The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (27 page)

Exactly what he said to Grant and Sherman in the cabin of the
River Queen
has never been made clear. Neither of them ever reported the conversation in detail, and it is entirely likely that he asked them not to do so. But what came out of this conference can lead to only one conclusion: that Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, made full use of his official position to specify the terms of surrender. Both Grant and Sherman offered terms that were almost identical in detail, and that were absolutely identical in the spirit of generosity implicit in them.
²⁶

In addition to providing the most favorable terms of surrender possible, Lincoln sounded out his generals to see if the pending battle could in some way be avoided. The Confederates, bottled up within their capital, obviously had no chance of further success. Every drop of blood spilled now seemed horribly unnecessary. Both Grant and Sherman, however, concurred in believing that Lee would not give up without making a last-stand fight. Disappointed in this, Lincoln,
nevertheless, spoke with gentle indirection about the fate of the Confederate leaders. If they were captured he was afraid that their execution would be demanded. He hinted that if they were permitted to escape from the country, the issue of what should be done with them would never have to be met.

Sherman returned to his army. Grant gave the word for the assault on the fortifications around Petersburg. Events now moved with fearful swiftness. Grant intensified the pressure on Petersburg. On April 2, Lee telegraphed to Davis that he could no longer hold his lines—the city must be evacuated immediately. The Confederate Government fled to Danville, where it was hoped that Lee could join Johnston to make another stand. Lee’s army streamed out of the redoubts around Petersburg. Sheridan started in hot pursuit. A running battle took place that lasted for several days. By April 8 it was all over. Sheridan headed off Lee, and Grant was on the heels of the fleeing army. The next day, at Appomattox Court House, Grant accepted Lee’s surrender and gave him the generous terms proposed by Lincoln.

Lee’s men were permitted to keep their horses so they could take them home to do the spring plowing; officers and men were simply asked to sign paroles not to take up arms again and to surrender all military equipment except their side-arms. And then the War was ended—not officially and finally, but to all practical purposes.

The Confederates had set Richmond on fire when they abandoned it. A huge conflagration raged there, consuming seven hundred buildings in the heart of the city. On April 3, when the vanguard of the Union army marched in, one of its first tasks was to help put out the fire.

On April 4, Lincoln set out with a small escort to see the city that had been the main goal of his war aims. He sailed up the James River in company with Admiral Porter. When the ship came to a barrier placed by the Confederates in the channel, the Presidential party had to proceed in a small
barge. This was landed on the waterfront not far from Libby Prison—a place that had become infamous in the North for the dreadful stories told about the treatment of prisoners of war held there. The prison was deserted, the streets around it silent. The great fire, still burning in some parts of the city, covered the scene with a pall of smoke. When the President stepped ashore, a few Negroes recognized him. In a short time a large crowd of colored people gathered around him, eager to see the man they looked upon as a saint and a messiah. Followed by them, the President walked through the city to the building Davis had used as the Executive Mansion of the Confederacy. Lincoln entered and went to the desk that Davis had so recently vacated; then he sat down in the chair that had belonged to the President of the Confederate States of America. For the first time in his career as President, Lincoln held his position unchallenged.

He returned through the city safely, although there must have been hundreds of men still in hiding there who would have been glad to kill the man they held responsible for their defeat. He returned to City Point and waited for the outcome of the running battle still going on with Lee.

Word came to him that Secretary Seward had been seriously injured in a carriage accident in Washington and was in bed suffering from a fractured jaw and severe shock. Lincoln felt that his presence at the capital was needed; he left City Point on April 8.

The
River Queen
headed up the Potomac. While it was on its way back to Washington Lincoln held long conversations with his friends, speaking to them about literature and poetry. He read Shakespeare to them, and one incident fastened itself forever on their minds. When Lincoln was reading
Macbeth
, he came to the passage:

And then he stopped and read the passage over again as if struck by its significance. Nor was this the only portent he had at this time. He later recounted to Lamon a dream which must have occurred during this period, for his references to dispatches from the front date it. He told the story to Lamon some time prior to April 11, so the dream must have taken place about April 1, while he was at City Point waiting for the news of Grant’s assault on the lines of Petersburg.

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. What 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 [of the White House], 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.

The man who was returning to the White House to meet
the realization of his own death dream entered Washington on April 9, the day of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. The news was received early on the morning of the tenth, and the city, which had just gone through a week of celebration over the fall of Richmond, began another period of wild rejoicing.

News of victory and peace spread across the Northern states, creating an emotional outburst that can be compared only with the spontaneous display of public feeling on Armistice Day, 1918. Lincoln knew that he still faced a struggle with Congress over the problems of a merciful reconstruction for the South, but he must have been glad that no more men were marching to their deaths at his command. Observers all say that he seemed to be imbued with a new energy after his return from City Point. Spring was at hand, and the air was warm and invigorating. The dreadful War years were over, and the President could look forward to peace and the conduct of ordinary affairs.

On the night of April 10, a torchlight procession went to the White House to serenade him. He was unwilling to speak extemporaneously at a time when every word might be taken as a declaration of policy. He good-naturedly asked the crowd to return the next evening, promising to prepare a speech for the occasion. He then suggested that the band play “Dixie,” a tune, he said, that could rightfully be considered a contraband of war.

Advance notice that the President would deliver a speech of victory encouraged a large turn-out the next evening. If the people who came to the White House expected a speech of exultation they must have been disappointed, for the President had quite another idea in mind. He spoke chiefly about the provisional state government that had been set up in Louisiana, and he made it clear that he expected to treat the Southern states as if they had never been out of the Union at
all; according to him, they had simply been “out of their proper practical relation” to it. He indicated also that he would favor the franchise for those Negroes who were very intelligent or who had served as soldiers. He pleaded that the new state government be sustained; it was not perfect, he admitted, but it was the best that could be obtained under the circumstances.

It was, in many ways, a strange speech to make in response to a serenade of victory. Except for the brief introduction there was no mention of victory in it. Lincoln had already discounted the winning of the War and was pressing on to the winning of the peace. It was evident, also, that he was preparing to take the issue of reconstruction to the public in order to gain support for his anticipated struggle with Congress. But this was his valedictory address. The hostile eyes of conspirators were glaring at him as he spoke.

The next two days passed quickly. April 12 was the fourth anniversary of the day on which the Confederate forts in Charleston harbor had opened fire on Sumter. The War had lasted almost exactly four years. On April 14, which was the anniversary of Sumter’s surrender, a public ceremony was held inside the ruined fort. Robert Anderson, the Union officer who had been compelled to haul down his country’s flag there four years before, now pulled the halyards that flung the same flag to the sea breezes over Sumter’s historic walls.

In Washington, April 14 was a blustery spring day with sunshine and shadow alternating as the hours passed. At eleven o’clock in the morning, a Cabinet meeting was held at which General Grant was present as a guest of honor. The ever-present problem of reconstruction was discussed, and then mention was made of Sherman. Word was expected hourly from him of Johnston’s surrender. The President told his Cabinet that he was sure the news would come soon, for he had had a dream which came before almost every great battle of the War—Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg,
etc. He, the dreamer, had dreamed again, and he explained that in this dream he always stood on the deck of a strange vessel sailing rapidly toward a dark and unknown shore. He felt that his dream was an augury that something eventful was about to happen—it would probably be the news from Sherman, he said.

He had arranged to go to the theater that evening with General and Mrs. Grant, but during the Cabinet meeting a note was received from Mrs. Grant, saying that she had decided to go to New Jersey to visit her children who were at school there. General Grant asked to be excused from the theater party. No other reason was given, but his wife probably did not wish to expose herself again to the embarrassment Mrs. Lincoln had caused her at City Point.

And so it was that the President and Mrs. Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater that night with only a young officer and his fiancée for company. Had General Grant been with them it is at least possible that the tragedy due to be staged there might never have occurred. Grant was a tough old campaigner, alert against attack and experienced with the ways of violent men.

The Presidential party entered the theater shortly after eight o’clock. The play was
Our American Cousin
, and the star was Laura Keene, who had already given more than a thousand performances in the leading role. It was a silly comedy at which the President laughed heartily, glad to have an opportunity to forget the problems of the day. During the second act he suddenly felt cold and got up to put his coat around him. And then, during the next act, a door behind him opened so quietly that no one noticed it. A shot rang out, and Abraham Lincoln’s consciousness of the living world ceased at that moment. The infuriated Booth cried out his singularly inappropriate phrase “
Sic semper tyrannis
,” slashed with a dagger at the young officer in the box and then was gone to keep his own rendezvous with death somewhere in Virginia.

The unconscious President was carried out of the theater in the midst of wild pandemonium. He was taken to a boarding-house across the street, where he was laid on a bed in a hall room. Surgeons worked over him for hours, but it was obvious that he could not live, that he could not even regain consciousness. Mrs. Lincoln, weeping and hysterical, waited all night in the front parlor of the little house. Members of the Cabinet and high government officials came to gather around the President. Everybody suspected that the assassination was part of a concerted rebel attempt to capture the city. At the same moment Lincoln was shot, another conspirator had entered the house where Seward was lying helpless in bed. Seward escaped death, but the infuriated intruder wounded several people who got in his way.

As the night passed, the noise of a city gone mad reached the room where the President lay dying. Mobs surged through the streets; cavalry patrols thundered past. But the people standing around the motionless figure on the bed had ears only for the labored breathing that came and went. Shortly after dawn, the rain began to fall. Gray daylight filtered in through the window. A surgeon, listening to the last faint breathing, closed his watch at seven-twenty-two; he then lifted the wasted hands and folded them across the motionless chest. The life-course that had begun in a Kentucky mountain cabin had run full cycle.

At nine-thirty the body of the dead President was carried through the streets of Washington to the White House. As the funeral cortege passed along in the rain, people were taking down the banners of victory to replace them with the dark trappings of mourning. And all through the North the news of the President’s death was received with incredulity, with paralyzing shock, and then with rage that was to shake the nation for years to come.