Page images
PDF
EPUB

1866.

that he proclaimed a state of peace as existing in CH. XVII. the rest of the United States, and then he excepted the State of Texas; on the 20th of August, in the same year, he made his final proclamation, announcing the reëstablishment of the national authority in Texas, and thereupon he concluded, "I do further proclaim that the said insurrection is at an end, and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America."

Thus the war ended. The carnage and the waste of it had surpassed the darkest forebodings, the most reckless prophecies. On the Union side 2,200,000 men had enlisted;1 on the Confederate, about 1,000,000. Of these 110,000 Union soldiers were killed or mortally wounded in battle; 2 a quarter of a million died of other causes. The total of deaths by the war on the Northern side amounted to 360,282. The number of the Confederate dead cannot be accurately ascertained; it ranges between 250,000 and 300,000. The expense of the war to the Union, over and above the ordinary expenses of the government, was about $3,250,000,000; to the Confederacy less than half that amount, about $1,500,000,000.

It seems a disheartening paradox to the lovers of peace that all this homicide and spoil gave only a new impulse to the growth and the wealth of the nation. We have seen how the quick eye of Lincoln recognized the fact, on the very night of election, that the voting strength of the country was

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

CH. XVII. greater in 1864 than it had been in 1860, and the census of 1870 showed a prodigious advance in prosperity and population. The 31,443,321 of 1860 had in the ten troubled years of war and reconstruction increased to 38,558,371; and the wealth of the country had waxed in an astonishing proportion, from $16,159,616,068 to $30,068,518,507. Even the reconquered States shared in this enormous progress.

CHAPTER XVIII

LINCOLN'S FAME

HE death of Lincoln awoke all over the world CH. XVIII.

THE
Taq death of awoke all world

a quick and deep emotion of grief and admiration. If he had died in the days of doubt and gloom which preceded his reëlection, he would have been sincerely mourned and praised by the friends of the Union, but its enemies would have curtly dismissed him as one of the necessary and misguided victims of sectional hate. They would have used his death to justify their malevolent forebodings, to point the moral of new lectures on the instability of democracies. But as he had fallen in the moment of a stupendous victory, the halo of a radiant success enveloped his memory and dazzled the eyes even of his most hostile critics. That portion of the press of England and the Continent which had persistently vilified him now joined in the universal chorus of elegiac praise. Cabinets and courts which had been cold

1 One of the finest poems on the occasion of his death was that in which the London "Punch" made its manly recantation of the slanders with which it had pursued him for four years:

Beside this corpse that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?
Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

1865.

CH. XVIII. or unfriendly sent their messages of condolence. The French Government, spurred on by their Liberal opponents, took prompt measures to express their admiration for his character and their horror at his taking-off. In the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies the imperialists and the republicans vied with each other in utterances of grief and of praise; the Emperor and the Empress sent their personal condolences to Mrs. Lincoln.

In England there was perhaps a trifle of selfconsciousness at the bottom of the official expressions of sympathy. The Foreign Office searched the records for precedents, finding nothing which suited the occasion since the assassination of Henry IV. The sterling English character could not, so gracefully as the courtiers of Napoleon III., bend to praise one who had been treated almost as an enemy for so long. When Sir George Grey opened his dignified and pathetic speech in the House of Commons, by saying that a majority of the people of England sympathized with the North, he was greeted with loud protestations and denials on the part of those who favored the Confederacy. But his references to Lincoln's virtues were cordially received, and when he said that the Queen had written to Mrs. Lincoln with her own hand, "as a widow to a widow," the House broke out in loud cheering. Mr. Disraeli spoke on behalf of the Conservatives with his usual dexterity and with a touch of factitious feeling. "There is," he said, "in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the

ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of CH. XVIIL nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind."

In the House of Lords the matter was treated with characteristic reticence. The speech of Lord Russell was full of that rugged truthfulness, that unbending integrity of spirit, which appeared at the time to disguise his real friendliness to America, and which was only the natural expression of a mind extraordinarily upright, and English to the verge of caricature. Lord Derby followed him in a speech of curious elegance, the object of which was rather to launch a polished shaft against his opponents than to show honor to the dead President; and the address proposed by the Government was voted. While these reserved and careful public proceedings were going on, the heart of England was expressing its sympathy with the kindred beyond sea by its thousand organs of utterance in the press, the resolutions of municipal bodies, the pulpit, and the platform.

In Germany the same manifestations were seen of official expressions of sympathy from royalty and its ministers, and of heartfelt affection and grief from the people and their representatives. Otto von Bismarck, then at the beginning of the events which have made his career so illustrious, gave utterance to the courteous regrets of the King of Prussia; the eloquent deputy, William Loewe, from his place in the House, made a brief and touching speech. The man," he said, "who accomplished such great deeds from the simple desire conscientiously to perform his duty, the man who never wished to be more nor less than the most faithful servant of his people,

66

« PreviousContinue »