With Malice Toward None

With the recent election of the 44th President of the United States, I've been reflecting on how authoritative figures of the past have viewed this characteristic of compassion, particularly as it pertains to us cats. Fortunately, one of Cat-Dad's interests is history, and his library which he makes freely available to us, contains several volumes.

Perhaps the most famous individual to lead our country was Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, and a great admirer of felines. His cat, Tabby, in March of 1861 was actually the first cat to occupy the White House. Tabby was joined by three other cats before the end of Lincoln's term (along with two dogs, a rabbit, three goats, and a Thanksgiving turkey whose life the President had spared).

Lincoln's greatest role came at a particularly difficult period of history, that of the American Civil War. Anyone who has studied this man will recognize the phrase from the Second Inaugural Address which characterizes his nature so well. The last sentence of that speech begins "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right..."

Lincoln's "charity" was sorely being taxed during that time, yet history records a brief example of his compassion in the midst of overwhelming turmoil, which is not uncharacteristic for him. The following excerpt is taken from Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (Volume IV, p146) and describes an incident that happened in late March of 1865, at the headquarters of General Ulysses S. Grant on the day Grant's army was to begin its final assault of the war. This discussion took place in Grant's telegraph hut barely three weeks after Lincoln had delivered his Second Inaugural Address, and three weeks before his untimely death at the hand of John Wilkes Booth.

The President's eyes roved the floor of the telegraph hut. They caught on three tiny kittens wandering, mewing as if lost. He picked up one and asked it, "Where is your mother?" Someone answered. "The mother is dead." And as he petted the little one: "Then she can't grieve as many a poor mother is grieving for her son lost in battle." Then, gathering the two others in his hands, he put them on his lap, stroked their fur and meditated, "Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can't understand this terrible strife that's going on." Then more practically and immediately to the kittens, according to Colonel Horace Porter, "Poor little creatures, don't cry; you will be taken good care of." And to Bowers, "Colonel, I hope you will see that these poor motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly." Colonel Bowers promised he would see that the mess cook would do right by them. Several times later in the telegraph hut Horace Porter noticed Lincoln fondling the kittens. "He would wipe their eyes tenderly with his handkerchief, stroke their smooth coats, and listen to them purring in gratitude to him." A curious sight it was, thought Porter, "at an army headquarters upon the eve of a great military crisis in the nation's history, to see the hand which had affixed the signature to the Emancipation Proclamation and had signed the commissions... from the general-in-chief to the lowest lieutenant, tenderly caressing three stray kittens."

With malice toward none; with charity for all. All, to include even three orphaned kittens. What a lesson this is and what extraordinary insight into a man who changed the course of history because he believed with all his heart in doing what was right.

With love for all,

Noel
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Acts of compassion are born and take shape in the privacy of your own conscience. No one can shape it for you.
- Rich DeVos

Click here to read the complete text of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.