Stories and Anecdotes About Abraham Lincoln

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SQUASHED A BRUTAL LIE.

In September, 1864, a New York paper printed the following brutal story:

"A few days after the battle of Antietam, the President was driving over the field in an ambulance, accompanied by Marshal Lamon, General McClellan and another officer. Heavy details of men were engaged in the task of burying the dead. The ambulance had just reached the neighborhood of the old stone bridge, where the dead were piled highest, when Mr. Lincoln, suddenly slapping Marshal Lamon on the knee, exclaimed: 'Come, Lamon, give us that song about "Picayune Butler"; McClellan has never heard it.'

"'Not now, if you please,' said General McClellan, with a shudder; 'I would prefer to hear it some other place and time.'"

President Lincoln refused to pay any attention to the story, would not read the comments made upon it by the newspapers, and would permit neither denial nor explanation to be made. The National election was coming on, and the President's friends appealed to him to settle the matter for once and all. Marshal Lamon was particularly insistent, but the President merely said:

"Let the thing alone. If I have not established character enough to give the lie to this charge, I can only say that I am mistaken in my own estimate of myself. In politics, every man must skin his own skunk. These fellows are welcome to the hide of this one. Its body has already given forth its unsavory odor."

But Lamon would not "let the thing alone." He submitted to Lincoln a draft of what he conceived to be a suitable explanation, after reading which the President said:

"Lamon, your 'explanation' is entirely too belligerent in tone for so grave a matter. There is a heap of 'cussedness' mixed up with your usual amiability, and you are at times too fond of a fight. If I were you, I would simply state the facts as they were. I would give the statement as you have here, without the pepper and salt. Let me try my hand at it."

The President then took up a pen and wrote the following, which was copied and sent out as Marshal Lamon's refutation of the shameless slander:

"The President has known me intimately for nearly twenty years, and has often heard me sing little ditties. The battle of Antietam was fought on the 17th day of September, 1862. On the first day of October, just two weeks after the battle, the President, with some others, including myself, started from Washington to visit the Army, reaching Harper's Ferry at noon of that day.

"In a short while General McClellan came from his headquarters near the battleground, joined the President, and with him reviewed the troops at Bolivar Heights that afternoon, and at night returned to his headquarters, leaving the President at Harper's Ferry.

"On the morning of the second, the President, with General Sumner, reviewed the troops respectively at Loudon Heights and Maryland Heights, and at about noon started to General McClellan's headquarters, reaching there only in time to see very little before night.

"On the morning of the third all started on a review of the Third Corps and the cavalry, in the vicinity of the Antietam battle-ground. After getting through with General Burnside's corps, at the suggestion of General McClellan, he and the President left their horses to be led, and went into an ambulance to go to General Fitz John Porter's corps, which was two or three miles distant.

"I am not sure whether the President and General McClellan were in the same ambulance, or in different ones; but myself and some others were in the same with the President. On the way, and on no part of the battleground, and on what suggestions I do not remember, the President asked me to sing the little sad song that follows ("Twenty Years Ago, Tom"), which he had often heard me sing, and had always seemed to like very much.

"After it was over, some one of the party (I do not think it was the President) asked me to sing something else; and I sang two or three little comic things, of which 'Picayune Butler' was one. Porter's corps was reached and reviewed; then the battle-ground was passed over, and the most noted parts examined; then, in succession, the cavalry and Franklin's corps were reviewed, and the President and party returned to General McClellan's headquarters at the end of a very hard, hot and dusty day's work.

"Next day (the 4th), the President and General McClellan visited such of the wounded as still remained in the vicinity, including the now lamented General Richardson; then proceeded to and examined the South-Mountain battle-ground, at which point they parted, General McClellan returning to his camp, and the President returning to Washington, seeing, on the way, General Hartsoff, who lay wounded at Frederick Town.

"This is the whole story of the singing and its surroundings. Neither General McClellan nor any one else made any objections to the singing; the place was not on the battle-field; the time was sixteen days after the battle; no dead body was seen during the whole time the President was absent from Washington, nor even a grave that had not been rained on since the time it was made."

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