Now he belongs to the Ages.
—Edwin Stanton, April 15, 1865
It had been four painful, catastrophic years for America. Both sides had thought the war would be over quickly, but it had dragged on so long that the numbers reached staggering, unimaginable levels. More than ten thousand battles had been fought in sixteen states, plus the New Mexico and Indian territories. Of the three million men who took up arms against each other, more than six hundred thousand had died; two-thirds of those deaths were by disease. Many thousands of soldiers, North and South, went home without a leg or an arm, a face, testicles, eyes, or feet. Others went home with permanently damaged brains or nervous systems. More than 150 prisons were established to house prisoners of war; all were quickly filled to capacity, and more than fifty thousand men died in them from disease, exposure, and malnutrition. Conditions in the prisons on both sides were disgraceful, morally outrageous. Half-crazed prisoners frequently beat or killed one another while fighting for near-starvation food rations. On the brighter side, some four million African American slaves had been set free, and when finally given the chance 185,000 fought bravely for the Union that they hoped might somehow fulfill its promises of liberty and justice.
The grim figure of six hundred thousand for those who died in the Civil War is only slightly below the combined American fatalities in the two world wars. These terrible losses came at a time when the U.S. population was much smaller than it was during the world wars. Nearly every family across the land, North and South, lost a son, a husband, a brother, a cousin, an uncle, or a friend or neighbor. Of course, this war set an all-time record for American fatalities because the people who died on both sides were all Americans.
Wheatfields and cornfields became killing grounds. Churches became hospitals, homes became military headquarters. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, American waterways were streaked with blood. Armies pursued each other, seeking to destroy not only enemy soldiers but transportation lines, factories, towns, and farms. The federal government looked to defeat the Confederate army in the field and to break the will of the Southern people. In response, the rebels struggled so desperately to survive that their government forced nearly every available male to fight. Both sides fought savagely, heroically, relentlessly. But the exuberant fanfare of 1861, manifested in parades and celebrations and patriotic fever—the sense of adventure that so many thousands of young men felt as they went off to war—had been replaced by a grim weariness and sober realization of the horrors that had been inflicted. Both sides suffered from a shattered spirit. “The immense slaughter of our brave men chills and sickens us all,” said Gideon Welles.1 By 1865 Robert E. Lee realized that the longer the war went on, the less chance the Confederates had of winning it. Lincoln and Grant understood this inescapable fact as well.
The war had taken a heavy personal toll on Lincoln. Four years of bloodshed and destruction haunted and drained him. He slept and ate poorly. His clothes hung comically on his gaunt frame. “I am very unwell,” Lincoln said. “My feet and hands are always cold—I suppose I should be in bed.”2 Orville Browning, Lincoln’s friend and critic from Illinois, visited him in February and found him “more depressed than I have seen him since he became President.”3 Photographs of the fifty-six-year-old Lincoln show him sad-eyed and careworn with the unmistakable look of exhaustion. Even his famed sense of humor did not surface as often; “the boisterous laughter became less frequent year by year,” said his secretary John Hay.4“I am a tired man,” Lincoln said. “Sometimes I think I am the tiredest man on earth.”5
Once during the war when a delegation of women were waiting to see the president at the White House they heard him laughing. When they were admitted to his office, the leader of the delegation told Lincoln that they were dismayed to hear the president laughing while American boys were dying on the battlefield. Lincoln is reported to have replied that if it were not for occasional laughter to break his sadness over the war his heart would break.
Still, remarkably, Lincoln willed himself to carry on. As weakened as he was physically, his spirit, buoyed by an inner strength, remained strong. Since his election in 1860 he had seemingly experienced a deepening of his faith. The death of his favorite son, Willie, in 1862 devastated him and Mary, but he took to heart the advice of a Presbyterian minister who told him to turn to God with confidence, for “our sorrows will be sanctified and made a blessing to our souls, and by and by we shall have occasion to say with blended gratitude and rejoicing, ‘It is good for us that we have been afflicted.’ ” He came to acknowledge, and even depend upon, a higher power; indeed, it seemed that the connection between Lincoln and the Almighty enabled him to take on the great challenges he faced as president. He saw himself as an instrument of God’s will; he had been charged with a “vast” and “sacred” trust, the responsibilities from which he “had no moral right to shrink.” Still, Lincoln did not expect that God would show him the way. “These are not . . . the days of miracles,” he said. “I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right.” He had to trust his own judgment as well as God’s. “In the present civil war,” he wrote, “it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party. . . . He could give the final victory to either side any day—yet the contest proceeds.”6
For all his trials, Lincoln had become a masterful president. His political skills and powers of persuasion were unmatched. His self-confidence was strong, and he demonstrated great faith in his abilities and in the worthiness of his cause. The depth of his insight, and his ability to judge and inspire men, had transformed him into an extraordinary leader. Lincoln’s growth was unexpected, certainly, to most who knew him. But he had guided—and was guiding—the nation through unprecedented times, and he had a vision for the future.
Lincoln summoned all his skills as he prepared for his second Inauguration Day. Saturday, March 4, 1865, broke cold and wet in Washington. Despite the weather a large crowd assembled in front of the East Portico of the Capitol. Just as Lincoln moved to the lectern the sun emerged from the clouds, bathing the speaking stand in glorious light. He hesitated a few moments, taking in the sustained applause, and then spoke in his high, clear voice. Memorable and magnificent, the speech was notable for both its content and its literary style. Lincoln did not dwell on the achievements of his presidency, did not even mention the Emancipation Proclamation. He gave no hint that Union forces were on the road to certain victory. Instead, he sought to explain the origin of the conflict and examine its significance. He spoke of Providence, and the idea of exact retribution: God might punish the nation for the sin of slavery, he believed, the North for allowing the evil institution to exist, and the South for the institution itself. Most famously, Lincoln spoke of the need for mutual forgiveness and the promise of a reunited America.
Four years earlier, Lincoln said, “all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war.” Both sides “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.” One-eighth of the American population, Lincoln noted, were slaves, “who constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.”
Many on both North and South claimed that God was on their side, continued Lincoln. “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God. And each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.” Those purposes would surely be revealed in the months to come, Lincoln cautioned:
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
Lincoln concluded with the immortal peroration of forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing: “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 lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”7
At just 703 words, Lincoln’s second inaugural address was the shortest in American history. It was met with mixed reviews, but Lincoln was not nearly as concerned with press reaction as he once had been. He was more pleased when Frederick Douglass, in attendance at a White House reception that evening, told him the speech was a “sacred effort.”8 Lincoln believed that the speech might “wear as well—perhaps better than—any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told.”9
Another truth was that the end of the war was in sight. General Sherman’s mighty and relentless march continued through the winter. He had reached Savannah at Christmas, and then turned his destructive machine north into South Carolina. “The devil himself couldn’t restrain my men,” said Sherman. “I almost tremble at her [the South’s] fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems to be in store for her.”10 Charleston fell in mid-February, and Sherman set his sights on the rear of Lee’s faltering Army of Virginia.
Since June 1864, Lee had been rendered immobile at Petersburg, just a few miles south of the capital city of Richmond. The junction point of five railroads, Petersburg was the Confederacy’s essential supply center, and Grant knew that if he could take it, he could take Richmond itself. The federals matched rebel fortifications with trench lines that extended for thirty miles along its southern and eastern perimeters. For ten months Grant had launched a series of assaults on the city but had been met with stubborn, if ever-weakening, resistance on all fronts. Eventually, Grant believed, Lee’s line of defense would be stretched so thin that it would break.
Grant invited the Lincolns to Union headquarters at City Point, Virginia, just ten miles northeast of Petersburg. On March 23, Lincoln and Mary, her maid, twelve-year-old Tad, and two guards boarded the River Queen and sailed down the Potomac, while Edwin Stanton, concerned for Lincoln’s safety, remained anxiously in Washington. For the first time in weeks Lincoln was able to relax, and he thoroughly enjoyed the trip, exploring the ship, talking with the crew, and taking in the scenery. Mary later recalled that the pleasant river excursion, combined with Lincoln’s hope that “the war was near its close,” put him in a cheerful mood. “He was almost boyish, in his mirth & reminded me, of his original nature, what I had always remembered of him, in our own home—free from care, surrounded by those he loved so well.”11 Captain Robert Lincoln—until recently a student at Harvard, and now, upon his father’s special request, a member of Grant’s staff—escorted General and Mrs. Grant to greet the Lincolns when the River Queen docked at City Point on the evening of March 24. While the women chatted, Grant reassured his president that the war was indeed winding down.
The next morning, however, brought surprising news. Nearly half of Lee’s army, under General John Gordon, had broken away from the Petersburg lines and attacked Fort Stedman, just eight miles away. It appeared that Lee’s plan was to move his army to North Carolina and join forces with Joe Johnston; together, perhaps, Lee and Johnston could block Sherman from joining Grant, and the rebel war effort might survive. But Grant’s forces under George Meade and John Parke moved quickly to check Gordon, inflicting nearly three thousand casualties on the Confederate army.
Lincoln was eager to view the battlefield and telegraphed Stanton that he was “here within five miles of this morning’s action.” A special train was organized, and Lincoln rode over military rail to Stedman and General Meade’s headquarters. Lincoln toured the field on horseback, seeing fresh evidence of the most recent carnage: the ground covered with dead and wounded men of both sides, surgeons attending to soldiers in the field while ambulances carried others away to hospitals, and burial parties already at work. Lincoln remarked “upon the sad and unhappy condition” of long lines of Confederate prisoners, most of whom appeared undernourished and resigned to defeat. Later he said that “he had seen enough of the horrors of war, and that he hoped this would be the beginning of the end, and that there would be no more bloodshed or ruin of homes.”12 His train returned slowly to City Point, and Lincoln, depressed over what he had seen, canceled his plans for dinner with Grant, preferring to spend time alone with Mary.
Lincoln remained at City Point for the next several days, conferring with commanders, discussing strategy, and studying the constant stream of telegraph dispatches. He spent a considerable amount of time at the local hospital, visiting thousands of wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. One observer, an employee with the United States Sanitary Commission, said that when talking to rebels “he was just as kind, his handshakings just as hearty, his interest just as real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among our own soldiers.”13 On March 26 he reviewed General Ord’s division at Malvern Hill. Mary arrived late, and she saw Mrs. Ord riding close to Lincoln, a position of honor that she believed should have been reserved for herself. She exploded in anger, calling Mrs. Ord “vile names,” much to the embarrassment of everyone present. Her angry mood continued that evening at dinner, despite Lincoln’s gentle reassurances that no slight had been intended, and she finally retreated to her stateroom, where she remained secluded for several days. Much to Lincoln’s relief, Mary made plans to return to Washington on April 1.
Fresh from a victory over Johnston at Bentonville, North Carolina, and with his army resupplying at Goldsboro, General Sherman arrived at City Point to confer with Lincoln and Grant. The three men, along with Admiral David Dixon Porter, met on board the River Queen and entered into “a lively conversation” about the military situation and how best to corner Lee and bring about the end of the conflict. Both generals agreed that Lee’s only option, short of releasing his men to fight as guerrillas, was to fall back in desperation to the Carolinas. Lee had been trapped before, only to outmaneuver his opponent and escape. It must not be allowed to happen again. Grant was cautiously confident that he had Lee where he wanted him; still, he later wrote, “I was afraid every morning that I would wake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was left but his picket line.”14
No matter what Lee attempted, the generals agreed that there would be at least “one more desperate and bloody battle.” Wringing his hands, Lincoln asked, “Must more blood be shed? Cannot this bloody battle be avoided?” When he was told that was not likely, Lincoln exclaimed, “My God, my God! Can’t you spare more effusions of blood? We have had so much of it!”15
Lincoln wanted victory won without retribution. He wanted to “defeat the opposing armies, and to get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops. Let them have their horses to plow with, and, if you like, their guns to shoot crows with. I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.” Again he emphasized that once the “deluded men of the rebel armies” were allowed to surrender and return to their homes, “they won’t take up arms again.”16
And what of Jefferson Davis, the man so many Northerners wanted to see imprisoned or hanged? Lincoln answered, as he often did, with a humorous story:
A man once had taken the total-abstinence pledge. When visiting a friend, he was invited to take a drink, but declined, on the score of his pledge; when the [friend] suggested lemonade, [the man] accepted. When preparing the lemonade, the friend pointed to the brandy-bottle, and said the lemonade would be more palatable if he were to pour in a little brandy; when his guest said, if he could do so “unbeknown” to him, he would not object.
Sherman took the point of the story immediately. Lincoln “would not object” if Davis and his political cohorts were to “escape the country unbeknown to him.”17
It seemed to Admiral Porter that Lincoln “wanted peace on almost any terms.”18 But Porter was mistaken. Lincoln would not agree to peace without assurances of Union, emancipation, and (at least limited) equality. When advised that Lee had made recent overtures to Grant, requesting an “interchange of views” on “the subjects of controversy between the belligerents,” Lincoln stated firmly that peace negotiations were to be left to him. “Such questions,” Lincoln said, “the President holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions.”19
This round of conferences concluded, Sherman and Grant prepared to return to their commands for the expected final assaults. Both generals were impressed with Lincoln’s style and convictions. Sherman later wrote of Lincoln’s “kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, and his absolute faith in the courage, manliness, and integrity of the armies in the field.” Later, when Grant left, Lincoln accompanied him to the railroad station, where “his eyes looked more serious than at any other time since he had visited headquarters; the lines in his face seemed deeper, and the rings under his eyes were a darker hue.” As the train pulled away Lincoln saluted the officers and called out, “his voice broken by an emotion he could ill conceal, ‘Good-by gentlemen, God bless you all!’ ”20
Still Lincoln did not return to Washington. Instead, he waited at City Point for news of his army’s progress. On March 30, Lee sent Major General George Pickett’s division to a crossroads called Five Forks, southwest of Petersburg. Pickett commanded some five thousand men—a sizable number, although still a shadow of those who had been slaughtered at Gettysburg—and was now instructed to hold the area at all cost, lest Grant gain control of the Southside Railroad line. Grant sent General Sheridan to meet the rebels in torrential rain. “I am ready to strike,” Sheridan brashly stated, “and go to smashing things!” With the assistance of Brigadier Generals Joshua Chamberlain and George Custer, Sheridan was true to his word, furiously attacking Pickett’s forces, inflicting thousands of casualties, and taking scores of prisoners. The crushing defeat of Pickett’s division at Five Forks—the historian Bruce Catton called it “the great, decisive victory of the whole Civil War”—came to be known as “the Waterloo of the Confederacy.”21
Now, on Sunday, April 2, the final assault on Petersburg began. Grant’s army, which numbered nearly a hundred thousand men, twice the size of Lee’s forces, had been waiting for this moment for many months. Both armies fought savagely, but Lee’s lines could not withstand the series of coordinated direct assaults. Within hours the centers of the Confederate lines, nicknamed Fort Hell and Fort Damnation, had fallen. As Union flags were unfurled at the siege works, Lee prepared to abandon the city, and that night he took what was left of his forces and looked to escape to the west, along the Appomattox River. Throughout the day, from the deck of the River Queen, Lincoln watched the flash of cannon fire from Petersburg.
In Richmond, Jefferson Davis was attending church services when he received Lee’s message advising him to evacuate the city. He did so immediately, taking his cabinet westward to Danville, Virginia, and then to Greensboro, North Carolina, on the only available railroad line. Confederate troops fled as well, destroying bridges and burning armories and warehouses as they left. Union soldiers, including some companies of African Americans, quickly stormed in and worked feverishly to put out the fires, but the blazes all but consumed the city. When word of Richmond’s fall reached Washington, thousands of people ran into the streets, “talking, laughing, hurrahing, and shouting in the fullness of their joy.”22 Celebratory crowds gathered in front of the War Department and called for Stanton to speak; he was so happy that his voice trembled and his body shook. He expressed his gratitude to “an Almighty God” and “to the President,” and then led the throng in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”23 Newspapers rushed to print special editions of the news, and that night the capital was alive with fireworks, brass bands, and cannon salutes.
Lincoln found his own way to celebrate. On Tuesday, April 4, he disregarded Stanton’s cautionary advice—“I will take care of myself,” he said—and went to Richmond to see the former capital city of the Confederacy. Walking two miles from the pier to the center of the smoldering city, Lincoln was met by hundreds of jubilant African Americans as sullen white residents drew their curtains and remained indoors. “From the colored population of Richmond,” said a Union officer who accompanied the president, “we received such a reception as could only come from a people who were returning thanks for the deliverance of their race.” Crowds of black men, women, and children surrounded him, shouting “Bless the Lord, Father Abraham’s come.”24 Some knelt to Lincoln, but he would have none of it. “Don’t kneel to me,” he said. “You must kneel to God only and thank Him for your freedom.”25 Lincoln made his way to the Confederate White House and sat in Jefferson Davis’s chair. Major General Godfrey Weitzel, who now made his headquarters in the house, asked Lincoln how best to handle the people of Richmond.“If I were in your place, I’d let’em up easy, let’em up easy,” Lincoln said.26
Phil Sheridan had no intention of allowing Lee to escape. He caught up with the rear of Lee’s army at Saylor’s Creek, fifty miles west of Petersburg. Combining with Major General Horatio Wright, Sheridan met some initial resistance from Major Robert Stiles’s forces, but within a day the Union’s overwhelming numbers resulted in the surrender of eight thousand rebels, or nearly one-fourth of Lee’s army. Sheridan telegraphed Grant, “If the thing is pressed, I think Lee will surrender.” Lincoln read the forwarded message and replied, “Let the thing be pressed.”27
Lee desperately needed provisions for his starving, exhausted soldiers. He pushed on, hoping to find supplies at the Appomattox station of the Southside Railroad. But Sheridan’s hard-riding cavalry arrived first, took control of the station, and skirmished briefly with the dejected Confederates. Surrender was Lee’s only realistic option. Though he said he would “rather die a thousand deaths,” Lee agreed to meet Grant at the village of Appomattox Court House on Sunday, April 9. Lee was relieved and grateful when Grant offered generous terms: all soldiers, including officers, could return to their homes “not to be disturbed by the United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”28 Though they had to turn in their arms and military equipment, the rebels could keep their horses and could help themselves to twenty-five thousand Union rations. In contrast to four years of bitter, vicious fighting, the surrender was marked by civility and honor. In effect, the war was finally over; although some Confederate forces continued to fight, within two months all hostilities had ceased.
At the same time as Lee and Grant met at Appomattox, Lincoln was on board the River Queen, heading up the Potomac toward Washington. News of the surrender arrived around 10 P.M., and the next day the entire city turned out in celebration. Gideon Welles wrote, “The nation seems delirious with joy. Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering—all, all jubilant.”29 The Capitol dome was brilliantly lit, and across the river, at the former home of Robert E. Lee, thousands of freedmen gathered to sing “The Year of Jubilee.”30 Appearing briefly at a White House window, Lincoln asked that the band play “Dixie.”
During the evening of Tuesday, April 11, Lincoln made his final public address to a crowd gathered on the White House lawn. While many expected a speech of triumph and celebration, Lincoln spoke instead of reconstruction, “restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union.” He outlined a flexible program, with different approaches for the different states (some of which had been under federal control for two years), and, to appease the radicals, the role Congress might play. He asked Edwin Stanton to draft a plan for military governments in states where anti-Union fervor still ran high. Lincoln also endorsed, for the first time, limited black suffrage. In the crowd, a handsome young actor and Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth heard those words and said to an associate, “That means nigger citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make. By God, I’ll put him through.”31
• • •
Lincoln had been dealing with death for most of his life. He lost his mother and sister when he was still a boy. His first love, Ann Rutledge, died when she was just twenty-two. Two of his four sons, Eddie and Willie, died at early ages. And, of course, hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives in the war. Lincoln became emotionally reserved. “If he had griefs,” said a friend, “he never spoke of them in general conversation.”32 He was fatalistic about his own death. In 1863 he told the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, “I shan’t last long after the war is over.” He regularly received death threats, which he shrugged off. Sometimes Lincoln dreamed of death. Soon after Appomattox he told Mary that he dreamed the president had been assassinated.
The last full day of Lincoln’s life was Good Friday, April 14, 1865. He was happier that day than he had been in a long time. “His whole appearance, poise, and bearing had marvelously changed,” remembered Senator Harlan. “He seemed the very personification of supreme satisfaction. His conversation was, of course, correspondingly exhilarating.”33 Mary joined him for an afternoon carriage ride, and she later noted that he seemed “cheerful—almost joyous.” He had a good reason to be in such good spirits, he told her. “I consider this day, the war has come to a close. We must both be more cheerful in the future.” They spoke of someday traveling to Europe, and to California, and of returning home to Illinois.
That evening the Lincolns went to Ford’s Theatre, on Tenth Street just six blocks from the White House, to see a farce called Our American Cousin. Lincoln loved the theater—Shakespearean comedies and tragedies were his favorites—and had seen more than a hundred performances during his tenure as president. General and Mrs. Grant, among others, turned down the Lincolns’ invitation to attend the play, but they found a willing couple in Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, the daughter of a New York senator. The party arrived at the theater at about 8:30, and as they made their way to the presidential box, the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief” while the audience stood.
The Lincolns thoroughly enjoyed the play, and each other’s company. Mary nestled against her husband and they held hands, laughing and teasing. “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging onto you so?” Mary whispered. Smiling, Lincoln told her, “She won’t think anything about it.” Meanwhile, John Wilkes Booth steadied his nerves with brandy at a tavern next door and kept his eyes on the clock.
Shortly after ten o’clock, while the play was in its third act, Booth entered the front of the theater. He ascended the stairs to the second level, where several members of the audience noticed him walk down the aisle, behind the dress circle, to the presidential box. He showed his calling card and was allowed inside. A few moments later, as the audience laughed at a humorous line, Booth pointed his derringer at the back of Lincoln’s head and fired. Fighting off Major Rathbone’s attempts to stop him, Booth jumped to the stage some twelve feet below and shouted the state motto of Virginia, Sic semper tyrannis—“Thus always to tyrants.” Mary screamed in horror, again and again, as the entire theater, at once confused, terrified, and outraged, erupted in pandemonium. His ankle broken from the fall, Booth scurried off the stage and out the back exit to an alley where his horse waited, and within moments he was galloping away into the foggy Washington night.
A doctor in attendance examined the unconscious Lincoln and probed the wound, finding the bullet hole and surmising that the ball was lodged behind his right eye. His body was carried across the street to the home of William Petersen and placed on a bed in a small room at the rear of the first floor. Other physicians now arrived on the scene, including Lincoln’s family doctor and the surgeon general of the United States; all agreed that the wound was fatal and that the president had but a few hours to live.
Edwin Stanton arrived and immediately took charge, interviewing witnesses and conducting a preliminary investigation. He soon learned that William Seward, resting at his home that evening after a serious carriage accident, had been attacked by an accomplice of Booth’s named Lewis Powell. Stanton acted quickly, issuing warrants of arrest and ordering that all bridges and roads leading out of the capital be closed. By dawn a massive manhunt for Booth and Powell was under way.
Soon Robert Lincoln arrived at the Petersen house, as did senators, congressmen, and cabinet members. While Gideon Welles, among others, kept vigil alongside Lincoln’s bed, Mary sobbed uncontrollably in the front room. Several times it seemed that Lincoln stopped his labored breathing, and Mary was allowed in, where she kissed him and called him “every endearing name.”34 And several times Lincoln seemed to rally, keeping impossible hopes faintly alive.
He breathed his last at 7:22 on the morning of April 15. “Now he belongs to the ages,” said Stanton in a final salute. A minister offered a brief prayer, and one of the physicians informed Mary, “The President is no more.”35 He was fifty-six years of age.
It is one of the cruel paradoxes of American history that Abraham Lincoln, whose heart was filled with compassion and love for his nation and his fellow human beings, North and South, should have been killed by a man whose soul was filled with hate in a theater loved by both the killer and his victim. The larger paradox is that a man who longed for peace and goodwill was called to preside during his days in the White House over one of the bloodiest and most destructive wars in human history. But perhaps the greatest of our presidents would have confronted such puzzling paradoxes in the words he had invoked on other occasions: “The Almighty has his own purposes.”