Young Mr. Harry Ford stopped next door at Ferguson’s Restaurant for lunch. He saw big, ham-handed James P. Ferguson behind the cigar counter and he said: “Your favorite, General Grant, is going to be in the theater tonight. If you want to see him, you had better go get a seat.”
Ferguson thanked him, asked a question or two, took off his white apron and ran next door to get a seat. In fact, he wanted two. There was a little girl who lived next door to him, and she showered a shy adoration on big Jim, and now, with her mother’s permission, Ferguson would take her with him.
This man was sensitive to history and to historical personages. He had seen Mr. Lincoln many times, but he would still run out of his restaurant to watch him pass by in a carriage. However, he had never seen the Little Giant and tonight would be his opportunity. Mr. Maddox was in the box office and he tried to sell Ferguson two good seats downstairs, but the restaurateur told him that he wasn’t going to see Our American Cousin; in fact, he wouldn’t care if he never saw it. What he wanted to know was, will the President use the usual boxes—7 and 8? Maddox said he would. Then, said Ferguson, I want two front-row seats on the left-hand side of the dress circle, because that’s the only place in the house with a view into the Presidential Box.
He got them.
In President Lincoln’s office, the Cabinet meeting continued. It had passed its second hour, and the President was pleased to note that, except for minor differences of opinion his Cabinet seemed to be agreed that, if the South were helped to get on its economic feet, the effect would be to enhance the welfare of the North. No one, including Lincoln, desired to spoon-feed the South and, by the same token, no one wanted to heap additional punishment on the defeated states. Stanton was for a sterner peace than the President, but the difference between the men was not beyond bridging.
In and out of Congress and the newspapers there were varying shades of public opinion about this matter, ranging all the way from those who desired to re-embrace the South and start anew, to the bitterness of Senator Ben Wade, who hoped that the Negroes of the South would be goaded to insurrection, feeling that, “if they could contrive to slay one half of their oppressors, the other half would hold them in the highest respect and no doubt treat them with justice.”
Horace Greeley, an editorial flirt, had been Lincoln’s friend and was now his enemy. A year ago, he had parted politically from Lincoln when, in the New York Tribune, he had begged for peace at almost any price. Now he opposed Lincoln politically and personally.
After lunch, in New York, he went to the office of his managing editor, Sidney Howard Gray, and handed to him a sheaf of papers written in longhand. It was an editorial for tomorrow’s paper and would be off the composing room floor at 2 A.M. Gray, accustomed to Greeley’s attacks on the President, read it after the boss left and found it to be so “brutal, bitter, sarcastic and personal” that, though he had it set in type, he hid the galley.
The President was aware, on this day and at this meeting, that, in America, he was now a minority political leader. The entire South, temporarily disenfranchised, opposed him. The Democratic party of the North opposed him. The radicals in his own Republican party opposed him. Most of the influential newspapers opposed him. Even the mild Senator Morrill of Maine found it “truly most difficult to speak of the elements of Lincoln’s character without offending public sense.” He was scorned, maligned, spat upon as a person lacking decision, character, intelligence and honor. He was an ape, a buffoon, a rascal of dirty mind and dirty jokes. He was held in low esteem by politicians and molders of public opinion. The only persons who loved him were the people, and they would not fully realize it until tomorrow.
To all of which Mr. Lincoln said: “As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer. . . .”
That is why, at this meeting, he was determined to block out the form of the peace no matter how long he had to hold the Cabinet together. He did not expect it to be formalized by signed documents; he wanted basic agreements. If that could be achieved, and the machinery to implement it were set in motion, then he would consider that what he had started out to achieve in 1861 had been, in the main, realized.
He noted with satisfaction that when Secretary of the Navy Welles offered his views about the course to be followed in Virginia, Secretaries Stanton and Dennison agreed, and the others said nothing in opposition. Thus, even among men who distrusted each other, Lincoln had harmony on this one day.
Frederick Seward saw “visible relief and content” on the face of the President and said that, in the regular order of business, none could refrain from chatting about “the great news” of the war’s sudden end. Like boys who had recovered from an interminable illness, they tried to stick to their schoolwork, but they could not refrain from looking out the window at the sunshine and the lush grass and the dizzying atmosphere of feeling good.
The President asked General Grant to tell the Cabinet the details of General Lee’s surrender, and Grant did, detracting from his own role and saying nothing to lessen the figure of Lee. When he had finished, Mr. Lincoln spoke.
“What terms did you make for the common soldiers?”
Grant fingered his beard and said: “I told them to go back to their homes and families, and they would not be molested, if they did nothing more.”
In front of Kirkwood House, Vice President Johnson, hands thrust in pockets, scowled at the unnatural quiet of the city and walked back into the hotel. He went to his rooms, closed the door, and sat reading.
A short time later, George Atzerodt came in with a bundle and walked up the curving staircase to his room. If he made any noise in his alcoholic anxiety, it is not recorded that the Vice President, in a room almost directly below, made any complaint. He deposited huge pistols under the pillow on his bed and a knife under the sheet. He gave passing glances at the coat and materials left by Herold, and then he went back downstairs, where he asked the room clerk to point out the Vice President’s room, and asked where Johnson was right now.
The room was pointed out to him, and he was told that the Vice President had just come in. George Atzerodt’s reaction was to straighten up in shocked surprise, and to step into the bar. He was there only a short time when he paid for his drinks and walked out.
A few minutes later, the Vice President, having scanned a newspaper, glanced at his timepiece and got up and put his coat on and left. He had an appointment, an after-lunch appointment, with the President. Neither of them had been sure how long the Cabinet meeting would take, so Lincoln had suggested that Johnson “drop over” early in the afternoon.
Johnson walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, across Fifteenth at the Treasury Building, and around the corner to the White House. At the gate, two soldier guards recognized him and snapped to attention. He nodded without smiling and walked on in. At the front door, he was met by a colored doorman, a soldier with carbine and bayonet, and the President’s personal guard, Crook.
They held the door for him and he walked inside, down the corridor and up the staircase until he reached the big doors of the President’s office. The soldier at that door said that he was sorry, but that the Cabinet meeting was still going on, and the President had not had his lunch. Mr. Johnson said that he would stroll around until the President was ready.