The Importance of Numbers

[David Lockmiller]

On my return to Mr. Lincoln, the messenger said I had better go directly into the President's room. I found my way to the back part of the room, and seated myself on a sofa in such a position that the desk was between Mr. Lincoln and me. I do not think that he knew I was there. The gentleman with him had given him a paper. [What followed was Lincoln's famous "old bulls good for nothing under heaven" story as justification for him to stop making brigadier generals.] [Y]ou should have seen Mr. Lincoln laugh -- he laughed all over, and fully enjoyed the point if no one else did. The story, if not elegant, was certainly apropos.

The gentleman soon departed, fully satisfied, I doubt not, for it was a saying at Washington when one met a petitioner: "Has Mr. Lincoln told you a story? If he has, it is all day with you. He never says 'yes' after a story."

I stepped forward as soon as the door closed. The President motioned to a chair near him. "Well, what did the Secretary of War say?"

I gave a full account of the interview, and then said: "I have nowhere else to go but to you." [Please note the prescient intelligence of Mrs. Harvey in asking of the President at their previous meeting: "May I return to you, Mr. Lincoln?"]

He replied earnestly: "Mr. Stanton knows very well that there is an acting surgeon-general here, and that Hammond will not be back these two months. I will see the Secretary of War myself, and you come in the morning."