by Victor M. Parachin

A Union soldier was killed in battle on April 1, 1865, fewer than ten days before the American Civil War ended. Searching his body for identification, his companions were surprised to find this note in the handwriting of President Abraham Lincoln:

Upon condition that Roswell McIntyre of Company E. 6th Regiment of New York Cavalry returns to his regiment and faithfully serves out his term, making up for lost time, or until otherwise lawfully discharged, he is fully pardoned for any supposed desertion heretofore committed; and this paper is his pass to go to his regiment.

It was signed by President Abraham Lincoln from the Executive Mansion in Washington, D.C. and dated October 4, 1864.

Behind that presidential pardon is this story. During the Civil War, young McIntyre was drafted into the New York Cavalry. Because there was an enormous need for men to get into battle quickly, very little training was provided this new soldier. During a fierce battle, McIntyre became frightened, panicked, and ran away. Charged with desertion, he was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot by firing squad. McIntyre’s mother appealed directly to President Lincoln. She pleaded that he was young, inexperienced, and was worthy of a second chance.

Lincoln’s generals urged the President to enforce discipline, arguing that exceptions would only undermine the discipline of an already beleaguered army. Lincoln reflected on the plea of the mother as well as the arguments of the generals and simply said, "I have observed that it never does a boy much good to shoot him." He then wrote out the pardon instructing that McIntyre be readmitted into the New York Cavalry.

Frustrated generals
     On another occasion, when he was pressured by army generals to maintain military discipline, including the death penalty, Lincoln replied, "If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned."

In a conversation with an army chaplain as the sound of rifles rang out across the Potomac River, Lincoln said, "This is the day when they shoot deserters. I am wondering whether I have used the pardoning power as much as I ought."

Though Lincoln sometimes frustrated his generals who wanted rules obeyed and regulations enforced, this President remained sympathetic to the plight of the common soldier. His letters consistently exhibit a compassionate president who was able to maintain a human touch while guiding the nation through a horrendous civil war.

Mercy for a sleeping sentinel
     Private William Scott of Groton, Vermont had been court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad on September 9, 1861. His offense: falling asleep at his post while on watch over the Potomac. He had been assigned to guard the Chain Bridge leading to the nation’s capitol.

Scott was found asleep on August 31,1861, sometime before 4 a.m. According to Articles of War at the time, any sentry found asleep on duty was to be shot. Worsening his case was the reality that the Confederate army was assembled at the river and ready to attack Washington. A sleeping sentinel could have helped cause the loss of the capitol.

However, Scott had volunteered to take the place of a sick comrade and was serving his second consecutive night of sentry duty. As word of his plight spread, 191 officers and enlisted men signed a petition appealing to Brigadier General William F. Smith and his superior, Lt. General George B. McClellan, who was commanding the Army of the Potomac.

Scott’s death sentence was to have been carried out September 9. 1861, but the petition found its way into the hands of an army chaplain, Rev. Moses P. Parmalee, who presented it to President Lincoln the day before the execution. Early the next morning, Lincoln visited General McClellan who is reported to have said, "Mr. Lincoln came this morning to ask me to pardon a man that I had ordered to be shot."

Scott was pardoned and continued to serve the union army. Sadly, seven months later, he was mortally wounded while struggling up a riverbank with a wounded companion. Knowing he was dying of his bullet wounds, he called his closest companions to his hospital cot where he relayed messages to his family and friends at home. He also requested that his friends contact President Lincoln, informing the president about the circumstances of his death. Scott asked that his gratitude be expressed for the pardon he received, which made it possible for him to die in battle as a solider and not in disgrace at the hands of a firing squad.

Letter to a mother
     Lincoln’s note to Mrs. Lydia Bixby is one of the most celebrated of his letters. Massachusetts Governor John Andrew informed President Lincoln that a resident of his state, Mrs. Bixby, had lost five sons in the war. Lincoln, moved with compassion, immediately wrote the grieving mother. Copies of Lincoln’s letter made their way to newspaper editors who reprinted it throughout the country.

Later it was learned that only two of the boys had actually died in action—one at Fredericksburg and another at Petersberg—but President Lincoln knew only what he had been told by the governor. This is Lincoln’s letter, dated November 21, 1864:

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln.

Appeal to the secretary of war
     Private Isaac P. Baird was sentenced to an army jail for a minor offense and was forced to forfeit his pay. Baird’s mother, a widow who was dependent on the money, wrote President Lincoln asking for his help. Lincoln responded immediately by writing to Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton:

My Dear Sir: A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the army, that for some offense has been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most with very little pay. I do not like this punishment of withholding pay—it falls so very hard upon poor families. After he had been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful appeal of the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to enlist for a new term, on the same conditions as others. She now comes, and says she cannot get it acted upon. Please do it.

No pardon for a slave trader 
     When it came to slave traders, however, Lincoln was firm in denying clemency. Congressman John B. Alley of Massachusetts personally visited Lincoln pleading that a convicted slave trader be released from jail because he had completed his prison term but was unable to pay the fine that had also been imposed. After reading both Alley’s written petition as well as a note from the prisoner himself, Lincoln responded:

My friend, that is a very touching appeal to our feelings. You know my weakness is to be, if possible, easily moved by appeals for mercy, and, if this man were guilty of the foulest murder that the arm of man could perpetrate, I might forgive him on such an appeal; but the man who could go to Africa, and rob her of her children, and sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer, that he can never receive pardon at my hands. No! He may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine.

Even this refusal of a pardon revealed the deep, abiding compassion Lincoln had for those who were slaves.

The first commissioned officer killed
     Elmer Ellsworth was a young man who apprenticed in Lincoln’s law office in Springfield, Illinois. In spite of the age difference, the two became close friends enjoying each other’s company. When Lincoln was elected president, Ellsworth accompanied him on the presidential train to Washington.

Once in office, Lincoln made Ellsworth one of his presidential secretaries. Ellsworth was also a volunteer serving the Union cause in the Civil War. On May 24, he led a regiment of men recruited from the New York Fire Department across the Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia. Their mission was to remove a huge Confederate flag from atop the Marshall House, a small hotel on King Street. For weeks the flag had been visible in Was
hington, including Lincoln’s second-floor White House office.

Ellsworth was shot and killed by the hotel owner. His body was taken back to the White House where it lay in state in the East Room. Ellsworth was the first commissioned officer to be killed in the civil war. Lincoln grieved Ellsworth like a son. In a letter to his parents, Ephraim and Phoebe Ellsworth, Lincoln’s words reveal the strong emotional attachment he had for their son.

My Dear Sir and Madame: In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one’s country, and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed as in his fall. In size, in years, and in youthful appearance a boy only; his power to command men was surpassingly great. This power, combined with a fine intellect, an indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military, constituted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent in that department I ever knew….
What was conclusive of his good heart, he never forgot his parents. The honors he labored for so laudably, and for which in the sad end he so gallantly gave his life, he meant for them no less than for himself. In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend and your brave and fallen child. May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power.

It was both Lincoln’s leadership and his compassion that endeared him to a public often frustrated and mistrustful of politicians. His acts of compassion were not forgotten. Sergeant Smith Stimmel, one of the soldiers who served on the President’s security detail, recalled what transpired the day after Lincoln was assassinated.

One of my comrades—my bunk mate—was riding down the street and he met another cavalryman from another troop, a man he did not know, and the fellow was weeping. They stopped and had a passing word about the sad event of the night before, and speaking of the President’s death, the stranger said to my comrade, “It probably means more to me than it does to you; he signed an order that saved me from being shot.”

Commenting on that incident, Stimmel noted, “He saved others; he could not save himself.”

Editor’s note: February 12, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth.