From The Lincoln Nobody Knows by Richard N. Current:

Lincoln, the Tender-Hearted

One winter night an Indiana congressman, Schuyler Colfax, left his business at the Capitol and went to the White House to plead for the son of one of his constituents. The boy, convicted of desertion, had been sentenced to die before a firing squad at Davenport Barracks, Iowa. Colfax told the story to President Lincoln, who listened patiently, then replied: "Some of my generals complain that I impair discipline by my frequent pardons and reprieves; but it rests me, after a day's hard work, that I can find some excuse for saving some poor fellow's life, and I shall go to bed happy tonight as I think how joyous the signing of this name will make himself, his family and friends."

With a smile enlivening his care-furrowed face, the President signed his name and saved a life.

A Pennsylvania congressman, the dour, clubfooted, bewigged Thaddeus Stevens, once visited the White House with an old woman from his Lancaster district. She wished a pardon for her son, condemned to die for sleeping at his post. For Stevens, the mission was somewhat embarrassing, since he often had denounced the President for being too free with pardons. But Stevens knew that hundreds of his constituents were waiting to see how the old woman's Washington pilgrimage turned out. He also knew that any congressman, to stay in office, had to please the folks back home. And so he supported the mother's appeal. "Now, Thad, what would you do in this case if you happened to be President?" Lincoln asked him. Stevens answered that, knowing the extenuating circumstances as he did, he would certainly grant the request. "Well, then," Lincoln said, after a pause while he penned a few lines, "here, madam, is your son's pardon."

Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt brought to Lincoln the case of a soldier who in the midst of battle had demoralized his regiment by throwing down his gun and hiding behind a friendly stump. When court-martialed, the soldier offered no defense. He was found to be a habitual thief as well as a coward. And he had no living father or mother, no wife, no child, no known relative.

"Here," said Judge Holt in presenting the sentence to Lincoln for review, "is a case which comes exactly within your requirements. He does not deny his guilt; he will better serve the country dead than living, as he has no relations to mourn for him, and he is not fit to be in the ranks of patriots, at any rate."

Holt expected the President to approve the execution without further ado, but Lincoln sat a while in thought, running his hand through his hair. Finally he said: "Well, after all, Judge, I think I must put this with my leg cases. "Leg cases," Holt repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Why," Lincoln explained, "do you see those papers crowded into those pigeon-holes? They are the cases that you call by that long title, 'cowardice in the face of the enemy,' but I call them, for short, my 'leg cases.' But I put it to you, and I leave it for you to decide for yourself: if Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?"

One day a congressman, going to the White House for some business with the President, passed through an anteroom crowded with supplicants. An old man, crouching in a corner by himself, wept as if his heart would break. The congressman stopped to ask the trouble. The old man explained that his son, a private in the army of General Benjamin F. Butler, had been convicted of some crime and had been sentenced to be shot. The congressman, his sympathy enlisted, took the sobbing father into the President's office.

"I am sorry to say I can do nothing for you," Lincoln said, his face clouding with sorrow. "Listen to this telegram received from General Butler yesterday: 'President Lincoln, I pray you not to interfere with the courts-martial of the army. You will destroy all discipline among our soldiers.' "

The old man, his hopes aroused and then suddenly dashed, wailed and writhed in grief. Lincoln watched a while, then exclaimed: "By jingo, Butler or no Butler, here goes!" He wrote a few words and handed them to the man, who was cheered and then again saddened when he read the note: "Job Smith is not to be shot until further orders from me. -Abraham Lincoln."

"Why," protested the old man, "I thought it was to be a pardon; but you say, 'not to be shot till further orders,' and you may order him to be shot next week."

Lincoln smiled and said: "Well, my old friend, I see you are not very well acquainted with me. If your son never looks on death till further orders come from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than Methuselah."