Our One Common Country (39 page)

Lincoln wrote to General Weitzel the next day. Having worked past midnight to focus his thoughts, he had limited Virginia's legislators to a de facto sort of recognition and confined them to a single task:

 

It has been intimated to me that the gentlemen who have
acted
as
the Legislature of Virginia, in support of the rebellion, may now desire to assemble at Richmond, and take measures to withdraw Virginia's troops and other support from resistance to the General Government. If they attempt it, give them permission and protection until, if at all, they attempt some action hostile to the United States, in which case you will notify them, give them reasonable time to leave, and at the end of which time arrest any who remain.

 

Even now, with their ruined capital taken, if they returned and renewed their treason, Lincoln would let them leave. He closed with a testament of trust in a friend. “Allow Judge Campbell to see this, but do not make it public.”

Weitzel sent for Campbell, read him Lincoln's letter, and invited him to write a supporting note to leading Virginians. If Campbell noticed how narrow Lincoln's order was, he did not say so. He asked if influential persons other than legislators could be called to Richmond without fear of arrest. Weitzel said they could, and went the judge one better: The army would provide transportation and accommodations. Campbell composed an appeal to Southern pride and Southern duty and handed it to Weitzel to publish. Despite the North's superior resources, it said, the spirit of the South was unbroken and the war could be prolonged. It was “the province of statesmanship” to prevent this. The “agencies of the Confederate States” were unwilling to negotiate. “Hence the necessity to call upon the Legislature and suspend hostilities” and “bring the minds of the people to consider of peace.”

Then Campbell wrote a letter to an honor roll of Virginians, reciting Lincoln's peace terms and his intention to let the legislature assemble if it would accept the Constitution and laws of the United States. “I understood from Mr. Lincoln, if this condition be fulfilled, that no attempt would be made to establish or sustain any other authority.” In this the judge took a giant step too far. Nevertheless, when Campbell read his draft to General Shepley, his staff, and Stanton's eyes and ears in the person of Charles Dana, none of them objected. But when Dana wired the War Department, Stanton told him to order General Weitzel not
to follow the president's instructions to summon the legislature until further notice.

Then Campbell met with five Virginia legislators. He gave them copies of the memorandum that Lincoln had handed him on the
Malvern,
the presidential instructions to Weitzel to let the legislature withdraw from the war, and Campbell's own letter to influential men. It was for the government of Virginia to decide what to do, he said.

Then he wrote to Weitzel. The spirit of the people was not broken. They were capable of “a prolonged and embarrassing resistance. Humanity as well as patriotism requires that such a contest, which must be in the end fruitless, should be averted.” The Confederacy had “made no provision for the possibility of its failure. Its functionaries don't understand how they can negotiate for the subversion or overthrow of their Government.” While “reflecting persons” knew that the cause was lost, and were ready for fair terms, the difficulty lay in finding a lawful authority to accept them. The legislature would provide one. In Virginia and other states, elected officials could resolve with their federal counterparts the issues of confiscated property, amnesties, representation in Congress, “the condition of the slave population.”

All that was needed was a “very grave, important, and patient inquiry” between the elected representatives of the United States government and the separate state governments, Campbell said, unknowingly echoing Gideon Welles, who thought that the rebellious states could be peeled away one by one, ending the war themselves, leaving Jefferson Davis to preside over nothing.

Grateful for Weitzel's enlightened occupation of the city, Campbell encouraged him to persevere in the “patience, moderation, forbearance, and conciliation that has marked your conduct since you entered Richmond.” But when Stanton's man Charles Dana asked Weitzel on Friday evening about letting the churches open on Sunday, the general replied injudiciously. They could hold their services on three conditions. There would be no disloyal invocations. The clergy would not pray for Jefferson Davis. They would pray for Abraham Lincoln.

The President of the United States, who had wished to let Richmond up easy, would be treated like a conquering caliph.

Campbell asked Weitzel's chief of staff, General Shepley, to intervene. Banning prayer for Davis was one thing, Campbell said, ordering prayer for Lincoln was another. Shepley brought the issue to Weitzel. Convinced that the judge was right, but loath to reverse himself, Weitzel sent Shepley to Dana to ask him to amend the order, on Stanton's authority, but the war god had issued no commandments on public worship, and Dana would not interfere. Then Campbell went personally to Weitzel, who sent Shepley back to Dana. Weitzel had meant to ban prayer for Davis, Shepley said. Dana had ordered prayer for Lincoln. Dana had given no such order, and said so. Weitzel must act on his own judgment. Recalling Lincoln's advice, the general revoked his edict compelling the people to bless their conqueror.

Dana would later say that on Richmond's first Sabbath in captivity the sermons were “devout and not political.” When Dana reported to Stanton that freedom of religion had been restored, Mars wired Weitzel in the fullness of his wrath. Lincoln smoothed it over in a telegram to Weitzel. He did not recall discussing prayer in Richmond, “but I have no doubt that you have acted in what appeared to you to be the spirit and temper manifested by me while I was there.”

Before Lincoln left City Point to comfort Seward, he wired Grant, still dogging Lee's heels, about his meeting with Campbell and his hope that Lee might be recalled to Richmond and be ordered to bring his fellow Virginians, the faintly beating heart of his army, taking them out of the war. “I do not think it very probable that anything will come of this; but I have thought best to notify you, so that if you should see signs, you may understand them.” In the meantime, he said, Grant was removing Virginia's troops from the war pretty well on his own. “Nothing I have done, or probably shall do, is to delay, hinder, or interfere with you in your work.”

Rumors reached Capitol Hill that Lincoln was letting the Virginia legislature assemble. A fellow Jacobin had never heard “such force and fitness” in Senator Benjamin Wade's swearing. Idle talk had been heard of assassinating Lincoln, Wade said. If the rumors were true, “the sooner he was assassinated the better.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Rebels Are Our Countrymen Again

On Saturday morning, April 8, Judge Campbell met at the Executive Mansion with some Northern and Southern dignitaries: Stanton's man Dana, generals Weitzel and Shepley, Gustavus Myers, some Virginia legislators and minor officeholders, and the editor of the defunct
Enquirer.
Dana could see that the other Southerners shared Campbell's views. Though not as bright and articulate as he, they were “thoroughly conscious that they were beaten, and sincerely anxious to stop all further bloodshed and restore peace, law, and order.”

The Virginians read to the victors an assortment of memoranda, some less submissive than others, and were told that nothing recognizing Confederate authority would be entertained. If they wanted to compose a message advising their people to stop fighting and obey the laws of the United States, the means would be provided to circulate it. If they chose to call a convention to restore Virginia to the Union, horses would be loaned for the purpose. Make no mistake, they were told; none of this should be misread as overlooking any offenses that any of them had committed. High treason was their unspoken crime. Campbell said he had stayed in Richmond to accept the consequences of his actions and to help restore peace and order. He would gladly perform any labor asked of him but did not wish to participate prominently in a convention.

After Dana left, he was sitting in the lobby of the Spotswood Hotel, whose carpets had been ripped up for Rebel army blankets, when a familiar voice called his name. It was Vice President Andrew Johnson. He drew Dana aside and warned him heatedly not to take the Rebels back unpunished. Their sins had been enormous. They might be dangerous.
They could turn on us again. Campbell later heard that when his letters calling on Virginia's leaders to assemble were read in Johnson's presence he counted himself “strongly and profanely hostile.”

In the company of Grant, the hot-blooded Phil Sheridan was pursuing Lee, nipping at his heels, killing and capturing his troops, taking casualties in return. With hundreds of lives and limbs being lost every day to the death throes of the Confederacy, Lincoln wanted the Virginia legislature to assemble immediately. He told Stanton that Sheridan seemed to be getting Rebel soldiers out of the war “faster than this Legislature could think.”

On the bright and beautiful Sunday of April 9, in the bucolic village of Appomattox Court House, in the parlor of Wilmer McLean, a sugar broker who had moved his family to safer ground after a shell fell through his chimney at Bull Run, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant, who had finally boxed him in. The story of Grant's compassion has been told ever since. Lee and his officers and men were amnestied and allowed to go home. Having eaten next to nothing for over a week, they were given federal rations. The officers kept their sidearms. The cavalry and artillerymen kept their horses. Lee said it would “do much toward conciliating our people.” Grant forbade celebration. “The rebels are our countrymen again.” The universal amnesty he had given Lee and his army was broader than the one that Lincoln had specifically authorized, which did not apply to generals or senior Rebels who had resigned from Congress, the federal bench, or the US military. Far from repudiating it, the president embraced it.

Several Confederate armies more or less worthy of the name were still in the field, most notably what was left of General Johnston's in North Carolina, another in Texas, a third in Alabama. Smaller organized forces and guerrilla bands were scattered across the South. Grant told Lee that he hoped their own transaction would lead to the end of the war and prevent any further loss of life. Lee said little.

Unaware of the momentous event, Lincoln returned to Washington late that afternoon on word of Seward's accident and went straight to the governor's home, sacrificing his fervent wish to welcome Grant back to City Point whenever Lee surrendered. He stretched himself out on Seward's bed, brought his head up close to his friend's, reached behind him to hold Fan Seward's hand, and talked about touring a hospital that day, shaking hands with hundreds of wounded men. He felt as if he had been chopping wood, he said, trying to raise a smile. Seward could barely speak.

When the news of Lee's surrender arrived that night, Stanton threw his arms around the president and ordered illuminations. Graciously enough,
grant
was displayed in gaslight across the War Department's facade. It was Grant who had subtracted the Virginians from the war after all. At daybreak, the hollow boom of cannon awakened Washington and Richmond, bringing joy to one, despair to the other. Gideon Welles made an entry in his diary. “Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering, all are jubilant.” In Richmond, a citizen wrote, “God help us, we must take refuge in unbelief.”

When Uncle Gideon went to see him in the morning, the president was effervescent. There would be no final battle of annihilation. The Army of Northern Virginia was no more. The war would sputter out.

The news reached Jefferson Davis as he dined with his Cabinet in Danville. An officer handed him a note. He read it and passed it down the table, and “a great silence prevailed for a moment.” Judah Benjamin told a friend he would never be taken alive. Far from condemning Lee, Davis believed that a leader “less resolute, an army less heroically resisting fatigue, constant watching, and starvation, would long since have reached the conclusion that surrender was a necessity.” Lee had reached it months ago. He had turned and fought repeatedly on his hopeless retreat from Petersburg, leaving thousands of men and boys dead and twice as many maimed on his fields of Southern honor.

On the day after the surrender, Grant and his staff rode over to Lee's camp and were stopped by armed men. “The force of habit is hard to overcome,” a Northern officer said. A message was sent to Lee, who rode out with his own aides. They raised their hats to one another and the officers withdrew in blue and gray semicircles around their chiefs. Grant said he hoped the war would end soon. Lee said he had been anxious to stop it for some time, and trusted that everything would be done to conciliate the people. He could not predict what the other armies or President Davis would do, but he thought they would follow his example. Prolonging the war would be pointless. He would devote himself to pacifying “the country” and bringing his people back. His own heart had always been for the Union, he said. He could “find no justification for the politicians who had brought on the war,” the extremists on both sides.

Grant said no one had greater influence in the South than Lee. He might use it to urge the other commanders to make peace. He could not do it, Lee said, not without consulting President Davis. Grant urged him to do so. It was not his place, Lee said. The civilian authorities would surely conclude as he had. The generals exchanged a few more words, raised their hats to one another again, and parted.

Lincoln asked “Governor” Francis Pierpont to the White House that day to discuss the transplantation of his ersatz government of Virginia from Alexandria to Richmond. The president spoke of his meetings with Judge Campbell, their discussion about the legislature, how Campbell had tried to find a leader willing to make peace. Lincoln said Pierpont's government and its legitimacy were “fully in my mind” when he spoke with Campbell. He had authorized the Rebel legislature to perform a single act—to withdraw Virginia's forces from the war—“and with this act I expected their powers as legislators to cease. They had put the army in the field, why not take it out and quit?” But “if I had known that General Lee would surrender so soon I would not have issued the proclamation.”

On Tuesday, April 11, Grant and his senior officers got back to City Point before dawn. He signed a few dispatches, then rose and turned wryly to an aide. “On to Mexico.”

A festive breakfast was improvised. Someone at the table said the general should go to Richmond for a triumphal tour. He waved the idea away. His wife said he should go, and persisted when he said no. Then the general leaned in close. “Hush, Julia. Do not say another word on this subject. I would not distress these people.” They were feeling their defeat bitterly. She would not have him twist their wounds. No doubt recalling her own forlorn visit to the beaten Rebel capital, Julia urged no more. Instead, the Grants and some senior officers took the
Mary Martin
up the Potomac. There was triumph enough in Washington.