Stories and Anecdotes About Abraham Lincoln

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NO WAR WITHOUT BLOOD-LETTING.

"You can't carry on war without blood-letting," said Lincoln one day.

The President, although almost feminine in his kind-heartedness, knew not only this, but also that large bodies of soldiers in camp were at the mercy of diseases of every sort, the result being a heavy casualty list.

Of the (estimated) half-million men of the Union armies who gave up their lives in the War of the Rebellion--1861-65--fully seventy-five per cent died of disease. The soldiers killed upon the field of battle constituted a comparatively small proportion of the casualties.

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