President Abraham Lincoln was visiting General U.S. Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia in March 1865 - a few weeks before the end of the Civil War.
Lincoln, Grant, General Horace Porter, and some of the other officers on Grant's staff were sitting around the camp-fire talking. Lincoln's manner was grave and his language much more serious than usual, as he spoke of the appalling difficulties encountered by the administration, the losses in the field, and the complications his administration faced with some foreign countries - especially England.
After a while he spoke in a more cheerful vein, and said:
“England will live to regret her inimical attitude toward us. After the collapse of the rebellion, John Bull [**] will find that he has injured himself much more seriously than us."
Then he launched into a story.
"His action reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County in my State. He had just gone to bed when a stranger came along and said he must be shaved; that he had a four days beard on his face, and was going to take a girl to a ball, and that beard must come off.
Well, the barber got up reluctantly and dressed, and seated the man in a chair with a back so low that every time he bore down on him he came near dislocating his victim's neck. He began by lathering his face - including his nose, eyes, and ears - stropped his razor on his boot, and then made a drive at the man's face as if he had practised mowing in a stubble-field.
He cut a bold swath across the right cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, and two warts. The man in the chair ventured to remark: ‘You appear to make everything level as you go.’ ‘Yes,’ said the barber; ‘and if this handle don't break, I guess I'll get away with most of what's there.’
The man's cheeks were so hollow that the barber couldn't get down into the valleys with the razor, and the ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clear through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, shook the blood off it, glared at him, and cried: ‘There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you've made me cut my finger! ’ "
Story finished, Lincoln drove home his point.
"And so England will discover in the end that because she tried to help the South,she has only cut her own finger.”
After the laugh which followed this story had exhausted itself, General Grant asked: “Mr. President, did you at any time doubt the final success of the cause?”
“Never for a moment,” was the prompt and emphatic reply, as Mr. Lincoln leaned forward in his camp-chair and enforced his words by a vigorous gesture of his right hand.
This was another story from Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.
Mac
[**] "John Bull" was the 1800s cartoon archetype of England. He originated as a satirical character created by John Arbuthnot.
Works Cited
[1] David Dixon Porter, David Dixon. (1885). Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War. New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company.
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