From mid-April ’61 to mid-April ’65 some 3,000,000 men North and South had seen war service—the young, the strong, the physically fit, carrying the heavy load and taking the agony. The fallen of them had seen Antietam, Murfreesboro, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, each a shambles, a human slaughterhouse. In the burned and blackened Shenandoah Valley were enough embers of barns and men to satisfy any prophet of doom. From Malvern Hill and Gettysburg down to Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Island Number 10, Vicksburg, the Red River and beyond, the burying grounds deep and shallow held the consecrated dead.
They were a host proven in valor and sacrifice—swept to the Great Beyond. No man who actually and passionately loved the cause of either flag could evade moments when he reproached himself for being alive. Robert E. Lee had those moments, well attested. So did Abraham Lincoln. His Gettysburg speech and his letter to Mrs. Bixby had an undeniable undertone of this reproach.
Killed in action or dead from wounds and disease were some 620,000 Americans, 360,000 from the North, 260,000 from the South—planted in the tomb ol the earth, spectral and shadowy. They were phantoms never absent from Lincoln’s thoughts. Possibly from that vanished host, rather than from the visible and living, Lincoln took his main direction and moved as though the word reconciliation could have supreme beauty if he could put it to work.
In Greensboro, North Carolina, at a rather ordinary house, in an upstairs room having a bed, a few small chairs, a table with pen and ink, Jefferson Davis, with four remaining Cabinet members and two veteran generals, held a final meeting over the affairs of the Confederate States of America, its government,
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its armies and prospects. They agreed a letter should be written to Sherman asking for terms. Johnston asked Davis to write it—which he did. They parted.
The sunset of the Confederacy had shaded over into evening stars, into lasting memories of a Lost Cause. Some would find welfare and kindness in the old Union. Two sections of the country fought a duel and came out with honors enough for both—this was the philosophy of some who really loved two flags—and why was a mystery, their personal secret. Some who had starved and suffered and taken wounds in the rain and lived on the food of rats and lost everything except a name for valor and endurance—some of these could never repent or be sorry.
As Davis packed his kit for moving farther south he knew there were not a few in the North who wished to see him hang on a sour-apple tree. One report credited Lincoln with saying: “This talk about Mr. Davis tires me. I hope he will mount a fleet horse, reach the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and ride so far into its waters that we shall never see him again.”
Lincoln sat for a photograph by Alexander Gardner—and for the first time when facing a camera in the four years of his administration permitted a smile to wreath his face. Until this camera register in the second week of April ’65, he had most often been grave and somber. Now he smiled. The hurricane was spent, the high storm winds gone down. Rough weather and choppy seas were ahead—but the worst was over and could not come again. He hoped for good will and mutual trust and let that hope shine on his face.
Slimmer than a single cobweb thread was the hope that the President would call an extra session of Congress and let the legislative end of the Government dictate the reconstruction. When Speaker Colfax saw Lincoln about it he heard the President say he should “put it off as long as possible.”
Crusader opposition to the President saw a long hard fight ahead. They would have to break Lincoln’s control of his party. They would have to pry loose from him several powerful Northern economic factors that had not suffered loss at his hands and expected favors to come. They had not yet been able to solve the political genius by which he had so repeatedly foiled those seeking to unhorse him. Phillips, Sumner, Wade, Stevens, were not sure what strategy would overcome the odds against them. But they were sure the fight must be made; the Executive must somehow be shorn of his power. On the calendar it was Holy Week and April 14th was Good Friday. Some were to say they had never before this week seen such a shine of beneficence, such a kindling glow, on Lincoln’s face. He was down to lean flesh and bone, 30 pounds underweight, his cheeks haggard, yet the inside of him moved to a music of peace on earth and good will to men. He let it come out in the photograph Gardner made this Holy Week.
The schedule for this day as outlined beforehand was: office business till eight; breakfast and then interviews till the Cabinet meeting at 11; luncheon, more interviews, a late afternoon drive with Mrs. Lincoln; an informal meeting with old Illinois friends; during the day and evening one or more trips to the War Department; another interview, then to the theater with Mrs. Lincoln and a small party. Such was the prepared docket for this Good Friday.
The city of Washington outside the White House kept on being gay. Flags and bunting still flew across streets. Churchgoers in large numbers heard Good Friday sermons of the Prince of Peace having brought unutterable blessings to the country.
In Washington General Grant had arrived from the front, heard shouts of welcome, and in trying to walk from his hotel to the War Department had to call on the police to help make a path through the curious, cheering throngs. The Secretary of War had announced that after “consultation with the lieutenant-general,” it was decided to stop all drafting and recruiting.
At breakfast with Robert the President heard his son tell of life at the front, and he probably did, as one story ran, take up a portrait of Robert E. Lee his son had brought him, and after placing it on the table scan it long, saying: “It is a good face. I am glad the war is over at last.”
After breakfast came Speaker Colfax. Other callers included Congressman Cornelius Cole of California, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, lawyer, W. A. Howard, and the “lame-duck” Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire. The President emphasized restoration of good will between the two sections whose war had ended.
Senator John A. J. Creswell came, one of the Union men who kept Maryland from secession. Creswell said that an old friend had drifted South, got into the Confederate Army, fallen into Federal hands, and was now a prisoner. I know the man acted like a fool, but he is my friend and a good fellow. Let him out, give him to me, and I will be responsible for him.”
Creswell, said Lincoln, you make me think of a lot of young folks who once started out Maying. To reach their destination they had to cross a shallow stream, and did so by means ol an old flat boat. When they came to return, they found to their dismay that the old scow had disappeared. They were in sore trouble, and thought over all manner of devices for getting over the water, but without avail. After a time one of the boys proposed that each fellow should pick up the girl he liked the best and wade over with her. The mas- teily proposition was carried out, until all that were left upon the island was a little short chap and a great, long, gothic-built elderly lady. Now, Creswell, you are trying to leave me in the same predicament. You fellows are all get- ting your own friends out of this scrape, and you will succeed in carrying off
one after another until nobody but Jeff Davis and myself will be left on the island, and then I won’t know what to do. How should I feel? How should I look lugging him over? I guess the way to avoid such an embarrassing situation is to let them all out at once.”
Others came seeking pardons, releases, discharges, which Lincoln wrote with an easier hand than he could while the war was on. A fever of a bright new time coming possessed many this day. “Washington was a little delirious,” wrote Crook. Everybody was celebrating. The kind of celebration depended on the kind of person. It was merely a question of whether the intoxication was mental or physical. A stream of callers came to congratulate the President.
Lincoln was disinclined to go to the theater party planned by Mrs. Lincoln. A third-rate drama, Our American Cousin , which the star Laura Keene had carried to popularity, was showing at Ford’s Theatre. But Mrs. Lincoln had set her heart on it, and on his suggestion she invited General and Mrs. Grant. And General Grant accepted, the newspapers were announcing.
Grant however had changed his mind. Mrs. Grant, in all probability, had told the General that the more she thought about it, the more it seemed impossible that she could endure an evening with the unfortunate woman she had last seen in such outbursts of temper and rages of jealousy at City Point. The General himself, anyone who knew him would testify, could see no fun in such a social evening.
Grant sat that morning in his first session with a President and a Cabinet. Welles wrote in his diary the President’s comment on re-establishing law and order and new state governments in the South. Changing Welles’ report from the third person to the first, Lincoln said:
“I think it providential that this great rebellion is crushed just as Congress has adjourned and there are none of the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we are wise and discreet we shall reanimate the States and get their governments in successful operation, with order prevailing and the Union reestablished before Congress comes together in December . . . I hope there will be no persecution, no bloody work after the war is over. No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing those men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off”—throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. “Enough lives have been sacrificed.”
Early in this Good Friday session of the Cabinet curiosity was sharp about army news. Stanton had not arrived. Grant said he was hourly expecting to hear from Sherman. Wrote Welles: “The President remarked it would, he had no doubt, come soon, and come favorable, for he had last night the usual dream which he had preceding nearly every great and important event of the War.
Generally the news had been favorable which succeeded this dream, and the dream itself was always the same. I inquired what this remarkable dream could be. He said it related to your (my) element, the water; that he seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that he was moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite shore; that he had this dream preceding Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc. General Grant said Stone River was certainly no victory, and he knew of no great results which followed from it. The President said however that might be, his dream preceded that fight. ‘I had,’ the President remarked, ‘this strange dream again last night, and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. I think it must be from Sherman. My thoughts are in that direction, as are most of yours.’ ”
Young Frederick Seward attended this Cabinet meeting as Acting Secretary of State in place of his father, who still lay abed with a broken jaw. Young Seward’s account of the session added details that escaped Welles. Curiosity was spoken about the “rebel” leaders. Would they escape? Would they be caught and tried, and if so, what would be the penalties? “All those present thought that, for the sake of general amity and good will, it was desirable to have as few judicial proceedings as possible.” “I suppose, Mr. President,” said Postmaster General Dennison, “you would not be sorry to have them escape out of the country?” “Well,” came a slow answer, “I should not be sorry to have them out of the country; but I should be for following them up pretty close, to make sure of their going.”
As to various details of any new state government, Seward heard the President: “We can’t undertake to run State governments in all these Southern States. Their people must do that—though I reckon that at first some of them may do it badly.”
So the Cabinet session of Friday, April 14, came to an end with the expectation that on Iuesday, April 18, they would again meet and resume discussion of how to bind up the nation’s wounds.
A new British Minister, Sir Frederick Bruce, had arrived in Washington and was awaiting presentation to the President. Young Seward asked at what time the next day would it be convenient? Lincoln paused a moment, then:
Tomorrow at two o’clock?” Seward supposed it would be in the Blue Room.
Yes, in the Blue Room,” said Lincoln.
Chaplain Neill came to Lincolns office with a Vermont colonel seeking a brigadier generals commission Lincoln had signed. The President had not returned from lunch. Neill was looking among papers on the President’s desk. Lincoln came in eating an apple. I told him for what I was looking,” wrote Neill of this, “and as I talked he placed his hand on the bell-pull, when I said,
'For whom are you going to ring?’ Placing his hand upon my coat, he spoke but two words,— Andrew Johnson.’ Then I said, ‘I will come in again.’ As I was leaving the room the Vice-President had been ushered in, and the President advanced and took him by the hand.” Seldom had Lincoln and Johnson met. Definitely Lincoln had on several occasions avoided a conference sought by Johnson. Before Johnson left Lincoln would have sounded and fathomed him on immediate issues.
A black woman faint from hunger and a five-mile walk arrived at the White House gate, where the guards queried, “Business with the President?” and heard her grimly: “Befo Gawd, yes.” “Let her pass—they’ll stop her further on,” she heard one guard say as she took a deep breath and went on. The main entrance guard stopped her: “No further, madam. Against orders.” In a flash she darted under his arm and went straight to the guard at the farther door. “Fo’ Gawd’s sake, please lemme see Mistah Lincoln.” “Madam, the President is busy. He can not see you.”
Either a cry she gave or the little tumult of her coming had reached inside, because, as she afterward related: “All of a sudden de do’ open, and Mistah Lincoln hissef stood lookin’ at me. I knowed him, fo’ dar wuz a whimsy smile on his blessed face, an’ he wuz a sayin’ deep and sof’-like, ‘There is time for all who need me. Let the good woman come in.’”
He heard Nancy Bushrod tell of her life with her husband Tom, how they were slaves on the old Harwood plantation near Richmond till the Emancipation Proclamation brought them to Washington. Tom joined a regiment with the Army of the Potomac, leaving Nancy with twin boys and a baby girl. At first his pay kept coming every month. Then it stopped. The soldiers were behind in pay from the Government. She had tramped seeking work but Washington was overrun with Negro help. Could the President help her get Tom’s pay?
He heard her through and, according to Nancy, told her: “You are entitled to your soldier-husband’s pay. Come this time tomorrow and the papers will be signed and ready for you.” And as Nancy told it, “I couldn’t open my mouf to tell him how I’se gwine ‘membah him fo’evah for dem words, an’ I couldn’t see him kase de tears wuz failin’.” He called her back. “My good woman, perhaps you’ll see many a day when all the food in the house is a single loaf of bread. Even so, give every child a slice and send your children off to school.” With that, the President bowed “lak I wuz a natchral bawn lady.”
Assistant Secretary of War Dana had a report that Jacob Thompson, the Confederate commissioner in Canada who had fomented raids, explosions and various disorders in the Great Lakes region, was to arrive in Portland this night of April 14 to take a steamer for Liverpool. Stanton said promptly,
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“Arrest him!” and changed to: “No, wait; better go over and see the President.” Dana found Lincoln with his coat off in a closet attached to the office, washing his hands. “Halloo, Dana!” said the President. What is it now? “Well, sir, here is the Provost Marshal of Portland, who reports that Jacob Thompson is to be in that town to-night, and inquires what orders we have to give.” “What does Stanton say?” “Arrest him.” “Well,” continued Lincoln, drawling the words, “no, I rather think not. When you have an elephant by the hind leg, and he’s trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.”
This answer Dana carried back to the War Department, which on Stanton’s wish sent no reply to the Provost Marshal’s anxious inquiry. If the Marshal on his own initiative should make the arrest, Stanton would have Thompson where he wanted him—without having ordered the arrest.
A long afternoon carriage drive made an interlude. Mrs. Lincoln told Crook and others later of her query whether some friends should be invited for this drive, Lincoln saying No, he wanted “just ourselves.” As the carriage rolled along he talked about the next four years in Washington, how he hoped afterward perhaps for a trip abroad, then a return to Springfield, perhaps law practice and a prairie farm on the banks of the Sangamon. Mrs. Lincoln spoke too of a happiness moving him, a happiness so strange and unusual that she could not read it, and it troubled her. She quoted him as saying, “I never felt so happy in my life,” and a fear crossed her as she replied, “Don’t you remember feeling just so before our little boy died?”
Walking over to the War Department late this afternoon of April 14, Lincoln did one thing perhaps for the first time. Always others had brought up the matter of possible harm to come to him—and he had laughed them off or promised to take care. In this instance it was Lincoln who first mentioned it, according to Crook’s account. They passed some drunken men, profane, violent, irresponsible. And Lincoln turned, saying, “Crook, do you know, I believe there are men who want to take my life?” And after a pause, half to himself, “And I have no doubt they will do it.”
Lincolns tone was so calm and sure that Crook found himself saying, Why do you think so, Mr. President? “Other men have been assassinated”— this still in the manner of half talking to himself. “I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President, offered Crook. And after a few paces in silence, Lincoln in a more ordinary tone: I have perfect confidence in those who are around me— in every one of you men. I know no one could do it and escape alive. But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it.”
Of this visit to the telegraph office, Cipher-Operator Charles A. Tinker wrote, Lincoln . . . came . . . while I was transmitting a cipher dispatch that was couched in very laconic terms. Lincoln read the dispatch, and after taking
in the meaning of the terse phrases, he turned to me and with his accustomed smile said, ‘Mr. Tinker, that reminds me of the old story of the Scotch lassie on her way to market with a basket of eggs for sale. She had just forded a small stream with her skirts well drawn up, when a wagoner on the opposite side of the stream called out, “Good morning, my lassie; how deep’s the brook and what’s the price of eggs?” She answered, “Knee deep and a sixpence.’” Mr. Lincoln, still with a smile, lifted his coat tails in imitation of the maiden and passed into Secretary Stanton’s room adjoining.”
After a short conference in Stanton’s office Lincoln came out, Crook noticing that the “depression” or “intense seriousness” had passed. “He talked to me as usual.” Of the theater party planned for the evening he said: “It has been advertised that we will be there, and I cannot disappoint the people. Otherwise I would not go. I do not want to go.” This surprised Crook, who knew well the ease and enjoyment Lincoln usually found at the theater. So Crook meditated, “It seems unusual to hear him say he does not want to go tonight.” At the White House door he stood facing his guard a moment and then, “Good-bye, Crook.” This puzzled Crook somewhat. Until then it had always been “Good-night, Crook.”
At the White House Congressman Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio pleasantly asked that one of his constituents be appointed to a staff position in the Army. Lincoln pleasantly said he was reminded of when he was a young man in Illinois and a woman in the neighborhood made shirts. “An Irishman went to her and ordered a white shirt for some special function. The woman made it, and laundered it and sent it to her customer. When he got it the Irishman found the shirt had been starched all the way around, instead of only in the bosom, and he returned it with the remark that he didn’t want a shirt that was all collar. The trouble with you, Shellabarger, is that you want the army all staff and no army.” Thus Shellabarger told it to his Buckeye friend J. Warren Keifer.
Dick Oglesby, the new Governor of Illinois, and Dick Yates, the new U.S. Senator from Illinois, had an evening hour at the White House with Lincoln. They were home folks. Oglesby was salty and Yates convivial. Lincoln read to them horseplay humor from the latest outpouring of Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, said Oglesby, perhaps including a letter dated April 10 wherein the satirist took his fling as follows: “I survived the defeet uv Micklellan (who wuz, trooly, the nashen’s hope and pride likewise), becoz I felt assoored that the rane uv the Goriller Linkin wood be a short wun; that in a few months, at furthest, Ginral Lee wood capcher Washington, depose the ape, and set up there a constooshnal guverment, based upon the great and immutable trooth that a white man is better than a nigger.”
The Confederates had “consentratid” and lost their capital. “Linkin rides into Richmond! A Illinois rale-splitter, a buffoon, a ape, a goriller, a smutty joker, set hisself down in President Davis’s cheer, and rites dispatchis! . . . This ends the chapter. The Confederasy hez at last consentratid its last con- sentrate. It’s ded. It’s gathered up its feet, sed its last words, and deceest . . . Linkin will serve his term out—the tax on whisky won’t be repeeled—our leaders will die off uv chagrin, and delirium tremens and inability to live so long out uv offis, and the sheep will be skattered. Farewell, vane world.” This extravaganza rested Lincoln. It had the flavor Oglesby liked. And Yates could take it.
After dinner Speaker Colfax called by appointment. He asked whether the President intended to call an extra session of Congress during the summer. The President assured him he had no such intention. This left Colfax free for a trip to the West Coast. Lincoln gave him a message to the mountain regions that their gold and silver mines must count in a coming peace prosperity. Colfax spoke of how uneasy all had been over his going to Richmond and taking risks amid the tumult there. “He replied,” noted Colfax, “pleasantly and with a smile (I quote his exact words), ‘Why, if anyone else had been President and gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed too; but I was not scared about myself a bit.’”
Congressman George Ashmun of Massachusetts waited below, said a card brought in. A loyal party man, presiding chairman of the 1860 convention that had nominated Lincoln for President, he was entitled to a hearing. One published report assumed to give concretely the gist of their interview. Ashmun spoke for a client of his who had a cotton claim against the Government and he desired a “commission” appointed to examine and decide on the merits of the case. Lincoln was quoted as replying rather warmly: “I have done with ‘commissions.’ I believe they are contrivances to cheat the Government out of every pound of cotton they can lay their hands on.” Ashmun’s face flushed. He answered that he hoped the President meant no personal imputation. Lincoln saw that his sudden and sharp comment on such “commissions” had been taken as personal and he had wounded a good friend, instantly saying:
You did not understand me, Ashmun. I did not mean what you inferred. I take it all back. He would see Ashmun first of all callers on the docket next morning, and taking a card, wrote:
April 14, 1865.
Allow Mr. Ashmun & friend to come in at 9 A.M. tomorrow—
A. Lincoln
They joined Colfax, Mrs. Lincoln and Noah Brooks. The President was unusually cheerful, thought Brooks, “never more hopeful and buoyant concerning the condition of the country, full of fun and anecdotes,” though he had no enthusiasm about the play for the evening, felt “inclined to give up the whole thing.” The party stepped out on the White House portico, Lincoln going toward the carriage, saying, “Grant thinks we can reduce the cost of the army establishment at least a half million a day, which, with the reduction of expenditures of the navy, will soon bring down our national debt to something like decent proportions, and bring our national paper up to a par, or nearly so, with gold—at least so they think.”
Good old Isaac N. Arnold of Chicago came along, mentioned his errand as Lincoln was stepping into the carriage, and was answered, “Excuse me now. I am going to the theater. Come and see me in the morning.”
CHAPTER L