President Lincoln was not in the best of spirits on this particular morning; he was in another one of his weary and sad moods. In an attempt to cheer himself up, he decided to go for a horseback ride through Washington. It was certainly a nice day for it; the weather was perfect. A ride might help, and it certainly could not hurt.

On his way through town, the president happened to come across Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Maunsell B. Field, who was riding in a carriage along Fourteenth Street. Secretary Field recalled that he heard a “clatter” coming up from behind, and saw the president approaching on horseback, followed by “the usual cavalry escort.”1 President Lincoln drew alongside the carriage and carried on a casual conversation with Assistant Secretary Field. “I noticed that he was in one of those moods when ‘melancholy seemed to be dripping from him,’ and his eye had that expression of profound weariness and sadness which I never saw in other human eyes.” After talking for a while, Lincoln “put his spurs to his horse” and rode off with his escort.

In spite of his melancholy mood, President Lincoln did accomplish some routine paperwork. He wrote three passes for travelers with business in Alabama and Virginia, and also approved a recommendation for the post of collector of Internal Revenue for a district in California. The most important business undertaken by the president was a meeting with Secretary of War Stanton and General U. S. Grant involving the reduction of the Union army. Because the meeting involved General Grant, it also turned out to be the most exciting business of the day.

General Ulysses S. Grant was the man of the hour. The only man in the country, or at least in the North, more popular than General Grant was President Lincoln himself. When the public found out that the general and his wife were guests at the Willard, which was the most prestigious hotel in Washington, a crowd began to form outside the main entrance and eventually surrounded the entire building. In order for General Grant to leave the hotel to keep his appointment with the president, the manager had to send for the police. A police escort arrived shortly, and accompanied the general through the streets of Washington to the War Department. General Grant's entrance certainly livened up what otherwise would have been a mundane meeting with the president and Secretary Stanton, and may even have given Lincoln a lift out of his doldrums.

The subject of the meeting would also have been encouraging for President Lincoln; it involved preparations for the final winding down of the war. The president, his general-in-chief, and his secretary of war discussed the demobilization of the army along with the limiting of the purchase of arms and ammunition, which was costing the government millions of dollars every day. Now that General Lee had surrendered, it was agreed that there would be no more major battles or campaigns, which meant that there would no longer be any need for major military expenditures. This was exactly what President Lincoln wanted to hear.

Among the Lincoln papers is a document headed “Memorandum Respecting Reduction of the Regular Army.”2 The document details how the army was to be reduced, how existing regiments would be scaled down, and how discharged officers and enlisted men would be paid off, according to their rank at the time of discharge. Lincoln used the War of 1812 as a precedent. “At the close of the last British war—in 1815—the Regular Army was reduced and fixed at 14,000,” he wrote.

Later in the same day, Secretary Stanton issued an order “to stop drafting and recruiting, to curtail purchases, to reduce the number of general and staff officers, and to remove all military restrictions.”3 Demobilization was finally under way. But the organizing of the postwar army, which would have a maximum number of 76,000 men, would not begin until July 28, 1866. The president and General Grant were in full agreement over downsizing the army and taking all necessary steps toward planning a peacetime military force.

Four days after Appomattox, the residents of Washington were still celebrating. “The city became disorderly with the men who were celebrating too hilariously,” according to William Crook.⁴ Mrs. Grant received visitors all day long, all of whom offered their congratulations to her husband and herself. Visitors also came to see President Lincoln at the White House throughout the day, shaking his hand, offering their congratulations, and sometimes just stopping to say hello. Everyone in town seemed to be intoxicated—sometimes literally, giving every bar in Washington capacity business—but also mentally and emotionally. The entire city seemed to be breathing a collective sigh of relief.

Julia Grant was excited by the holiday atmosphere; “all the bells rang out merry greetings, and the city was literally swathed in flags and bunting,” she would later remember.⁵ Even Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was normally anything but the most cheerful person in the world, “was in his happiest mood.” He took Mrs. Grant aside to show her a few war trophies: “many stands of arms, flags, and, among other things, a stump of a large tree perforated on all sides by bullets, taken from the field at Shiloh.”

Mary Lincoln was also in a cheerful mood. “We are rejoicing beyond expression over our great and glorious victories,” is what she said to the New York Herald's James Gordon Bennett.⁶ Her son Robert was home from the front and her husband would no longer have the strain and anxiety of the war to tax his health. Abraham Lincoln was probably about thirty pounds underweight, and appeared gaunt and unhealthy to everyone who saw him. Now that the war was nearly over, Mrs. Lincoln hoped that her husband's health and well-being would soon return.

After sundown, the city was illuminated once again. “Last night, Washington was ablaze with glory,” according to the Evening Star. “The very heavens seemed to have come down.”7 The illumination was as much a social event as it was a celebration. “All the great men of the nation who were necessarily in Washington at that time were assembled that night,” Julia Grant remembered.⁸ “Such congratulations, such friendly, grateful grasps of the hand and speeches of gratitude.”

General Grant and his wife had a minor disagreement over whether Mrs. Grant would be accompanied to the illumination by Secretary and Mrs. Stanton or by her husband. General Grant wanted his wife to go with the Stantons, while he escorted Mrs. Lincoln. But Julia Grant told her husband that she would not go at all unless he went with her. The general came up with another suggestion: he would ride out with Julia to the Stanton residence, leave her at the house, and then come back to escort Mrs. Lincoln to the illumination—the president elected not to go to the light show, leaving General Grant in charge. This arrangement suited Mrs. Grant; the Grants, Mrs. Lincoln, and the Stantons all watched the light show together.

The celebrations and excitement did not seem to amuse William Crook, the president's bodyguard. But the fact that the war was nearly over helped to calm him and put his mind at ease. “Those about the President lost somewhat of the feeling, usually present, that his life was not safe,” he said somewhat awkwardly.⁹ “It did not seem possible that, now that the war was over and the government…had been so magnanimous in its treatment of General Lee, after President Lincoln had offered himself a target for Southern bullets in the streets of Richmond and had come out unscathed, there could be danger.” Crook had allowed himself to relax after the president left Richmond, “and had forgotten to be anxious since.” With Lee's army having surrendered, the threat of assassination also ended, at least to William Crook's way of thinking.