Bloody Crimes

by James L. Swanson

  One hundred thousand dollars for the arrest of Jefferson Davis.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars for the arrest of Clement C. Clay.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars for the arrest of Jacob Thompson, late of Mississippi.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars for the arrest of George N. Saunders.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars for the arrest of Beverly Tucker.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars for the arrest of William C. Cleary, late clerk of Clement C. Clay.

  The Provost Marshall General of the United States is directed to cause a description of said persons, with notice of the above rewards, to be published.

  In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

  Done at the city of Washington, this second day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-ninth.

  By the President:

  ANDREW JOHNSON

  Varina wrote to her husband on May 2, giving him the same advice that Parker had: “Do not try to meet me, I dread the Yankees getting news of you so much, you are the countrys only hope, and the very best intentioned do not calculate upon a stand this side of the river. Why not cut loose from your escort? Go swiftly and alone with the exception of two or three…May God keep you, my old and only love, As ever Devotedly, your own Winnie.”

  Mallory decided that there was nothing more he could do to help Davis. At Abbeville he resigned his post as secretary of the navy. His family needed him, he said, and he did not want to flee the country and abandon them. Still, he agreed to remain with Davis’s party for a few more days.

  By noon on May 2, the line of people in Chicago who were waiting to view Lincoln’s remains stretched nearly a mile. They came all day, and when the doors to the courthouse were shut at 8:00 p.m., the thousands of people still waiting in line had to be turned away. The cortege, flanked by marchers bearing torches, exited the square and moved north through Washington and Market streets to the Madison Street bridge, and on to the St. Louis and Alton Railway Depot. The Chicago Tribune reminded readers of the city’s special relationship with Abraham Lincoln: He practiced in the federal courts; he debated with Douglas, and five years earlier in May cannon and jubilations celebrated his nomination at the Wigwam convention center. The newspaper wrote that its city had “first summoned him from…obscurity…and demanded that the country…recognize…him [as] one fit to stand in high places.” And now, “he comes back to us, his work finished, the Republic vindicated, its enemies overthrown and suing for peace; but alas! He returns with the crown of martyrdom, the victim of the dastard assassin…his calm, sad face was ever turned westward” to Chicago.

  “Taken in all,” boasted the Tribune, “Chicago made a deeper impression upon those who had been with the funeral train from the first than any one of the ten cities passed through before had done…seeing how other cities had honored the funeral, there seemed to be no room for more; and the Eastern members of the cortege could not repress surprise when they saw how Chicago and the North-west came, with one accord, with tears and offerings, to help bury ‘this Duncan.’ ”

  Townsend remembered that the “cortege left Chicago at half past nine o’clock p.m. As usual, night was forgotten by the people in their anxiety to show all possible respect for him whom they expected; and bonfires and torches threw their uncertain light upon mourning emblems which were destined to stand in their places as memorials for weeks to come.”

  The excitement aboard the train increased. This was the last night. In the morning, the funeral train would complete its journey.

  Lincoln was in his home state now, and the emotions of the people huddled around the fires along the tracks reached a fever pitch. The passengers on the train saw more signs that they passed in the night. ILLINOIS CLASPS TO HER BOSOM HER SLAIN BUT GLORIFIED SON. COME HOME, read a sign posted on a house at Lockport. GO TO THY REST, said the one atop a large arch at Bloomington.

  The next stop was Lincoln, Illinois, the first town in America named after Abraham Lincoln. This honor had been bestowed in the 1850s before the man became the president. It was a gesture meant to recognize his work as a lawyer. Tonight an arch over the railroad tracks leading into his town displayed his portrait and the motto “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

  During the night of May 2 and through the early morning hours of May 3, the residents of Springfield were restless. They had anticipated Lincoln’s homecoming since they heard the news of his death. At first, they had not been sure that he would come home at all. Mary Lincoln had tortured them about the disposition of his remains. She had rejected their initial proposal to bury him downtown, and then she had threatened to deny them his remains entirely and instead keep them in Washington, or send them to Chicago. Mary’s ultimatums infuriated her former neighbors. How dare she deny them, they complained, their just reward for their long association with him?

  SPRINGFIELD WELCOMES LINCOLN HOME. HIS OLD LAW OFFICE DRAPED IN MOURNING.

  But once the citizens knew that Springfield would be his final resting place, they began frenzied preparations.

  They had finished hanging the decorations and painting the signs. Crepe and bunting blackened the town. Lincoln’s two-story frame house at Eighth and Jackson streets was a decorated masterpiece of mourning. Over the front door of his law office, through which he had passed countless times during his circuit-riding days, hung one of the most stunning and beautifully painted signs seen along the entire funeral route: HE LIVES IN THE HEARTS OF HIS PEOPLE. The townspeople had waited twenty days since Lincoln’s death and thirteen days since the train had left Washington. Beginning tomorrow, over the next two days of May 3 and 4, Springfield would show the nation that no town loved Abraham Lincoln more. It was up to Springfield to stage the final act of the death pageant.

  That night Judah Benjamin came to William Parker’s room around 8:00 p.m. and begged him to call on Davis once more and persuade him to leave Abbeville. Parker agreed and proposed that he and three naval officers depart with Davis and escape to the eastern coast of Florida, where they might seize a boat and sail to Cuba or the Bahamas. Parker presented this strategy to Davis, who again refused. But as soon as Parker left, Davis summoned his cabinet. From that meeting, Mallory sent Parker a note saying that Davis had, in part, changed his mind. He agreed to leave Abbeville that night, but he would not break off from his escort and go with the four naval officers to make a run for the coast.

  After Davis met with the cabinet he wrote a letter that evening to his private secretary about his plans. He confessed his low morale and disparaged the troops, which Lee had never done.

  Abbeville S.C.

  [2] May 65 9 P.M.

  To Burton Harrison:

  My Dear Sir:

  The courier has just delivered yours and I hasten to reply—I will leave here in an hour and if my horse can stand it will go on rapidly to Washington [Georgia]—The change of route was I think judicious under the probabilities of the Enemy’s movements.

  I can however learn nothing reliable and have to speculate—I think all their efforts are directed for my capture and that my family is safest when furthest from me—I have the bitterest disappointment in regard to the feeling of our troops, and would not have any one I loved dependent upon their resistance against an equal force—

  Many thanks for your kind attention and hoping as time and circumstances will serve to see you am as ever your friend J

  At 11:00 p.m., Davis left Abbeville. He, the cabinet, and his personal staff rode at the head of the column, in advance of the cavalry escort. The wagons carrying the Confederate treasury and deposits from the Richmond banks followed, accompanied by Secretary of War Benjamin and the troops.

  Lincoln’s funeral train steamed into Springfield on the morning of Wednesday, May 3. His journey was now almost complete. He had been on the move since April 21. It was as though, whi
le the train stayed in motion, he wasn’t quite dead. Edward D. Townsend dispatched his usual, matter-of-fact telegram to Secretary of War Stanton: “The funeral train arrived here without accident at 8.40 this morning. The burial is appointed at 12 p.m. to-morrow, Thursday [May 4].” The brief text spoke in a detached voice empty of emotion. Townsend concealed the feeling of relief that must have been his as the train rolled into the Springfield depot.

  He recorded his true feelings years later in his memoirs:

  “Thus closed this marvelous exhibition of a great nation’s deep grief. It seemed as though for once the spirit of hospitality and of all Christian graces had taken possession of every heart in every place. Not one untoward event can be recalled. Every citizen rivaled his neighbor in making kindly provision for the comfort of the funeral

  company while in their midst. Unstinted hospitality was not forgotten in the exceeding pains taken with the public displays.”

  Townsend had done it. Under his command, the funeral train had transported the corpse of Abraham Lincoln 1,645 miles from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, and it had arrived on schedule. During its thirteen-day odyssey, the train never broke down, suffered an accident, or deviated from the master timetable. At every stop along the way, the honor guard performed flawlessly. Not once did they falter in their handling of the heavy casket. Carrying the coffin off the train, loading it into the hearse, unloading it from the vehicle, carrying it upon their shoulders to the place of public viewing and laying it down on the catafalque, raising it from the catafalque after the viewing, and then reversing the process to bring Lincoln back to the train required stamina and concentration. Whenever they carried the president’s body, whether on level ground, up and down steep winding staircases, or onto a ferryboat, whether in daylight or darkness, in sunshine or a driving rain, the veteran Union army soldiers of the casket team never made a misstep. Now, in Springfield, they would carry the president of the United States upon their shoulders for the last time.

  Townsend reflected on the journey with pride: “The guard of honor having thus surrendered their trust, began to realize how closely their interest had centered upon this object which, for [thirteen] days and twelve nights, had scarcely for one moment been out of their sight.”

  In this tumultuous and violent spring of 1865, the funeral journey was a peaceful triumph. When the train left Washington, there was no guarantee of that. Beginning the night of April 14, the public mood had fluctuated between a feeling of mournful sadness and an urge for bloodthirsty vengeance. Violence could have erupted any point on the route, just as it had the night of the assassination. In an instant, the funeral processions might have degenerated into ugly demonstrations against Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy, and the Southern people.

  During those thirteen days in April and May, many Northerners, including Edwin Stanton, continued to believe that Davis and the Confederacy were behind John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy to murder Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward to throw the Union into chaos. Indeed, during Lincoln’s death pageant from Washington to Springfield, every member of the cabinet, plus the Chief Justice of the United States, remained under armed guard around the clock to thwart anticipated additional assassinations.

  But nothing untoward happened. The millions of Americans who had either viewed Lincoln’s corpse, participated in the huge processions, or watched the train pass by remained peaceful. Yes, the petty criminals who always prowl through urban crowds—especially the infamous pickpockets of New York City—preyed on some of the mourners. But the crowds did not beat or murder anyone they judged guilty of insulting the martyred Lincoln. Nor did they cry out for vengeance upon the sight of Lincoln’s corpse, or shout anti-Confederate epithets as the cortege rolled by.

  Even the signs and banners spoke words of mourning, not vengeance. Only a handful demanded justice—or revenge. Of all the public utterances, from the White House funeral in Washington to the graveside prayer in Springfield, and at all points between, only once did an overwrought orator surrender to an explicit impulse for vengeance. Instead, the bereaved millions adopted Lincoln’s second inaugural message of peace and reconciliation as their own.

  From Springfield, General D. C. McCallum, the superintendent of the United States Military Railroad, who had ridden the rails all the way from Washington to ensure that everything went as planned, also reported to Stanton that he had accomplished his mission: “The duty assigned me has been completed promptly and safely, and I believe satisfactorily to all parties.”

  Like Townsend, McCallum understated the meaning of what he had done. The journey of the Lincoln funeral train across America was a tour de force of railroad engineering and military planning. Without the railroads to move troops, rifles, artillery, ammunition, rations, horses, equipment, and other supplies over thousands of miles of standardized track, the Union might not have won the Civil War. Railroad technology had proven to be a key advantage over the Confederacy. Yes, the North might have prevailed in the end, but without railroads, victory would have taken longer, and at a price more dear in blood. Trains helped win the war, and now, at its end, one train, its progress followed by an entire people, helped bring the country together.

  Lincoln was home, back at the Great Western Railroad station where his journey began four years earlier, on February 11, 1861, one day before his fifty-second birthday. When he left for Washington that morning, he contemplated that he might never return. He stood on the platform of the last car, looked at the faces of his neighbors, and spoke:

  My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young man to an old one. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

  Four years later, he had returned.

  Not long after Lincoln’s remains reached Springfield, Jefferson Davis arrived in Washington, Georgia. His party had crossed the Savannah River very early in the morning, and while en route to Washington, they were informed that the federal cavalry was at that place, and they were looking for Davis. They stopped at a farmhouse and ate breakfast and fed their horses.

  By this time, Davis’s escort was war weary and demoralized. They wanted to go home. John Reagan knew what else they wanted: “After they crossed the Savannah River and camped, and before reaching Washington, [Davis’s] cavalry, knowing that they were guarding money, demanded a portion of it.” If the government on wheels failed to pause here to pay them, they were going to seize the money. “[Breckinridge] told me that after he reached Washington the cavalry demanded that the silver and gold coin, equal to the amount of the silver bullion, should be divided among them, and that he and the officers commanding them found it necessary to yield or to risk their forcibly seizing it.”

  It was here that Judah Benjamin decided to leave Davis and make his own escape. The president’s pace was too leisurely for Benjamin’s taste, and he thought he would have a better chance on his own. He had never been comfortable riding a horse and set out in a carriage. Reagan spoke to him before he set off: “I inquired where he was going. ‘To the farthest place from the United States,’ he announced with emphasis, ‘if it takes me to the middle of China.’ He had his trunk in the carriage with his initials, J. P. B., plainly marked on it. I inquired whether that might not betray him. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘there is a Frenchman traveling in the Southern States who has the same initials, and I can speak broken English like a French-man.’”

  B
enjamin’s departure deprived Davis’s party of the good humor of its court jester in chief. It also suggested how Davis should travel from this point on—alone, or with no more than a couple of aides. Benjamin’s strategy served him well in the days ahead. His secretary of state gone, Davis mounted his horse and led the way to Washington, wary of reports of its occupation by the enemy. “We found no Federal cavalry at Washington,” recalled Reagan, “where we remained a few days. Before reaching that place, General Breckinridge and myself, recognizing the importance of the capture of the President, proposed to him that he put on soldier’s clothes, a wool hat and brogan shoes, and take one man with him and go to the coast of Florida, ship to Cuba, thence by an English vessel to the mouth of the Rio Grande. We proposed [he] take what troops we still had, to go west, crossing the Chattahoochee between Chattanooga and Atlanta, and the Mississippi River, and to meet him in Texas. His reply to our suggestion was: ‘I shall not leave Confederate soil while a Confederate regiment is on it.’”

  Davis had been willing to abandon Richmond—and its citizens—for the good of the Confederacy, but what he told Reagan was not sound military strategy. If he hoped to avoid capture, his advisers were right. He needed to move fast to the Mississippi River or Florida.

  When Davis trotted his horse into Washington, Georgia, late on the morning of May 3, accompanied by an advance party of about forty men, the people welcomed their president as if he rode at the head of a triumphant army. Fate had spared this town during the war, and the citizens, unlike many in neighboring North Carolina, had not turned against the Confederacy. Eliza Andrews described the scene:

  About noon the town was thrown into the wildest excitement by the arrival of President Davis. He is traveling with a large escort of cavalry, a very imprudent thing for a man in his position to do, especially now that Johnston has surrendered, and the fact that they are all going in the same direction as their homes is the only thing that keeps them together. He rode into town at the head of his escort…and as he was passing by the bank…several…gentlemen were sitting on the front porch, and the instant they recognized him they took off their hats and received him with every mark of respect due the president of a brave people. When he reined in his horse, all the staff who were present advanced to hold the reins and assist him to dismount.