Mr. Beecher was editor of _The Christian Union_ and had occasion to write about Abraham Lincoln, and he wrote nothing of this kind. In his sermons and in his lectures he had frequent occasion to mention Lincoln, and no story of this sort is related as having come from him. Mr. Beecher knew too well the homiletic and editorial value of such an incident not to have related it if it had occurred.
Someone came to see him one stormy night and the two lingered long together in prayer. For some doubtless good reason Mr. Beecher did not tell his family the name of the man with whom he had spent those earnest hours. Many years afterward, Lincoln and Beecher both being dead, Mrs. Beecher recalled the event and satisfied herself that it was Mr. Lincoln who had come from Washington to see her husband and spend some hours in prayer with him.
This is the reasonable explanation, as it seems to me, of an incident which has had rather wide currency but which we are not justified in accepting on the unsupported testimony of even so good a woman as Mrs. Beecher in her old age.
An incident of remarkable interest, attested as authentic by two generals of the Civil War, is related by General James F. Rusling, in his _Men and Things in Civil War Days_:
General D. E. Sickles was wounded at Gettysburg, and brought to Washington, where a leg was amputated. President Lincoln called upon him, and in reply to a question from General Sickles whether or not the President was anxious about the battle at Gettysburg, Lincoln gravely said, 'No, I was not; some of my Cabinet and many others in Washington were, but I had no fears.' General Sickles inquired how this was, and seemed curious about it. Mr. Lincoln hesitated, but finally replied: 'Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of your campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day, and I locked the door, and got down on my knees before Almighty God, and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this was His war, and our cause His cause, but we couldn't stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God, that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him. And He _did_ stand by you boys, and I _will_ stand by Him. And after that (I don't know how it was, and I can't explain it), soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into his own hands and that things would go all right at Gettysburg. And that is why I had no fears about you.' Asked concerning Vicksburg, the news of which victory had not yet reached him, he said, 'I have been praying for Vicksburg also, and believe our Heavenly Father is going to give us victory there, too.' General Rusling says that Mr. Lincoln spoke 'solemnly and pathetically, as if from the depth of his heart,' and that his manner was deeply touching."[49]