Introduction
1. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, one vol. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1954), p. 679.
2. Quotes from the second inaugural address are from Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 332–33.
3. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 219.
4. “Gen. Grant and the President,” New York Times, September 23, 1864, p. 4. Also, Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 4 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), p. 112. The text of both letters can be found in the appendix.
March 4, 1865, Saturday: A Sacred Effort
1. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 529.
2. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 251.
3. Ibid., p. 252.
4. Ibid.
5. “Additional Details of the Inauguration Ceremonies,” New York Daily Herald, March 5, 1865, p. 1.
6. New York World, March 6, 1865.
7. “From Washington: The Inauguration Ceremonies,” New York Times, March 6, 1865, p. 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Quotes from the second inaugural address are from Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 332–33.
The text of the entire speech can be found in the appendix.
10. “The President's Address,” New York Daily Herald, March 6, 1865, p. 5.
11. “From Washington: The Inauguration Ceremonies,” New York Times, March 6, 1865, p. 1.
12. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, one vol. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1954), p. 663.
13. New York World, March 6, 1865.
14. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 271.
15. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Boston: DeWolfe & Fiske, 1892), p. 402.
16. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 568.
March 5, 1865, Sunday: A Welcome Relief
1. “Service at the Capitol,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), March 6, 1865, p. 3.
2. Dan Gilgoff, “Abraham Lincoln's Religious Uncertainty,” US News & World Report, February 12, 2009, https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/02/12/abraham-lincolns-religious-uncertainty.
3. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 382.
4. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 542.
5. “Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln,” in John Hay, Addresses of John Hay (New York: Century Co., 1907), p. 337. The Bible quote is from Luke 10:37.
March 6, 1865, Monday: Inauguration Ball
1. “The Inaugural,” New York Times, March 6, 1865, p. 4.
2. New York World, March 6, 1865.
3. “The Inaugural,” Inquirer (Philadelphia), March 6, 1865, p. 4.
4. “Topics of the Day: Mr. Lincoln,” Spectator (London), March 25, 1865, p. 4.
5. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil and Lee, 1931), p. 155.
6. “News from Washington: The Grand Ball,” New York Times, March 7, 1865, p. 4.
7. “Lincoln's Patent,” Abraham Lincoln Online, 2018, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/patent.htm.
Part of the application reads, “Be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, in the county of Sangamon, in the state of Illinois, have invented a new and improved manner of combining adjustable buoyant air chambers with a steam boat or other vessel for the purpose of enabling their draught of water to be readily lessened to enable them to pass over bars, or through shallow water, without discharging their cargoes.”
8. William F. Richstein, The Stranger's Guide-Book to Washington City, and Everybody's Pocket Handy-Book (Washington, DC: W. F. Richstein, 1864), p. 25.
9. “News from Washington: The Grand Ball,” New York Times, March 7, 1865.
10. “The Inauguration Ball,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), March 7, 1865, p. 2.
11. Ibid.
12. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 107.
March 7, 1865, Tuesday: Office Routine
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 338–39.
2. Ibid., pp. 339–42.
3. Ibid., p. 339.
4. Times (London), May 25, 1864, p. 8.
5. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 339.
6. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 592.
7. Ibid., pp. 592–93.
8. Ibid., p. 595–96.
March 8, 1865, Wednesday: Political Affairs
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 345.
2. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster), p. 593.
3. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 210.
March 9, 1865, Thursday: Communications with General Grant
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 346.
2. Ibid. p. 348.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 347.
5. Ibid., p. 348.
6. Details of the Battle of Kilpatrick's Drawers are from a conversation with an acquaintance who lives in the area.
March 10, 1865, Friday: Day of Rest
1. George R. Agassiz, ed., Meade's Headquarters, 1863–1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922), pp. 324–25.
2. John Hay, “Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln,” in Addresses of John Hay (New York: Century Co., 1906), p. 339.
3. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 297.
March 11 and 12, 1865, Saturday and Sunday: Life and Death Decisions
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 350.
2. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 297.
March 13, 1865, Monday: Not Sick, Just Tired
1. “Illness of the President,” New York Herald, March 14, 1865, p. 4.
2. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 297.
3. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935), p. 544.
4. Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), p. 914.
5. “Black Confederate Soldiers,” http://confederatelegion.com/Black_Confederate_Soldiers.html [site discontinued].
March 14, 1865, Tuesday: Cabinet Meeting
1. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 297.
2. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 299.
3. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 211.
March 15, 1865, Wednesday: Evening at Grover's Theatre
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 356. Thurlow Weed, who was also the editor of the Albany Evening Journal, predicted that Lincoln would never be reelected in 1864.
2. “The German Opera,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), March 16, 1865, p. 2.
3. “Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln,” in John Hay, Addresses of John Hay (New York: Century Co., 1907), p. 332.
4. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 570.
5. The information concerning John Wilkes Booth's meeting at Gautier's Restaurant is based on three main sources: The Lincoln Assassination Suspect file, at the National Archives; Samuel B. Arnold, Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1996); and Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 476–82.
March 16, 1865, Thursday: Tad
1. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 23.
2. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 300–301.
3. Ibid., pp. 302–303.
March 17, 1865, Friday: The President Thinks Ahead
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 359.
2. Ibid., pp. 360–61.
3. Ibid., pp. 361–62.
4. Ibid., p. 362.
March 18 and 19, 1865, Saturday and Sunday: Executive Decisions
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 364.
2. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 260.
3. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 365.
4. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vol. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 303.
5. Ibid., pp. 304–306.
6. Ibid., pp. 306–307.
7. Ibid., p. 314.
8. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 595.
9. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 402.
10. Welles, Diary, p. 261.
March 20, 1865, Monday: City Point
1. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 402.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 367.
3. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 596.
March 21, 1865, Tuesday: Lincoln Decides to Take a Trip
1. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 518.
2. “At Old Fort Stevens: The Stars and Stripes Raised Over an Historic Spot,” Washington Times, June 15, 1900, p. 3.
3. Ibid.
4. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 369.
5. Ibid., p. 223.
6. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 402.
7. “German Opera,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), March 22, 1865, p. 2.
March 22, 1865, Wednesday: A Flattering Letter
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 371.
2. Ibid., pp. 371–72.
3. Garnet Wolseley, “A Month's Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” in The American Civil War: An English View: The Writings of Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, ed. James A. Rawley (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), p. 48.
4. Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 173.
5. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 323.
6. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 213.
March 23, 1865, Thursday: Heading for City Point
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 372.
2. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 521.
3. “News from Washington,” New York Herald, March 24, 1865, p. 1.
4. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 373.
5. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 40.
March 24, 1865, Friday: Arrival
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 373.
2. Ibid.
3. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 521.
4. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 142.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor: A Personal Memoir (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton, 1887), p. 362. Also in Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 145.
March 25, 1865, Saturday: Visiting a Battlefield
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 373.
2. Ibid., p. 374.
3. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 521.
4. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 373.
5. Jesse Grant Cramer, ed., Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, 1857–78 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912), p. 106.
6. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 597.
7. Ibid.
8. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 406.
9. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 521.
10. Ibid.
11. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 42.
12. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” pp. 521–22.
13. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 43.
14. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 406.
15. Ibid., p. 407.
16. Ibid., pp. 407–408.
17. Ibid., p. 408.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid. p. 409.
20. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 374.
March 26, 1865, Sunday: The Presidentress
1. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), pp. 409–10. General John G. Parke sent this telegram: “The enemy attacked my front this morning at about 4.30 with three divisions under command of General [John B.] Gordon. By a sudden rush they seized the line…to the right of Fort Stedman, wheeled, and…took possession of the fort…. Our troops on either flank stood firm…the enemy were driven out of the fort, with the loss of a number of prisoners, estimated at about 1,600….” Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 374.
2. Ibid.
3. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 412.
4. Ibid.
5. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 599.
6. Ibid., p. 600.
7. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 413.
8. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 522.
9. Ibid., pp. 522–23.
10. Ibid., p. 523.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 413.
17. Ibid., p. 414.
18. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 239.
19. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 414.
20. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 523 Photos of Mary Ord show her to be a fairly ordinary-looking middle-aged woman.
21. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 239.
22. Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace from Appomattox to Mount McGregor: A Personal Memoir (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton, 1887), pp. 359.
23. Ibid., 360.
24. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), pp. 146–47.
25. Ibid., p. 147.
26. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 414.
27. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 524.
28. Jackie Rosenhek, “The First Lady of Lunacy,” Doctor's Review, November 2006, http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/nov06-history_medicine/.
29. Karen Springen, “Hellcat or Helpmate: A Look at Mary Todd Lincoln,” Newsweek, September 18, 2007, http://www.newsweek.com/hellcat-or-helpmate-look-mary-todd-lincoln-100149.
30. Rosenhek, “First Lady of Lunacy.”
31. “Mary Lincoln at Bellevue Palace,” Abraham Lincoln Online, 2018, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/sites/bellevue.htm.
32. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 524.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 416.
37. Ibid.
38. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 213.
March 27, 1865, Monday: Aboard the River Queen
1. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 324.
2. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), pp. 417–18.
3. Ibid., p. 418.
4. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 234.
5. Ibid.
6. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 419.
7. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 325.
8. Ibid.
9. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 420.
10. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: I. The President Sees a Fight and a Review,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 5 (May 1907): 524.
11. Ibid.
12. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 240.
13. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 743.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 375.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., p. 376.
19. Ibid.
March 28, 1865, Tuesday: “Let Them All Go”
1. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), pp. 423.
2. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 325.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 325–26.
5. Ibid., p. 329.
6. Ibid., p. 326.
7. Ibid.
8. Details of President Lincoln's conference aboard the River Queen are in Sherman, Memoirs, pp. 325–31.
9. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 574.
10. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 328.
11. Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), p. 542.
12. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 328.
13. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, one vol. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1954), p. 679.
14. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 332.
15. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 215.
March 29, 1865, Wednesday: “Your Success Is My Success”
1. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 424.
2. Ibid., p. 425.
3. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 149.
4. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 425.
5. Ibid., p. 426.
6. Ibid.
7. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 376–77.
8. Ibid., p. 376.
9. Ibid., p. 377.
10. Ibid.
11. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diaries and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 215.
12. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 149.
13. William Crook's account of Smith/Surratt is from Margarita Spalding, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), pp. 45–47.
March 30, 1865, Thursday: War Nerves
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 377.
2. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 269.
3. John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 14 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), p. 136.
4. Ibid.
5. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 601.
6. Ibid.
7. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), pp. 427–28.
8. Ibid., p. 428.
9. Ibid., p. 429.
10. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 377.
11. Ibid., p. 378.
March 31, 1865, Friday: Much Hard Fighting
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 378.
2. Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), p. 922.
3. Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 378–79.
4. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 431.
5. Ibid., 431–32.
6. Ibid., p. 433.
6. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 378.
7. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 269.
8. Ibid.
April 1, 1865, Saturday: Anxiety at City Point
1. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 573.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 381.
3. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 715.
4. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 605.
5. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 381.
6. Ibid., p. 380.
7. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 434.
8. Ibid., p. 439.
9. Ibid., pp. 442–43.
10. Ibid., p. 443.
11. Ibid., p. 444.
12. Ibid., pp. 444–45.
13. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 382.
14. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 47.
15. Ibid.
April 2, 1865, Sunday: Messages for General Grant
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 381.
2. Ibid., pp. 382–83.
3. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 445.
4. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 147.
5. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 383.
6. Ibid., pp. 383–84.
7. Ibid., p. 383.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 384.
10. Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), p. 925.
11. Ibid., p. 924.
12. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 447–48.
13. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), pp. 47–48.
14. Ibid., p. 48.
15. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 448.
April 3, 1865, Monday: “Get Them to Plowing Once”
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 384.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 384–85.
5. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 744.
6. Ibid.
7. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 449.
8. Ibid., p. 450.
9. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 612.
10. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 450.
11. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 613.
12. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 451.
13. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 609.
14. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 452.
15. Godfrey Weitzel, Richmond Occupied: Entry of the United States Forces into Richmond, Va., April 3, 1865; Calling Together of the Virginia Legislature and Revocation of the Same, ed. Louis H. Manarin (Richmond: Richmond Civil War Centennial Committee, 1965), p. 13.
16. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 452.
17. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 219.
18. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), pp. 272–73.
19. “Grant, Richmond, and Victory! The Union Army in the Rebel Capital,” New York Times, April 4, 1865, p. 1.
20. “Richmond Is Ours. The Old Flag Floats over the Rebel Capital,” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1865, p. 1.
21. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), pp. 48–49.
22. Ibid., p. 49.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1885), p. 284.
26. Ibid., pp. 284–85.
27. Ibid., p. 285.
28. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 745.
29. Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes, p. 285.
30. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 385.
31. Ibid.
April 4, 1865, Tuesday: The President Visits Richmond
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 385. Also in US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 529.
2. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 452.
3. Ibid.
4. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 219.
5. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 50.
6. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 747.
7. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 50.
8. Ibid., p. 52.
9. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 747.
10. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 53.
11. Ibid., p. 52.
12. Ibid., p. 53.
13. Ibid., p. 54.
14. Ibid.
15. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 748.
16. Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 54.
17. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 748.
18. Ibid., p. 749.
19. Ibid.
20. Thomas Thatcher Graves, “The Occupation,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, vol. 4 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), p. 728.
21. “Details of the Evacuation: The City on Fire,” New York Times, April 8, 1865, p. 1.
22. Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 56.
23. John A. Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War during the Year 1865 (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1887), p. 38.
24. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 577.
25. Campbell, Reminiscences, p. 39.
26. Ibid.
27. Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 56.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., pp. 56–57.
30. David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1885), p. 307.
31. Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 57.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 194.
35. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 453.
36. Rhodes, All for the Union, p. 219.
37. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 615.
April 5, 1865, Wednesday: Return to City Point
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 386.
2. John A. Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War during the Year 1865 (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1887), p. 39.
3. Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents, pp. 39–40, and Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 386–87. The terms that President Lincoln proposed are included in the appendix.
4. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 387. Also in US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 575.
5. Ibid.
6. David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1885), p. 304.
7. Ibid., p. 305.
8. Ibid.
9. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), pp. 57–58.
10. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 579.
11. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 388.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 387.
14. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 616.
15. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 343.
16. The incident involving the scout Campbell is from Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 455.
17. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 618.
18. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 456.
19. Ibid.
20. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 618.
21. The Lincoln log for April 5, 1865, http://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1865-04-05.
22. Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 2 (Richmond, VA: Garret and Masie, 1938), p. 574.
The entire text of the proclamation can be found in the appendix.
April 6, 1865, Thursday: Bringing the Fighting to an End
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 388.
2. Ibid., p. 389.
3. Ibid., p. 388.
4. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 241.
5. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), pp. 75–77.
6. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster), p. 620.
7. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), pp. 219–20.
8. Ibid., p. 221.
9. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 620.
10. Ibid., p. 622.
11. Ibid.
April 7, 1865, Friday: “Let the Thing Be Pressed”
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 389. Also in US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 640.
2. Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 389–90.
3. Ibid., p. 390.
4. Ibid., pp. 390–91. Also Official Records, p. 596.
5. Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 391–92.
6. Ibid., p. 392.
7. Ibid.; Official Records, p. 640.
8. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 276.
9. Ibid.
10. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 85.
11. Ibid.
12. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), pp. 149–50.
13. Official Records, p. 619.
14. Ibid.
15. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 623.
16. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 150.
17. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, pp. 77–78.
18. Ibid., p. 78.
19. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), p. 169.
20. Dorus M. Fox, History of Political Parties, National Reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe Movement (Des Moines, IA: Iowa Printing, 1895), p. 218.
21. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1992), p. 619.
April 8, 1865, Saturday: A Hospital Visit and a Reception
1. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 79.
2. Ibid., p. 80.
3. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), pp. 171.
4. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 751.
5. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, pp. 171–72.
6. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 82.
7. Ibid.
8. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 750.
9. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 83.
10. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 221.
11. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 624.
12. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 461.
13. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 624.
14. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), Series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 641.
15. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 462.
16. Ibid.
17. Official Records, vol. 46, part 3, p. 641.
18. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 463.
19. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 59.
20. “The Sequel to the President's ‘Peace Mission,’” Sun (New York), April 4, 1865, p. 2.
21. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 59.
22. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, vol. 2 (New York: American News Company, 1879), p. 354.
April 9, 1865, Sunday: “Lee Has Surrendered”
1. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 751.
2. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 83.
3. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, in The New Temple Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935), act 3, scene 2, p. 41.
4. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 83.
5. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, in The New Temple Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935), act 3, scene 2, p. 35.
6. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 751.
7. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 84.
8. Ibid., pp. 85–86.
9. Ibid., p. 84.
10. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 58.
11. Ibid.
Abraham Lincoln's biographers have not written very much about his first hearing of General Lee's surrender. General Grant states that he telegraphed Secretary of War Stanton of the surrender at 4:30 p.m. Such an important message would have circulated throughout the city immediately. Julia Grant mentions that she was first given the news on “Sunday afternoon,” but she does not specify the exact time. An account of Lincoln's visit to the recuperating Secretary of State Seward by his daughter Fanny, in her diary entry of April 9, 1865, puts the time later in the evening, when Secretary Stanton came to visit Secretary Seward. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005, p. 725), states that Secretary of War Stanton showed Lincoln Grant's telegram when he reached the White House. It is more than possible that General Grant's “General Lee surrendered” telegram reached Washington by the time the president arrived from City Point, and that the word would have spread throughout the city immediately.
12. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 644.
13. Ibid.
14. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 461.
15. Official Records, p. 665.
16. George A. Forsyth, Thrilling Days in Army Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 187.
17. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 180.
18. Ibid., p. 181.
19. Ibid.
20. Official Records, p. 665.
21. Chamberlain, Passing of the Armies, p. 186.
22. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 222.
23. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), pp. 151–52.
24. Ibid., p. 152.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Fanny Seward's diary entry of April 9, 1865, in transcript by Patricia Carley Johnson, “Sensitivity and Civil War: The Selected Diaries and Papers, 1858–1866, of Frances Adeline (Fanny) Seward” (PhD thesis; Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 1964).
28. Ibid.
29. Winston Churchill, The Great Democracies, vol. 4, A History of the English Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1958), p. 262.
30. “The End of the Rebellion,” in Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 10, 1965, p. 2.
31. J. F. C. Fuller, Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1957), p. 245.
April 10, 1865, Monday: Return to the White House
1. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 60.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. “Glory! Glory!! Glory!!! The Rebellion Ended!” Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1865, p. 1.
5. “Hang Out Your Banners, Union Victory!” New York Times, April 10, 1865, p. 1.
6. “General Lee and His Army Have Surrendered!” Albany Evening Journal, April 10, 1865, p. 4.
7. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 278.
8. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 343.
9. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 93.
10. Ibid., p. 90.
11. Ibid., p. 91.
12. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 62.
13. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 393. The complete version of the president's remarks can be found in the appendix.
14. Ibid., p. 394. The full text of the president's remarks can be found in the appendix.
15. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 62.
16. Ibid., p. 63.
17. Ibid.
18. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 222.
19. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 188.
20. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 490.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., pp. 490–91.
23. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 634.
24. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 491. In Charles Marshall's An Aide-de-Camp of Lee: The Papers of Col. Charles Marshall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927, p. 275), Colonel Marshall states that General Grant asked General Lee to meet with Lincoln: “If you and Mr. Lincoln will agree upon terms, your influence in the South will make the Southern people accept what you accept, and Mr. Lincoln's influence in the North will make reasonable people of the North accept what he accepts, and all my influence will be added to Mr. Lincoln's.” The colonel went on to say, “I think myself, and have always thought, that if General Lee and Mr. Lincoln would have met as General Grant proposed, we could have had immediate restoration of peace and brotherhood among the people of these States.” But according to Horace Porter, General Grant never said any such thing.
25. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 491.
April 11, 1865, Tuesday: A Fair Speech
1. Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), p. 904. Daily National Republican, April 12, 1865.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 396–98.
3. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 279.
4. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), pp. 92–93.
5. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed. Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 63.
6. “The Celebration Last Night,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 12, 1865, p. 1.
7. The quotes from Lincoln's speech are from Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 399–405.
8. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), pp. 174–75.
9. Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 210.
10. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 405. The full text of the president's address can be found in the appendix.
11. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 93.
12. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 64.
13. New-York Tribune, April 12, 1865.
14. “A Grand Illumination—Speech by the President,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 12, 1865, p. 1.
15. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 93.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 93–94.
April 12, 1865, Wednesday: Only a Dream
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 405.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 406.
4. Ibid.
5. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), pp. 279–80.
6. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 407.
7. Ibid., pp. 406–407.
8. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 195.
9. Ibid., pp. 195–96.
10. Ibid., p. 196.
11. Ibid., pp. 200–201.
12. Ibid., p. 201.
13. Ibid., p. 202.
14. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 344.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. The description of Lincoln's dream is from Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Washington, DC: published by the editor, 1911), pp. 115–17.
April 13, 1865, Thursday: “Melancholy Seemed to Be Dripping from Him”
1. Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and of Some Women (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874), p. 321.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 408.
3. Ibid., p. 409.
4. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 68.
5. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 154.
6. Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 257.
7. “The Grand Display Last Night,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 14, 1865, p. 1.
8. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 154.
9. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 65.
April 14, 1865, Friday: Ford's Theatre
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 410–12.
2. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 282.
3. Ibid., pp. 282–83.
4. Ibid., p. 291.
5. Ibid.
6. Gideon Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson: Their Plan of Reconstruction and the Resumption of National Authority,” Galaxy 13, no. 4 (April 1872): 526.
7. Ibid.
8. Charles Dana, Recollections of the Civil War: With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties (New York: D. Appleton, 1902), pp. 273–74.
9. Ibid., p. 274.
10. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 497.
11. The story of the messenger inviting Mrs. Grant to Ford's Theatre is from Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 155.
12. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 497.
13. Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 14, 1865, p. 2.
14. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 497–98.
15. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, pp. 155–56. A footnote explains that “Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby's partisan rangers” had come close to capturing General Grant in Virginia in 1864.
16. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 498.
17. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 156.
18. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 498–99.
19. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, vol. 2 (New York: American News Company, 1879), p. 356.
20. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 345–46.
21. Ibid., pp. 346–47.
22. Ibid., p. 347.
23. “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, April 18, 1865, p. 8.
24. Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, “When Old Glory Returned to Fort Sumter,” New York Times, April 16, 2015, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/when-old-glory-returned-to-fort-sumter/#more-156636.
25. “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, April 18, 1865, p. 8.
26. Roberts and Kytle, “When Old Glory Returned.”
27. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 36.
28. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 376.
29. Charles W. Johnson, ed., The Official Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions: 1856, 1860, and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), p. 242.
30. “The Nomination of Mr. Lincoln—How the News Is Received,” New York Times, June 9, 1864, p. 4.
31. Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 192.
32. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 410.
33. Mary Bushrod's story is from Esther May Carter, She Knew Lincoln (Cuyahoga Falls, OH: published by the author, 1930), pp. 5–11.
34. Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 284.
35. Ibid., p. 285.
36. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 65.
37. William Crook's description of his walk to the War Department and back with President Lincoln are from Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, pp. 65–68.
38. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 413. Congressman Ashmun framed the card and placed it next to a card of his own, upon which he wrote, “The above is the last autograph of President Lincoln. It was written & given to me at half past 8 P.M. April 14, 1865, just as he and Mrs. Lincoln were starting off for the Theatre where he was assassinated.”
39. Noah Brooks, Mr. Lincoln's Washington: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (South Brunswick, NJ: Thomas Yoseloff, 1966), p. 443.
40. Timothy Noah, “Our American Cousin Revisited,” Slate, February 11, 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2009/02/our_american_cousin_revisited.html.
41. Richard Byrne, “Our American Cousin: A Sort of Defense (Revised),” Balkans via Bohemia (blog), February 13, 2009, http://richbyrne.blogspot.com/2015/04/our-american-cousin-sort-of-defense.html.
42. George S. Bryan, The Great American Myth (New York: Carrick & Evans, 1940), p. 176.
43. Ruth Painter Randall, Mary Lincoln: Portrait of a Marriage (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), p. 382.
44. Annie F. F. Wright, “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” Magazine of History, February 1909. In the confusion immediately following the assassination, people gave conflicting accounts of what they had seen and heard. Most biographies agree that John Wilkes Booth shouted “Sic semper tyrannis,” which is also the state motto of Virginia. Booth claimed that he said the phrase just after shooting the president, not after he jumped onto the stage.
45. Ibid.
46. “The Autopsy of President Lincoln,” in Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body, US National Library of Medicine, last updated June 5, 2014, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/cases/lincoln.html.
47. Dr. Blaine Houmes, who has studied Lincoln's assassination from a medical standpoint, states, “Today if you treat someone with an injury like Lincoln had, despite all of our advances, despite all of our equipment, despite all the drugs we're able to give, and the procedures available, if you look in the medical literature, the fatality rate is still 100 percent.” Blaine Houmes, “A Doctor's View of the Lincoln Assassination,” interview with Abraham Lincoln Online, 2018, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/medical.htm.
48. Ibid.
49. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), pp. 95–96.
50. Ibid., p. 96.
51. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, pp. 744–45.
52. The description of General and Mrs. Grant receiving the news of Lincoln's assassination is from Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 156.
53. Ibid.
54. Official Records, p. 756.
55. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 499.
56. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 157.
57. “The Assassination: The Murderous Assault upon Mr. Seward,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 18, 1865, p. 1.
58. The description of Gideon Welles visiting Secretary Seward and President Lincoln after the attacks upon them is from Welles, Diary, vol. 2, pp. 284–87. Frederick Seward recovered fully and later became a member of the New York State Assembly.
April 15, 1865, Saturday: A New World
1. Blaine Houmes, “A Doctor's View of the Lincoln Assassination,” interview with Abraham Lincoln Online, 2018, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/medical.htm.
2. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 598.
3. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 288.
4. Ibid.
5. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, vol. 10 (New York: Century, 1890), p. 302.
6. “Special Cabinet Meeting,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 15, 1865, p. 2.
7. Welles, Diary, p. 288.
8. “The New President,” New York Times, April 17, 1865, p. 1.
9. Welles, Diary, p. 290.
10. Ibid.
11. “New President,” New York Times, April 17, 1865. The complete text of Andrew Johnson's speech was printed in the New York Times, and can be found in the appendix.
12. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 103.
13. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 501.
14. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 641.
15. “Awful Event: President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin,” New York Times, April 15, 1865, p. 1.
16. Atlas & Argus (Albany, NY), April 17, 1865.
17. Deuteronomy 34:4.
18. “Our Great Affliction,” Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1865, p. 1.
19. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 68.
20. Ibid., pp. 73–74.
21. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 751.
22. Ibid.
23. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 223.
24. The description of General Chamberlain hearing the news of President Lincoln's death is from Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), pp. 210–13.
25. New York Tribune, April 17, 1865.
26. Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 438.
27. The description of Jefferson Davis receiving the news of Lincoln's death is from Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 2 (Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1938), p. 550.
28. Beth G. Crabtree and James W. Patton, eds., “Journal of a Secesh Lady”: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston, 1860–1866 (Raleigh, NC: Division of Archives and History, Dept. of Cultural Resources, 1979), p. 702.
29. “Mournful Intelligence: Assassination of President Lincoln,” Daily Standard (Raleigh, NC), April 18, 1865, p. 2.
30. “The Situation,” Texas Republican (Marshall, TX), April 28, 1865, p. 2.
31. “The Assassination of President Lincoln,” Tri-Weekly News (Winnsboro, SC), May 20, 1865, p. 1.
32. “Glorious News: Lincoln and Seward Assassinated,” Demopolis Herald (Alabama), April 19, 1865.
33. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, eds., “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), pp. 130–31.
34. Ibid., p. 154.
35. Ibid.
Epilogue: “The Loss This Country Has Suffered”
1. William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 1384.
2. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 105.
3. Ibid., p. 112.
4. Ibid., p. 106.
5. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 641.
6. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, pp. 109, 111.
7. Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1979), p. 20.
8. “Restoration: President Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation,” New York Times, May 30, 1865, p. 1.
The entire text of the proclamation was published in the New York Times and is included in the appendix.
9. Andrew Johnson, “Proclamation 135—Reorganizing a Constitutional Government in North Carolina,” Washington, DC, May 29, 1865, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=72403.
10. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 347.
11. Ibid., p. 349.
12. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 641.
13. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 47, part 3, pp. 243–44.
14. Ibid.
15. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 504.
16. Ibid.
17. “Sherman's Army—Gen. Sherman Negotiating with Gen. Johnston—His Actions Repudiated by the President and the Cabinet,” New York Times, April 24, 1865, p. 5.
18. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 644.
19. The description of General Chamberlain's memorial service for Lincoln is from Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), pp. 214–17.
20. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 170.
21. Robert E. Lee Jr., comp., Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004), p. 147.
22. J. William Jones, Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee: Soldier and Man (Washington, DC: Neale Publishing, 1906), p. 390.
23. Castel, Presidency of Andrew Johnson, p. 111.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 229.
27. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 80.
28. Ibid., pp. 83–84.
29. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 675.