A horse, an apple and a steamboat - An Abe Lincoln Story

 

Raft of logs (foreground) and a river steamboat (distance) 

By July of 1864, the Union Army was winning the war on just about all fronts. 

While General Sherman was marching through Georgia and General Grant was dug in before Richmond, General Phil Sheridan made a strategic march through the Shenandoah Valley in Virigina - known as the "breadbasket of the South" - destroying Southern farmers' crops as he went.

One Southern farmer decided to take his complaint to Washington - directly to President Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln granted the man an audience and listened to his complaint about Sheridan's men taking all of his hay and his only horse. The farmer wanted Lincoln to personally tell the officer to return his horse.

Lincoln sat back in his chair and said the farmer's complaint reminded him of a story about an old acquaintance of his, Jack Chase, a lumberman on the Illinois River.

Jack was a steady, sober man, and the best raftsman on the river. It was quite a trick to take a raft of logs over the rapids, but he was skillful and always kept it straight in the channel. Finally a steamboat was put on the river, and Jack was made captain of her. Jack would always take the wheel of the steamer going through the rapids.

One day when the boat was plunging and wallowing in the churning current, Jack's utmost vigilance was being challenged to keep the steamboat in the narrow channel.

Suddenly, a boy pulled on Jack's coat-tail and yelled: "Say, Mister Captain! I wish you would just stop your boat a minute - I've lost my apple overboard!" [1]

History doesn't say if the farmer got his horse back, but it did give us another anecdote from Abe Lincoln, storyteller!

Mac

Works Cited

[1] Leidner, Gordon (2015) Lincoln's Gift: How humor shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy. Naperville, IL: Cumberland House. p. 201.