This eagerness for a joke now and then gave offense.  On one occasion, a noted Congressman called on the President shortly after a disaster.  Lincoln began to tell a story.  The Congressman jumped up.  “Mr. President, I did not come here this morning to hear stories.  It is too serious a time.”  Lincoln’s face changed.  “Ashley,” said he, “sit down!  I respect you as an earnest, sincere man.  You can not be more anxious than I have been constantly since the beginning of the war; and I say to you now, that were it not for this occasional vent, I should die."(16) Again he said, “When the Peninsula Campaign terminated suddenly at Harrison’s Landing, I was as near inconsolable as I could be and live."(17)

Lincoln’s imaginative power, the ineradicable artist in him, made of things unseen true realities to his sensibility.  Reports of army suffering bowed his spirit.  “This was especially’ the case when the noble victims were of his own acquaintance, or of the narrower circle of his familiar friends; and then he seemed for the moment possessed of a sense of personal responsibility for their individual fate which was at once most unreasonable and most pitiful.”  On hearing that two sons of an old friend were desperately wounded and would probably die, he broke out with:  “Here, now, are these dear brave boys killed in this cursed war.  My God!  My God!  It is too bad!  They worked hard to earn money to educate themselves and this is the end!  I loved them as if they were my own."(18) He was one of the few who have ever written a beautiful letter of condolence.  Several of his letters attempting this all but impossible task, come as near their mark as such things can.  One has become a classic: 

“I have been shown,” he wrote to Mrs. Bixby, “in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.  I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.  But I can not refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.  I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."(19)

All these innumerable instances of his sympathy passed from mouth to mouth; became part of a floating propaganda that was organizing the people in his support.  To these were added many anecdotes of his mercy.  The American people had not learned that war is a rigorous thing.  Discipline in the army was often hard to maintain.  Impulsive young men who tired of army life, or who quarreled with their officers, sometimes walked away.  There were many condemnations either for mutiny or desertion.  In the stream of suppliants