John Charles Black, again fell, terribly mangled, at Prairie Grove. He was hopelessly shattered; yet he remained in the service and at the front until the last gun was fired, and is now among the badly wounded survivors of the war. I shall never forget the scene, when I took to Mr. Lincoln a letter written by Dr. Fithian to me, describing the condition of the "Black boys," and expressing his fears that they could not live. Mr. Lincoln read it, and broke into tears: "Here, now," he cried, 66 are these dear, brave boys killed in this cursed war! My God, my God! It is too bad! They worked hard to earn money enough to educate themselves, and this is the end! I loved them as if they were my own." I took his directions about my reply to Dr. Fithian, and left him in one of the saddest moods in which I ever saw him, burdened with an unreasonable sense of personal responsibility for the lives of these gallant men.

Lieut.-Colonel William McCullough, of whom a very eminent gentleman said on a most solemn occasion, "He was the most thoroughly courageous man I have ever known," fell leading a hopeless charge in Mississippi. He had entered the service at the age of fifty, with one arm and one eye. He had been clerk of McLean County Circuit Court, Ill., for twenty years, and Mr. Lincoln knew him thoroughly. His death affected the President profoundly, and he wrote to the Colonel's daughter, now Mrs. Frank D. Orme, the following peculiar letter of condolence :

:

DEAR FANNY,- It is with deep regret that I learn of the death of your kind and brave father, and especially that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bitterer agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned ever to expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say, and you need only to believe it to feel better at once. The memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother. Your sincere friend,

MISS FANNY MCCULLOUGH,

Bloomington, Ill.

A. LINCOLN.

Gen. W. H. L. Wallace, who fell at Shiloh, was a friend whom Lincoln held in the tenderest regard. He knew bis character as a man and his inestimable value as a soldier quite as well as they are now known to the country. Those who have read General Grant's " Memoirs" will understand from that great general's estimate of him what was the loss of the federal service in the untimely death of Wallace. Mr. Lincoln felt it bitterly and deeply. But his was a public and a private grief united,

and his lamentations were touching to those who heard

them, as I did. The following account of General Wallace's death is taken from an eloquent memorial address, by the Hon. Leonard Swett in the United States Circuit Court, upon our common friend the late Col. T. Lyle Dickey, who was the father-in-law of Wallace:

"Mrs. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace, who was Judge Dickey's eldest daughter, as the battle of Shiloh approached, became impressed with the sense of impending danger to her husband, then with Grant's army. This impression haunted her until she could stand it no longer; and in one of the most severe storms of the season, at twelve o'clock at night, she started alone for the army where her husband was. At Cairo she was told that no women could be permitted to go up the Tennessee River. But affection has a persistency which will not be denied. Mrs. Wallace finding a party bearing a flag to the Eleventh Infantry from the ladies of Ottawa, to be used instead of their old one, which had been riddled and was battle-worn, got herself substituted to carry that flag: and thus with one expedient and another she finally reached Shiloh, six hundred miles from home and three hundred through a hostile country, and through the more hostile guards of our own forces.

"She arrived on Sunday, the 6th of April, 1862, when the great storm-centre of that battle was at its height, and in time to receive her husband as he was borne from the field terribly mangled by a shot in the head,

which he had received while endeavoring to stay the retreat of our army as it was falling back to the banks of the river on that memorable Sunday, the first day of that bloody battle. She arrived in time to recognize him, and be recognized by him; and a few days afterward, saying, 'We shall meet again in heaven,' he died in the arms of that devoted wife, surrounded by Judge Dickey and his sons and the brothers of General Wallace."

These are but a few cases of death and mutilation in the military service cited to show how completely Mr. Lincoln shared the sufferings of our soldiers. It was with a weight of singular personal responsibility that some of these misfortunes and sorrows seemed to crowd upon his sympathetic heart.

Soon after his election in 1864, when any other man would have been carried away on the tide of triumph and would have had little thought for the sorrows of a stranger, he found time to write the following letter: —

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Nov. 21, 1864.

DEAR MADAM, I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the

solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

To MRS. BIXBY

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

BOSTON, MASS.

Once when Mr. Lincoln had released a prisoner at the request of his mother she, in expressing her gratitude, said, "Good-bye, Mr. Lincoln. I shall probably never see you again till we meet in heaven." She had the President's hand in hers, and he was deeply moved. He instantly took her hand in both of his and, following her to the door, said, "I am afraid with all my troubles I shall never get to the resting place you speak of, but if I do I am sure I shall find you. Your wish that you will meet me there has fully paid for all I have done for you."

Perhaps none of Mr. Lincoln's ambitions were more fully realized than the wish expressed to Joshua F. Speed: Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.