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AUGUST V.
V. KAUTZ,

ORD

401

THE VISIT OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN TO RICHMOND,

THE ABANDONED CONFEDERATE CAPITAL, ON THE 4TH OF

THE

APRIL, 1865.

HE abandoned and burning city was occupied, the day previous, by General Weitzel's command, consisting of a division of white troops under General Devins and a colored division which I commanded. The President, accompanied by Admiral Porter, had landed early in the afternoon from the gun-boat Malvern, which came up from City Point, and leading his little son Tad, the three walked up from the landing to General Weitzel's quarters, in the house occupied two days before by the Confederate President. By the time he reached it, the streets were almost impassable, being obstructed mostly by negroes struggling to get sight of the man whom they regarded as their savior. A reception was held immediately, that lasted some hours, and then a ride was proposed, and, accompanied by a number of general officers, the party, filling two ambulances, drove through the city and Capitol grounds until sundown. The same evening, Mr. Campbell, of the Confederate Cabinet, and some other prominent Confederates, interviewed Mr. Lincoln with propositions for the restoration of Virginia to the Union. The President remained until the 7th without agreeing upon any plan that was accepted. This was the last time

that I saw Mr. Lincoln; one week after he was assassinated; and, a few weeks later, I was summoned to Washington and detailed a member of the Commission that tried the assassins. By this visit to the captured Confederate .capital, Mr. Lincoln realized, before General Lee had surrendered, more completely than he otherwise could have done, that the Confederacy had fallen, and that the cause, of which he was the distinguished representative, had triumphed, to accomplish which, he would have laid down his life at any time during the war.

Angust kant

U.S. ARMY.

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The way was long and cheerless,
But dawn succeeded night;
That soul, so brave and fearless,
Dwells evermore in light!

No shadows dim his glory,

Our hearts his praise resound,

And history tells his story,-
Our nation's king is crowned!

Sophie C. Castman.

SOUTH HADLEY, 1882.

THE

HE most conspicuous victim of our nation's rise and progress has been Abraham Lincoln. The long and cruel war of the rebellion was over. The first glad days of peace had come. The waters of the flood of wrath were disappearing, and the long-tossed ark of the national life had just rested upon solid ground. The dove was returning from the redeemed world with a branch of olive, when the hand of the assassin struck down the emancipator of the race of slaves. To those of us who remember vividly the war days, who cannot recall the awful shock of that event? The brave patriot's life, covered, as it had been, with contumely and abuse, derided, scorned, criticised, condemned, stood at the last far above all his compeers, and we understood at the last why it was that the leadership of this elect nation had been committed to his patient, suffering keeping through the storm of the civil war, and not to his companions, a Seward, a Chase or a Stanton, since in the light of his death we beheld the divine meaning of his choice, and felt that, like Saul among the elder brethren of his father's house, the horn of the prophetic people, like that of Samuel of old, had anointed with holy oil that man of the people whom God had unmistakably cailed and chosen to be the leader through the crisis of the rebellion.

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ABR

BRAHAM LINCOLN I regard as belonging to the same class with the judges in Israel.

He was

raised up by Divine Providence to be the deliverer of this nation in a time of great peril. His work done, God permitted him to be removed without conscious suffering, by the bullet of a most cowardly and wicked assassin. His name will stand on the roll of fame next to that of Washington as a benefactor of his race.

S. Scott

1880.

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