Voices from the Past Part 147

Later

In Boston there have been two mammoth celebrations.

Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson and politicos attended.

Harriet Beecher Stowe came. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was played.

Throughout the nation, in small towns and hamlets there were schoolhouse ceremonies, church ceremonies, to honor the Proclamation. Hymns and prayers.

In Norfolk, two thousand former slaves paraded.

I have gone through many newspapers to read of the rejoicing.

A black is quoted:

"Freedom are an unbroke filly...but I gwine to mount her."

Hundreds of thousands of copies of my Emanc.i.p.ation have been printed and distributed.

To preserve the union.

Office

Surrounded by war I try to remember what Was.h.i.+ngton was like when I first came here about eighteen years ago.

What a bedraggled place it was! I stayed at Brown's Hotel. And Was.h.i.+ngton is again a bedraggled place, in a different way now, with tents, troops, cavalry, guns, death.

In '47, I leased my house in Springfield for $90.00 a year. This time I have leased it for double. My tenants were neglectful in '47; I expect neglect again.

In the wilderness each Christmas was a day for sober thoughts. Easter was a day of inner conflict. When was time both gentle and kind? Underneath the stars on a summer's night? Perhaps. Even then we might hear a wildcat scream. Wildcats were more numerous than books.

There was that winter when the cold and the snow killed many of us, us and our livestock. Drifts hung lean-tos on our cabin. Papa shot a deer. Wolves used the crust to raid cattle. We cut wood, lugged frozen water. A fire burned day and night.

I lived ten years in that cabin.

One day, in town, I met a man who offered to sell me a barrel for 50. I bought it. In the bottom, buried under straw, I found a book: Blackstone's Commentaries. 1753.

It was warm at the blacksmith's and I began to study the commentaries there.

It is very late, perhaps two or three in the morning. I forgot to wind my watch. I hear men on the street, men and horses; this city never rests; there is weather here but I do not think of weather. The climate of dread has a.s.sumed a reality beyond all else. When you control men and control armies you lack inner core.

White House

January 15, 1864

In spite of myself, I recall the meals I had as a boy, the meals when there was nothing to eat but potatoes.

There were better times, when we had perch or catfish, wild pig, grouse, or venison. But, eating potatoes, here in the White House, brings to mind that struggle. Memory.

How constant, how untrustworthy, how valuable. Here, my Shakespearean-aside, will, like a juggler, toss up thoughts, three or four at a time, potatoes.

In those Illinois days I was lucky when I earned 30 cents a day, working on a farm. Walk to the farm, walk home. At dark I climbed my peg ladder to the cabin loft and slept on corn husks, my grizzly bear rug not always warm enough. Lying among the husks and the squeaky mice I puzzled, knowing that soon I must leave. I determined I must get away. Living there I lived like an Indian, an Illinois Indian, barefooted all summer, moccasined during the winter. Like an Indian, I knew the meaning of silence, the dread of silence and its comfort. My father taught me to work but he never taught me to love drudgery.

Some of those pioneers used to say:

"Don't see all you see; don't hear all you hear."

That is sound advice. It applies here in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Many aspects of my life have a.s.sumed ridiculous proportions among these people. The fact that I was a wrestler affronts some; that I could plow with oxen annoys others. My humor shocks many. My lizard joke, that I thought very amusing, is now in bad taste. If I said: "Spit against the wind and you spit in your own face"

...well, certain politicians might understand and appreciate that.

I see people and more people. My office is often crowded. I am criticized for the amount of time I devote to the public. My secretaries try to restrain me.

I'll do the very best I can, the very best I know how.

And I mean to keep doing so to the end. If the end brings me out all right what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

People have asked me how it feels to be president, and I sometimes say, if there is an appropriate moment:

You have heard about the man tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked him how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.

W. H.

January 20

The other night I had a dream and in that dream I observed myself in a huge mirror; my face had two distinct images, one more or less superimposed on the other, the underneath face much paler than the upper face. The dream has perplexed me; something about it, its shadowiness maybe, seems part of my wilderness life, the shadowiness of those star-roofed nights. Mary was disturbed by my dream. She interpreted it, saying that it meant that I would be re-elected for a second term. The pale image meant I would not finish that term. As she talked about the dream I remembered how emphatically I felt that I would never return to Springfield, an emotion that nearly overwhelmed me as I waved from the train.

W. H.

1864

It was only a few years ago that John Quincy Adams was swimming in the Potomac with his son. Adams used to rise at five, to read the Bible, Commentary, and then read the newspapers. He was about fifty-seven when he was President. I recall his vivid description of abolitionist Lovejoy's printing press tragedy, in Alton, in '37, how the mob destroyed the man's press and murdered him, such a fate for a truly conscientious man! A martyr to the cause of freedom! Adams recounts preacher Joseph Cartwright's plea for money, for $450 to buy the freedom of his own three grandchildren. What a meaningful exemplification of slavery!

JQA-fine President!

White House

January 24, '64

Job seekers have besieged me. It must be the new year that sends so many. They come from every part of our nation, even the deep South. Some of the job seekers feel they have every right to storm my office; some are pitifully humble. Some bring recommendations; some have prepared a little speech; some have no credentials.

Yesterday an elderly woman burst into tears as she pled for a job. I helped her to sit down. I offered her a drink of water. I did my best to console her. In her case there seemed to be no job available; I asked her to return in a few days; I had to ask my secretary to show her out. I am resolved to permit my countrymen access to my office. I can understand my country through these seekers. If some are loath to leave, I can sit up later over my important doc.u.ments. Of course there are not enough oats for all these hosses.