cartoonist recalls meeting famous US generals

Sherman montage / © Roy R. Behrens

Walt McDougall, This Is the Life! New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926—

I was born in 1858, in Newark, NJ, and about ten years later the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, took me in hand and, recognizing qualities not yet discernible by parents, teachers or companions, with one prophetic sentence planted in me a firm, enduring conviction that I was destined for great things, along with a deep-seated aversion for hard work. The exact date of this memorable event may be found by ascertaining just when President Grant drove the famous Dexter around the track at Waverley Fair Grounds, a couple of miles south of Newark.

I was there with about half the boy population, but every incident of the day is forgotten except this historic happening. Loitering back of the judge's stand, a circular structure, the vast crowd blocked my view except aloft to this bird-house wherein I knew the President and a number of notables were watching the races. An enclosed stairway led to the upper platform, supported by a three-inch post, and urged by Destiny and exuberant vitality, I amused myself by climbing up this support. Reaching the platform, I was, of course, checked by the paneled balustrade and slid down, but on a third or fourth attempt I looked up to find a bearded face looking down upon me with kindly amused eyes. A hand was extended to me and raising mine, I was drawn up and lifted over the balustrade.

"You'll get up in the world, my boy!" said the bearded man as he set me down. Every eye in the judge's stand was fixed upon me and I expected an instant expulsion, but a pleasant grin upon the handsome face of Patrick Quinn, the Secretary of the Waverley Association and a friend of my family, gave me some confidence. I stared eagerly about me but saw no face resembling the well-known one of General Grant. After a moment, Congressman Courtland Parker, also a family friend, asked me with a teasing smile: "Who are you looking for, son?"

"Why, I'm looking for General Grant!" I stammered. "I thought he was up here."

What he replied I cannot recall, but there was a general laugh following it, and in my embarrassment I turned about toward my introducer as a refuge. Instantly I recognized the familiar face, but wreathed in a broad smile. The shock was such that I bolted down the stairway, unlatched the door and fled. Before I reached home I was highly exultant, but when I told my story my mother was deeply mortified by such unseemly conduct and insisted that I write the President an apology. Poor mother, with six boys to guide, had none as erratic as I, and she feared that my little adventure would get into the paper, but, unfortunately, it didn't.

One day in '86 I went with James Kelly, the sculptor, to Grant's house in 65th Street to watch him make some sketches for a battle monument he was designing. I asked the General if he remembered driving Dexter at Waverley. He said that he had driven the horse several times but did not recall the name of the place in New Jersey, and he was highly amused when I related how he had uplifted me and given me a slogan to live up to.

•••

Somewhere about the same time as the Waverley incident a great Industrial Exposition, the first of its kind, I think, in our quiet city, was opened at the Washington Street Rink and General William Tecumseh Sherman was the main attraction. An immense throng attended that formed an endless line to shake hands with the hero of the March to the Sea. I remember well the gaunt yet handsome figure he made as he underwent this ordeal. I slipped into the slow-moving line and finally felt the tingling thrill of contact with that smooth but formidable sword-hand. The sensation was delicious, but, not content, I wormed myself into line again and took another electric shock. When I reached him for a third thrill, the General glared down upon me and said gruffly:

"You get out of here! I've shaken hands with you twice already!"

One evening years afterward when I had come to know him, as I shall relate in another place, I told of this incident at a big theatrical banquet. The General wrinkled his brow meditatively for a moment, then smiled and said:

"Why, I remember that little episode very well, but you've got it wrong. Didn't I kick you? Seems to me I did!"

"You did not, General, but I deserved it," I replied. "I suppose it irks you to discover that you neglected an opportunity?"

"Well! Well, I still think I did!" he insisted, grinning. "Anyway, I guess I knocked a lot of conceit out of you!"

a girl from new york begged him to grow a beard

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Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1939—

Just why Lincoln took to whiskers at this time nobody seemed to know. A girl in New York had begged him to raise a beard. But something more than her random wish guided him. Herndon, Whitney, Lamon, Nicolay, Hay, heard no explanation from him as to why after fifty-two years with a smooth face he should now change.

Would whiskers imply responsibility, gravity, a more sober and serene outlook on the phantasmagoria of life? Perhaps he would seem more like a serious farmer with crops to look after, or perhaps a church sexton in charge of grave affairs. Or he might have the look of a sea-captain handling a ship in a storm on a starless sea. Anyhow, with whiskers or without, he would be about the same-sized target.

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Lincoln Infographic | Jordon Deutmeyer

Lincoln Infographic © Jordon Deutmeyer 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Jordon Deutmeyer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

 •••

Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 342—

Just after we moved to Fargo [ND], the summer of 1932, Mother took Grandma Critchfield down to Knoxville, Iowa, to visit McLain in the veterans hospital. He'd been there ever since his brain was injured in that plane crash during World War I. Mom took the three boys along with her. We'd moved into a house on the north side of town and the Hopes were visiting… Mr. Hope had fallen asleep at the wheel and woke up when his car hit a passing train at a crossing. He walked for help with a shattered kneecap. Anyway, the whole family of Hopes came to our house in Fargo to recuperate. When Mom got back from Iowa, she hunted all over for the toilet brush and found it in the kitchen. Helen had been using it to scrub vegetables.

In that first house in Fargo, a family named Hilliard lived next door… Mr. Hilliard wore shorts and a goatee. The shorts came below his stomach and one day his little girl stuck a nasturtium in his navel and he left it there all day. Mr. Hilliard was very congenial. He'd call over, "Yoo hoo! Let's all come out! I've got a good dirty story!" Daddy was always joking too. One time, a man had been chasing girls in the park and Daddy said, "I just wish he'd jump out of the bushes at Betty. She'd scare 'im." Another time, when Aunt Helen was visiting from Iowa with her two-year-old and a newborn baby, Daddy said, "You people in Iowa breed just like rabbits." That didn't go down so well.

Lincoln Infographic | Stephanie Berry

Lincoln Infographic © Stephanie Berry 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Stephanie Berry, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Slim Collier (bartender), quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. NY: Random House, 1970, p. 119—

I was born in Waterloo [IA]. A great deal of Iowa, southern Iowa, particularly, didn't have electricity until the end of World War II. I was eleven years old before I lived in a house with running water.

•••

Kitty McCulloch, quoted by Studs Terkel, ibid., p. 55—

[One day during the Depression] This one man came in—it was right before Christmas. My husband had a very nice suit, tailored. It was a black suit with a fine white pin-stripe in it. He put it to one side. I thought he didn't like the suit. I said to this man, "Your clothes are all ragged. I think I have a nice suit for you." So I gave him the suit.

The following Sunday my husband was to go to a wake. He said, "Where's my good suit?" And I said, "Well, Daddy, you never wore it. I—well, it's gone." He said, "Where is it gone to?" I said, "I gave it to a man who had such shabby clothes. Anyway, you got three other suits and he didn't have any. So I gave it to him." He said, "You're the limit, Mother."

Lincoln Infographic | Gina Hamer

Lincoln Infographic © Gina Hamer 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Gina Hamer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That [his famous autobiography] (Penguin Books, 2000), recalling the eccentricity of Greek scholar Gilbert Murray—

Once, as I sat talking to him in his study about Aristotle's Poetics, while he walked up and down, I suddenly asked: "Exactly what is the principle of that walk of yours? Are you trying to avoid the flowers on the rug, or are you trying to keep to the squares?" My own compulsion-neuroses [OCD] made it easy for me to notice them in others. He wheeled around sharply: "You're the first person who has caught me out," he said. "No, it's not the flowers or the squares; it's a habit that I have got into of doing things in sevens. I take seven steps, you see, then I change direction and go another seven steps, then I turn around. I consulted Browne, the Professor of Psychology, about it the other day, but he assured me it isn't a dangerous habit. He said: "When you find yourself getting into multiples of seven, come to me again."
 

Lincoln Infographic | Bailey Higgins

Lincoln Infographic © Bailey Higgins 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Bailey Higgins, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Eugene V. Debs, American union leader, quoted in E.J. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years. NY: Macmillan, 1975—

I am not a leader. I don't want you to follow me or anything else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.
 

Cannons Roar | Digital montage

Roy R. Behrens © Cannons Roar (2011). Purchase online.