CHAPTER XXIV

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

THE surrender of General Lee led to immediate measures looking to the end of the war. The Confederacy still existed as a government upon paper, but its principal army had been captured, its president was a fugitive, and its capital was in the hands of the Union Army. There still were scattered military organizations in arms against the Federal Government, but they were feeble, ineffective and disheartened. It would require some weeks officially to terminate the rebellion, but practically the Confederacy went down with the evacuation of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army. The draft was suspended. Edwin M. Stanton, his profanity to the contrary notwithstanding, was a religious man, and caused the new dome of the capitol to be surrounded by a transparency bearing these words:

"THIS IS THE LORD'S DOING,

AND IT IS MARVELOUS

IN OUR EYES"

Friday was the regular day for the Cabinet meeting. General Grant had come to Washington and was invited to be present. Apparently not much business was done. There was general rejoicing over the end of the war, and a consideration of what would follow by way of reconstruction.

Gideon Welles recorded concerning this meeting, that the president warned his Cabinet that he would not participate in any vindictive measures against the South.

He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect he would take any

part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. "Frighten them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them off," said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. "Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union." There was too much desire on the part of our very good friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate to those states, to treat the people not as fellow-citizens; there was too little respect for their right. He didn't sympathize in those feelings.

Secretary Stanton recalling this Cabinet meeting in the light of the sad events of that night, recorded on Saturday:

He was more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him, rejoiced at the near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and abroad; manifested in a marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition and the tender forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him.

President Lincoln was a close observer of his own dreams. He was subject to them, and could not let them go without wondering what they might portend. At this last Cabinet meeting he told of a dream he had the night before, and one which he was confident portended some important event, the nature of which he did not attempt to conjecture. Secretary Welles thus recalls the president's recital of his dream:

He said it was in my department, it related to the water, that he seemed to be in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and that he was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; that he had had this singular dream preceding the firing on Sumter, the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc. . . Victory did not always follow his dream, but the event and results were important. He had no doubt that a battle had taken place, or was about being fought, "and Johnston will be beaten, for I had this strange dream again last night. It must relate to Sherman; my thoughts are in that direction, and I know of no other very important event which is likely just now to occur."

Through all the years of his life in the White House Lincoln had been in receipt of letters threatening his assassination. He

did not pay much attention to these. He was a brave man. He had abiding faith that he had been called to do a great work, and he believed that he would live to finish it. He had no great faith that any precaution of his would avert whatever destiny was in store for him. Moreover, he had in him a strain of innate superstition. Herndon is unquestionably right in saying that his tendency to fatalism was intensified by the Baptist preaching which he heard in his boyhood and youth. The backwoods Baptists of that day believed in predestination of a most intense and effective sort.

Lincoln had moved steadily forward through abundant and repeated warnings of assassination with as little apparent concern as Admiral Farragut had shown when his flagship, the Hartford, was steaming ahead through the torpedoes of Mobile Bay. Apparently it did not occur to him that the dream which conveyed some premonition of an impending event was a portent of personal evil to himself.

On the afternoon of that Friday Lincoln said good-by to Schuyler Colfax who was going west, and spent a little time with a cheerful group of friends, among them Richard Oglesby, of Illinois. He had so merry a time with them it was difficult for Mrs. Lincoln to get him away from them to dinner.

After dinner, George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, who had presided over the convention that nominated Lincoln in 1860, called, and Mr. Lincoln made an appointment to meet him with a friend on the following morning. The last bit of writing which Lincoln ever did was a card* bearing these words:

April 14, 1865.

Allow Mr. Ashmun
& friend to come in
at 9-A. M. tomor-

row

A. Lincoln

*The friend of Mr. Ashmun referred to on this card was Judge C. P. Daley, of New York.

Mrs. Lincoln had been disappointed in her effort to lionize General Grant on the occasion of his visit to the White House when he became commander-in-chief of the army. She arranged a theater party for that evening at which the general and his wife were to be her guests. Laura Keene was playing Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater. The manager of the theater did not fail to make it known in the afternoon papers that "the president and his lady" and "the hero of Appomattox" would attend the theater that night. The president's box was draped with flags. General and Mrs. Grant decided to leave for Burlington, New Jersey, that night. Mrs. Lincoln invited Major H. R. Rathbone and his financée, the daughter of Senator Ira Harris, to take the place of General and Mrs. Grant.

The president and his party reached the theater about nine o'clock. The president and his wife were greeted with applause as they entered their box from the rear, and took the places assigned. The interruption was brief, and the play proceeded.

The president sat down in a rocking chair which had been provided for him, and watched with interest the scene upon the boards. It was broad comedy, and Mr. Lincoln enjoyed it, all unconscious of the tragedy which soon was to supersede it.

That tragedy was not long delayed. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin, who knew the theater well, and had made his plans carefully, entered the box quietly and fired the fatal shot from a Derringer pistol. The audience at first did not realize that the pistol-shot was not a part of the performance. Major Rathbone was the first to understand what had occurred. He grappled with the assassin, who had already drawn a dagger, and who viciously stabbed the young officer. The blow was aimed at his heart but was warded off and received in the arm.

"Sic Semper Tyrannis!" exclaimed Booth.

Booth then vaulted from the box to the stage. An American flag, draped below the box, caught his spur and flung the murderer to the stage with a broken leg. Thus did the nation's flag become the mute avenger of its country's chief.

Booth rose to his feet and moved quickly to the stage exit. Although his leg was broken, he escaped to the alley behind the theater, where a horse awaited him, and he hurriedly left the city.

As soon as the spectators realized what had occurred, there was a rush of people to the box. Among them was Laura Keene, the actress, and others crowded in, bewildered. A surgeon was helped over the balustrade and into the box. The president was borne from the theater at first with no plan where to take him. Nearly opposite the theater was a lodging-house, occupied by the family of William Peterson. A young man named Clark who roomed there was standing upon the steps when men appeared in the street bearing the president. Into this young man's room on the ground floor and toward the rear of the house, they bore the unconscious form and laid it upon the bed. Eminent surgeons were summoned, and the members of the Cabinet were called. A night of unspeakable agony followed. The president never regained consciousness.

For a time Washington was in terror. It was not known at once how many of the officers of the government might have been stricken. It seemed as though conspiracy stalked everywhere, and murder lurked in every doorway. Those who lived in Washington can never forget the horror of the night when Lincoln was killed.

The same night of Lincoln's assassination an attempt was made to murder also the secretary of state, William H. Seward. He was almost fatally stabbed, and his son Frederick was very severely wounded.

General Grant had left the city for Burlington, New Jersey, a few hours before the time fixed for his assassination. Those who were to have assassinated the remaining members of the Cabinet either lost courage, or drank too heavily, or were prevented by other causes not known.

A defective door-bell on Stanton's house was probably the reason for his own escape from assassination on the same night.