Upon the president’s arrival at Harrison’s Landing, the nearby soldiers, quartermasters, and surgeons cheered him repeatedly. McClellan asserted that during a review, he “had to order the men to cheer & they did it very feebly,” but numerous eyewitness accounts contradict his statement. A New Yorker wrote that McClellan’s popularity among the troops “will never measure 1/100 part of Honest Abe’s. Such cheers as greeted him never tickled the ears of Napoleon in his palmiest days.” Another trooper from the Empire State recalled that “we cheered his presence to the echo.” Yet another soldier reported that as Lincoln “rode slowly along the lines, the cheering was most enthusiastic. It evidently gratified and cheered both officers and men to witness this evidence of a lively interest in their welfare and sympathy with them of the President. On his part, he seemed to be much pleased with his reception, and to be satisfied that the Army of the Potomac was yet a living institution.” A general remarked “that the visit was worth a reinforcement of ten thousand men.” In his diary, a lieutenant described the reaction: “Long and hearty was the applause and welcome which greeted him. His presence after the late disaster … seemed to infuse new ardor into the dispirited army.” A sailor aboard the Monitor thought that the president “seemed to be in better spirits than I supposed he would be. His visit here has been a good thing, serving to give more confidence to the army by his presence among them.” Doubtless that was one of Lincoln’s aims in visiting the front.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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