dent, "Can you not visit City Point for a day or two? I would like very much to see you, and I think the rest would do you good." Lincoln accepted the invitation and arrived on the 24th, bringing with him Mrs. Lincoln and their youngest boy, "Tad"; the eldest son, Robert, was now a member of Grant's staff. Grant sensed the collapse of Lee's army, the fall of Petersburg and the capture of Richmond and wanted Lincoln to be in at the death. The President was in great good humor and regaled the officers at headquarters with his anecdotes. It was during this visit that he had the famous interview with Grant, Sherman and Porter on board the River Queen. Referring to his recent meeting with the Confederate Commissioners at Hampton Roads, Lincoln asked Grant if he had noted the enormous overcoat which Alexander H. Stephens, a very small man, was wearing. Grant said that he had. "Well," said Lincoln, "did you see him take it off? Didn't you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?" Grant afterwards related this to General Gordon, who in turn told Stephens, much to the latter's delight.

As they sat one night about the campfire Lincoln in his anecdotal method was prophesying that England would regret the stand she had taken during the war, illustrating his point with the story of a western barber who, in order to get at the beard of a hollow-cheeked man, thrust his finger in the man's mouth and pressed out the cheek. But in a careless moment he cut through the man's cheek and into his own finger. At the end of this parable,

Grant looked up and said, “Mr. President, did you at any time doubt the final success of the cause?" "Never for a moment," was the reply of the President as he leaned forward in his camp chair and raised his hand by way of emphasis.

When Petersburg was taken Lincoln gave Grant an affectionate greeting at his headquarters in the captured town and said to him, "Do you know, General, I had a sort of sneaking idea all along that you intended to do something like this: but I thought sometime ago that you would so maneuver as to have Sherman come up and be near enough to co-operate with you." Grant replied that he had concluded it would be better to let the Army of the Potomac deliver the finishing blow to Lee's army, for if the army under Sherman was even near the scene of surrender, the old cry about the superiority of the western troops would be raised and it would be claimed that they had won the war.

After entering Richmond amid the tears and cheers of the negroes, Lincoln returned to Washington. There on the fatal Friday, April 14th, Grant met with Lincoln and the Cabinet. Grant ex

pressed some anxiety as to Sherman's situation, not having heard from him for some time, but Lincoln then assured Grant that good news would soon come in, for on the night before he had dreamed the dream which had always preceded great events. In a strange vessel he was rapidly approaching a dark shore. This dream he had had before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. Grant responded that Murfreesboro was no victory

and had no important results. But the President insisted that the dream was the precursor of great news from Sherman, for he knew of no other important event pending.

But another great event was at the door, and that night it would enter to shock the world, although neither Lincoln nor any of his advisers was conscious of its near approach. Lincoln invited General Grant and Mrs. Grant to accompany him and Mrs. Lincoln to the theatre that night. Grant said they would go if in the city, but if his other matters could be attended to he planned to leave Washington that night and go to visit his children, who were in school at Burlington, N. J. On the way to the station that night Grant was shadowed by a man who had frightened Mrs. Grant by his close scrutiny at the hotel during the day. When the photographs of Booth were published they at once recognized him as the man who had shadowed them. When taking the ferry at the Delaware River, at Philadelphia, Grant received the telegram announcing the assassination of Lincoln and hurried back to Washington. Some time after the assassination he received an anonymous letter saying that the writer had been selected by Booth to board Grant's train at the station in Washington and kill him. The conductor had refused him entrance and he was thankful that he had thus been spared committing a murder.

United in their great labors for the salvation of the country, it was only by one of those little chances upon which great issues turn that Grant and Lincoln were not united in death at the as

sassin's hand. Grant's last message to Lincoln was when he spoke at the dedication of the great obelisk at Springfield, when he said, "From March, 1864, to the day when the hand of the assassin opened a grave for Mr. Lincoln, the President of the United States, my personal relations with him were as close and intimate as the nature of our respective duties would permit. To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head, and for his patience and patriotism. With all his disappointments from failures on the part of those to whom he had intrusted commands, and treachery on the part of those who had gained his confidence but to betray it, I never heard him utter a complaint, nor cast a censure for bad conduct or bad faith. It was his nature to find excuses for the his adversaries. In his death the nation lost its greatest hero; in his death the South lost its most just friend."

Three score and four years have passed since the beginning of the Civil War. But even so, we are still too near to that stirring epoch to say with assurance how many of its chief actors will have an abiding place in the history of the nation. It is quite likely that a century hence some of the men dealt with in this book will be not even names. But of this at least I think we can be sure: Lincoln and Grant belong to history. Their names and their fame are secure. Whoever else shall be forgotten, they will be remembered as long as it shall please God to give America a name and a place among the nations of the earth.

[ END ]

AUTHORITIES

The chief mine of information concerning the American Civil War is the great collection of orders, reports and findings known as the War Records, and published by a generous and grateful Government. But in addition to this priceless collection there has arisen a vast literature of a more personal nature. Nearly every chief figure of the Civil War has written a book, or had a book written about him. For the purpose of my investigation such books as the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, McClellan's My Own Story, Butler's Book, by General Ben Butler, McClure's Lincoln and Men of War Times, Gideon Welles' Diary, etc., have proved very helpful. I have consulted, too, the many excellent biographies of the generals of the war, personal letters, and such classics of the Civil War literature as Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, John C. Ropes' Story of the Civil War, and the notable series of papers, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. In addition to this wide range of written sources, it has been my very great pleasure and rare privilege, during the years of my study, to talk with the survivors of the great conflict, both officers and soldiers. What an opportunity this has been can be appreciated if one stops to reflect that ten years hence the veterans of the Civil War I will be seen no more on our streets. From this rich oral tradition I was able to learn much that had not been written in books.