Stanton put in a proviso that those cases only should be considered where the claimant could take the iron-bound oath of allegiance. Of course no slaves were paid for. The President never forgave me. Subsequently, when General Schenck resigned command to take his seat in Congress, the Union men of Maryland and Delaware, headed by Judge Bond, waited on the President with a request that I be promoted to brigadier-general and put in command of the Middle Department. Mr. Lincoln heard them patiently, and then refused, saying, "Schenck and Piatt are good fellows, and if there were any rotten barrel they'd be sure to hook 'em out. apples in the But they run They Edwin their machine on too high a level for me. never could understand that I was boss." M. Stanton told me, after he left the War Department, that when he sent a list of officers to the President, my name included, as worthy promotion, Lincoln would quietly draw his pen through my name. I do not blame him. His great, thoughtful brain saw at the time what has taken years for us to discover and appreciate. He understood the people he held to a death struggle in behalf of the great Republic, and knew that, while the masses would fight to the bitter end in behalf of the Union, they would not kill their own brothers, and spread mourning over the entire land, in behalf of the negro. He therefore kept the cause of the Union to the front, and wrote to Horace Greeley the memorable words : "If to preserve the Union it is necessary to destroy slavery, slavery will be destroyed; and if to preserve the Union slavery is to be maintained, slavery will be maintained." He well knew that the North was not fighting to liberate slaves, nor the South to preserve slavery. The people of the slave States plunged into a bloody war to build a Southern empire of their own, and the people of the North. fought to preserve the government of the fathers on all the land the fathers left us. In that awful conflict slavery went to pieces. We are quick to forget the facts and slow to recognize the truths that knock from us our pretentious claims to a high philanthropy. As I have said, abolitionism was not only unpopular when the war broke out, but it was detested. The minority that elected Mr. Lincoln had fallen heir to the Whig votes of the North, and while pledging itself, in platforms and speeches, to a solemn resolve to keep slavery under the Constitution in the States, restricted its antislavery purpose to the prevention of its spread into the Territories. I remember when the Hutchinsons were driven from the camps of the Potomac Army by the soldiers for singing their abolition songs, and I remember well that for two years nearly of our service as soldiers we were engaged in returning slaves to their masters, when the poor creatures sought shelter in our lines. President Lincoln's patriotism and wisdom rose above impulse, or his positive temperament and intellect kept him free of mere sentiment. Looking back now at this grand man, and the grave situation at the time, I am ashamed of my act of insubordination, and although it freed Maryland it now lowers me in my own estimation. Had the President carried his threat of punishment into execution, it would have been just. The popular mind is slow of study, and I fear it will be long ere it learns that, while an eminent man wins our admiration through his great qualities, he can hold our love only from his human weaknesses that make him one of ourselves. We are told that, with the multitude, nothing is so successful as success, yet there is often more heroism in failure than in triumph. The one is frequently the result of accident, while the other holds in itself all that endears the martyr to the human heart. The unfortunate Hector is, after all, the hero of the Iliad, and not the invulnerable Achilles, and by our popular process of eliminating all human weakness from our great men we weaken, and in a measure destroy, their immortality, for we destroy them. As we accept the sad, rugged, homely face, and love it for what it is, we should accept it as it was, the grandest figure loom ing up in our history as a nation. Washington taught the world to know us, Lincoln taught us to know ourselves. The first won for us our independence, the last wrought out our manhood and self. respect. DONN PIATT. ON XXIX. E. W. ANDREWS. NE morning, early in the spring of 1863, a middle-aged lady appeared at the garrison gate of Fort McHenry, and applied for permission to visit head-quarters. This was some time after the battle fought at Nashville, Tennessee, where our troops were victorious under the command of General Franklin. The lady's request was sent up to head-quarters by the officer of the guard. At that time, I was chief of staff to General W. W. Morris, of the regular army, then commanding the defenses of Baltimore. Representing my chief, who was absent, I granted the lady's request. Her appearance, as she entered head-quarters, inspired every one with the deepest interest, for, with the calm self-possession and distinguished bearing of an accomplished lady, there was an expression of profound sadness in her face which appealed touchingly to every heart. She told me her story with modest dignity. She was a widow, she said, and resided near Nashville, |