Presidents and First Ladies Trivia

[Anita]

Roger, Here are some first hand accounts of your Lincoln pig tale from
http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=27

Kentuckian Mary Owens, to whom Mr. Lincoln once proposed marriage, wrote: "In many things he was sensitive almost to a fault. He told me of an incident; that he was crossing a prairie one day, and saw before him a hog mired down, to use his own language; he was rather fixed up, and resolved that he would pass on without looking towards the shoat, after he had gone by, he said, the feeling was eresistable [sic] and he had to look back, and the poor thing seemed to say so wistfully - There now! My last hope is gone; that he deliberately got down and relieved it from its difficulty". Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, editor, Herndon’s Informants, p. 262 (Letter from Mary S. Vineyard to William H. Herndon, July 22, 1866).

Lawyer Charles Zane said Mr. Lincoln had related the same incident, quoting Mr. Lincoln that "thinking of the loss to the owner and the cruelty to the animal, I did not feel satisfied and thought it would be wrong to leave the hog there to perish, and turned back and got out and pulled the animal from the mire to solid ground, then found some water nearby and washed my hands and drove one. My action seemed disinterested, but on further reflection I found that the act was done to regain my peace of mind, my own happiness, and was not entirely disinterested on my part." Rufus Rockwell Wilson, editor, Lincoln Among His Friends: A Sheaf of Intimate Memories, p. 135 (Charles S. Zane, Sunset Magazine, October 1912