Virginia against Richmond, while McClellan contended that the safe and brilliant movement was down the Chesapeake, up the Rapahannock to Urbana and across land to the York river. There was much controversy between the friends of the two plans. It ended in the President giving up to his general. Of one thing he felt certain, McClellan would not work as well on a plan in which he did not believe as on one to which he was committed, and as success was what Mr. Lincoln wanted he finally consented to the Chesapeake route. It brought bitter criticism upon him, especially from the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. Common sense told men that the direct overland route to Richmond was the better. The President, they said, was afraid of his general-in-chief.

While harassed by this inaction and obstinacy of McClellan's, Mr. Lincoln was plunged into a bitter private sorrow. Early in February his two younger boys, Willie and Tad, as they were familiarly known, fell sick. In the tenderness of his nature Mr. Lincoln could never see suffering of any kind without a passionate desire to relieve it. Especially was he moved by the distress of a child. Indeed his love for children had already become familiar to the whole public by the touching little stories which visitors had brought away from the White House and which crept into the newspapers:

"At the reception Saturday afternoon, at the President's house," wrote a correspondent of the "Independent," many persons noticed three little girls, poorly dressed, the children of some mechanic or laboring man, who had followed the visitors into the White House to gratify their curiosity. They passed around from room to room, and were hastening through the reception room, with some trepidation, when the President called to them, 'Little girls, are you going to pass me without shaking hands?' Then he bent his tall, awkward form down, and shook each little girl warmly

by the hand. Everybody in the apartment was spellbound by the incident, so simple in itself."

Many men and women now living who were children in Washington at this time recall the President's gentleness to them. Mr. Frank P. Blair of Chicago, says:

of

During the war my grandfather, Francis P. Blair, Sr., lived at Silver Springs, north of Washington, seven miles from the White House. It was a magnificent place of four or five hundred acres, with an extensive lawn in the rear of the house. The grandchildren gathered there frequently. There were eight or ten of us, our ages ranging from eight to twelve years. Although I was but seven or eight years age, Mr. Lincoln's visits were of such importance to us boys as to leave a clear impression on my memory. He drove out to the place quite frequently. We boys, for hours at a time, played" town ball" on the vast lawn, and Mr. Lincoln would join ardently in the sport. I remember vividly how he ran with the children; how long were his strides, and how far his coat-tails stuck out behind, and how we tried to hit him with the ball, as he ran the bases. He entered into the spirit of the play as completely as any of us, and we invariably hailed his coming with delight.

The protecting sympathy and tenderness the President extended to all children became a passionate affection for his own. Willie and Tad had always been privileged beings at the White House, and their pranks and companionship undoubtedly did much to relieve the tremendous strain the President was suffering. Many visitors who saw him with the lads at this period have recorded their impressions :how keenly he enjoyed the children; how indulgent and affectionate he was with them. Again and again he related their sayings, sometimes even to grave delegations. Thus Moncure Conway tells of going to see the President with a commission which wanted to "talk over the situation." The President met them, laughing like a boy. The White House

From a photograph taken by Brady at Washington, shortly before the death of Willie Lincoln.

was in a state of feverish excitement, he said; one of his boys had come in that morning to tell him that the cat had kittens, and now the other had just announced that the dog had puppies.

When both the children fell ill; when he saw them suffering, and when it became evident, as it finally did, that Willie, the elder of the two, would die, the President's anguish was intense. He would slip away from visitors and Cabinet at every opportunity, to go to the sick room, and during the last four or five days of Willie's life, when the child was suffering terribly and lay in an unbroken delirium, Mr. Lincoln shared with the nurse the nightly vigils at the bedside. When Willie finally died, on February 20, the President was so prostrated that it was feared by many of his friends that he would succumb entirely to his grief. Many public duties he undoubtedly did neglect. Indeed, a month after Willie's death, we find him apologizing for delay to answer a letter because of a "domestic affliction."

If one consults the records of the day, however, it is evident that Mr. Lincoln did try to attend to public duties even in the worst of this trial. Only two days after the funeral, on February 23, he held a Cabinet meeting, and the day following that, a correspondent wrote to the New York Evening Post: "

Mr. Lincoln seems to have entirely recovered his health, and is again at his ordinary duties, spending, not infrequently, eighteen out of the twenty-four hours upon the affairs of the nation. He is frequently called up three and four times in a night to receive important messages from the West. Since his late bereavement he looks sad and careworn, but is in very good health again.

There is ample evidence that in this crushing grief the President sought earnestly to find what consolation the Christian religion might have for him. It was the first ex