A Stage in the Ceaseless March Onward to Victory
Veterans will remember the peculiar effect, on a forced march, of the younger or less-enduring comrade falling asleep as to all but his eyes and the muscles employed, but stepping out and apparently sustained only by the touching of elbows in the lurching from the ruts in the obliterated road. On the night of the stunning news of the last conflict at Chancellorsville, Lincoln could derive no comfort from later intelligence. Late at night General Halleck, commanding the capital, and Secretary Stanton left him unconsoled. Then his secretary, as long as he stayed, heard the man on whom rested the national hopes—her very future—pace his room without pause save to turn. It was like the fisher on the banks who must keep awake for a chance at a grab at the chains of the ship that may burst through the fog and crush his smack like a coconut-shell. At midnight the chief may have stopped to write, for there was a pause—but a breathing-spell. Then the pacing again till the attaché left at 3 A.M. When he came in the morning, not unanxious himself, he found his chief eating breakfast alone in the unquitted room. On the table lay a sheet of written paper: instructions for General Hooker to renew fighting although it only brought the slap on the other cheek—at Winchester—and still Lee pressed on into Pennsylvania till Harrisburg was menaced! But Meade supplanted “Fighting Joe,” and Gettysburg wiped out the shame of the later repulses.
(The private secretary was W. O. Stoddard.)