Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
When news came back of the fight in Baltimore, and the murder of some
of his brave men, Andrew sent a telegram which showed that if he did
not care to wear the uniform of a Massachusetts Governor, he knew how
to assert the honor of Massachusetts, and to make other States feel
that she had a Chief Magistrate in whose sight the blood of every
Massachusetts man was sacred.
He telegraphed to the Mayor of Baltimore:
"I pray you let the bodies of our Massachusetts soldiers, dead in
Baltimore, be laid out, preserved in ice, and tenderly sent forward by
express to me. All expenses will be paid by the commonwealth."
The tender and fatherly feeling expressed in this telegram is the key
note to all Governor Andrew's conduct of the war. Though he would not
waste one cent on the trappings of rank, or his own personal dignity or
convenience, he gave unlimited orders for marks of tender and delicate
devotion to even the remains of the brave who had fallen for their
country.
In the same manner he gave himself no rest, in his labors for the
families of the brave men who were in the field. This interest was the
deeper, the humbler the walk in life of its objects.
The British minister, Sir Frederick Bruce, once called upon him at
the State House, and found the room nearly filled with colored women
who had come to hear news of fathers, brothers and sons enlisted in
the black regiments of Massachusetts. He waited patiently while the
Governor inquired into the sorrows and grievances, and listened to
the perplexities of these poor anxious souls, and tried in his hopeful
cheery way to smooth away difficulties and inspire hope. It was not
till the humblest and poorest had had their say, that the turn of the
British Minister came, who, as he shook the Governor's hand, said that
the scene before him had given him a new idea of the paternal character
of a Republican Government.
Of a like nature is another anecdote, one of many which since the
Governor's death, have risen like flowers upon his grave.
A poor woman, the wife of a soldier, came to his room to have some
business done in relation to the pension of a poorer sister. The
Governor told her that her application must be made at another bureau
in another part of the State house. Observing something of delicacy and
timidity in her air, he asked her where she lived and finding it out of
Boston, enquired if she had any friends or relations in the city with
whom she could rest during the hours before the opening of the office.
Finding that she was utterly a stranger in Boston, and evidently in
delicate health, the Governor provided her a sofa in a private nook and
told her to rest herself, and offered her from his own frugal stores a
glass of wine and a cracker for refreshment. The fatherly kindness and
consideration of his manner was more even, than the favors he gave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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