CHAPTER 41
It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Lincoln ~ Buchanan
The election of 1860 had ushered in a new America. After all the compromises, before and after the Constitution, the North would not yield another foot to slavery. So much had transpired in the four years since then. Now the election of 1864 had ratified that earlier verdict but also expanded it. The Marquis de Chambrun, a visiting French aristocrat who would come to know Lincoln well, put it best: “By Mr. Lincoln’s re-election the American people had clearly signified its political intentions: the war was to be carried on to ultimate success and slavery to be abolished. Such were the solemn and decisive utterances of the national will.” The former presidents, who had compromised and capitulated in the face of the slave power for so long, were living relics of an era that now was gone. Whatever compass they had followed that had led them to the presidency now failed to work in the new America. Nothing better reflected this disconnect than the words of James Buchanan after the election.
“Now would be the time for conciliation on the part of Mr. Lincoln,” he wrote. “A frank and manly offer to the Confederates that they might return to the Union just as they were before they left it, leaving the slavery question to settle itself, might possibly be accepted. Should they return, he would have the glory of accomplishing the object of the war against the most formidable rebellion which has ever existed. He ought to desire nothing more.” Somehow a traveling French marquis had discerned what was happening with the American people, while a former president did not.
On December 8, Lincoln took a major step in implementing the public’s vision of a new America, nominating Salmon Chase to replace Roger Taney as chief justice. A leading and longtime abolitionist would now sit in the chair of the author of Dred Scott.Nicolay recorded, “Probably no other man than Lincoln would have had, in this age of the world, the degree of magnanimity to thus forgive and exalt a rival who had so deeply and so unjustifiably intrigued against him. It is however only another most marked illustration of the greatness of the President, in this age of little men.”
Another example of Lincoln’s generosity was soon to be found, for on Christmas Eve, Laura Jones, who had traveled north three years earlier to care for her sick mother, became stuck behind the lines, separated from her fiancée. She asked for a pass so that she could travel to Richmond to be married. Welles, who was helping Lincoln process his many visitors that day, warned that she was a secessionist. Welles remembered, “He said he would let her go; the war had depopulated the country and prevented marriages enough, and if he could do a kindness of this sort he was disposed to, unless I advised otherwise. He wrote a pass and handed it to me.”
The day after Christmas, three hundred guns were fired on Vermont Avenue, announcing major news from Georgia. Lincoln wrote Sherman, “Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah.” Lincoln acknowledged that Sherman’s strategy of dividing his forces and driving to the east received nothing but his acquiescence, and gave him all the credit for its success. It had indeed been successful; Hood’s movements on Tennessee were a flat failure, and after attacks on Franklin and Nashville, his army was obliterated, removing them from the field of battle. Receiving Lincoln’s letter, Sherman “experienced more satisfaction in giving to his overburdened and weary soul one gleam of satisfaction and happiness, than of selfish pride in an achievement which has given me among men a larger measure of fame than any single act of my life.”
In his final annual message, Lincoln recommended a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery to the lame duck Congress that had rejected it. Lincoln had asked the National Union Convention that had nominated him to include it in the platform. Lincoln had run on that amendment, won on that amendment, and now urged Congress to enact the mandate of the people.
Lincoln was engaged in the legislative process as never before, working with congressional leaders, counting votes, lobbying members personally for passage. It was not long before this day that the massive patronage power of the president had been leveraged to try to force a pro-slavery Constitution on an unwilling people. Now it would be harnessed to effect passage of an amendment banning slavery throughout the country. No evidence exists for Lincoln specifically offering jobs in exchange for votes, but it appears he allowed the floor managers of the amendment to do so, promises that were later honored in a number of instances. Where votes could not be procured, absences during the vote were encouraged, since the 2/3 threshold necessary for passage was limited to members present. On the eve of the vote, the amendment was threatened by a rumor of Confederate peace commissioners on their way to Washington. With a substantial number of “yes” votes predicated on the argument that the amendment could bring about peace, a conclusion of hostilities was perhaps the worst news possible. To counteract it, Lincoln wrote Congressman James Ashley, the amendment’s sponsor, “So far as I know, there are no peace commissioners in the city, or likely to be in it.” The commissioners were, in fact, on their way to Hampton Roads, under a pass that Lincoln issued the day before.
All the efforts succeeded, by the narrow margin of 118–59. There was “loud and long applause” upon passage. The victory “filled [Lincoln’s] heart with joy. He saw in it the complete consummation of his own great work, the Emancipation Proclamation.”
On February 1, 1865, Lincoln transmitted the amendment to the states for ratification, while Sherman left Savannah on his way to the state where the crisis began. “The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina,” Sherman wrote. “I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems to be in store for her. This march was like the thrust of a sword toward the heart of the human body; each mile of advance swept aside all opposition, consumed the very food on which Lee’s army depended for life, and demonstrated a power in the national government which was irresistible.”
James Buchanan wrote, “I confess I was much gratified at the capture of Charleston. This city was the nest of all our troubles. For more than a quarter century the people were disunionists, and during this whole period have been persistently engaged in inoculating the other slave states with their virus. Alas! for poor Virginia, who has suffered so much, and who was so reluctantly dragged into their support.”
March 4, 1865, began “rainy and unpleasant, and the streets and sidewalks were encrusted with from two to ten inches of muddy paste, through which men and horses plodded wearily.” But as “Lincoln stepped forward to take the oath of office, the sun, which had been obscured by rain clouds, burst forth in splendor.” In the crowd were freed blacks, now able to participate in a presidential inauguration. In his address, Lincoln succinctly explained what had led to this moment. “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” From the ashes of the war, Lincoln articulated his vision for the future of America. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
The president of the United States heard “subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping.” He walked downstairs and traveled room to room but encountered no one. “Where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?” he wondered. He found the East Room filled with mourners, where he saw a coffin resting on a platform, guarded by soldiers. He asked one, “Who is dead in the White House?”
“The President,” he answered. “He was killed by an assassin!” A scream from the crowd woke Lincoln from his dream. He “slept no more that night.”
On April 2, “a strange agitation was perceptible on the streets of Richmond,” wrote one Confederate captain. While attending church, Jefferson Davis received a telegram from Lee. They could hold out no longer; Richmond must be evacuated. It was shortly thereafter announced that evening services would be cancelled.
Ulysses Grant awoke every day worried that he would find Lee had escaped him. One of his generals joked, “Grant had been sleeping with one eye open and one foot out of bed for many weeks.” On April 3, the enemy was gone. Grant declined to use his artillery to destroy the retreating Confederates, believing he could force them to surrender before long.
Lincoln landed by boat in Virginia, and traveled to Petersburg to meet with Grant. As he did, “many of the dead and dying were still on the ground.” Lincoln’s companion, George Crook, wrote, “I can still see one man with a bullet hole through his forehead and another with both arms shot away.” The previously high-spirited president’s face “settled into its old lines of sadness.” They were greeted at their destination by Captain Robert Lincoln, his oldest son, who had been serving on Grant’s staff, and who led them through the ghostly streets of Petersburg to his commander.
“Do you know, General,” Lincoln said to Grant, “that I have had a sort of a sneaking idea for some days that you intended to do something like this.”
When Lincoln returned to City Point, news had arrived that Richmond had been taken at 8:15 that morning. The Third New Hampshire, who had spoken out so strongly against Pierce and his allies in the 1864 elections, had the honor to be the first to enter. “Thank God I have lived to see this,” Lincoln said. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”
The James River narrowed as it approached Richmond, and Lincoln, along with his party, was tugged in by a little boat, the Bat, which was manned by Marines. They were pulled by a long rope, in case the Bat struck one of the many mines or torpedoes left in the water. “On either side dead horses, broken ordnance, wrecked boats floated near our boat,” Crook remembered, “and we passed so close to torpedoes that we could have put out our hands and touched them.”
Lincoln walked through the captured capital with six sailors in front of him, and six behind, armed with short rifles. Lincoln was silently scrutinized from a distance through windows, behind trees and telegraph poles. Crook, looking at Lincoln, saw “His face was set. It had the calm in it that comes over the face of a brave man when he is ready for whatever may come.”
This trip to Richmond may well be considered the climax of the Lincoln story, for perhaps nothing he did thereafter was of greater moment. From his time as a little boy, Abraham Lincoln had dreamt of being president of the United States. His election, when it finally happened, had been resisted by arms, and he had assumed the presidency of a Union badly broken. But now, in the former capital of the Confederacy, with Grant and Sherman on the heels of their adversaries, his very presence was a powerful deposit on his promise, “malice toward none . . . charity for all.”
The first residents of Richmond encountered by Lincoln were black workers who, dropping their tools, enveloped the president, fell to their knees, and attempted to kiss his feet.
“Don’t kneel to me,” Lincoln said, “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. My poor friends, you are free—free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it; it will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as He gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years.”
From there the party traveled to the Confederate White House. “This must have been President Davis’s chair,” Lincoln said. Lincoln crossed his legs and “looked far off with a serious, dreamy expression.”
On April 6, Mary, members of the cabinet, and the Marquis de Chambrun joined Lincoln at City Point. Lincoln led his guests to the River Queen and discussed the positions of Grant’s army, his recent communications with his general, and where he believed Lee would finally be compelled to surrender. Lincoln appeared “satisfied and at rest, but in spite of the manifest success of his policy it was impossible to detect in him the slightest feeling of pride, much less of vanity. He spoke with the modest accent of a man who realizes that success has crowned his persistent efforts, and who finds in that very success the end of a terrible responsibility.”
On Sunday, Lincoln joined his wife, members of Congress and the cabinet, and the marquis on a steamer up the Potomac. The president entertained his guests with hours of recited Shakespeare. He paused during a reading from Macbeth, the soliloquy that follows the murder of the king. Lincoln explained that, “the dark deed achieved, its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim.” Lincoln then read the scene again. Passing Mount Vernon, the marquis told him, “Mount Vernon and Springfield, the memories of Washington and your own, those of the revolutionary and civil wars; these are the spots and names America shall one day equally honor.”
“Springfield!” Lincoln said. “How happy, four years hence, will I be to return there in peace and tranquility.”
Arriving in Washington, the presidential party noticed, “The streets were alive with people, all very much excited. There were bonfires everywhere.” They stopped a passing carriage to ask what had happened. Grant had cornered Lee near Appomattox Courthouse and accepted his surrender.
A senator traveling with Lincoln noticed, “His whole appearance, poise, and bearing had marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved.”
On April 14, Lincoln breakfasted with son Robert, before meeting with his cabinet and General Grant at 11:00 a.m. Lincoln predicted that good news would be soon in coming from Sherman in his movements against Johnston, for he had always experienced the same dream before such events.
Welles remembered Lincoln’s vision. “He seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that he was moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite shore; that he had this dream preceding Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc.”
Grant pointed out that Stone River was certainly no victory.
The president said “however that might be, his dream preceded that fight.”
“I had this strange dream again last night,” he continued, “and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. I think it must be from Sherman.”
Lincoln spoke against “persecution” and “bloody work” now that war was done. There would be no hangings, not even for the leaders of the rebellion. “We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union.” Stanton remembered him “more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him.”
On a carriage ride that afternoon, Mary remarked that she had only seen her husband this happy once before, right before Willie died. “And well may I feel so, Mary, for I consider that this day the war has come to a close.”
“Mary,” he said, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington, but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet.” Lincoln talked fondly of Springfield, the days of his youth, his law practice and time on the circuit. As the day came to an end, Washington was the scene of “torchlight processions” and music.
Lincoln received many callers throughout the day. At ten past eight he excused himself, for he and Mary had tickets to see Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. “Mother,” he said to his wife, “I suppose it’s time to go, though I would rather stay.”