“I Don’t Want To — But That’s It If I Must Die!”
In the ferment, as the term of Lincoln’s first office-holding was terminating, the old war fever returned by which “Little Mac (McClellan), Idol of the Army” was hailed as “the hope of the country.” Only this time the presage was that General Grant had only to secure that phantasm, the capture of Richmond, to be nominated and elected. This reached the President’s ears through the “hanged good-natured friend,” as Sheridan—the wit, not the general—calls the stinging tongue.
“Well,” drawled Mr. Lincoln, “I feel very much like the man who said he did not particularly want to die, but, if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he wanted to die of!”