Lincoln needed humor as a kind of counter-balance to the depression he seemed to carry as a matter of course. And given the death and devastation that surrounded him at every turn, such debilitating depression was inescapable – except through humor.
As good an example of his resorting to humor is his reaction to the destruction of the once-formidable rebel army commanded by John Hood. That army had been annihilated in the battle of Nashville, Tennessee in late 1864.
Lincoln said "I think Hood’s army is about in the fix of Bill Sykes’s dog, down in Sangamon county.
“Bill Sykes had a long, yaller dog, that was forever getting into the neighbors’ meat houses and chicken coops. They had tried to kill it a hundred times, but the dog was always too smart for them. Finally, one of them got a bladder of a coon, and filled it up with gun powder, tying the neck around a piece of punk, a kind of fuse. When he saw the dog coming he lit the punk, split open a hot biscuit and put the bladder in, then buttered it all nicely and threw it out. The dog swallowed it at a gulp.
“Pretty soon there was an explosion. The head of the dog lit on the porch, the fore-legs caught astraddle the fence, the hind-legs fell in the ditch, and the rest of the dog lay around loose.
“Pretty soon Bill Sykes came along, and the neighbor said; ‘Bill I guess there ain’t much of that dog of your’n left.’ ‘Well, no,’ said Bill; ‘I see plenty of pieces, but I guess that dog, as a dog, ain’t of much more account.’”
Lincoln concluded that although there were still pieces of Hood’s army left, the army, as an army, wasn’t of much more account.
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