Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [331]
As the pressure on all the key administration officials mounted, Lincoln, with the hardest task of all, maintained the most generous and even-tempered disposition. Even he, however, was sorely tried on occasion. After recommending that the War Department utilize the services of a meteorologist, Francis Capen, Lincoln was exasperated when none of Capen’s presumably scientific predictions proved correct. “It seems to me Mr. Capen knows nothing about the weather, in advance,” Lincoln wrote three days after Capen had assured him it would not rain for five or six days. “It is raining now & has been for ten hours. I can not spare any more time to Mr. Capen.” He was more irritated when warring factions in Missouri refused to reconcile. He informed the recalcitrant groups that their continuing feud was “very painful” for him. “I have been tormented with it beyond endurance for months, by both sides. Neither side pays the least respect to my appeals to your reason. I am now compelled to take hold of the case.”
But Lincoln refused to let resentments rankle. Discovering that a hastily written note to General Franz Sigel had upset the general, he swiftly followed up with another. “I was a little cross,” he told Sigel, “I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.” Such gestures on Lincoln’s part repaired injured feelings that might have escalated into lasting animosity.
The story is told of an army colonel who rode out to the Soldiers’ Home, hopeful of securing Lincoln’s aid in recovering the body of his wife, who had died in a steamboat accident. His brief period of relaxation interrupted, Lincoln listened to the colonel’s tale but offered no help. “Am I to have no rest? Is there no hour or spot when or where I may escape this constant call? Why do you follow me out here with such business as this?” The disheartened colonel returned to his hotel in Washington. The following morning, Lincoln appeared at his door. “I was a brute last night,” Lincoln said, offering to help the colonel in any way possible.
Republican stalwart Carl Schurz relates an equally remarkable encounter in the wake of an unpleasant written exchange that initially seemed to threaten his friendship with Lincoln. Discouraged by the lack of progress in the war, Schurz had blamed Lincoln’s misguided appointment of Democrats “whose hearts” were not fully “in the struggle” to top positions in the field. Lincoln had responded testily, telling Schurz that he obviously wanted men with “heart in it.” The question was “who is to be the judge of hearts, or of ‘heart in it?’ If I must discard my own judgment, and take yours, I must also take that of others; and by the time I should reject all I should be advised to reject, I should have none left, Republicans or others—not even yourself.” Schurz, at the army camp in Centreville, Virginia, where he led the Third Division of the 11th Corps, detected in Lincoln’s long reply “an undertone of impatience, of irritation, unusual with him.” Though he had been encouraged by the president to correspond freely, he feared that his letter had transgressed.
Several days later, a messenger arrived at Schurz’s encampment with an invitation from Lincoln “to come to see him as soon as my duties would permit.” Obtaining permission to leave that same day, Schurz reached the White House at seven the next morning. He found Lincoln upstairs in his comfortable armchair, clad in his slippers. “He greeted me cordially as of old and bade me pull up a chair and sit by his side. Then he brought his large hand with a slap down on my knee and said with a smile: ‘Now