The Darkest Dawn

by Thomas Goodrich

  While she herself did not go to view the body, Anna Ridgely’s little sister, who sang with the choir, was compelled to remain near the casket for almost an hour. “The room was close and the gas lighted,” said Anna, “the air was scented with evergreen which was placed all around the room and the poor child came near fainting.”21

  Another problem that had plagued the journey surfaced yet again in the Illinois capital. Despite the obvious solemnity of Springfield, predatory pickpockets were utterly merciless in their quest for ill-gotten gain. With thousands of farmers and unsophisticated rustics swarming the streets, the thieves had a field day. Although many were arrested by plainclothes policemen, for every criminal locked in jail, two more seemed to materialize.22 So pervasive was the problem that when General Joseph Hooker spied a pickpocket in the act, he angrily ran over to the man.

  “[H]e gave the thief a kick that sent him not less than ten to fifteen feet,” laughed an appreciative onlooker.23

  Hordes of shameless hucksters were also on hand, peddling the normal mementos, with images of the president’s old horse, his dog, and the former Lincoln home added to the mix. At the residence itself, though the current owners graciously allowed thousands of curiosity-seekers to enter and even carry away a leaf or flower as a token of the visit, a strong guard eventually had to be posted when relic-hunters were caught hacking off pieces of fence and prying bricks from the house.24

  Although Lincoln’s interment was scheduled for the following day, late into the evening of May 3 there still was doubt among many as to just where the remains would rest. On its own volition, Springfield had spent over five thousand dollars to purchase a beautiful six-acre tract in the heart of town to bury its most beloved son. Mary Lincoln vetoed the plan. Favoring the more remote Oak Ridge Cemetery, the widow threatened to inter her husband in Chicago if this demand was not met.25 Already tested sorely by her actions in the past, the citizens of Springfield were furious at this latest fit of temper and the woman’s refusal to accept a well-intentioned gift.

  “The people are in a rage about it and all the hard stories that were ever told about her are told over again,” revealed attorney Henry Bromwell. “She has no friends here.”26

  Two days before the funeral train reached Springfield, Mary’s son, Robert, had sent a sharp telegram to Illinois governor Richard Oglesby:

  There seems to be a disposition at Springfield to disregard my mother’s wishes in regard to the internment. Both the temporary and final interment must take place in the Oak Ridge Cemetery. We have reasons for not wishing to use the [other] place for either purpose and we expect and demand that our wishes should be consulted.27

  While rumors that the widow was on her way to Springfield to handle affairs were untrue, those regarding Robert Lincoln were not. Arriving at ten that night, the angry son settled the matter for good.28

  Throughout the night, thousands of mourners continued to tramp in and out of the capitol building. At the same time, noisy trains arrived at the depot disgorging thousands more. As a result, an already crowded city soon became packed, forcing most to sleep on floors, in barns, or not at all.29

  The following day, May 4, almost three weeks after the murder, the coffin containing Lincoln’s body was finally sealed for good.30 When the casket was placed in the hearse, the grand, solemn procession started for the cemetery three miles to the north. The day was clear, but humid and hot—”almost intolerably hot,” thought a Chicago reporter.31 There was the promise of more rain in the air. Already the spring had been so unusually wet in central Illinois that farmers could not enter their fields. As a result, hundreds of idle yeomen joined the huge procession as it moved through the countryside. The wet weather had been kind to nature, however, and not only were the surrounding fruit trees leafed out, but sweet-smelling lilacs were also in full bloom.32 As the cortege entered the rolling cemetery, it was greeted by a three-hundred-voice choir that delivered a sad and deeply felt dirge.33

  “He made all men feel a sense of himself—a recognition of individuality—a self-relying power,” praised Bishop Matthew Simpson in his eulogy.

  They saw in him a man who they believed would do what is right, regardless of all consequences. It was this moral feeling that gave him the greatest hold on the people, and made his utterances almost oracular. . . . Chieftain, farewell! The nation mourns thee. Mothers shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall study thy record, and from it learn the lessons of wisdom. . . . We crown thee as our martyr, and humanity enthrones thee as her triumphant son. Here, Martyr, Friend, farewell.34

  “As the speaker uttered the last words,” wrote a witness, “peals of thunder broke through the black clouds which had been gathering over head, and heavy rain drops spattered upon the ground as if the very clouds were weeping. The cortege resumed its order of march and alone in the last sleep we left all that was mortal of this great and good man, the pure patriot, the immortal martyr, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”35

  Lincoln was left not quite alone. Indeed, in the days following his funeral, the crowds of visitors became so great that soldiers were stationed at the grave to prevent souvenir-hunters from carting off everything “living and dead.”36 Far from fading with time, the fascination for the sixteenth president gained an inexorable momentum from the cross-country funeral that would never diminish. In twelve days and sixteen hundred miles, from Washington to Springfield, perhaps as many as ten million Americans, or roughly one-half the population of the North, viewed either the train, the coffin, or the body itself.37 Despite the rain and the sun, the dust and the distance, Americans had trekked to see their fallen chief in numbers never before witnessed in the history of man.

  “I can say I had the honor of seeing the remains of the greatest man that ever lived,” explained one visitor simply.38 Millions more could make the same claim, and someday they would thrill their children and their children’s children with tales of that terrible time and the role they played in it.

  By the time of his burial, the memory of Abraham Lincoln—his life, his death—had become for many almost a state religion. In their rush to deify, Lincoln the man was all but lost. Rather than accept that in him which was simply good and decent and that which each and every one of them shared to some degree, well-meaning men and women chose instead to gild the common and create an impossible paragon: Lincoln—the Great Emancipator, Lincoln—the Martyr, Lincoln—”the greatest man that ever lived,” Lincoln—the American Christ.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  OLD SCORES

  The April just closing has been crowded with memorable events. . . . Had ever any April more of alternating sunshine and gloom?1

  THUS WROTE THE EDITOR OF THE St. Louis Democrat after reviewing in amazement the past thirty days. From the fall of Richmond to the burial of Lincoln, it seemed to many as if an eon had elapsed, and yet, when people looked back as did the above journalist, they found to their astonishment that all had been encompassed within the span of one short month. Earthshaking events had come so fast and furious that eventually they were as looked for each day as the sun or rain.2 Other incidents—the fall of Mobile, the flag-raising at Fort Sumter, the death of fifteen hundred Union soldiers when the Sultana sank in the Mississippi, the surrender of Joe Johnston’s rebel army—were each momentous in their own right, yet in the dizzy swirl of events they were all but forgotten.

  “This has been a most eventful month,” concurred Horatio Taft from Washington. “The most eventful in the history of our Country.”3

  Although Taft’s comment was true, those who imagined that Lincoln’s burial had closed the book on stirring times were wrong. Much lay ahead. On May 10, near Irwinville, Georgia, federal soldiers finally captured the fugitive president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. As news spread, there was instant celebration throughout the North. After so much sadness, when word reached Springfield on Sunday morning there was an outburst of appla
use from every church in town.4

  “For a month past the body of the rebellion has lain helpless at our feet,” exulted a Springfield editor, “now its head is in our power.”5

  Not only was the capture of Davis symbolic proof that the war was won, but now the “arch-traitor” would answer for his bloody crimes. For at least one angry Northern diarist, the list of those sins was almost infinite:

  A man Starver, A soal killer, A dastard Rascal, A midnight assassin, A thief, A Rober, A Liar, A forsworn vilian, A Confirmed Traitor, A Slave Driver, A nigger breeder, A negro Equality man mixing his own Blood with niggers. . . . He has made fatherless Children by tens of thousands and widows by thousands [and] has Caused the Spilling of Rivers of Blood. Hang him I say . . . and Leave him on the Gallows for Crows and vultures to feed on.6

  Davis, concluded the upset writer, was “two mean to Live, two mean to Dy.”7

  Not content with his capture and imprisonment, those who blamed Davis for the past four years of death and destruction now began a deliberate attempt to denigrate and vilify not only the man, but also the cause for which he fought.

  “Jeff Davis captured in women’s clothes! Jeff Davis captured in women’s clothes!” cried newsboys soon after the arrest.8

  A simple shawl and cloak thrown on in the confusion of the moment were gleefully transformed by an eager and excited press into Davis flying through the woods disguised as a female.9 “The Rebel President in Petticoats”; “The Hero of the Last Ditch Betrayed by his Boots!!” “Full Particulars of the Capture of the Old Lady”—these were just a few of the fanciful Northern headlines.10

  “What an end of all the boastings of chivalry,” laughed Julia Trumbull of Springfield. “Could tragedy end in a greater farce than has this . . . ? [T]he would be hero of a great Confederacy . . . takes to the woods in his wife’s petticoats! to preserve a little longer . . . his miserable contemptible life! Degradation & chivalry are henceforth synonymous.”11

  As the above example illustrates, most in the North uncritically accepted the lies as truth. Despite the fact that even Union soldiers involved in the capture were men enough to admit that there was no substance to the story, most Northerners desperately wanted to believe the tale, and believe it they did.12 One fair-minded individual who didn’t, and who quickly saw through the “humbug,” was the editor of the New York News. Jefferson Davis was forced into the dress, said the incensed journalist, “because there was danger of the appearance of some little sympathy with the fallen Confederate Chief; and it was necessary to quash and drown any expression of that nature with an universal roar of scornful laughter.”13

  Nevertheless, the story stuck. And in a nation anxiously seeking laughter, no one could have been happier than Edwin Stanton. At the same time that he was promising Chicagoans he would send the “dress” Davis was captured in for public viewing, the secretary of war also was charging the ex-Confederate president and other rebel leaders with complicity in the assassination. Perhaps to draw attention away from his own role in the scheme to murder Davis and his cabinet during the 1864 raid on Richmond, Stanton was well aware that there were no hard facts to support such a charge. And yet, in the overheated atmosphere following Lincoln’s death, such things as facts were small matters.

  Even as Davis was being imprisoned and chained at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, the cry for a swift and savage accounting was being raised. Edward Goodwin, a Congregationalist clergyman from Ohio, favored hanging Southern leaders high and low, “if it took a string of gallows from M[ain]e. to Cal[ifornia].”14 Other preachers were equally bloodthirsty. Seventeen Massachusetts ministers from Newburyport signed a petition informing President Andrew Johnson that he was now the Lord’s thunderbolt and that he must smite the defeated “without respect to persons.”15

  Many Northerners felt as did George Armstrong Custer, when he matter-of-factly urged a massacre across the board. Wrote the “Boy General” to a Detroit newspaper:

  Extermination is the only true policy we can adopt toward the political leaders of the rebellion, and at the same time do justice to ourselves and to our posterity. . . . Let all of those who have occupied prominent positions in the rebel State Governments or the so-called Confederate Government—all the editors and others, who, by their traitorous harangues or speeches, have stirred up the people to revolt, be condemned as traitors and punished with unrelenting vigor, until every living traitor has been swept from our land, and our free government and free institutions shall be purged from every disloyal traitor. Then, and not till then, may the avenging angel sheathe his sword.16

  Fortunately for the future, older and much wiser generals, such as Grant and Sherman, had seen quite enough bloodshed over the past four years and were more than willing to call a halt to the slaughter. Indeed, few vices were more repugnant to Sherman’s mind than vindictiveness. Especially galling to the general were the Radical Republican politicians—”invisible in war, invincible in peace”—who were now using Lincoln’s death as a pretext to foist a cruel, crushing “peace” on the defeated and disarmed South. The bloodthirsty speeches and cries for mass executions, said Sherman, were nothing more than “the howlings of a set of sneaks who were hid away as long as danger was rampant, but now shriek with very courage.”17

  Though truly terrible in war, Sherman was also magnanimous in victory. Thus, following Lincoln’s death, when he extended to his adversary, Joe Johnston, virtually the same charitable surrender terms that Grant had offered to Lee, the document was rescinded by a federal government still stunned and angry over the assassination. Though stung by the censure, Sherman was especially outraged by the accusations of treason and treachery that followed. One Washington editor suggested that the “erratic, ambitious” general was planning to seize power in a coup.18

  Erratic though he may have been, few generals in the Union Army were less ambitious politically, and fewer still had done more to win the war than Sherman. Thus, with Edwin Stanton leading the Radical chorus against him, the red-headed hero exploded. Wrote Sherman to a friend on May 19:

  It is amazing to observe how brave and firm some men become when all danger is past. I have noticed on fields of battle brave men never insult the captured or mutilate the dead; but cowards and laggards always do. . . . Falstaff, the prince of cowards and wits . . . stabbed again and again the dead Percy, and carried the carcass aloft in triumph to prove his valor. So now, when the rebellion in our land is dead, many Falstaffs appear to brandish the evidence of their valor and seek to win applause, and to appropriate honors for deeds that never were done.19

  Four days later, the greatest military display ever witnessed in the New World was staged when the victorious Union Army marched in a final grand review through the streets of Washington. The second day of the pageant was reserved for Sherman’s tough army, fresh from its triumph in the Carolinas. As the victor of Atlanta and the march to the sea, the commanding general received a thunderous ovation when he was recognized by the tens of thousands of spectators gathered. Just prior to the parade, Sherman—still smarting from Stanton’s reprimand—dismounted and climbed up to the grandstand, where he might watch his troops pass in review. There, the top military and political leaders in the land arose to greet the general, including Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant. As Sherman moved down the line shaking hands, Edwin Stanton stood and extended his. With a sharp turn on his heel, the fiery commander ignored the gesture and seated himself at the end of the stage.

  “The slight was no sooner given,” noted a reporter, “than it was noticed by the multitude, who in the enthusiasm of the moment loudly applauded the act, and even laughed at the Secretary’s discomfiture.”20

  With their commander’s honor vindicated in dramatic style, Sherman’s rugged veterans now stepped off up Pennsylvania Avenue on their last march of the war. Only the month before, in the depth of depression, the same crowds had watched silently in the rain as Lincoln’s coffin had passed; now, all were joyous once again in the euphoria of victory
.

  “The shouts of the multitude rent the air,” remembered one of the soldiers. “Garlands of flowers were strewed in our pathway, and blessings showered upon us.”21

  It was, indeed, a thrilling spectacle, a glorious celebration to close out four years of war. As impressive as the Grand Review was, though, in the minds of most it would always be incomplete.

  “O! If Mr. Lincoln could only live again, how glorious it would all be!” stated one young woman of the bittersweet times. “[B]ut with the gladness comes the sadness of the thought ‘Too late!’ and takes with it all the enthusiasm—at least from me.”22

  No one in America felt these sentiments more painfully than the lonely widow waiting at the depot on the evening of May 23.

  Out of deference to the dead president, Mary Lincoln had been allowed to remain in the White House for more than five weeks while the new president shifted as best he could. During that entire period, the widow was all but bedridden with grief.23 She was, noted Noah Brooks, “more dead than alive.”24 Again and again, despite the best efforts of those around her, the distraught woman would dwell upon the final agonizing moments at Ford’s. Nights in the great, empty home were the worst. Remembered Mary’s dressmaker and confidant, Lizzie Keckley:

  Often at night, when Tad would hear her sobbing, he would get up, and come to her bed in his white sleeping-clothes: “Don’t cry, Mamma; I cannot sleep if you cry! Papa was good, and he has gone to heaven. He is happy there. He is with God and brother Willie. Don’t cry, Mamma, or I will cry too.”25

  Between her uncontrollable fits of sobbing, Mary did manage to receive several reluctant well-wishers, although Julia Grant was denied entrance many times.26 One group that gained egress into Mary’s quarters were female “spiritualists.”

  “They poured into her ears pretended messages from her dead husband,” recalled bodyguard William Crook. “Mrs. Lincoln was so weakened that she had not force enough to resist the cruel cheat. These women nearly crazed her.”27