President Lincoln indulged in another one of his favorite forms of relaxation: he went for a ride. He usually went with Mary Lincoln, but on this particular day he decided to go with his eleven-year-old son, Thomas “Tad” Lincoln. Tad Lincoln spent a good deal of time with his father. He frequently accompanied Lincoln on trips, often attended cabinet meetings, and stayed with the president in his office for hours on end. People frequently told stories about how close Tad and his father were, and about the boy's many and various pranks. One of these pranks took place during a visit to Grover's Theatre. During the performance, Tad managed to slip out of the president's box unnoticed. President Lincoln had no idea that his son was missing until he saw the boy down on the stage, singing “The Battle Cry of Freedom” with the chorus. Tad was wearing a Union army blouse about three sizes too large for him, and was almost unrecognizable in the oversized uniform top.

Tad Lincoln had his mother's nervous temperament. He was also on the hyperactive side, and did not show much interest in learning—he was considered a slow learner by a succession of tutors—and also had a speech impediment. President Lincoln's bodyguard William Crook said, “Taddie could never speak very plainly.” His impairment sometimes made it seem like he had his own language, especially when he was speaking of other people. Tad called his father “papa-day,” which everyone supposed meant “papa dear.” In Tad's lingo, Crook became “Took.” But the president enjoyed Tad's company and spent as much time with the boy as he could—the boy's very presence seemed to take the president's mind off the pressures of Washington. “I believe he was the best companion Mr. Lincoln ever had,” Crook observed, “one who always understood him, and whom he always understood.”1

Most people were touched by the relationship between the president and his son, but there were those who complained that Tad was completely undisciplined and was allowed to get away with too much mischief. But Lincoln had lost one son, William Wallace “Willie” Lincoln, most likely due to typhoid fever, when the boy was eleven years old. Because of this, Lincoln was more inclined to let Tad get away with his pranks. Lincoln might have been even more lenient if he had known that Tad would die at the age of eighteen, in 1871.

“On the 15th of March the whole army was across Cape Fear River,” General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote, “and at once began its march for Goldsboro.”² The army encountered “pretty stubborn resistance” from Confederate General William J. Hardee's infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Heavy rain helped to curtail the fighting, but on Thursday March 16, “the opposition continued stubborn.” Near the village of Averysboro, General Hardee's men dug themselves into a strong defensive position. General Sherman ordered one of his brigades to outflank Hardee's trenches. The maneuver succeeded—217 Confederates were captured, and another 108 were killed in the course of the flanking move.

By the following morning, General Hardee's force had disappeared, “in full retreat toward Smithfield.” The Battle of Averysboro, as General Sherman called it, was not exactly a rout, but it did allow Sherman's army to continue its move northward, toward Petersburg and Grant's army. “From Averysboro the left wing turned east, toward Goldsboro, the Fourteenth Corps leading,” General Sherman would write.³