– His Last Days –

There seemed to be 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 at the East Room, which I entered. Before me was a catafalque on which was a form wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the catafalque, others weeping pitifully. “Who is dead in the White House?” I demanded of one of the soldiers. “The President,” was the answer. “He was killed by an assassin.” There came a loud burst of grief from the crowd which woke me from my dream.

—Lincoln’s recounting of dream to Mary Todd Lincoln, April 1865, from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years by Carl Sandburg

Fellow Citizens:

I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves. I suppose that arrangements are being made for some sort of a formal demonstration, this, or perhaps, tomorrow night. If there should be such a demonstration, I, of course, will be called upon to respond, and I shall have nothing to say if you dribble it all out of me before. I see you have a band of music with you. I propose closing up this interview by the band performing a particular tune which I will name. Before this is done, however, I wish to mention one or two little circumstances connected with it. I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.

—Response to Serenade, Washington, D.C., April 10, 1865

We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He, from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself, was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.

By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority—reconstruction—which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike the case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction. . . . We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have even been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.

—Lincoln’s last speech, given from a window in the White House to a crowd that had gathered to celebrate Lee’s surrender, April 11, 1865

Well, my son, you have returned safely from the front. The war is now closed, and we soon will live in peace with the brave men that have been fighting against us. I trust that the era of good feeling has returned with the war, and that henceforth we shall live in peace. Now listen to me, Robert: you must lay aside your uniform, and return to college. I wish you to read law for three years, and at the end of that time I hope that we will be able to tell whether you will make a lawyer or not.

—Remark to Robert Lincoln on the morning of April 14, 1865, from Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley

I think it providential that this great rebellion is crushed just as Congress has adjourned and there are none of the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we are wise and discreet we shall reanimate the States and get their governments in successful operation, with order prevailing and the Union reestablished before Congress comes together in December . . . I hope there will be no persecution, no bloody work after the war is over. No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing those men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off. Enough lives have been sacrificed.

—Lincoln’s remarks in morning session with his Cabinet and Ulysses S. Grant, April 14, 1865, as recorded in the diary of Gideon Welles, from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years by Carl Sandburg

No, I rather think not. When you have an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.

—Remark to Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, April 14, 1865, about whether to arrest Jacob Thompson, a Confederate commissioner, whose planned escape that night to Liverpool was made known to the War Department, from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years by Carl Sandburg

At three o’clock in the afternoon, he drove out with me in the open carriage. In starting, I asked him if anyone should accompany us. He immediately replied—“No—I prefer to ride by ourselves today.” During the drive he was so gay that I said to him, laughingly, “Dear Husband, you almost startle me by your great cheerfulness.” He replied, “and well I may feel so, Mary; I consider this day, the war has come to a close” and then added, “We must both be more cheerful in the future—between the war and the loss of our darling Willie—we have both, been very miserable.”

—Mary Todd Lincoln’s recounting of her conversation with Lincoln on the day of the assassination, from Mary Todd Lincoln’s letter to F. B. Carpenter, November 1865, as quoted in Lincoln as I Knew Him edited by Harold Holzer

Now he belongs to the ages.

—Spoken by Edwin M. Stanton, upon Lincoln’s death at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865