Although President Lincoln's thoughts were never very far away from the coming campaign in Virginia, he was also beginning to think ahead toward what would happen to the country after the war had ended. On March 17, Lincoln looked away from Virginia long enough to see and appreciate what was taking place in the West. He issued a proclamation calling for the court martial of anyone supplying weapons to Indian tribes in the lands west of the Mississippi. “Whereas reliable information has been received that hostile Indians within the limits of the United States have been furnished with arms and munitions of war,” which is enabling them “to prosecute their savage warfare upon the exposed and sparse settlements of the frontier.”

The president went on to proclaim that “all persons detected in that nefarious traffic” will be arrested and tried by court martial and, if convicted, “shall receive the punishment due to their deserts.”1

During his first term in office, the president was fully preoccupied with the war and how it was being conducted—with the performance of General George B. McClellan and his less-than-successful campaign against Robert E. Lee in 1862; with General Grant's siege of Vicksburg in 1863; with the course of the US Navy's blockade of Southern ports; and his own chances of being reelected in 1864. But now all those problems were safely behind him. The war looked to be nearing its end.

If everything went the way Lincoln hoped, the fighting might be over by early summer or even before that. He now had the time to focus on items that would occupy his time and his thoughts during the remainder of his second term, beyond the war. One of these matters was the settling of the West, which meant creating new states and protecting settlers from “hostile Indians.” His concern was no longer centered on the North and the South. He could now afford to consider the future of all the states, and the entire reunified country. Lincoln's proclamation of March 17, 1865, was a step in that direction.

On the same day, President Lincoln made a speech to the 140th Indiana Regiment, during which he presented the regiment with a flag that it had captured a Fort Anderson, North Carolina, that past February. After making his presentation, the president turned to the main point of his remarks—the recruitment of black soldiers into the Confederate army. Or, as Lincoln put it, “the recent attempt of our erring brethren,” as he called the Confederates, “to employ the negro to fight for them.”2

As far as Lincoln was concerned, any black man who agreed “to fight for those who would keep them in slavery” deserved to be a slave.³ But recruiting slaves was also another indication that the Confederacy was on its last legs, and that it would not be very long before the rebellion collapsed. “We must now see the bottom of the enemy's resources,” he told his audience. “They have drawn upon their last branch of resources. And we can now see the bottom.”

The speech was good-natured, and was interrupted several times by applause and laughter. But the president's message was clear enough—the war was almost over, the end was in sight, and he “could see the bottom.” He ended with, “I am glad to see the end so near at hand,” which was received with another round of applause. “I have now said more than I intended, and I will therefore bid you goodbye.”⁴ But he was also afraid that there would be one more big battle before it all ended, possibly something on the scale of Gettysburg or Antietam/Sharpsburg, and he feared for the resulting loss of life during that battle.