To see this one day clearly, it is necessary to see the President— and later, John Wilkes Booth—in the weeks prior to the event. Some of what happened on April 14, 1865, had earlier motivation. Some did not. Still, a certain pattern of events can be seen, in retrospect, and this pattern tends to increase, rather than diminish, the shame of the United States Government on April 14.
It seems, from the testimony of many witnesses after the event, that the government in early 1865 had two main conversational functions: killing the Confederacy, and keeping Lincoln alive. When the officials weren’t talking about victory, and the means to victory, they were talking about the possibility of assassination. They talked about it, they worried about it and they counter-plotted against it. However, they were assuming that an assassination plot would involve the Confederate States of America versus the United States of America, and it seems not to have occurred to any ranking official that it might be a lonely band of fanatics versus the United States Government.
The newspapers of late 1864 and 1865 published dramatic and fretful stories of the narrow escapes of President Lincoln. Stanton’s bureau of spies were uncovering plots in Richmond and in Washington almost weekly. The newspapers of the North, with or without the cooperation of the Secretary of War, published stories of the narrow escapes of the President. In the main, these plots probably did not exist, but, as the War Between the States moved toward its close, the stories made the people conscious of assassination and pressure was brought to bear on Stanton and on the President to be more and more careful.
In the early part of 1865, four members of the Washington metropolitan police force were appointed to guard the President. Two were on duty daily from 8 A.M. until 4 P.M. A third came on duty at 4 P.M. and remained at Mr. Lincoln’s side until midnight. The fourth man arrived at midnight, and sat in the hall outside Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom until relieved at 8 A.M. These men were not in uniform. Each had been trained in the use of the .38 pistol. Their specific order was to remain within a few feet of the President at all times and, in public, to look for faces they could not vouch for.
At about the same time, Stanton, not satisfied that four guards were enough, selected a troop of Ohio light cavalry, men who were mounted on fine black horses, and ordered them to act as presidential escort any time Lincoln left the Executive Mansion. This troop was quartered next door to the White House and, around the clock, they always had four horses saddled and bridled.
The first reaction to all of this was relief on the part of the Cabinet, irritation on the part of Mr. Lincoln. He said that Stanton was going too far. Later, he was amused by all the fuss and furor whenever he left the White House for an afternoon drive and, on some days, he made a game of trying to evade the cavalry escort. He did not try to “lose” his four policemen and, in time, cultivated them and sometimes confided personal opinions to them.
Withal, everyone worried about assassination and no one believed it would happen. Except one. Ward Hill Lamon not only feared it—he was certain that it would happen. In 1864, this fear overpowered him so much that, in stretches, he slept in the hall outside Lincoln’s bedroom. Assassination, to him, was an idée fixe.
Lamon was a chunky-chested man with brown wavy hair and beard. He was the United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. He and Lincoln were old and dear friends, close enough to quarrel. On one occasion, when the President and two guests evaded the guards and attended the theater, Lamon, at 1:30 A.M., wrote in bitter sarcasm to his friend that neither of his guests “could defend himself against an assault by any able-bodied woman in this city.”
The President trusted Lamon as he trusted few men, but he could not share his fears because Mr. Lincoln’s philosophy was that he could be killed at any time by anyone who was willing to give his own life in return. Now and then, the President discussed a violent death, and, in this, his attitude was one of sadness and resignation rather than fright.
Still, the days of March were shiny with victory and short-term promise. The dusty banners of the Union snapped southward out of Fredericksburg, westward out of Old Point, northward out of Savannah, eastward out of Lynchburg. The noose tightened, hour by hour. The city to watch was Petersburg. When that fell, the final kill would occur at Richmond.
The South fought with valiance and empty bellies. The remainders of the great commands had pride and a little ammunition. The weaker Lee grew, the more craftily he planned. His men fought as though they could still win, and, man for man, perhaps they were the better soldiers.
General Ulysses S. Grant, a modest tenacious man who understood the value of numbers, repeatedly curled the whip of his Army of the Potomac around Lee’s legs, and waited for his adversary to ask for mercy. Each day, Lee was a little bit weaker than yesterday. Each day, Grant snapped the whip a little harder.
The people of the North understood this. The news of victory in battle did not excite them, because they had waited an eternal four years for this. What excited them was the feeling that the war was in the twilight stage and soon it must end. They sensed this, and hungered for it.
They celebrated Lincoln’s second inaugural as they had not celebrated the secretive first one. They came into Washington on excursion trains and in stagecoaches and carryalls and farm wagons, and they jammed the hotels and the boarding houses and the outlying farms until mattresses were stretched in the corridors of Willard’s Hotel and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad begged the people either to stay home, or to stop off at the City of Baltimore before inauguration day.
On the night before the inauguration, Lincoln worked in his office—perhaps on his “With Malice Toward None” speech, and Vice President Andrew Johnson, a one-time tailor and professional common man from Tennessee, attended a party tendered by Colonel John Forney, clerk to the United States Senate. The Vice President had been ill. He was also a poor drinker. That night, he got drunk. Sick drunk.
The day of March 4 was rainy. The mud on Pennsylvania Avenue was viscous. Below the inauguration platform, on the east plaza of the Capitol, the crowd looked like a vast bed of dark mushrooms. Under the umbrellas, they were jubilant. In the rain, the women preened in their best gowns and the men set up yells for Lincoln, Grant, Sheridan, Meade, Admiral Porter, and even McClellan.
In the Senate gallery, Mrs. Lincoln was attended by the courtly Senator Anthony. Admiral Farragut and General Hooker arrived at almost the same moment. The diplomatic corps, in dazzling uniforms and cocked hats, came to rest in the gallery as the justices of the United States Supreme Court came into the well below. The President sat in the front row on a low seat, his knees high, his ancient face lighted briefly by recognition and a slow nod of the head. Seward sat at his left, followed by Stanton, Welles, Speed and Dennison.
The Vice President would be sworn in here. Afterward, Mr. Lincoln would be sworn in, for his second term, outside. Johnson arrived on the arm of the outgoing Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin. Mr. Hamlin sang a short swan song, full of the rich sentimentality of the times, and introduced Andrew Johnson, who stood, red-faced and nervous and intoxicated, and who, in a few minutes, disgraced himself.
Mr. Johnson’s theme was “the people.” His effort was to demean himself before these high personages but, having done it, he did it again. And again.
“. . . for today,” he shouted belligerently, as his audience glanced at neighboring faces, “one who claims no high descent, one who comes from the ranks of the people, stands, by the choice of a free constituency, in the second place in this government. . . .
“You, Mr. Secretary Seward, Mr. Secretary Stanton, the Secretary of the Navy, and the others who are your associates, you know that you have my respect and my confidence— derive not your greatness and your power alone from President Lincoln. . . . Humble as I am, plebeian as I may be deemed, permit me in the presence of this brilliant assemblage to enunciate the truth that courts and cabinets, the President and his advisers, derive their power and their greatness from the people.”
The “brilliant assemblage” was shocked. The little man was drunk, obviously drunk. No one knew that Johnson, depressed by a hangover and his consciousness of his own tailor shop peasantry, had pleaded nervousness and had asked Mr. Hamlin for a drink. He felt sick, he said. So Hamlin had got a bottle, and handed it to Mr. Johnson, who was not in any stronger condition to fight the effects of whiskey today than he had been last night.
Hamlin pulled at Johnson’s coattails. Forney whispered loudly to please sit down. Out front, the faces were frozen. Lincoln alone looked sad and composed. Stanton was popeyed. Speed closed his eyes and held a hand over them. Justice Nelson’s mouth hung open in horror. The gallery whispered. At last, after what might be called a Tennessee stump speech, Andrew Johnson took the Bible in both hands, kissed it loudly, and said: “I kiss this book in the face of my nation of the United States.”
There was disgust in the crowd, a disgust resistant to wear, and Johnson would feel it the rest of his days. The whole party moved out to the plaza and President Lincoln was sworn in. His address amounted to less than four pages of copy:
“Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. . . .
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invoked His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but, let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. . . .”
Within five minutes, he had closed his address with the words: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
He turned to leave. As he saw the faces of his distinguished friends nodding and applauding behind him, he smiled. Is it too much to say that, close by, in the inauguration stand, his eyes may have paused for a part of a second on a handsome young stranger—John Wilkes Booth?
Mr. Lincoln rode back to the White House with Tad at his side. The parade was a big one and a noisy one. At forts, the guns boomed, on the Avenue mounted patrols sat their horses at every crossing. The bands played. The President gravely raised his top hat to the people.
The handsome stranger left the inauguration stand with Walter Burton, the night clerk at the National Hotel. They walked back to the hotel bar for a celebratory drink. Booth had little to say, except that he had got his inauguration stand passes from the daughter of Senator Hale of New Hampshire.
The President’s speech got perfunctory attention from the press, which labeled it “conciliatory” toward the South. The big news was not published; it was whispered. Andy Johnson had been drunk. Within two days, it had been whispered across the final dining-room table, the last bar, the ultimate alley, and Johnson, in anguish over it, left Washington for the home of Frank Blair in Silver Spring, Maryland. The gossipy United States Senate, which wanted to give the matter attention without being called guilty of bad manners, permitted a resolution to be offered prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors in Capitol restaurants. In caucus, some Senators said that Johnson should resign.
Lincoln had seen this thing, and now he heard about it from all sides. He put it in its proper perspective when he said to Secretary McCulloch: “Oh well. Don’t you bother about Andy Johnson’s drinking. He made a bad slip the other day, but I have known Andy a great many years and he is no drunkard.”
He defended Johnson, and yet the President was irritated because, after that, he would not see the Vice President although Johnson remained in and around Washington, waiting for an interview. Mr. Lincoln might have been hospitable and invited him to a Cabinet meeting or two, but he did not. The next time that the President expressed a desire to see “Andy” was on the one unique day when a clairvoyant chief executive would feel the need of a Vice President—April 14, 1865—the day.
Mr. Lincoln was thirty-five pounds underweight. He walked like a man whose feet hurt. Now and then, in the spring of 1865, he permitted a coachman to assist him in or out of his carriage. Lincoln was fifty-six; he looked old and sick. He had fought as hard as any soldier in the field to reunite the states. Now, in the closing days of the war, his spirit seemed to flag. The Surgeon General, Doctor Barnes, was worried about a nervous breakdown. The official family began to speculate, for the first time, about what would happen to them and to the nation if he died.
For a while, everyone including Mrs. Lincoln became solicitous of his health and his time. The police guards cleared the upstairs corridor of office seekers and favor seekers. His secretaries tried to hold the appointment calendar down, and his wife tried to coax him to take afternoon drives on sunny days. The attention was so pointed that even the President noticed it.
On March 14—a Tuesday—Mr. Lincoln tried to arise from his bed and fell back. He could not summon the strength to get on his feet and Mrs. Lincoln, called from her bedroom, sent for Dr. Robert K. Stone, the family physician. He examined the President and came out of the bedroom announcing that the case was one of “exhaustion, complete exhaustion.”
Three hours later, the President held a Cabinet meeting in the bedroom. Word went out that his illness was influenza, and it was so reported in the press. By Wednesday morning, he was out of bed and in his office. He looked jaundiced and sick, and no appointments were made that day, but he worked at his desk. In the afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln told him that she could be made to be very happy if he felt strong enough to attend Grover’s Theatre with her. The President consented. They saw the German Opera Company perform The Magic Flute.
The newspapers began to worry about the state of Lincoln’s health. The National Republican proclaimed that he was physically exhausted as a result of prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion and that, in addition, he was badgered by swarms of office seekers who infested the halls of the Executive Mansion. The writer recommended that these people be driven from Washington at once, or else the nation would run the risk of a presidential breakdown. The New York Tribune went a step further. The President’s energies, said a lead editorial, would have to be spared if Lincoln was to live through his second term. Unless something is done promptly, the Union will mourn a dead President “killed by the greed and impudence of bores.”
In the third week of March, General Grant felt that the end of the war was a matter of time—a few weeks at most. By army telegraph, he invited the President to come down to City Point, Virginia, to see the end. Petersburg was under siege and Grant was encamped before it. Philip Sheridan had traversed the Shenandoah Valley, destroying and requisitioning as he went, and Lee no longer had enough food for horses and men. William Tecumseh Sherman had finished with Savannah and swung north toward Virginia to hammer Lee and Johnston against the anvil of the Army of the Potomac. Sheridan rejoined Grant, and his mobile force was used, like an oversized hound dog, to keep the Confederate rabbit from running out of the pen.
Lincoln left Washington aboard the steamer River Queen on Thursday, March 23. With him were Mrs. Lincoln, her maid, Tad, bodyguard William H. Crook, and Captain Charles B. Penrose. The boat sailed at 1 P.M. and, as the heavy lines were cast off, the President seemed to cast off the heavy shackles of office. He romped in the forward salon with Tad, and took him up to the wheelhouse to show him how a steamer operated. He radiated relief and suppressed excitement and, to Mrs. Lincoln, seemed full of mischief. The First Lady brought several trunks of finery with her and told the President that she had heard that General Grant had ordered all the generals’ ladies to the rear and she supposed that she would be the only female at the front. Mr. Lincoln said that he had heard no such thing.
The River Queen made port at City Point the following day. The quayside was choked with the appurtenances of war—guns, cannon, barrels of pitch, ammunition, lumber, foodstuffs and a private railroad for the Army of the Potomac. In the President’s honor, the ranking generals were present, and came aboard for two conferences within a few days. Grant, Sherman and Sheridan were there (Meade was at the front), and Grant, assisted by the other two, spread the war maps in the dining salon and rendered a firsthand account of the final operations of the war.
Grant told Lincoln that the war had now been reduced to a matter of arithmetic. Lee and Johnston were losing a regiment a day through desertion, illness and wounds. They had no manpower to replace such losses. The longer Lee held out, the weaker he became. If he elected to fight battles, he would hasten the end—even if he won the battles—because his losses would increase. The end, the President was told, would come within a month.
On the maps, Grant showed the President that the one move left to the Army of Northern Virginia was to abandon Richmond and Petersburg and try to consolidate forces with Johnston on the Virginia-North Carolina line. Grant proposed to devote his time to preventing that move.
Two ladies bumped over a corduroy road on Saturday. This was an army road and, in a circuitous way, it led to the front. One of the ladies was Mrs. Lincoln. The other was Julia Dent Grant. They rode in an army ambulance and both held on to the overhead hoops to keep from falling. They sat on a crossboard seat. Directly in front were an army driver and General Adam Badeau, who had been ordered to escort the distinguished ladies to a troop review.
Mrs. Lincoln chattered happily as the wagon swayed over the pine logs. Even here, in a forest of saplings and old undergrowth, she was dressed lavishly. Mrs. Grant did not carry the conversation. She was a plain, almost homely woman with a long nose, and what she smelled in the presence of the First Lady of the Land was trouble, Julia Grant could never explain it, but she always felt nervous in the presence of Mrs. Lincoln. So, as the mules walked, she merely nodded yes, and yes and yes.
On her side, Mrs. Lincoln was careful too. She now knew that General Grant had indeed issued an order for all wives of general officers to go to the rear, but he had exempted his own wife. Mrs. Lincoln did not mention it, although it may have been close to her tongue.
For his part, General Badeau, a tactful man and a keen intellect, filled the gaps in the conversation by explaining that it was Crawford’s division which would pass in review, and that the salute would be taken by General George Meade, Commander of the Army of the Potomac. The ladies paid little attention. However, when he moved blithely on to the subject of Grant ordering women out of the area, he got complete attention. The wagon jarred and swayed as he explained, with humor, that when such an order came through, the men in the ranks regarded it as a sure sign that a battle was impending. This time, he said, General Grant had permitted no exemptions except, of course, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Charles Griffin. Mrs. Griffin remained at the front, he said, because she had a special permit from the President.
Mrs. Lincoln’s rages were always almost instantaneous. This time, she almost rose from her seat. “What do you mean by that, sir?” she snapped. “Do you mean to say that she saw the President alone?” Mrs. Grant turned to her in alarm. General Badeau looked over his shoulder at the stricken woman. “Do you know that I never allow the President to see any woman alone?”
The pitch of the voice rose higher. Julia Grant looked ill. Badeau swung all the way around and tried to smile reassuringly. “That,” said Mrs. Lincoln, “is a very equivocal smile, sir! Let me out of this carriage at once!” She started to clamber toward the canvas side of the wagon. “I will ask the President if he saw that woman alone.”
Mrs. Grant tried to soothe Mrs. Lincoln. The First Lady was now livid. She wasn’t listening. The general, who seemed confused, apologized even though he wasn’t certain of the offense. Mrs. Lincoln ordered the ambulance stopped at once. When the mules continued their slow pace, she reached past the driver’s shoulder and tried to yank the reins. The general’s wife, almost in tears, begged Mrs. Lincoln to please sit down. Just sit.
The First Lady sat. She was silent, and her face twitched. The ambulance continued on the road. Nobody spoke. When it arrived at the parade grounds, General Meade came to the steps at the back of the ambulance and assisted Mrs. Lincoln.
After the review was over, Mrs. Lincoln returned to the ambulance and got in and stared at the back of Adam Badeau’s head. “General Meade is a gentleman, sir,” she said. “He says it was not the President who gave Mrs. Griffin the permit, but the Secretary of War.”
At City Point, Mrs. Grant spoke to General Badeau in private and begged him “never to mention this distressing and mortifying affair again.”
The month of March closed with minor chords. In Washington City, the headquarters of General C. C. Augur, at 151/2 Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, was badly damaged by fire and Augur had to move most of his staff to Fourteenth Street. It meant that the White House would not have the protection of extra guards next door. In the War Department, Stanton and Eckert and Bates listened to the snap of the telegraph keys and hoped for momentous news, but the best they got was signed “Lincoln”: “There has been much hard fighting this morning. . . . Our troops, after being driven back on the Boydton plank road, turned and drove the enemy in turn and took the White Oak road. . . . There have been four flags captured today.”
The massive crescendos began to be heard in the opening days of April and some of the counterpoint was lost in the bedlam of sound. For instance, on April 2, the Confederacy fell. No one in the North knew it, and no newspaper carried the news, but, shortly after church services in Richmond, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet fled the city. That was the end, even though Lee and Johnston still fought in the East. There was no roll of covered drums, no ceremony, perhaps few tears.
On this Sunday, the Confederacy died and there was no longer an amalgamation of seceded states. An idea born of pride was gone, and had taken its place in the pages of history. After four years of battling a brother who was bigger, stronger, better fed, better armed, the South was whipped.
The President, still at the front, did not know it. His daily dispatch to Stanton said: “All going finely. Parke, Wright, and Ord, extending from the Appomattox to Hatcher’s Run, have all broken through the enemy’s intrenched lines, taking some forts, guns and prisoners. Sheridan, with his own cavalry, Fifth Corps, and part of the Second, is coming in from the west on the enemy’s flank.”
The next day, everybody knew the news. It started when Lincoln sent a coded message to the Secretary of War announcing the portentous intelligence that the city of Petersburg had been evacuated by the Confederate Army and that Grant was “sure” Richmond too had been abandoned. Stanton had slept in his office and, when the code clerk had reduced the message to straight English, the Secretary of War was awakened and told the news.
He was barely savoring the exultation of it when a telegraph key started an insistent chatter in straight English:
“From Richmond,” it began. Two army operators listened, in bug-eyed disbelief, then emitted a whoop and ordered a fifteen-year-old apprentice telegrapher, Willie Kettles, to copy the rest of it. The two operators threw up a front window and began to roar, in unison: “Richmond has fallen! Richmond has fallen! Richmond has fallen!” Citizens on the walk below looked up anxiously. The two yelled the louder. Drays on the cobbles, and carriages too, came to a stop. The faces below began to comprehend; they began to crease in attitudes of smiles, and relief, and sudden sadness and ecstasy. An aged man threw his hat down and jumped on it. A woman blessed herself. A wagon driver burst into tears and blew his nose.
The cry was taken up, and boys skittered down Pennsylvania Avenue in the cool yellow sunshine passing the word and bumping into people and the word began to spread quickly and wildly. When it reached the offices of the Washington Star, an editor ran out front and printed in chalk on a big blackboard:
GLORY!!! HAIL COLUMBIA!!!
HALLELUJAH!!! RICHMOND OURS!!!
In a public park, a battery of guns was limbering up when the word came. The officer in charge became so excited that he ordered an immediate salute of eight hundred rounds, three hundred for Petersburg and five hundred for Richmond. The cannonading was massive and, as it echoed across the Navy Yard, an officer heard it and, not knowing the news, decided to fire one hundred rounds on a big Dahlgren gun on the chance that the news might be important. In an hour, the offices of Washington City were almost empty, and many of the stores were without clerks. Stranger hugged stranger and the taverns did a brisk morning business. The courts adjourned. Children skipped home from school. The banks closed. Church bells tolled in the hollows between mountainous crashes of artillery. Flags appeared before the homes of the loyal and the disloyal. Horse cars stopped running. An impromptu parade started on Sixth Street, the first of many. Negro families emerged from shacks shyly, like children hoping to be asked to a party. Unbidden orators stood on the several hotel steps, faces red, arms waving, but not a word was heard in the bedlam.
Mr. Stanton, surrendering to a rare moment of happiness, leaned from a War Department window and held up a hand for silence. He asked the crowd below to beg Providence “to teach us how to be humble in the midst of triumph.” In the momentary vacuum, someone said that Richmond was burning, and the crowd roared: “Let ’er burn!” Willie Kettles was introduced from the telegraph window as the “man” who had received the auspicious message. Willie bowed gravely from the waist.
On E Street, two squadrons of cavalry met and, without orders, got into parade formation and in a moment a brigade of infantry fell in behind. As the parade moved, it grew. An hour later, the cavalrymen led it across the south grounds of the White House and they were surprised to find that they were being reviewed by General C. C. Augur.
This was going to go on, sporadically, for twelve days. It was the wildest celebration known to the young Republic and it would not end until the nation was plunged into deepest grief. On some days, it would flag a little, through surfeit or exhaustion, and then fresh news of victory would come and it would revive in Washington City and New York and Spring-field and St. Paul and in the crossroad settlements across the country. The feeling in most minds was that two incredible things had happened: the war was over; we won it.
And yet it was not quite over. Lee’s army was still in the field. It was a striking unit in being; it had its fighting units intact, its stores, its staff. It was dying in dignity, and no one in the Army of the Potomac was celebrating.
The President sent word to Stanton that he was about to sail upriver to take a look at burned-out Richmond, and the Secretary of War was beset with misgivings. Had he the power, Stanton would have placed the President under military detention to keep him out of Richmond. He knew that Mrs. Lincoln had returned to Washington yesterday, and would not return to her husband for a few days, but Stanton did not visit the White House on this Monday, April 3, to ask her to stop Lincoln. There is no record that he even visited to ask how she enjoyed her trip.
Instead, Stanton tried the direct approach. He sent a message to Lincoln:
“I congratulate you and the nation on the glorious news in your telegram just recd. Allow me respectfully to ask you to consider whether you ought to expose the nation to the consequences of any disaster to yourself in the pursuit of a treacherous and dangerous enemy like the rebel army. . . . Commanding Generals are in the line of their duty in running such risks. But is the political head of a nation in the same condition?”
The President read it, was comforted by the solicitude of his Secretary of War, and took a boat up the river to Richmond. When he disembarked at a riverbank on the edge of the Confederate capital, Admiral Porter was at his side. A small group of Negroes saw the overly tall man with the stovepipe hat scrambling up the bank and, when they saw the quizzical, sad smile on the thick lips, a few recognized him from half-remembered pictures. They began to shout and bow and a group gathered about him, a few kneeling to kiss his black shoes.
“Don’t kneel to me,” the President said sharply. “This is not right.” He glanced around the circle of dark faces and saw the wonderment in them. “You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. I am but God’s humble instrument, but you may rest assured that, as long as I live, no one shall put a shackle to your limbs, and you shall have all the rights which God has given to every other free citizen of this Republic.”
He had injected the somber note: “As long as I live. . . .”
Admiral Porter tried to push the Negroes away. They were as pliant as full wheat. They moved back when pushed. When the hand was removed, they returned. Negroes seemed to be coming from everywhere and the admiral looked around helplessly for help. There was none. The people pressed around the President and they sang and chanted. A few bold ones tried to touch the sleeve of his coat. Lincoln stepped forward, determined to see a part of Richmond, and the circle moved with him. Later, Lincoln was seen and rescued by a roving squadron of U.S. Cavalry. Both groups were equally surprised.
All of the nation’s news came from the front in these final days. Washington City—normally the master maker of news—was, for the moment, a listening post. Congress had adjourned; many legislators had gone home to mend fences. The streets were full of men in uniform, men from Ohio and Vermont and Illinois and Delaware and Missouri who were on leave from one of the many camps in and around the city, and who wanted, before the war was done, to say that they had seen the new Capitol dome and the White House.
The most momentous event on Tuesday, April 4, was the arrival of the steamer Thomas Powell with three hundred wounded aboard. The most trivial news was that Mrs. Lincoln, preparing to return to City Point, Virginia, sat in the White House and wrote notes for two of the President’s guards, detailing them to duty at the White House and, in effect, exempting them from being drafted into the Army. Both guards, John Parker and Joseph Sheldon, had been notified that they were being drafted, and both had asked Mrs. Lincoln for the note.
It was news of a happy sort that the State Department had ordered a grand illumination of all Federal buildings in the District of Columbia for this Tuesday night in celebration of the fall of the Confederate capital. All day, hundreds of workmen crawled along the façades of buildings carrying bunting. The Navy Department built a big model of a full-rigged ship and held it aloft in front of the building with piano wire. Over the front of the Treasury building, a gigantic ten-dollar bill could be seen. The main War Department building was hidden by hundreds of flags.
Stanton wanted his department to do a memorable thing and so, shortly after sunset, men were stationed in each window of the War Department’s eleven buildings, armed with matches. At twilight, an army band crashed into “The Star-Spangled Banner” and, in an instant, the buildings swam in a pool of yellow flame. At the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue, for the first time, the Capitol was lighted from basement to dome by gas, and, across the front, in letters two stories high, blazed the message:
THIS IS THE LORD’S DOING; IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.
The cheerful flicker of candles could be seen in almost every home on every street. Except at Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse. Here the shades were drawn and the owner wept.
The celebrants were on all streets in rollicking bands. In front of the Patent Office, a crowd saw the Vice President and someone yelled “Speech! Speech!” Andrew Johnson, red of face and angry, said that the leader of the rebellion was Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who had plunged the sword given to him by his country into his mother’s bosom. There were cries of “Hang him! Hang him!” and Johnson roared back: “Yes, hang him twenty times because treason is the greatest of the crimes!”
The glee of the people was reflected in the newspapers, which, in stories never wider than one column, made the news gladsome and official. The New York Herald was radiant in diminishing sizes of type:
GRANT
RICHMOND OURS
Weitzel Entered the Rebel Capital Yesterday Morning
MANY GUNS CAPTURED
Our Troops Received With Enthusiasm
An editorial, probably written by editor James Gordon Bennett, fed the dream of power politics to the people: “The end of our great Civil War is close at hand,” it said. “It is very easy to see that with the return of peace, this country will be the greatest in the world. Midway between Europe and Asia, geographically, we shall hold the balance of power politically, commercially and financially. As our resources are developed we shall produce the gold, silver, iron, petroleum, corn and cotton for the use of all mankind. We are the center of the world, and we shall move everything by our immense central force. In creating this nation, Providence created the acme of strength and civilization. It is our manifest destiny to lead and rule all other nations.”
On Wednesday, April 5, Mrs. Lincoln left Washington to rejoin her husband at the front. With her aboard the steamer were a party of friends. The war, within a few days, had taken on the aura of a sport, a hunt. Shipboard life was happily expectant. The steamer was barely past Indian Point when State Secretary William H. Seward, who had planned to join Lincoln to “sell” him on the idea of closing Southern ports to all but Northern traders, was out riding in his carriage. His matched blacks cut a corner too sharply and ran away. The front right wheel of the vehicle was smashed, and it screeched over the paving stones, acting as sled and brake at the same time. Seward pitched out and sustained a broken arm, a broken jaw, multiple contusions of face and head, and concussion of the brain. He was sixty-four.
A small thing occurred on April 6, a week and a day before the day. John Surratt, son of the boardinghouse widow, arrived in Montreal with dispatches from the Confederate Secretary of State, Mr. Judah Benjamin. For the next week, Surratt would be busy with Southern General Edwin G. Lee.
Now there was a period of quiet. From Thursday until Sunday, nothing of moment occurred except that General Robert E. Lee made a final, masterful attempt to haul his tired army southwestward to join General Johnston. Coming out of a small valley, his lead regiments saw horsemen on a ridge ahead.
General Philip Sheridan was calling check.
On Palm Sunday—April 9—the River Queen came upstream in the afternoon and docked with the President, Mrs. Lincoln, and a party of friends. Mr. Lincoln had heard about Seward’s accident and, begging leave of the others, hurried on alone to his Secretary of State.
At the “Old Clubhouse”—the Seward home—Lincoln stood hat in hand in the lower hallway and listened to Frederick Seward retell the story of the accident and the grievous injuries. The President heard that Surgeon General Barnes had pronounced that, now that Seward had survived the initial shock, he would live. Lincoln walked up the two flights of stairs, and went to the bedroom at the front of the building on the left side. He tiptoed into the darkened room and, standing a moment, saw the secretary.
Seward was on the side of the bed away from the door. His face, the small part of it that was visible, was unrecognizable with swelling and discoloration. Bandages and dressings covered the entire head except for the purple eyes and the cruelly ripped mouth. Without moving the twice-broken jaw, he whispered:
“You are back from Richmond?”
“Yes,” said the President, “and I think we are near the end, at last.”
Without invitation, the President did something rare and impulsive. He sprawled, on his stomach, across the empty side of the bed, and he told his secretary all that had happened in Virginia in the past week. Lincoln was still talking, a half hour later, when he studied Seward’s eyes and saw that he was sleeping. The President arose softly, in stages, and tiptoed from the room.
At 9 P.M. on that Palm Sunday night, Secretary of War Stanton was dozing on a downstairs couch in his home. An army messenger yanked the pull bell, found that it was broken, and drummed his fist on the front door. The secretary was awakened, and was given a dispatch:
Headquarters, Appomattox Ct. H. Va.
April 9, 1865 4:30 p.m.
Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington
General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this afternoon on terms proposed by myself. The accompanying additional correspondence will show the conditions fully.
U.S. Grant,
Lieut.-General
The iron man of the administration read it again. He was close to tears. While the messenger waited, he went to his desk, sat, and penned a reply:
Thanks be to Almighty God for the great victory with which He has this day crowned you and the gallant army under your command. The thanks of the Department and of the government and of the people of all the United States, their reverence and honor, have been deserved and will be rendered to you and the brave and gallant officers of your army for all time.
It was too late in the evening for a celebration. Mr. Stanton did the next best thing. He dressed and hurried to the White House with the most momentous news of his career. The President was in the Red Room with Mrs. Lincoln and some friends, and Lincoln was standing with his back to the coal grate, flicking his coattails as the dispatch was read. It was greeted with stunned silence. Now that it had happened, it was beyond the capacity of these people to comprehend. All faces seemed blank; the expressions were almost the same as though the news had been bad.
Around this time—it may have been this night—Stanton asked to see the President alone and handed a paper to him on which was written the War Secretary’s resignation. Lincoln read it through, took the paper between his hands and tore it slowly, dropping the fragments into a basket, and placed his big hands on Stanton’s shoulders.
“You cannot go,” he said. “Reconstruction is more difficult and dangerous than construction or destruction. You have been our main reliance. You must help us through the final act. The bag is filled. It must be tied and tied securely. Some knots slip. Yours do not. You understand the situation better than anyone else, and it is my wish and the country’s that you remain.”
Washington City, tired and hungover from almost a week of celebrating, awakened on the morning of Monday, April 10, to the crashing of cannon. The people listened, and wondered what further good news was possible. Lee, they learned, had surrendered to Grant. The celebrating started all over again.
A big battery was firing in Massachusetts Square, near Scott Circle and, between basso blasts, the treble tinkle of window glass could be heard. The morning newspapers, hawked up and down the streets, told of the dramatic meeting between the generals, how Grant had permitted the Southern officers to be paroled and to retain their sidearms, and of how he permitted the defeated army to keep its mules and horses for plowing old ground. The editorial pages speculated that, with Lee out of the way, Joseph Johnston commanded the only sizable force left to the Confederate states and, caught between Grant and Sherman, it must capitulate within a few days.
That afternoon, the flags in the capital drooped in rain. People huddled before the White House in damp expectancy. Now and then, a cry of “Speech!” went up. The President sent word out that, because of his recent trip, he was behind in his work and he advised the people to disperse. One of the things he did on this bleak Monday was to sit for Gardner, the photographer. While the pictures were being taken, Tad frolicked around the room, bouncing on and off his father’s lap, distracting Mr. Lincoln to the point that, for the first time, he smiled faintly in a picture.
Twice, the President went to the front windows of the White House, pulled back the curtain, and waved to the crowd below. He was waving when he saw Tad run out on the porch with a captured Rebel flag and race up and down in the dampness, trying to make the banner snap in the breeze. The crowd laughed when it saw the President of the United States, slightly harassed and embarrassed, come out to retrieve his son.
There was no way that the President could get back inside gracefully without saying something, and so, informally, he turned to the crowd, hanging on to Tad, and said that he supposed there would be some formal celebration, and that he would save his words for that occasion. There was scattered applause. The Navy Yard band was standing under the eaves and Lincoln asked the leader to please play a song for the people; “Dixie,” he thought, would be appropriate because it could now be considered the lawful property of the United States.
When he returned to his desk, Lincoln found a message from the Department of State advising him that the formal celebration of Lee’s surrender would be held on the evening of Tuesday, April 11 (tomorrow), and that there would be another grand illumination of the city with speeches, parades, etc.
The city was quiet on Tuesday. The people husbanded their strength for the evening and, shortly after 6 P.M. when the sun set, the festivities began. It was as spectacular as the earlier illumination and, when darkness had dusted the final alley, the Lee mansion in the hills across the river was aglow with lights, and freed slaves danced on the lawns before it, humming “The Year of Jubilee.” The city swam in light and the people were as festive as though there had been no celebration like this in years.
The weather was warm and misty. The crowd before the White House had changed personnel two or three times and was now much larger. The people filled Pennsylvania Avenue and trampled the shrubs of the grounds. Small sections of the people were coned by the gas lamps and an observant reporter wrote: “There is something terrible in their enthusiasm.”
A hanging mob had come to listen to a man of mercy.
The Marine band played marches. The crowd chanted “Lincoln! Lincoln!” The people undulated, those in back pressing forward, those in front holding the line. Two who pressed forward and managed to achieve a good position beside a tall tree were John Wilkes Booth and his friend Lewis Paine. Booth was impelled to hear the man he hated.
The people were becoming impatient when a French window was opened and the curtains pulled back on both sides. In silhouette, the President could be seen, waving both hands over his head. The cheers were frenzied. It was as though the people had not believed, until now, that this man could win. He waited gravely until he had near silence and then he unrolled a sheaf of foolscap and then rolled it in the opposite direction so that, as he held the pages, they would lie flat.
An arm appeared beside him, holding a lamp with a china shade. Mr. Lincoln adjusted his metal-rimmed spectacles and then began to read, so softly at first that the crowd heard but a whispering sound, then louder as he sensed the need for it until, after a few minutes, his voice was plain to all except those on the far side of the street.
They listened for exultation, and there was none. They strained for eloquence, and there was none. They waited patiently for vengeance, and there was none.
The President talked about Reconstruction. He talked soberly about postwar problems, as he saw them. He told them about the voting situation in Louisiana, where the lists were down from forty thousand to twelve thousand, arithmetic which only proved that Southerners would stay home from Yankee-sponsored elections. To cure this, Lincoln prescribed strong medicine.
“It is also unsatisfactory to some,” he said slowly, “that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man.” The crowd was quiet. “I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who served our cause as soldiers. . . .”
John Wilkes Booth sucked in a long breath. He tapped Lewis Paine on the arm. “That’s the last speech he will ever make,” the actor said. The two men edged out of the crowd.
Lincoln finished his talk and the applause was restrained and respectful. He bowed and stepped back from the window. The second speaker was Senator James Harlan of Iowa, now Secretary-designate of the Department of the Interior. One day in the future, his daughter would marry Robert Lincoln.
Mr. Harlan had excellent intentions, but he did not know that a good speaker never asks an explosive mob a question.
“What,” he said with arms outstretched, with silvery syllables echoing in the trees, “shall be done with these brethren of ours?”
As one, the crowd roared, “Hang’ em!”
The Senator smiled in the face of thunder and said that, after all, the President might exercise the power to pardon.
“Never!” the crowd screamed.
The Senator tried to educate and inform by suggesting that the great mass of Southern people were not guilty. He got silence. The Senator was not equal to further effort. He finished haltingly by proclaiming that he, for one, was willing to trust the future to the President of the United States. He left the window and the people gave him an enthusiastic hand. The Marine band struck up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and, in a soft drizzle, the crowd broke up.
No one had, on this night of victory, counted the dead. The United States would never officially count the Confederate dead, would never even keep records of the Confederate wounded. Still, the North paid more in blood and treasure than the South. About 110,000 men, largely young and fair, died in battle or died of wounds. About a quarter of a million more died of diseases attributable to war. The South’s losses, in battle and by disease, were about 133,000. Both sides paid in dead a little more than one and a half percent of the population of 31,000,000 people.
Inside the Executive Mansion, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln entertained a few friends. In the Red Room, he sat beside her on a sofa and listened to her birdy chatter. At ten, tea and cakes were served and, shortly afterward, the friends began to make their adieux. That is, all except Ward Hill Lamon, Senator Harlan and his daughter, and one or two others. The dominant emotion seemed to be relief rather than happiness. It was difficult to talk in an evening of no tensions.
To make conversation, Mrs. Lincoln said that, in the midst of joy, her husband’s face looked long and solemn. The President said that his mind had been heavy. The faces turned toward him.
“It seems strange,” he said slowly, as though feeling for the words, “how much there is in the Bible about dreams. There are, I think, some sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and four or five in the New in which dreams are mentioned; and there are many other passages scattered throughout the book which refer to visions. If we believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that, in the old days, God and his angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.”
Mr. Lincoln studied the suddenly solemn faces of his friends. He sat forward, elbows on knees, the veined hands describing small gestures.
“Nowadays,” he said apologetically, “dreams are regarded as very foolish, and are seldom told, except by old women and by young men and maidens in love.”
Mrs. Lincoln looked worried. “Why?” she said. “Do you believe in dreams?”
“I can’t say that I do,” he said, hedging against the nightmares she had suffered for many years, “but I had one the other night which has haunted me ever since. After it occurred, the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages, and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the old book, and everywhere my eyes fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts—supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, and so forth.”
Mrs. Lincoln clutched her bosom. “You frighten me,” she breathed. “What is the matter?”
At once the President tried to dismiss it. “I am afraid,” he said, “that I have done wrong to mention the subject at all. But somehow, the thing has gotten possession of me, and, like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down.”
He tried to talk of other things. Mrs. Lincoln would not be put off. She asked about the dream. Mr. Lincoln’s face settled again in melancholy and he agreed to tell about it.
“About ten days ago,* I retired very late. I had been waiting up for important dispatches. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs.
“There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?
“I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
“‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers.
“‘The President,’ was his answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’
“Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night, and, although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.”
Mr. Lincoln fell silent. The story was over. Ward Hill Lamon looked at the faces in the room. No one spoke. Mrs. Lincoln looked frightened.
“That is horrid,” she said. “I wish you had not told it. I am glad I don’t believe in dreams, or I should be in terror from this time forth.”
The President smiled. “It was only a dream, Mother. Let us say no more about it, and try to forget it.”
Senator Harlan arose to say good night. Secretary of the Interior Usher elected to stay a moment longer. So did Ward Hill Lamon. The President had asked Lamon, as a favor, to go to Richmond as his personal representative, and to see that certain anticipated complications at a state convention were smoothed. “Hill” had already agreed to go. Now, when the others had departed, and Mrs. Lincoln had said her good nights, Usher and Lamon tried to persuade the President not to go out anymore after nightfall. Ward Hill Lamon practically begged the President not to go out until he returned from Richmond.
“Usher,” Mr. Lincoln said banteringly, “this boy is a monomaniac on the subject of my safety. I can hear him, or hear of his being around, at all times of the night, to prevent somebody from murdering me. He thinks I shall be killed, and we think he is going crazy.” He grasped Hill’s shoulders in his big hands and shook gently. “What does anybody want to assassinate me for? If anyone wants to do so, he can do it any day or night, if he is ready to give his life for mine. It is nonsense.”
The Secretary of the Interior shook his head in disagreement. “Mr. Lincoln,” he said, “it is well to listen and give heed to Lamon. He is thrown among people that give him opportunities to know more about such matters than we can know.”
Lamon brought up the subject of the dream, and the President chided him, saying: “Don’t you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me but some other fellow that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else.” Mr. Lincoln was trying hard to laugh. His friends stared at him. “And that reminds me,” he said, “of an old farmer in Illinois whose family was made sick by eating greens. Some poisonous herb had got into the mess, and members of the family were in danger of dying. There was a half-witted boy in the family called Jake, and always afterward when they had greens the old man would say: ‘Now, afore we risk these greens, let’s try them on Jake. If he stands them, we’re all right.’
“Just so with me. As long as this imaginary assassin continues to exercise himself on others, I can stand it.” The President laughed alone. “Well,” he said sobering and pulling his watch, “let it go. I think the Lord in His own good time and way will work this out all right. God knows what is best.”
Lamon again asked for a promise that the President would not go out after dark while the marshal was in Richmond. Usher shook hands with his old friend and turned to leave.
“Well,” said Lincoln, “I promise to do the best I can toward it. Good-by. God bless you, Hill.”*
On the subject of dreams, the guard Crook later recalled his midnight patrols outside the President’s bedroom. In the stillness, with only the squeak of floorboards to punctuate his pacing, Crook often heard Lincoln moan in his sleep. “I would stand there and listen,” the guard said, “until a sort of panic stole over me. At last I would walk softly away, feeling as if I had been listening at a keyhole.”
On the day before Mr. Lincoln’s appointment with destiny, General and Mrs. Grant arrived in Washington. This was on Thursday, April 13. The hero of the war wanted to go up to Burlington, New Jersey, to see his two children and, with Lee out of the way, Grant felt that Sherman and Meade could handle Joe Johnston. He stopped off in Washington only because Stanton wanted him to advise how to cut army personnel and to cancel certain army contracts. The general figured that he could do this chore in a day—or two at most.
The Grants were consciously unostentatious. They did not like the theater or parades or public appearances, and did not care much for dining out. At Appomattox Courthouse, Ulysses S. Grant expressly ordered that there be no victory celebration by the Army of the Potomac. Now this morning, he arrived at the Willard Hotel so quietly that the management was flustered. At the desk, he stood short and stocky and dusty, gray beard a little bit stained with brown, and explained that he wanted a sitting room and a bedroom for overnight. If he needed the suite for an extra night, he would let the management know. With the Grants were Colonel Horace Porter, the general’s aide, and two sergeants who carried luggage.
In the rooms, Mrs. Grant unpacked and the general said that he and Colonel Porter would walk around the corner to the War Department and do some work. When the two stepped out on Pennsylvania Avenue, Grant was recognized and, in a trice, was surrounded by a hero-worshipping crowd. The people cheered. Porter, dismayed, tried to clear a passage for his chief. He found that he was helpless. Metropolitan policemen rescued the two officers and persuaded them to accept a carriage and a cavalry escort for the three-block trip.
At the War Department, the general was given a desk and, after a round of handshaking and congratulations, began the work of cutting the expenses of a wartime army. He recommended that the draft be stopped at once; he marked down the numbers of certain divisions and brigades which could be mustered out of service without impairing the power of the army to enforce the peace; he labored over contracts for shovels and ambulances and ammunition and beds and blankets and bullets which, in his estimation, would not be needed.
In the afternoon, Grant received an invitation from Mrs. Lincoln to take a drive around the city in the evening with her and her husband. The general did not want to go. He knew little about the social amenities—barely enough to make him fretful about his rights in such matters—and he went into Stanton’s office and told him about it. Stanton said that the general might refuse on the grounds of impending work. Grant followed this advice, although he might have wondered why his wife was not invited.
In the late afternoon, Stanton was leaving the War Department when he stopped in to say good night and to remind the general that he and his wife were expected at an informal at-home with the Stantons. Grant said that he wanted to finish a few more items on his list of recommendations, and that he and his wife would be at the Stanton home later. He told the Secretary of War that, while he had successfully turned down the invitation for an evening drive with the Lincolns, he now had a second one—this from the President. Lincoln wanted him to attend the theater tomorrow night.
Stanton was irritated. In the presence of telegrapher Bates, he urged Grant not to attend. He said that he and other Cabinet members had warned Lincoln about these public appearances many times, and that he, Stanton, had made it a rule to turn down all such invitations. Washington City, the Secretary of War said, was “Secesh” to the core, a place of wild-eyed plots and explosive Southern temperament. Stanton urged the general to refuse the invitation and asked him to use his good offices to keep Lincoln from attending the theater.
What happened at this hour—6 P.M.—is not altogether clear, but it is important. The invitation to take the evening drive probably arrived from Mrs. Lincoln shortly after lunch-time. After it was declined (the White House record shows that Colonel Horace Porter visited the President’s office in mid-afternoon), it seems credible that Mrs. Lincoln pressed upon her husband the public adulation being accorded to the general, and asked him to invite Grant to the theater as a means of giving the people a chance to look at the hero of the hour. The President told several friends on this day and again on Friday that he had no inclination to go to the theater himself, but felt that the public was entitled to see the general.
Although there have been explanations of this matter, and Grant added to them years later, the weight of evidence would indicate that the general, courageous in battle, lacked the courage to decline the second invitation. At one point in the conversation with the Secretary of War, the general said that “it was embarrassing to accept” the invitation to the theater. The words “it was embarrassing to accept” sound as though he had already accepted.
Still, Grant did not want to go. And neither did Lincoln.
That night, the Grants were entertained by the Stantons and two soldiers stood guard outside the house opposite Franklin Square. Some strollers asked who was inside and the soldiers, with pride, said General Ulysses S. Grant. A crowd collected and set up a clamor for a speech. The Secretary of War came out, and uttered some appropriate words from the steps. The general waved to the crowd and said nothing.
The social broke up early because both men had work to do. Grant said that he wanted to finish his task tomorrow, and be off for Burlington. Stanton said that he wanted to continue work tonight on a paper that the President had asked him to draw up in time for tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting.
The secretary worked very late that night. The President retired early.