Stanton and others were in a fury over what they feared had been open recognition of the seceded Virginia Legislature by the Federal Executive. Before the incident could come to a boiling point, Lincoln swept away all preparations with a telegram to Weitzel. From the operator Albert Chandler he borrowed a Gillott’s small-barrel pen—No. 404—and, while standing, wrote:
I have just seen Judge Campbell’s letter to you of the 7th. He assumes as appears to me that I have called the insurgent Legislature of Virginia together, as the rightful Legislature of the State, to settle all differences with the United States. I have done no such thing. I spoke of them not as a Legislature, but as “the gentlemen who have acted as the Legislature of Virginia in support of the rebellion” ... as Judge Campbell misconstrues this ... let my letter to you, and the paper to Judge Campbell both be withdrawn or, countermanded, and he be notified of it. Do not now allow them to assemble; but if any have come, allow them safe-return to their homes.
A careful diary entry of Welles indicated that the President strongly inclined to let the insurgent Virginia Legislature have wide powers, that he peremptorily stopped that legislature from convening because once more his Cabinet of select advisers was against him—and it was one of the cases where it was better to go along with them—and wait. The “so-called legislature,” Welles told the President, “would be likely to propose terms which might seem reasonable, but which we could not accept.”
Seward was among those who mainly favored the President’s policy of good will, of being generous and taking chances on double-dealing. Through different processes of thought, “we frequently arrived at the same conclusion,”
6 2 3
Seward described their joint operations; on the large questions “no knife sharp enough to divide us.”
Among those high in the Government persistently vocal for punishing the defeated Confederates was Vice-President Johnson. To Dana in Richmond he insisted “their sins had been enormous,” and if they were let back into the Union without punishment the effect would be bad, raising dangers in the future.
To Grant it came that Vice-President Johnson in Washington, in Richmond, had an “ever-ready” remark: “Treason is a crime and must be made odious.” To Southern men who went to Johnson for assurances that they might begin some sort of rebuilding, he offered vehement denunciations. To Grant this was a sorry performance, Grant believing that the Lincoln view had behind it “the great majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously,” the Lincoln view favoring “a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government.” Grant also believed with Lincoln that a majority of the Northern people were not in favor of votes for the Negro. “They supposed that it would naturally follow the freedom of the negro, but that there would be a time of probation, in which the ex-slaves could prepare themselves for the privileges of citizenship before the full right would be conferred.”
Sherman’s ideas about peace terms and reconstruction, it would be too easy to say, were identical with those of Grant. The Union general who more than any other favored a war strategy of punishment and destruction of the South decidedly favored a mild and kindly peace policy. Between Sherman and Joe Johnston was not merely respect but a curious affection. They always fought fair and clean, each having admiration for the style of the other. Not often does it happen in war, but a fellowship had grown up between the two commanders. Neither Sherman nor Johnston had ever owned slaves. Both disliked Jefferson Davis. Grant knew Sherman would drive no hard bargain.
In the balances of early April the three high commanders and a million soldiers were, to use Grants word, unanimous for ending the war on practically any terms that would bring a restored Union with slavery gone.
fo Carpenter, Dana, Brooks and others, came an anecdote used by Lincoln when he was asked what he would do with Jefferson Davis. Lamon had his version of Lincoln saying: When I was a boy in Indiana, I went to a neighbor s house one morning and found a boy of my Own size holding a coon by a string. I asked him what he had and what he was doing. He says, Its a coon. Dad cotched six last night, and killed all but this poor little cuss. Dad told me to hold him until he came back, and I m afraid he’s going to kill this one too; and oh, Abe, I do wish he would get away!’ ‘Well, why don’t you let him loose?’ That wouldn’t be right; and if I let him go, Dad would
give me hell. But if he would get away himself, it would be all right.’ Now,” said Mr. Lincoln, “if Jeff Davis and those other fellows will only get away, it will be all right. But if we should catch them, and I should let them go, ‘Dad would give me hell. ” It was not unpleasant for Lincoln to look back and consider that in all his speeches and papers no one could find a phrase of hate or personal evil wish against the head of the Confederate Government.
The two men who most often warned Lincoln about his personal safety were Stanton and Lamon. To Lamon he had laughing retorts. The envelope on which he had written “Assassination,” wherein he filed threat letters, numbered 80 items in latter March. He told Seward, “I know I am in danger; but I am not going to worry over threats like these.”
Lamon took no ease about this matter because of a dream Lincoln told him. To Lamon he spoke more than once of his failure to produce again the double image of himself in a looking glass, which he saw in 1860 lying on a lounge in his home in Springfield. One face held glow of life and breath, the other shone ghostly pale white. “It had worried him not a little . . . the mystery had its meaning, which was clear enough to him . . . the lifelike image betokening a safe passage through his first term as President; the ghostly one, that death would overtake him before the close of the second.”
Sternly practical and strictly logical man that Lincoln was, using relentless scrutiny of facts and spare derivations of absolutes from those facts, he nevertheless believed in dreams having validity for himself and for others. According to Lamon’s study, Lincoln held that any dream had a meaning if you could be wise enough to find it. When a dream came Lincoln sought clues from it. Once when Mrs. Lincoln and Tad were away he telegraphed her to put away a pistol Tad was carrying. “I had an ugly dream about him.”
To Lamon it was appropriate that Lincoln held the best dream interpreters were the common people. “This accounts in large measure for the profound respect he always had for the collective wisdom of the plain people,—‘the children of Nature,’ he called them.” The very superstitions of the people had roots of reality in natural occurrences. “He esteemed himself one of their number, having passed the greater part of his life among them.
Of the dream that came to Lincoln this second week of April 65, Lamon wrote that it was “the most startling incident” that had ever come to the man, of “deadly import,” “amazingly real.” Lincoln kept it to himself for a few days; then one evening at the White House, with Mrs. Lincoln, Lamon and one or two others present, he began talking about dreams and led himsell into telling the late one that haunted him. Of his written account of the evening,
Lamon said, “I give it as nearly in his own words as I can, from notes which I made immediately after its recital.”
Mrs. Lincoln remarked, “Why, you look dreadfully solemn; do you believe in dreams?” “I can’t say that I do,” returned Mr. Lincoln; but I had one the other night which has haunted me ever since. After it occurred, the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages, and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the old book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts,—supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc.”
He now looked so serious and disturbed that Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed: “You frighten me! What is the matter?” “I am afraid,” said Mr. Lincoln, seeing the effect his words had upon his wife, “that I have done wrong to mention the subject at all; but somehow the thing has got possession of me, and, like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down.”
This set on fire Mrs. Lincoln’s curiosity. Though saying she didn’t believe in dreams, she kept at him to tell what it was he had seen in his sleep that now had such a hold on him. He hesitated, waited a little, slowly began, his face in shadows of melancholy:
“About ten days ago I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like 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. MYiat 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. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin!’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that
night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.”
“That is horrid!” said Mrs. Lincoln. “I wish you had not told it. I am glad I don’t believe in dreams, or I should be in terror from this time forth.” “Well,” responded Mr. Lincoln, thoughtfully, “it is only a dream, Mary. Let us say no more about it, and try to forget it.”
The dream had shaken its dreamer to the depths, noted Lamon. As he had given the secret of it to others he was “grave, gloomy, and at times visibly pale, but perfectly calm.” To Lamon afterward, in a reference to it Lincoln quoted from Hamlet, “To sleep; perchance to dream! ay, there’s the rub \”— stressing the last three words.
Once again and with playful touches, bringing his sense of humor into use as though he might laugh off the dream, he said to Lamon: “Hill, your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody—the Lord knows who—from killing me. Don’t you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else. And this reminds me of an old farmer in Illinois whose family were made sick by eating greens. Some poisonous herb had got into the mess, and members of the family were in danger of dying. There was a half-witted boy in the family called Jake; and always afterward when they had greens the old man would say, ‘Now, afore we risk these greens, let’s try ’em on Jake. If he stands ’em, we’re all right.’ Just so with me. As long as this imaginary assassin continues to exercise himself on others I can stand it.” He then became serious and said: “Well, let it go. I think the Lord in His own good time and way will work this out all right. God knows what is best.”
This last he gave with a sigh, and in a way as if talking to himself with no friend Lamon standing by.
CHAPTER X L I X