proportion it is important to us that it shall.

Hence the utmost caution and vigilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them, and we should do the same to preserve and increase them.”

Rage at the South over the use of negro troops was unbounded. In 1862 Jefferson Davis had declared Generals Hunter and Butler, and their commissioned officers, outlaws, robbers, and criminals, who, if captured, were not to be treated as prisoners of war but to be held for execution. When the proclamation was issued he extended this principle to all commissioned officers captured in the territory covered. The Confederate Secretary of War wrote to General Kirby Smith the suggestion that white men leading negro troops "be dealt with red-handed on the field of war or immediately after." Such amenities naturally raised at the North a demand for reciprocity. In the summer the well-known negro Frederick Douglass, who was recruiting colored soldiers, called on the President and said that if these troops were to be a success four things were necessary:

I. Colored soldiers must have the same pay as white soldiers.

2. The government must compel the Confederates to treat captured negro soldiers as prisoners of war.

3.

Brave and meritorious service should lead to promotion precisely as with white soldiers. 4. If any negro soldiers were murdered in cold blood, the North should retaliate in kind.

Lincoln, in reply, Douglass tells us, described the opposition to employing black soldiers at all, and the advantage to the colored race that would result from employment in defence of their country. He regarded it as an experiment. He had with difficulty got them into United States uniforms, against the opposition of those who proposed a different dress, and that was something gained. In the matter of pay, also, he felt that some concession must be made to prejudice; and besides it was not proved that the negro could make as good a soldier as the white man. "I assure you," the President added, however, "that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers." He admitted the justice of the demand for promotion, and said that he would insist on their being entitled to all the privileges of prisoners of war; but in regard to retaliation he said, with a quiver in his voice, “once begun, I do not know where such a measure would stop," and added that, although if he could get hold of the actual perpetrators of the crime the case might be different, he could not kill the innocent for the guilty. He did, however, after the summer victories, order that "for every soldier of the

United States killed in violation of the laws of the war a rebel soldier shall be executed." As it turned out, practically nothing came of the threats on either side.

Toward the white soldiers, with whom he purposely came in contact as much as possible, his feelings seemed to become if possible kinder as their own stability diminished. He pardoned to an extent which drove his generals and the Secretary of War into despair. If," he once said,

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life, I think a little

"a man had more than one hanging would not hurt this one, but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be, so the boy should be pardoned." General Butler says that the President promised to let him execute whomever he chose, but did not keep his word, frequently giving orders to have some convicted person sent to the Dry Tortugas. The same general reminded him that the bounties given for enlistment led to desertions, so that the men could go home and enlist in other regiments, and this practice of bounty-jumping" soon became frequent.

How can it be stopped?" asked Lincoln. "Shoot every deserter," said Butler.

"You may be right," replied the President, "probably are; but Lord help me, how can I have a butcher's day every Friday in the Army of the Potomac?"

In a case of cowardice he said that a man could not always control his legs; or that he never felt sure he might not run away himself if he were in battle. This was mainly jocose, for there is little doubt of his personal bravery. General Butler tells us that when Lincoln visited his department he rode six miles within three hundred yards of the enemy, where officers inspected him through their glasses, and he refused to make his position more safe.

Schuyler Colfax1 gives a scene from the early days of the war. When Judge Holt, the judgeadvocate-general of the army, laid the first case before the President and explained it, he replied that he would wait a few days until he had more time to read the testimony.

When the judge read the next case Lincoln said, "I must put this by until I can settle in my mind whether this soldier can better serve the country dead than living."

To the third he remarked that as the general commanding the brigade would be in Washington in a few days he would wait and talk it over with him.

Finally there came a very flagrant case. A soldier in the crisis of a battle demoralized his regiment by throwing down his gun and hiding

1 A number of interesting anecdotes by men who knew Lincoln are to be found in a volume of reminiscences edited by A. T. Rice.

behind a stump. he had no dependents and that he was a thief, stealing continually from his comrades. Judge Holt remarked that this man might meet the President's requirement of serving his country better dead than living. The excuses were all gone, but Lincoln said that any way he thought he would put it with his "leg cases." Pointing to some pigeon-holes, he proceeded: "They are cases that you call by that long title, 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy,' but I call them, for short, my leg cases. If Almighty God has given a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help running away with them?

The court-martial found that

Some escaped because he knew their fathers, others because he liked their frankness, many for their youth. It may have done something to destroy discipline, but it probably did more good than harm. The President had in mind the kind of citizens who went into the army, and no one knew better how to manage them. With us every soldier is a man of character," he wrote to a French nobleman, "and must be treated with more consideration than is customary in Europe." His humor, as always, served him well. Meeting a soldier who considerably surpassed in height his own six feet four, Lincoln examined him with wondering admiration, and finally asked, "Hello, comrade, how do you know when your feet get cold?"