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ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CLEMENCY
21
mother's plea for her only boy who was to die disgraced.
He received hundreds of such letters, and they never lost their appeal ; but he had granted pardons until Secretary Stanton had declared that he was destroying discipline and had made the President half promise that he would withhold all pardons in the future.
It had only been a half promise, and altho he meant to keep it, the President found it desperately hard. And something about this letter, its convincing simplicity, perhaps, had strangely moved him. Full half the night he had worked over plans, reports and dispatches, his heart strings torn by their stories of death and defeat.
Out on the Virginia plains, on the other side of the river, a firing squad, still dull with sleep, and with no relish for their detail, listlessly made their way to the scene of execution. A week had passed, and Will Scott marched with head erect between his companions, whose rifles he would presently face.
Bravely he took his stand before them. Bravely he raised his head as the Sergeant gave the command to make ready, altho he knew that next would come "Aim," and "Fire," and with the last, a deafening roar that would be to him the last earthly sound. "Aim!"
His muscles stiffened and he waited the last command. "Halt!"
It was not the Sergeant's voice, and the hoof beats told of the approach of an orderly. It could not be a reprieve. "What could it mean?
The bandage was torn from his eyes. An orderly from another regiment was standing beside the sergeant, and thru the dust that mingled with the morning mist a carriage was seen to approach, and presently the tall form of the President, taller still for the old fashioned high hat, came upon the scene.
"I need live soldiers more than I do dead ones," he said to the officer. "I pardon William Scott. ' '
He handed the formal pardon to the
'HIS HEARTSTRINGS TORN BY THE STORIES OP DEATH AND DEFEAT.'