Years later, Chambrun remained intrigued by Lincoln’s temperament. On first impression, he “left with you with a sort of impression of vague and deep sadness.” Yet he “was quite humorous,” often telling hilarious stories and laughing uproariously. “But all of a sudden he would retire within himself; then he would close his eyes, and all his features would at once bespeak a kind of sadness as indescribable as it was deep. After a while, as though it were by an effort of his will, he would shake off this mysterious weight under which he seemed bowed; his generous and open disposition would again reappear.”
Lincoln’s bodyguard, William Crook, believed he understood something of the shifting moods that mystified the French aristocrat. He had observed that Lincoln seemed to absorb the horrors of the war into himself. In the course of the two-week trip, Crook had witnessed Lincoln’s “agony when the thunder of the cannon told him that men were being cut down like grass.” He had seen the anguish on the president’s face when he came within “sight of the poor, torn bodies of the dead and dying on the field of Petersburg.” He discerned his “painful sympathy with the forlorn rebel prisoners,” and his profound distress at “the revelation of the devastation of a noble people in ruined Richmond.” In each instance, Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him—the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.
DIRECTLY UPON HIS RETURN to Washington, Lincoln went to Seward’s bedside. “It was in the evening,” Fred Seward recalled, “the gas-lights were turned down low, and the house was still, every one moving softly, and speaking in whispers.” His father had taken a turn for the worse. A high fever had developed, and “grave apprehensions were entertained, by his medical attendants, that his system would not survive the injuries and the shock.” Frances had hurried down from Auburn to find her husband in a more serious state than she had imagined, his face “so marred and swollen and discolored that one can hardly persuade themselves of his identity; his voice so changed; utterance almost entirely prevented by the broken jaw and the swollen tongue. It makes my heart ache to look at him.” His mind was “perfectly clear,” however, and he remained, as always, “patient and uncomplaining.”
“The extreme sensitiveness of the wounded arm,” Fred recalled, “made even the touch of the bed clothing intolerable. To keep it free from their contact, he was lying on the edge of the bed, farthest from the door.” When Lincoln entered the room, he walked over to the far side of the bed and sat down near the bandaged patient. “You are back from Richmond?” Seward queried in a halting, scarcely audible voice. “Yes,” Lincoln replied, “and I think we are near the end, at last.” To continue the conversation more intimately, Lincoln stretched out on the bed. Supporting his head with his hand, Lincoln lay side by side with Seward, as they had done at the time of their first meeting in Massachusetts many years before. When Fanny came in to sit down, Lincoln somehow managed to unfold his long arm and bring it “around the foot of the bed, to shake hands in his cordial way.” He related the details of his trip to Richmond, where he had “worked as hard” at the task of shaking seven thousand hands as he had when he sawed wood, “& seemed,” Fanny thought, “much satisfied at the labor.”
Finally, when he saw that Seward had fallen into a much-needed sleep, Lincoln quietly got up and left the room. Drained by Seward’s grievous condition, Lincoln revived when Stanton burst into the White House bearing a telegram from Grant: “General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this afternoon upon terms proposed by myself.” It was later said that “the President hugged him with joy” upon hearing the news, and then went immediately to tell Mary.
Although it was close to 10 p.m., Stanton knew that Seward would want to be awakened for this news. “God bless you,” Seward said when Stanton read the telegram. This was the third time Stanton had come to see Seward that Sunday. “Don’t try to speak,” Stanton said. “You have made me cry for the first time in my life,” Seward replied.
BOTH GRANT AND LEE had acquitted themselves admirably at the courtly surrender ceremony that afternoon at the Appomattox Court House. “One general, magnanimous in victory,” historian Jay Winik writes, “the other, gracious and equally dignified in defeat.” Two days earlier, Grant had sent a note to Lee asking him to surrender. In light of “the result of the last week,” Grant wrote, he hoped that Lee understood “the hopelessness of further resistance” and would choose to prevent “any further effusion of blood.” At first Lee refused to accept the futility of his cause, contemplating one last attempt to escape. But Sunday morning, with his troops almost completely surrounded, Lee sent word to Grant that he was ready to surrender.
As the distinguished silver-haired general dressed for the historic meeting, his biographer writes, he “put on his handsomest sword and his sash of deep, red silk.” Thinking it likely he would be imprisoned before day’s end, he told General William Pendleton, “I must make my best appearance.” He need not have worried, for Grant was determined to follow Lincoln’s lenient guidelines. The terms of surrender allowed Confederate officers, after relinquishing their arms and artillery, “to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority,” on the condition that they never “take up arms” against the Union “until properly exchanged.”
As Grant continued to work out the terms, he later recalled, “the thought occurred to me that the officers had their own private horses and effects, which were important to them, but of no value to us; also that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to call upon them to deliver their side arms.” He therefore added a provision allowing officers to take their sidearms, as well as their private horses and baggage. This permission, Lee observed, “would have a happy effect upon his army.” Before the two men parted, Lee mentioned that “his army was in a very bad condition for want of food.” Grant responded immediately, promising to send rations for twenty-five thousand men.
As Lee rode back to his headquarters, word of the surrender spread through the Confederate lines. He tried to speak to his men, but “tears came into his eyes,” and he could manage to say only “Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you.” If Lee had trouble expressing his grief and pride, his soldiers showed no such reservations. In an overwhelming display of respect and devotion, they spontaneously arranged themselves on “each side of the road to greet him as he passed, and two solid walls of men were formed along the whole distance.” When their cheers brought tears to Lee’s eyes, they, too, began to weep. “Each group began in the same way, with cheers, and ended in the same way, with sobs, all along the route to his quarters.” One soldier spoke for all: “I love you just as well as ever, General Lee!”
At dawn the next day, Noah Brooks heard “a great boom.” The reverberation of a five-hundred-gun salute “startled the misty air of Washington, shaking the very earth, and breaking the windows of houses about Lafayette Square.” The morning newspapers would carry the details, but “this was Secretary Stanton’s way of telling the people that the Army of Northern Virginia had at last laid down its arms.”
“The nation seems delirious with joy,” noted Welles. “Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering—all, all jubilant. This surrender of the great Rebel captain and the most formidable and reliable army of the Secessionists virtually terminates the Rebellion.” A spontaneous holiday was announced in all departments. Employees poured into the streets.
An exuberant crowd of several thousand gathered at the White House. “The bands played, the howitzers belched forth their thunder, and the people cheered,” reported the National Intelligencer. Despite shouted demands for him to speak, Lincoln hesitated. He was planning a speech for the following evening and did not want to “dribble it all out” before he completed his thoughts. If he said something mistaken, it would make its way into print, and a person in his po
sition, he modestly said, “ought at least try not to make mistakes.” Still, the crowd was so insistent that the president finally appeared at the second-story window, where he “was received in the most enthusiastic manner, the people waving their hats, swinging their umbrellas, and the ladies waving their handkerchiefs.”
When the assembly quieted down, Lincoln acknowledged their euphoria with a smile of his own. “I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves.” These words drew even wilder cheers. Lincoln then announced a special request for the band. “I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” he began. “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.” This was followed by tumultuous applause. “I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.” In requesting the patriotic song of the South, Lincoln believed that “it is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again.” The band followed “Dixie” with “Yankee Doodle,” and “the crowd went off in high good-humor.”
“If possible,” Mary wrote, “this is a happier day, than last Monday,” when the news of Richmond’s capture had reached Washington. Her exhilaration was evident in a note she wrote to Charles Sumner the next morning, inviting him and the marquis to join her in a carriage ride around the city to see the grand illumination and to hear the president speak. “It does not appear to me,” she wrote, “that this womanly curiosity will be undignified or indiscreet, qu’en pensez vous?”
Illuminated once again, the city was spectacular to behold. The windows of every government building were ablaze with candles and lanterns, and the lights of the newly completed Capitol dome were visible for miles around. “Bonfires blazed in many parts of the city, and rockets were fired” in ongoing celebrations. Knowing the president was going to address the public, Stanton put his men to work decorating the front of the War Department “with flags, corps badges and evergreens.”
When Lincoln came to a second-story window on the north side of the White House, “he carried a roll of manuscript in his hand.” He had explained to Noah Brooks that “this was a precaution” against colloquial expressions that might offend men such as Charles Sumner, who had objected previously to phrases such as “the rebels turned tail and ran” or “sugar-coated pill.” At the sight of the president, the immense crowd’s enthusiasm was loosed in “wave after wave of applause,” requiring him to stand still for some time until the din subsided.
“The speech,” Noah Brooks observed, “was longer than most people had expected, and of a different character.” Instead of simply celebrating the moment, Lincoln wanted to address the national debate surrounding the reintroduction of the Southern states into the Union, “the greatest question,” he still believed, “ever presented to practical statesmanship.” He acknowledged that in Louisiana, where the process had already begun, some were disappointed that, in the new state constitution, “the elective franchise is not given to the colored man.” He felt the right of suffrage should be extended to blacks—to those who were literate and those “who serve our cause as soldiers.” On the other hand, the new Louisiana constitution contained a number of remarkable provisions. It emancipated all the slaves within the state and provided “the benefit of public schools equally to black and white.” The state legislature, which had already revealed its good intentions by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, was empowered specifically “to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man.” Were they to cast out the hard work already achieved, Lincoln asked rhetorically, or trust that this was the start of a process that would eventually produce “a complete success”? Relying on a simple, rustic image to convey the complex question, he wondered if “we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it?”
In the crowd that evening was Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. The younger brother of the famed Shakespearian actor Edwin Booth, whose performances Lincoln so admired, Wilkes had also acquired popularity as an actor. Unlike his older brother, who supported the Union, John Wilkes “had spent the most formative years of his youth in the South” and had developed an abiding passion for the rebels’ cause. In recent months, this passion had become a full-blown obsessive hatred for the North. Since the previous summer, he and a small group of conspirators had evolved a plan to kidnap Lincoln and bring him to Richmond, where he could be exchanged for rebel prisoners of war. The capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee rendered the plan useless, but Booth was not ready to yield. “Our cause being almost lost,” he wrote in his diary, “something decisive and great must be done.”
Two other conspirators were with Booth in the crowd—drugstore clerk David Herold and former Confederate soldier Lewis Powell, also known as Lewis Payne. When Lincoln spoke of his desire to extend suffrage to blacks, Booth turned to Powell. “That means nigger citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make,” he said. He pleaded with Powell to shoot Lincoln then and there. When Powell demurred, Booth proclaimed, “By God, I’ll put him through.”
Curiously, Lincoln had recently experienced a dream that carried ominous intimations. “There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me,” Lincoln purportedly told Ward Lamon. “Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping…. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along…. Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin!’”
Lamon also described what he claimed was the president’s attempt to evade the dire portent of the dream. “Don’t you see how it will turn out?” Lincoln comforted Lamon. “In this dream, it was not me but some other fellow that was killed…. Well, let it go. I think the Lord in His own goodtime and way will work this out all right. God knows what is best.” Historian Don Fehrenbacher is persuasive that Lamon’s chronology is confused, which casts doubt on the veracity of the entire story. Yet Lincoln’s penchant for portentous dreams and his tendency to relate them to others were remarked on by many of his intimate acquaintances.
While radicals, including Sumner and Chase, believed that universal suffrage should be mandated, rebel leaders should be punished, and the federal government should assume control of the seceded states, “a large majority of the people” approved of Lincoln’s speech. “Reunion,” according to Noah Brooks, “was then the foremost thought in the minds of men.”
Lincoln’s support for the quickly assembled imperfect governments in Louisiana and elsewhere drew further criticism from radicals. He believed “there must be courts, and law, and order, or society would be broken up, the disbanded armies would turn into robber bands and guerillas.” That same belief had informed his conversations with Judge Campbell in Richmond and his conditional permission for the old Virginia legislature to assemble. At the time of their meeting, five days before Lee’s surrender, Lincoln had hoped the Virginians would vote to take back the order of secession and remove Virginia’s troops from the war. He also felt that it was sound policy to let “the prominent and influential men of their respective counties…come together and undo their own work.”
Lincoln’s cabinet strongly disagreed with the idea of letting the rebel legislature assemble for any reason. In Seward’s absence, Stanton assumed center stage, telling Lincoln “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.” Stanton insisted that “any effort to reorganize the Government should be under Federal authority solely, treating the rebel organizations and government as absolutely null and void.”
Attorney General Speed expressed his accord with Stanton’s assessment in the meeting and, afterward, privately with Lincoln. The president confessed to Welles that the opposition of Speed and Stanton troubled him tremendously. Welles provided no relief. He, too, “doubted the policy of convening a Rebel legislature,” and predicted that, “once convened, they would with their hostile feelings be inclined perhaps, to conspire against us.” Lincoln still disagreed, maintaining that if “prominent Virginians” were to come together, they would “turn themselves and their neighbors into good Union men.” Nonetheless, Welles said, “as we had all taken a different view he had perhaps made a mistake, and was ready to correct it if he had.”
Lincoln’s thinking was further influenced by a telegram from Campbell to General Weitzel, which suggested that Campbell was indeed assuming more powers for the legislature than he and Lincoln had originally discussed. In the late afternoon of April 12, Lincoln walked over to the War Department to confer again with Stanton. Stanton’s clerk A. E. Johnson recalled that Lincoln sat on the sofa and listened intently while Stanton, “full of feeling,” reiterated his passionate opposition to allowing the legislature to convene, warning that “the fate of the emancipated millions” would be left in the hands of untrustworthy men, that “being once assembled, its deliberations could not be confined to any specific acts.”
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