“I Don’t Believe There Is Any Danger!”
One night the President had been very late with the secretary of war at the latter’s department. But, just the same, he insisted on his getting home by the short cut—a foot-path, lined and embowered by trees, then leading from the war office to the White House. But Stanton stopped him.
“You ought not to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime”—it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around—“it is worse at night!”
“I do not believe there is any danger there, night or day!” responded the President, with Malcolm’s confidence that he stood “in the great hand of God.”
“Well, Mr. President,” continued Stanton, a stubborn man himself, “you shall not be killed returning from my department by that dark way while I am in it!”
And he forced him to enter his carriage to return by the well-lighted avenue.
Lincoln had previously consented to carry a cane. (By Schuyler Colfax.)