Abraham Lincoln eBook

George Haven Putnam
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 609 pages of information about Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln eBook

George Haven Putnam
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 609 pages of information about Abraham Lincoln.
on them and their white officers were officially uttered by Jefferson Davis, but, except for one hideous massacre wrought in the hottest of hot blood, only a few crimes by individuals were committed in execution of these threats.  To Lincoln himself it was a stirring thought that when democratic government was finally vindicated and restored by the victory of the Union, “then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consummation.”  There was, however, prejudice at first among many Northern officers against negro enlistment.  The greatest of the few great American artists, St. Gaudens, commemorated in sculpture (as the donor of the new playing fields at Harvard commemorated by his gift) the action of a brilliant and popular Massachusetts officer, Robert Gould Shaw, who set the example of leaving his own beloved regiment to take command of a coloured regiment, at the head of which he died, gallantly leading them and gallantly followed by them in a desperate fight.

It was easier to raise and train these negro soldiers than to arrange for the control, shelter, and employment of the other refugees who crowded especially to the protection of Grant’s army in the West.  The efforts made for their benefit cannot be related here, but the recollections of Army Chaplain John Eaton, whom Grant selected to take charge of them in the West, throw a little more light on Lincoln and on the spirit of his dealing with “the nigger question.”  When Eaton after some time had to come to Washington, upon the business of his charge and to visit the President, he received that impression, of versatile power and of easy mastery over many details as well as over broad issues, which many who worked under Lincoln have described, but he was above all struck with the fact that from a very slight experience in early life Lincoln had gained a knowledge of negro character such as very few indeed in the North possessed.  He was subjected to many seemingly trivial questions, of which he was quick enough to see the grave purpose, about all sorts of persons and things in the West, but he was also examined closely, in a way which commanded his fullest respect as an expert, about the ideas, understanding, and expectations of the ordinary negroes under his care, and more particularly as to the past history and the attainments of the few negroes who had become prominent men, and who therefore best illustrated the real capacities of their race.  Later visits to the capital and to Lincoln deepened this impression, and convinced Eaton, though by trifling signs, of the rare quality of Lincoln’s sympathy.  Once, after Eaton’s difficult business had been disposed of, the President turned to relating his own recent worries about a colony of negroes which he was trying to establish on a small island off Hayti.  There flourishes in Southern latitudes a minute creature called Dermatophilus

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Abraham Lincoln from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.