Saturday, September 30, 2017

Diary of Captain John A. Dahlgren: May 22, 1862

1 received a telegram from Secretary of War for a boat in the evening. So about nine came a carriage with Stanton and, to my surprise, the President, bound on a quiet trip to Acquia. He left so privately that Mrs. Lincoln alone knew of it. I told them there was nothing to eat in the steamboat. I had eatables, bedding, &c., tumbled in, and we left at ten P. M., after supper. The President read aloud to us from Halleck's poems,1 and then we went to impromptu beds.
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1 President Lincoln had real dramatic power as a reader, and recited poetic passages with pathos. The copy of Halleck from which the President read on this occasion, now belongs to us, and “Marco Bozzaris” is marked as the piece read aloud to Secretary Stanton and Admiral Dahlgren. What a mournful and prophetic suggestiveness there was in the selection! How truly may it now be said of Lincoln,

"For them art Freedom's now, and Fame's;
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not horn to die.”

SOURCE: Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, Memoir of John A. Dahlgren, Rear-admiral United States Navy, p. 368

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