Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis

by James L. Swanson

  For many months the largest and finest army of the Confederacy, under the command of a leader whose presence inspires equal confidence in the troops and the people, has been greatly trammeled by the necessity of keeping constant watch over the approaches to the capital, and has thus been forced to forego more than one opportunity for promising enterprises.

  The hopes and confidences of the enemy have been constantly excited by the belief, that their possession of Richmond would be the signal for our submission to their rule, and relieve them from the burthen of a war which, as their failing resources admonish them, must be abandoned if not brought to a successful close.

  It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses, how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude, than to encounter danger with courage.

  We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle, the memory of which is to endure for all ages, and to shed ever increasing lustre upon our country. Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities and particular points, important but not vital to our defence with our army free to move from point to point, and strike in detail the detachments and garrison of the enemy; operating in the interior of our own country, where supplies are more accessible, and where the foe will be far removed from his own base, and cut off from all succor in case of reverse, nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain, but the exhibition of your own unquenchable resolve. Let us but will it, and we are free; and who in the light of the past, dare doubt your purpose in the future?

  Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude, which never yet has failed me, I announce to you, fellow countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul; that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any one of the States of the Confederacy; that Virginia, noble State, whose ancient renown has eclipsed by her still more glorious recent history; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock of this war; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come; that Virginia, with the help of the people, and by the blessing of Providence, shall be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous invaders of her homes by the sacrifice of any of her rights or territory.

  If by stress of numbers, we should ever be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from her limits, or those of any other border State, again and again will we return, until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.

  Let us not then respond, my countrymen, but, relying on the never failing mercies and protecting care of our God, let us meet the foe with fresh defiance, with unconquered and unconquerable hearts.

  Jefferson Davis

  April 4 was a day of two different messages from two different men. One man, Lincoln, wanted to end the war and appealed to his people to “let ’em up easy.” The other man, Davis, anticipating a “new phase of the struggle,” beseeched his people to “let us meet the foe with fresh defiance.”

  On April 5 Davis wrote a letter to Varina, revealing the details of his last few hours in the city:

  Danville Va

  5 April 65

  My Dear Wife

  …I made the necessary arrangements at my office and went to our house to have the proper dispositions made there—Nothing had been done after you left and but little could be done in the few hours which remained before the train was to leave—I packed the bust [of his deceased son, Samuel] and gave it to Jno. Davis who offered to take it & put it where it should never be found by a Yankee—I also gave him charge of the painting of the heroes of the valley—Both were removed after dark—The furniture of the house was left and very little of the things I directed to be put up—beddings and groceries were saved. Mrs. Omelia behaved just as you described her, but seemed anxious to serve and promised to take care of every thing which may mean some things. The Auctioneer returned acct of sale 28,400 dollars—could not dispose of the carriages—Mr. Grant was afraid to take the carriage to his house—&c. &c. I sent it to the Depot to be put on a flat, at the moment of starting it was said they could not take it in that train but would bring it on the next one—It has not been heard from since—I sent a message to Mr. Grant that I had neglected to return the cow and wished him to send for her immediately—

  Called off on horseback to the Depot, I left the servants to go down with the boxes and they left Tippy—Watson came willingly, Spencer came against my will, Robert Alf. V.B. & Ives got drunk—David Bradford went back from the Depot to bring out the spoons and forks which I was told had been left—and to come out with Genl. Breckinridge since then I have not heard from either of them—I had short notice, was interrupted so often and so little aided that the results are very unsatisfactory.

  The people here have been very kind, and the Mayor & Council have offered assistance in the matter of quarters and have very handsomely declared their unabated confidence—I do not wish to leave Va, but cannot decide on my movements until those of the Army are better developed—I hope you are comfortable and trust soon to hear from you.

  Kiss my dear children—I weary of this sad recital and have nothing pleasant to tell—May God have you in his holy keeping is the fervent prayer of your ever affectionate

  Husband

  It was an odd letter. Davis had just lost his capital, the military situation was dire, and yet he wrote of personal things—carriages, paintings, a sculpture, and silver spoons. At first, this checklist makes Davis seem out of touch, oblivious to the danger, even foolish. Davis had never indulged such petty concerns during the war. Even when Union forces closed in on his beloved Mississippi plantation, Brierfield, and when Confederate soldiers were placed at his disposal to rescue his possessions, he declined the offer, proclaiming that the army does not act for the president’s personal convenience. The purpose of Davis’s letter was to calm Varina, to reassure her that the world had not yet turned upside down, that he had left their home with a sense of order—and that he had rescued her favorite painting of Stonewall Jackson and the precious marble bust of her dead son, Samuel. All was not chaos, at least not yet.

  After Lincoln’s tour of Richmond, he returned to City Point, not to Washington. He still did not want to leave the field. He wanted to be there, with his army, for the end. His visit to the rebel capital had given him a taste of victory. On April 5, Secretary of State William Seward sent a telegraph to Lincoln: “We need your personal sanction to several matters here which are important and urgent in conducting the Government but not at all critical or serious. Are you coming up or shall I go down to you with the papers. The public interest will not suffer by you remaining where you are.”

  But Lincoln did not want to go home: “Yours of to-day received. I think there is no probability of my remaining here more than two days longer. If that is too long come down. I passed last night at Richmond and have just returned.”

  In Danville, Jefferson Davis did not know that Abraham Lincoln was using the White House of the Confederacy as an office to conduct peace negotiations with officials in Richmond. On April 6, Davis wrote another letter to Varina. “In my letter of yesterday I gave you all of my prospects which can now be told, not having heard from Genl. Lee and having to conform my movements to the military necessities of the case. We are now fixing an Executive office where the current business may be transacted here and do not propose at this time to definitely fix upon a point for seat of Govt. in the future. I am unwilling to leave Va. and do not know where within her borders the requisite houses for the Depts. and the Congress can be found…Farewell my love, may God bless preserve and guide you.”

  Many Southerners agreed that the loss of Richmond did not signify the total defeat of the Confederacy. On April 6, Eliza Frances Andrews, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of Judge Garnett Andrews, a lawyer in Washington, Georgia, and the owner of Maywood plantation and
its two hundred slaves, wrote in her diary: “I took a long walk through the village with Capt. Greenlaw after dinner, and was charmed with the lovely gardens and beautiful shade trees. On coming home, I heard of the fall of Richmond. Everybody feels very blue, but not disposed to give up as long as we have Lee.”

  On April 6, Robert E. Lee telegraphed Davis from his headquarters at Rice’s Station, Virginia, South Side Railroad: “I shall be tonight at Farmville. You can communicate by telegraph to Meherrin and by courier to Lynchburg.” The Army of Northern Virginia was, President Davis believed, still in the game.

  From Charlotte, Varina Davis wrote to her husband again on April 7. Their exchange of letters after the fall of Richmond was the beginning of a correspondence that evolved into one of the great collections of American love letters. “The news of Richmond came upon me like the ‘abomination of desolation,’” she wrote. “…I who know that your strength when stirred up is great, and that you can do with a few what others have failed to do with many am awaiting prayerfully the advent of time when it is God’s will to deliver us through his own appointed agent…Numberless surmises are hazarded here as to your future destination and occupation—but I know that wherever you are, and in whatever engaged, it is an efficient manner for the country.” She ended her letter intimately: “Our little ones are all well, but very unruly…Li Pie [their infant daughter Varina Anne] is sweet and pink, and loving her hands and gums are hot, and swollen, and I think she is teething…Write to me my own precious only love, and believe me as ever your devoted Wife.”

  On April 7, Abraham Lincoln, still at City Point, continued to follow the telegraph and dispatch traffic. Reading between the lines, he sensed that victory was imminent. He had become an expert at reading the dry words of a military communication and then interpreting the unsaid meaning behind the text. He had read several thousand of them during the war and knew how to take their pulse. Now, on April 7, when he held them with his fingers, Lincoln could feel victory resonating from the sheets of paper. Then General Phil Sheridan gave the president a military assessment that inflamed his taste for victory so much that it provoked him to send a telegraph to General Grant. He ordered his commanding general of the armies of the United States to close in for the kill and win the war.

  Head Quarters Armies of the United States

  City-Point,

  April 7. 11 A.M. 1865

  Lieut. Gen. Grant.

  Gen. Sheridan says “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.” Let the thing be pressed.

  A. Lincoln

  That day in Washington, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary: “It is desirable that Lee should be captured. He, more than any one else, has the confidence of the Rebels, and can, if he escapes, and is weak enough to try and continue hostilities, rally for a time a brigand force in the interior. I can hardly suppose he would do this, but he has shown weakness, and his infidelity to the country which educated, and employed, and paid him shows great ingratitude. His true course would be to desert the country he has betrayed, and never return.” Perhaps, Welles suspected, so would Jefferson Davis, and he expressed the same wish for the rebel chief.

  In City Point, as Lincoln prepared to board the River Queen and return to Washington, a U.S. Army band serenaded him with a farewell evening concert. The president had spent eighteen days and seventeen nights with his men: The long visit had invigorated him and increased the bonds of affection between them. During the war the common soldiers had always been happy to see their president and cheered him on sight. In the election of 1864, it was the soldiers’ vote that kept Lincoln in office when their former commander, General George McClellan, tried to unseat him. Lincoln enjoyed military music, and during summers in Washington, the U.S. Marine Corps band had played concerts on the White House grounds. At 11:00 P.M. the River Queen steamed away from City Point and headed for Washington. Lincoln did not know it, but he was leaving a day too early. If only he could have read Robert E. Lee’s mind, he would never have returned to Washington that night.

  While Lincoln was en route to Washington on April 8, Davis had been in Danville for five days. He still refused to believe that the Army of Northern Virginia was in danger of immediate collapse, even though Secretary of War Breckinridge had given him a report that day saying the war was lost. But Davis was far from the front lines and could not receive telegrams or couriers in anything close to real time. At the front, events were in flux, with the situation changing hourly. Far away in the new capital, Davis did not learn of battlefield events before or while they were occurring, but only after they had already happened. And Lee was fighting for his life. He did not have time to dispatch a series of detailed telegraphic or courier messages. And so the president of the Confederacy did not know what his most important general was thinking.

  Lee considered the possibility of continuing the fighting, but he had hardly any men left and fit for battle—no more than several thousand. His thoughts, and loyalty, turned to his surviving soldiers. The postwar South would need them—the country had lost so many boys already. In many ways they were the South, not cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Savannah, and the rest. If the Confederacy was doomed to lose these final battles, suffering great loss of life with no hope of victory, was it right to sacrifice any more lives? More fighting might have been suicidal, even criminal. Lee sent a courier to Danville bearing a message for the president: Surrender was inevitable. Lee knew what he must do. He composed a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, asking that they meet the next day at a little place called Appomattox Court House.

  In the morning a great controversy erupted in Richmond, on the first Sunday since the burning of the city and the beginning of Union occupation. In church services during the war, it was the custom of the ministers to ask God’s blessing for President Davis and the Confederate cause. Now Yankee officials demanded that ministers bless not Davis but Lincoln. This was too much for the downtrodden citizens to bear. The dispute made it all the way to the ears of Lincoln, who found the whole episode embarrassing.

  In Danville, Davis, ignorant of Lee’s appointment with Grant later in the day, continued to make war plans. He sent a telegram to his top general to plan the next phase of the struggle: “Your dispatch of the 6th…received. Hope the line of couriers established will enable you to communicate safely and frequently…You will realize the reluctance I feel to leave the soil of Virginia…the fall of Selma and the reported advance of the enemy on Montgomery, and the fears expressed for the safety of Columbus, Georgia, caused me to direct Gen’l Cobb to aid in resisting the enemy in Alabama…I hope to hear from you soon at this point, where offices have been opened to keep up the current business, until more definite knowledge would enable us to form more permanent plans. May God preserve, sustain and guide you.”

  It happened on April 9 around 1:00 P.M., without the participation of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis. While Lincoln sailed back to Washington, and while Davis waited in Danville for news, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met at the McLean house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

  Grant treated Lee with the highest military courtesy and, after reminiscing with his foe about their common service in the Mexican War, offered to accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on generous terms. Once the men laid down their arms and signed their paroles, they could return to their homes. They could wear their Confederate uniforms, take their horses, and just go home. They would not be made prisoners of war nor be punished as traitors. And before the men of the Army of Northern Virginia left the field for the final time, the boys in blue paid honor to them. It was as Lincoln would have wished.

  Lincoln arrived in Washington at 6:00 P.M. and went from the wharf straight to William Seward’s home in Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Seward, bedridden from terrible injuries he had suffered in a recent carriage accident, lay still while Lincoln stretched his long frame across the foot of Seward’s bed and brought him
encouraging news from the front and tales of his wondrous visit to Richmond. The president was ecstatic: The war would be over soon; he could feel it. Lincoln and Seward did not know that Lee had surrendered several hours earlier. After an hour of quiet, intimate talk, Lincoln went home.

  Crowds at the White House demanded that the president show himself—the people had missed him and were disappointed that he had not been in Washington on April 3 to celebrate the fall of Richmond with them. He stepped to a window beneath the north portico and spoke an inconsequential greeting. News from Appomattox did not arrive at the War Department until later on the night of the ninth, too late for Washington to celebrate en masse, but Lincoln was told. No one knows what he did after he heard the news: Was he too overjoyed to sleep that night? Did he walk the halls or go to his office and stare through the window into the night? Did he haunt the telegraph office? Did he know that tomorrow morning would begin the greatest day in the history of Washington?