A Man of the People Part 18

LINCOLN

Go where you are treated best and the ban is still upon you. I cannot alter it if I would. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. For the sake of your people you should sacrifice something of your present comfort.

FIRST NEGRO

Let our great leader show us the way----

LINCOLN

The Colony of Liberia is an old one, and it is open to you. I am now arranging to open another in Central America. You are intelligent and know that success does not so much depend on external help as on self-reliance. If you will engage in the enterprise I will spend the money Congress has entrusted to me for this purpose. I ask you to consider it seriously, not for yourselves merely, nor for your race and ours for the present time, BUT FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND.

FIRST NEGRO

We will, sir----!

LINCOLN

The practical thing I want to ascertain is whether I can get a number of able-bodied men with their wives and children to go at once--men who "can cut their own fodder" so to speak----? Take this plan, show it to your people----

[_Hands the doc.u.ment to the First Negro._]

--and find this out for me----

FIRST NEGRO

We'll do our best----

THIRD NEGRO

[_Bowing out with religious ecstasy._]

Praise G.o.d forever for our Savior-Leader----!

[NICOLAY _ushers out the three Negroes and shows in a stately black-robed figure in mourning for her dead. She walks quietly to the President and extends her hand with a gracious smile._]

THE WOMAN

Perhaps I've done wrong to take up your time----

LINCOLN

My time belongs to the people, Madam----

THE WOMAN

I've come to you, Mr. President, under an impulse I could not resist.

Mr. Stoddard, your third Secretary, is my friend. He told me this morning that all night the sound of your footfall came from this room.

He heard it at nine, at ten, at eleven. At midnight the Secretary of War left the door ajar and the steady tramp came with heavier sound.

The last thing he heard at three was the m.u.f.fled beat upstairs. The guard said it had not stopped at daylight. I saw you staggering alone under a Nation's sorrow and I wondered if you had been given the vision to see the dawn of a new life for our people. I know I'm looking into the eyes of the man whose word can stop this war and divide the Union--I have come to tell you that I lost my first born son at Fredericksburg--a lad of twenty----

[_She pauses and_ LINCOLN _bends and presses her hand._]

May G.o.d help you in your trials, Mr. President, as he has helped me in mine----

LINCOLN

[_Startled._]

You lost your first born at Fredericksburg and come to say this to me?

THE WOMAN

And I've been praying for you, day and night since----

LINCOLN

[_Softly._]

Will you say that again, Madam----

THE WOMAN

I have been praying for you, day and night, and I've come this morning to bring you this message--Be strong and courageous, and G.o.d will bring the Nation through!

LINCOLN

You say this to me--standing beside the grave of your son?

THE WOMAN

And beside the cot of my other boy of sixteen who was dangerously wounded in General Grant's last battle. I am proud of two such sons to lay on the altar of my country. I _had_ to tell you that I'm praying for you.

[LINCOLN _closes both hands over hers and holds them a moment in silence._]

LINCOLN

[_With upward gaze._]

How strange that you should come to me in this black hour with such a message. I've often wondered if the soul of my mother were not speaking to me! The day she died in the woods of Indiana, she told me that if dark hours came, her spirit would be watching, and she'd help me if she could! While you were talking to me--I got the tremor of her voice and the quiver of her lips--how strange!

[_Looking down into her face._]

Thank you, Madam! You have brought me medicine for both body and soul.

[LINCOLN _presses her hand again and she quietly goes as he gazes after her._]

[NICOLAY _starts to follow her to the door_--LINCOLN _lifts his hand._]