Lincoln’s friend Caleb Carman recalled how the president would pick up one of the cats and “talk to it for half an hour at a time.” The cats apparently won the president over with their quiet adoration.At one point during his first term, Lincoln observed in frustration, “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore she doesn’t talk back!”
In March of ’65, just before the end of the war, Lincoln visited General Grant at Grant’s City Point headquarters. With no spay-and-neuter program in place at that time, there were plenty of early spring kittens, and three had found their way into the President’s hearing. According to Admiral David Porter, the President hunted down the little guys and began, “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.”
Porter recalled that Lincoln stroked the cats’ fur and quietly told them, “Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can’t understand this terrible strife that is going on.” Before leaving a meeting in the officers’ tent that day, Lincoln turned to a colonel and said, “I hope you will see that these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly.”
I do not pretend that cat stories about our 16th President are “hard” history, nor does his fondness for animals of any kind have a thing to do with the American Civil War. Still, there must be some reason cat videos top the charts of YouTube, and why their small, purring presences lighten our lives. I would like to think a cat helped Lincoln cope with his issues, lightened his load somehow. Looking up information for this blog, and finding accompanying images has helped lighten my issues considerably.
Now . . . just why isn’t Vicksburg celebrated with the verve that accompanies Gettysburg? Maybe Gary Gallagher could help . . .