son. A
little helpless boy. A boy I’m mighty fond of, and they know it!”

“If I may speak plainly again, sir,” said Robert, “he needs his breeches
tanned. And you are the one who ought to do it.”

“He couldn’t have gone far,” fretted Lincoln. “It’s beginning to snow
again.” He moved across the yard, his escort keeping rigidly in
formation on either side. “Tad!” he shouted. “You, Tad—come back here!”

“He wanted to be a soldier, Mr. President,” put in one of the soldiers.
“Tad was bound he was a soldier.”

“All my boys,” said Lincoln, “wanting to be soldiers!”

There was a shout presently from beyond the fenced in confines of the
yard. Men started running.

“They’ve seen him,” cried Robert relieved. “The ornery little devil!” He
began to run himself, and Lincoln trotted too, almost outstripping his
guards.

“There he is!” exclaimed a soldier. “Up on that scaffolding again!”

“They’re going after him. They’ll get him down.” Lincoln almost forgot
to breathe. The little figure looked so small against the loom of that
great half-finished monument—a tiny, struggling shape swarmed over by
half a dozen men in blue who clung precariously to the spidery trestles,
caught him and passed him down slowly, kicking and fighting, from one to
another.

They brought him up in a few minutes, a pathetic, disheveled sight,
tear-stained, dragging his feet, still kicking at the shins of the men
who restrained him. His military cap was over one eye, his belt half
off, the toy sword dragging.

“Fetch him here!” sternly ordered the President of the United States.

Tad stumbled close, held tight by the elbows by two privates. His chin
was shaking, sobs shook him.

“Oh, Papa—Oh, Papa—” he gasped, trying to fling himself at the tall man
with the suddenly grim and forbidding face.

But Lincoln was unrelenting. “Thomas Lincoln! Give me that sword!” he
ordered in a terrible voice.

Trembling Tad jerked the sword loose, handed it over.

“Present the hilt, in proper military order!” snapped his father.

Tad reversed the sword, his hand shaking so that almost it fell to the
ground.

“Yes, sir!” His voice was very thin and small.

Solemnly Lincoln broke the sword over his knee, tossed it to one side.

“You are now reduced to the rank of private, Thomas Lincoln,” he stated,
“until such time as you can conduct yourself in the proper manner and
discipline of an officer of the Army of the United States. Strip off his
epaulets, Corporal.”

The corporal obeyed, looking unhappy and ill at ease, handing the
gold-fringed boards into the hands of the commander in chief.

“Private Thomas Lincoln, you will now escort the President of the United
States back to the White House,” ordered Abraham Lincoln. “Forward
march!”

Every man of Company K fell in, marched in grave formation, eyes
straight ahead, chins set, weapons held ready, to the side door of the
house. Lincoln entered first, turned on the doorstep, and soberly
saluted the ranks.

“My deepest gratitude, men of Company K,” he said, “for labor beyond the
call of duty.”

Tad marched in stiffly; then, with a frightened look backward at this
stranger who had been his adored and indulgent father, flew through the
hall and up the stairs. His mother came hurrying out of the sitting room
but he ignored her, flying past her to the room with the great
high-topped bed. There Private Thomas Lincoln dived under the bed.

When the dinner gong sounded, he refused to come out, even at his
father’s stern order.

“All right,” dismissed Abraham Lincoln. “Since you’re such a craven and
a coward, Private Lincoln, you may remain in durance there. I can eat
two drumsticks.”

Tad rolled out, swiftly, covered with dust and lint.

“I am not a coward!” he sobbed. “I climbed most to the top of that silly
ole monument!”

“You are still a disgrace to the uniform,” declared his father. “A
soldier who ran away. Now go and wash yourself before your mother comes
in here and scolds both of us.”

“Yes, Papa dear!” whimpered Tad, hugging the long legs and snuffling.
“And you can have both drumsticks.”




                                   8


The Christmas party was in full swing. Abraham Lincoln had shaken hands
till his knuckles ached. Mary Todd Lincoln’s coral-colored satin and
turbaned headdress with jaunty flowers and feathers had swished and
bowed and rustled, and her round face was all aglow with pleasure and
excitement. She was always vivacious at parties, and, if at times she
was a bit too garrulous, Lincoln overlooked that indulgently. He had not
given Mary much of happiness, and she had had her share of frustration
and sorrow. Now, if she could find pleasure in the dull round of an
official affair, he was content.

Some of the senators and other officials had had a few too many parties
already. One judge was already asleep on a padded sofa in the hall, his
gaited ankles sprawling, his mouth open. The musicians from the Marine
Band played on doggedly and quietly in the screened corner of the East
Room. Here and there stood men of Company K and White House guards,
stony-faced, rigidly alerted. Abraham Lincoln felt his legs begin to sag
a bit under him, found himself wishing wearily that this company would
all go home. But at least Mary was enjoying herself.

It was nearly midnight when an aide came through the crowd, and touched
the arm of the President.

“Some men of Company K at the rear door, Mr. President,” he said in a
low voice. “They insist on seeing you. An officer is with them. They say
they have brought a Christmas present for your son, Thomas.”

Lincoln looked about him. Mary was the animated center of a group.
Servants were collecting empty glasses and picking up shattered remnants
of flowers from the carpet. Secretary Seward stood in the midst of a
dozen men who were arguing a trifle too loudly the question of amnesty
for North Carolina. The band was playing slowly, with a few sour notes
indicating that the musicians were wearying after five hours of patient
tootling.

“Dismiss those Marine players,” ordered Lincoln. “They’re tired. I’ll
see what those boys at the back door want.”

“Not alone, Mr. President!” protested the aide.

“Company K won’t let anything happen to me,” argued Lincoln. “How many
are out there?”

“Quite a number, sir. A lieutenant is with them.”

“I’ll fetch Tad. If they’ve brought something for him it will sort of
make up for this sorry Christmas he had.” Lincoln strode off up the
stairs. All day since disciplining Tad his heart had ached in dull,
heavy fashion. It was not easy, he was thinking, to be the son of a
president. It was not even easy to be a president. He thought again
wistfully of that white house in Springfield, of turkey wishbones hung
to dry there above the kitchen stove when Tad and Willie were small.
Honors came dear. Almost, he decided, a man could pay too much for them.

Tad was still awake, lying hunched down in the middle of the huge, high
bed. A candle burned on a stand, and the flickering light made his eyes
enormous and somehow lost in the round paleness of his face.

“I couldn’t get to sleep, Papa,” he explained, scrabbling into his
father’s lap when Lincoln sat on the edge of the bed. “It was the drum.
I could hear it all the time—bum, bum. When it stopped I waited for it
to start again.”

“It’s stopped now, Tad. For good. And the boys are downstairs. Our boys.
They brought you something. Come on, I’ll carry you down. Put this
wrapper around you so you won’t take cold.”

“Maybe a new sword. Would you let me wear it, Papa?” asked Tad eagerly.

“I’ll see—we’ll see how you behave.”

They went down the rear stairway stealthily, through a chilly hall to
the back door. But even here was an aide who sprang to open the door and
two soldiers appeared out of nowhere, one desperately swallowing some
thing he had been chewing on.

On the steps outside huddled a crowd of blue-clad men. Snow sifted
thinly over their bent shoulders, their drawn-down caps. Every face came
up, but to a man they seemed to be holding something, holding tight to a
bulk that struggled a little, something that was hairy and odorous and
staccato of feet and alive.

“Mr. President,” the lieutenant jerked erect, saluted anxiously, “we
brought this—for Private Thomas Lincoln—for his Christmas, sir. It’s not
the same one. Some of the boys chipped in and bought it off a Negro,
sir—but we thought might be it would do—for the boy for his Christmas.”

Like a fish Tad was out of his father’s arms, nightshirt flying, bare
feet oblivious of the cold stone step.

“A nanny goat!” he shrieked in delight. “Papa, it’s a nanny goat! My
very own nanny goat!”

“Mr. President, your pardon sir, it’s kind of dirty, sir, but we’ll wash
it good in the morning. And though it ain’t the same one,” pleaded the
corporal, “we thought maybe it would do—for Christmas.”

“She licked my hand. She likes me!” Tad squirmed in ecstasy. “Most of
anything I wanted me a nanny goat!”

“It appears,” stated Abraham Lincoln, “to be a very superior goat. Thank
the boys, Tad, and let them take your nanny down to the stables and feed
her. She looks a bit gaunt to me. See that she gets a good feed,
Corporal, if you please. Now, back to bed, Private Lincoln. Your nanny
will still be here, all cleaned up and beautiful for you, in the
morning.”

Very reluctantly, with many farewell pats and hand lickings, Tad was at
last persuaded to mount the stairs again in his father’s arms.

Down below, the drums had ceased but Abraham Lincoln thought wearily of
all the hands he must shake again before he could lie down to rest in
this wide bed.

He tucked the covers tenderly over the happy child. Tad’s eyes were
starry. No more tears. All sadness forgotten. Wonderful, to be a child.
Abraham Lincoln sighed as he closed the door.

“Papa!” called Tad.

Lincoln opened the door again. “Yes, son.”

“It’s the nicest Christmas I ever had!” stated young Thomas Lincoln.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.



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