On this 150th anniversary month of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Al Hunter is off chasing Lincoln for future stories. Here is an encore of an article from February, 2011
Abraham Lincoln was a well documented animal lover, and although he apparently played a few pranks on animals as a boy, he quickly outgrew any desire to hurt family pets or to hunt wild animals. Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, testified that “He loved animals” and “he loved children…very well.” Lincoln’s kindness even extended to the insect world. After attending church with his parents, young Abe preached his own sermons to his step-family: “Abe preached against Cruelty to animals, Contending that an ant’s life was to it, as sweet as ours,” recalled his step-sister.
Indeed, Lincoln was known to go to great lengths to rescue animals from adversity — including once backtracking to rescue a pig stuck in the mud because he couldn’t bear the thought of its suffering. Friend Joshua F. Speed recalled a trip with Lincoln in 1839: “We were riding along a country road, two and two together, some distance apart, Lincoln and Jon. J. Hardin being behind. We were passing through a thicket of wild plum, and crab-apple trees, where we stopped to water our horses. After waiting some time Hardin came up and we asked him where Lincoln was. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘when I saw him last, he had caught two little birds in his hand, which the wind had blown from their nest, and he was hunting for the nest’. Hardin left him before he found it. He finally found the nest, and placed the birds, to use his own words, ‘in the home provided for them by their mother’. When he came up with the party they laughed at him. Said he, earnestly, ‘I could not have slept tonight if I had not given those two little birds to their mother’.”
Historian Charles B. Strozier noted that “Lincoln’s lifelong sympathy for animals…was hardly the norm for the frontier.” Historian Douglas L. Wilson recalled that Mr. Lincoln “was unusually tenderhearted. We see this in several reports of his childhood that depict him as concerned about cruelty to animals. When his playmates would turn helpless terrapins (turtles) on their backs and torture them, which was apparently a favorite pastime, the young future president would protest against it. He wrote an essay on the subject as a school exercise that was remembered years afterward. This instinctive sympathetic reaction seems to have been recognized by his stepbrother as a vulnerable spot in Lincoln’s makeup, for he is reported as having taunted Lincoln as he was preaching a mock sermon by bashing a terrapin against a tree.”
The Lincoln White House became a home for a lost dog named “Jet” as family friend Cynthia Owen Philip recalled years later: “In mid-October 1861, during the bleak months after the Union defeat at Bull Run, President and Mrs. Lincoln were driven across the Potomac River to Alexandria, Virginia, to present flags to newly formed volunteer regiments assembled there. On their return to the capital, a sleek black hunting dog trailed their carriage all the way to the White House, trotted after the President right through the front door, and to the delight of the Lincoln children, quickly made himself at home.”
Nurse Rebecca Pomroy reported that “his little dog helped relieve Lincoln of ‘some portion of the burden, for the little fellow was never absent from the Presidential lunch. He was always in Mr. Lincoln’s lap to claim his portion first, and was caressed and petted by him through the whole meal.” A friend of Lincoln’s wrote about the dog to his son; “a very cunning little fellow.” described as a “very beautiful little dog” who “barks & stands up straight on his hind feet & holds his fore feet up.” Turns out the dog had run off from his owner, army surgeon George Suckley, who read about the new White House pet in a newspaper and went to the White House to claim him. The Lincoln boys were devastated and Mr. Lincoln asked that Dr. Suckley furnish one of Jet’s pups in exchange for return of the animal. But by Mid-December, Jet had run away again so Dr. Suckley withheld the puppy. Can you imagine that?
Mr. Lincoln had a particular weakness for kittens. One friend from his New Salem days recalled that he “would take one & turn it on its back & talk to it for half an hour at a time.” Another New Salem resident recalled young Lincoln playing with the Carman family kittens, Jane and Susan: “he would Take them up in his lap & play with them and hold their heads together & say Jane had a better countenance than Susan had.” In an 1848 letter to her Congressman husband, Mrs. Lincoln reported that their son Robert had come “across in a yard, a kitten, your hobby” while Mary, Robert and Edward were staying with Mary’s stepmother in Kentucky. Mary wrote that Bobby said “he asked a man for it, he brought it triumphantly to the house, so soon as Eddy, spied it-his tenderness, broke forth, he made them bring it water, fed it with bread himself, with his own dear hands, he was a delighted little creature over it…” But Mary’s stepmother intervened: “in the midst of his happiness Ma came in, she you must know dislikes the whole cat race, I thought in a very unfeeling manner, she ordered the servant near, to throw it out, which, of course, was done, Ed screaming & protesting loudly against the proceeding, she never appeared to mind his screams, which were long & loud, I assure you“
Secretary of State William H. Seward presented the Lincoln household with two kittens early in his administration. Treasury Department official Maunsell B. Field wrote: “Mr. Lincoln possessed extraordinary kindness of heart when his feelings could be reached. He was fond of dumb animals, especially cats. I have seen him fondle one for an hour. Helplessness and suffering touched him when they appealed directly to his senses, or when you could penetrate through his intelligence to them.” During a conference with General Grant and Admiral David Porter, the President was interrupted by the purring of three motherless kittens. Picking them up and placing this on his lap, the President said: “Poor little creatures, don’t cry; you’ll be taken care of.” Grant aide Horace Porter recalled that it was “curious sight at an army headquarters, upon the eve of a great military crisis” to watch the commander-in-chief “tenderly caressing three stray kittens. It well illustrated the kindness of the man’s disposition, and showed the childlike simplicity which was mingled with the grandeur of his nature.”
Mrs. Lincoln did not share her husband’s indulgence of pets and people. When President Lincoln fed a cat named “Tabby” seated next to him at a White House dinner, Mrs. Lincoln asked: “Don’t you think it’s shameful for Mr. Lincoln to feed Tabby with a gold fork?” Mr. Lincoln provided the answer: “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.”
Son Tad’s love of animals was equal to his father’s. At Tad’s insistence, Lincoln issued a proclamation on October 3, 1863, setting aside the last Thursday of November, “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” A live turkey was sent to the White House for Thanksgiving dinner in 1863, and Tad named him Tom. Tad befriended the turkey and pleaded with his father to grant “Tom” a stay of execution. Abraham Lincoln took time out from a cabinet meeting to issue “an order of reprieve,” sparing the turkey’s life. This proclamation set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving and the official ceremony to pardon the condemned turkey is a White House tradition to this very day.
The Lincolns adopted two goats, Nanny and Nanko, who had the run of the house, much to the dismay of White House staff. Both Nanny and Nanko liked to chew things, especially plants and furniture. Nanny got in trouble for chewing up the flowers at the Old Soldier’s Home. Nanko got in trouble for chewing the bulbs planted by White House Gardener, John Watt. The goat “interests the boys and does them good; let the goat be,” President Lincoln said to anyone who objected to the animal’s presence. Mr. Lincoln took pride in the goats’ affection for him. Elizabeth Keckley, an ex-slave who worked for Mrs. Lincoln as a seamstress recalled, ”’Well, come here and look at my two goats. I believe they are the kindest and best goats in the world. See how they sniff the clear air, and skip and play in the sunshine. Whew what a jump,’ he (Lincoln) exclaimed as one of the goats made a lofty spring. ‘Madam Elizabeth, did you ever before see such an active goat?’ ”
In August 1863, President Lincoln wrote Tad to announce the disappearance of his son’s “Nanny Goat.” She had been last seen “chewing her little cud, on the middle of Tad’s bed. But now she’s gone.” Like her master Tad, Nanny also had the run of the White House. There was suspicion that one of the White House staff had been behind Nanny’s “disapperance.” Another longtime rumor is that some unknown soldier, one of many encamped around Washington,DC during the Great War, absconded with “Nanny” as a ready source of milk or worse, as the main course of a hearty dinner. By the next spring the goats were replaced with new ones as Mr. Lincoln reported in a telegram to his wife: “Tell Tad the goats and father are very well — especially the goats.”
When the White House stables caught fire in February 1863, President Lincoln had to be restrained from entering the burning building to rescue six trapped horses. One pony belonged to his late son Willie (who had died in the White House the previous year) and another belonged to his son Tad. The two “new” pet goats were also presumed destroyed. President Lincoln personally “burst open the stable door… and would have tried to enter the burning building had not those standing near caught and restrained him,” recalled presidential guard Robert McBride. The death of Willie’s pony particularly pained him.”
Tragedy visited Lincoln many times throughout his lifetime, perhaps no other family in American history (save the Kennedy’s) could match the Lincoln propensity for family sadness, as you will see next week in Part II of this story.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
