possessed the courage to prevent the President's misconception from reinvolving the Government in blood. Congress made an investigation of the matter, during which Stanton, under oath, testified interestingly as follows:

The order of Mr. Lincoln on April 12, on file in the War Department, is the last order he ever made of which I have any knowledge. It was the last time he was in the War Department.

Immediately after the capture of Richmond, Mr. Lincoln went to that city and some intercourse took place between him and Judge Campbell, formerly of the Supreme Court of the United States, and General Weitzel, which resulted in the call of the rebel legislature to Richmond. Mr. Lincoln, on his return from Richmond to Washington, reconsidered the mat

ter.

The policy of undertaking to restore the Government through the medium of rebel organization was vehemently opposed by me. I had several very earnest conversations with Mr. Lincoln upon the subject and advised him that any effort to reorganize the Government should be under Federal authority solely, treating the rebel organizations and government as absolutely null and void.

On the day preceding his death a conversation took place between him, the Attorney-General, and myself upon that subject at the executive mansion. After an hour or two, during the middle of the afternoon, Mr. Lincoln came over to the War Department and renewed the conversation. After I had repeated my reasons against allowing the rebel legislature to assemble, or the rebel organizations to have any participation whatever in the business of reorganization, he sat down at my desk and wrote a telegram to General Weitzel and handed it to me, saying: "There, I think that will suit you."

I told him no, it did not go far enough; that the members of the rebel legislature would probably come to Richmond and that General Weitzel ought to be directed to prohibit any such assembling.

He took up his pen again and made the alteration and signed the telegram. He handed it to me. I said, that, I thought, was exactly right. It was transmitted immediately to General Weitzel, and was the last act that was ever performed by Mr. Lincoln in the War Department.

Some of the other rebel States, after the surrender of the rebel armies, called together their legislatures, and, either pursuant to instructions from the War Department or on their own discretion, the commandants prohibited the assembling of those bodies.

The rebel authorities were all overthrown and destroyed, as I understood the case, by the war, by the capture of their armies and their States.

The only witness of the last great interview between Lincoln and Stanton, the interview which saved the nation from Charybdis and the President from ignominy, is Major A. E. H. Johnson, who

thus comprehensively describes the momentous occasion from precious notes taken by him on the spot:

In the afternoon about 5 o'clock the President came over to the War Department, and it was while sitting on the sofa in the Secretary's room looking towards my desk, that Mr. Stanton told the President why he should not turn over the determination of such grave matters to the Virginia legislature. It was then that Mr. Stanton again urged his plea that the reorganization of the seceded States should be under Federal authority. He told the President that the conqueror and not the conquered should control the State in the matter which was vital for all time; that to place such powers in the Virginia legislature would be giving away the scepter of the conqueror; that it would transfer the result of victory of our arms from the field to the very legislatures which four years before had said, "give us war"; that it would put the Government in the hands of its enemies; that it would surely bring trouble with Congress; that the people would not sustain him; that it would disturb the harmony between the executive and Congress; that reconstruction would have to deal with the new conditions of things, among which would be a change in the basis of representation now that all the blacks were free; that it would have to deal with the debts of the Federal and the Confederate Governments; that in all this the Southern legislatures would be in the ascendency, and the political power of the South increased; that the fate of the emancipated millions would be solely under the control of such legislatures; that the result of the war would go for nothing if those results were to be determined by the enemies of the Government; that it would be better to have nothing to do with the rebel legislatures; that the Virginia legislature was dead and could not again assemble at Richmond without permission of the Government, and to bring to life a dead legislature would bring endless trouble to the Government and to reconstruction; that, in fact, it would defeat any reconstruction, because Congress would not sanction any government established by it; that, being once assembled, its deliberations could not be confined to any specific acts, and that to disperse it would produce another rebellion; that the Virginia legislature should be ignored even in the capacity of its members as citizens for any purpose.

In pleading with the President-I can see the Secretary now, earnest and full of feeling and the President listening in profound thought, saying not a word—the Secretary's manner was not his usual manner; it was argumentative. The President had no story to illustrate his position or that of his Secretary. It was a solemn occasion, and upon that interview hung the destiny of reconstruction, of peace, and orderly government for the Southern people, and Mr. Stanton prevailed!

CHAPTER XLVII.

CELEBRATING AND REJOICING.

On Tuesday, April 4, following the fall of Richmond, Washington was wild with music, guns, speeches, rockets, and bonfires. The War Department was the center of attraction. The building was alive with fire from basement to tholus, and in the court colored lights of immense power turned a complete drapery of silken flags into a bower of patriotic splendor. In the center, jets of flame gave life to the words, "THE UNION: IT MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED." Beneath this motto a spirited American eagle grasped in his beak the significant word, "RICHMOND." Stanton's residence was superbly decorated with flags, flowers, evergreens, lanterns, and gas jets and was visited by thousands of people who cheered and serenaded the Secretary repeatedly.

At 9:20 on the evening of the 9th, Stanton received a telegram from Grant advising him officially of the capitulation of Lee. As soon as he had sent bulletins of the glorious news to General Dix in New York, and forwarded the famous telegram of thanks to Grant, he "Ordered, That a salute of two hundred guns be fired at the headquarters of every army and Department and at every post and arsenal in the United States and at the Military Academy at West Point, on the receipt of this order, in commemoration of the surrender of General R. E. Lee and the army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant-General Grant and the army under his command.” States, cities, towns, villages, and crossroads hastened to recognize the order and thus began, with the mightiest roar of artillery ever heard on the continent, the second celebration which culminated in Washington on the 12th.

Again Stanton led and again the War Department and the Secretary's residence fixed the standard in the art of patriotic decoration. The windows of the Department were solid sheets of light; the front was covered with flags, banners, evergreens, and corps badges; over the balcony was a large semi-circle of binnocles; beneath the arc, in letters of flame, was the word, "GRANT."