The President and Three Kittens

The President and Three Kittens

Near the end of the Civil War and about three weeks before President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the Lincoln family was invited to visit General Grant's headquarters in City Point, Virginia. While visiting Lincoln happened to be in the telegraph hut on the property. When Lincoln was inside the hut he happened upon three tiny kittens. The kittens seemed to be disoriented and wandering around. Lincoln stooped down and picked up one of the kittens and asked,

Where is your mother?’ A person standing nearby said, ‘The mother is dead.’ The President continued to pet the little kitten and said, ‘Then she can’t grieve as many a poor mother is grieving for a son lost in battle.’ Abraham picked up the other two kittens and now had all three in his lap. He stroked their fur and quietly told them, ‘Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can’t understand this terrible strife that is going on.’ The Chief Executive continued, ‘Poor little creatures, don’t cry; you’ll be taken good care of.’ He looked toward Colonel Bowers of Grant’s staff and said, ‘Colonel, I hope you will see that these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly.’ Bowers promised that he would tell the cook to take good care of them. Colonel Horace Porter watched the President and recalled, ‘He would wipe their eyes tenderly with his handkerchief, stroke their smooth coats, and listen to them purring their gratitude to him.’ Quite a 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 . . . tenderly caressing three stray kittens.’ ⁱ

It is amazing how God's little creatures can have such an impact on our feelings and emotions. Undoubtedly Lincoln was weary. He carried the weight of the Civil War upon his shoulders. He felt an overwhelming responsibility for the young men he had sent into battle. In a moment when Lincoln most needed an emotional outlet to express his feelings, he found three tiny kittens. The average age of a young soldier between 1861-1865 was 22. The romance of wearing a uniform and marching off to war was a luring alternative to a young man who was bored with life on the farm. It did not take long for soldiers north and south to realize that “war could be hell.” When the bullets started flying and soldiers were mortally wounded their thoughts turned toward mother and home. The three motherless kittens reminded President Lincoln of the young soldiers who often cried out for their own mothers when they were wounded in battle.

Cat lovers everywhere can relate to this story. There have been times when the purring of a kitten or the love of a family cat has helped us to cope with life. A cat has the special ability to sense when we are tense or worried. Could it be that three tiny kittens inspired Lincoln to bring a faster end to the Civil War?

i Norton, Roger, The Abraham Lincoln Research Site, home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln35html.