by Martha Hodes
19. farmer: Nimrod Porter diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Porter Papers, SHC; lady: Caroline Curtis diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Cary Family Papers III, MHS.
For continued skirmishing after surrender, see E. B. Long and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), 675–91.
20. road: James Herbert George to “My dear home,” Appomattox, Va., Apr. 14, 1865, George Letters, HL; impossible: Chester dispatch, Richmond, Va., Apr. 10, 1865, in Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 303–4; promenade: Thomas Day Seymour to Nathan Seymour, Richmond, Va., Apr. 10, 1865, and Thomas Day Seymour to Sarah Parsons, Richmond, Va., Apr. 12, 1865, Seymour Family Papers, Yale-Sterling; clothing, John Brown, children: Lucy Muse (Walton) Fletcher diary, Apr. 25, 1865, Fletcher Papers, Duke; shouts: Chesson and Roberts, Exile in Richmond, 375 (Apr. 9, 1865, entry); Roanoke: P. B. S. Nichuston [?] to George Whipple, Roanoke Island, N.C., Apr. 22, 1865, #100001, reel 169, AMA; Charleston: Gerald Schwartz, ed., A Woman Doctor’s Civil War: Esther Hill Hawks’ Diary (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984), 129 (Apr. 12, 1865, entry).
21. throats: John S. Sanford to mother, Appomattox Court House, Va., Apr. 10, 1865, Sanford Papers, Duke; toasts: James Herbert George to “My dear home,” Appomattox, Va., Apr. 14, 1865, George Letters, HL; Meade: Kiliaen Van Rensselaer to W. P. Van Rensselaer, City Point, Va., Apr. 23, 1865, ts., Erving-King Papers, NYHS; row: Peter Eltinge to Edmund Eltinge, Goldsboro, N.C., Apr. 14, 1865, ts., Eltinge-Lord Family Papers (Peter Eltinge Papers), Duke; newspapers: Hastell P. Lyons to “Dear Friends at Home,” Kinston, N.C., Apr. 8–12, 1865, Lyons Papers, GWBW.
22. kicked, hurrahed: James Otis Moore to sister, near Petersburg, Va., Apr. 15, 1865, Moore Papers, Duke; handstands, mud: Lucius F. Hubbard to aunt, Montgomery, Ala., May 3, 1865, in N. B. Martin, “Letters of a Union Officer: L. F. Hubbard and the Civil War,” Minnesota History 35 (1957), 318; mud: Manning Ferguson Force to “Mr. Kebler” [?], Raleigh, N.C., Apr. 16, 1865 (letters copied into journal), Force Papers, LC; liquor: Thomas S. Howland to sister, Raleigh, N.C., Apr. 16, 1865, Howland Papers, MHS; John Swift to sister, White River, Ark., Apr. 21, 1865, in “Letters from a Sailor on a Tinclad,” ed. Lester L. Swift, Civil War History 7 (1961), 62; double-shuffle John Payson Slocum diary, Apr. 9, 1865, Slocum Family Papers, NYSL; musicians: John B. Burrud to Ocena Burrud, Winchester, Va., Apr. 10, 1865 (part of Apr. 9 letter), Burrud Papers, HL; tree: R. P. Tanner to Charles A. Tanner, Raleigh, N.C., Apr. 14, 1865, Tanner Papers, SHC; battle: John Wesley Marshall diary, Apr. 10, 1865, LC; hospital: Rose Pickard to family, Alexandria, Va., Apr. 10, 1865, Pickard Papers, LC; incredible: James J. Higginson to Anne E. Heath, Burkeville, Va., Apr. 16, 1865, Heath Family Papers, MHS; impression: Stephen Minot Weld to Hannah Weld, City Point, Va., Apr. 24, 1865, in War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861–1865 (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1912), 396; whipping post: Rufus Mead Jr. diary, Apr. 12, 1865, Mead Papers, LC.
23. thunderbolt: David Gregg McIntosh diary, Apr. 9, 1865, McIntosh Papers, ser. A, reel 25, VHS-CMM; gloom: Heartsill, Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days, 240 (Apr. 23, 1865, entry), ACWLD; intense: Henry Robinson Berkeley diary, Apr. 11, 1865, Berkeley Papers, ser. A, reel 2, VHS-CMM; hearts: E. L. Cox diary, Apr. 10, 1865, ser. A, reel 13, VHS-CMM; sinking: Henry Robinson Berkeley diary, Apr. 11, 1865, Berkeley Papers, ser. A, reel 2, VHS-CMM; saddest: Kena King Chapman diary, Apr. 9, 1865, SHC; minutes, sick: John Johnston, “Personal Reminiscence of the Civil War, 1861–1865,” diary transcriptions, May 4, Apr. 28, 1865, Johnston Papers, SHC; rivers: Junius Newport Bragg to Anna J. G. Bragg, near Marshall, Tex., Apr. 23, 1865, in Bragg, Letters of a Confederate Surgeon, 1861–65, ed. Helen Bragg Gaughan (Camden, Ark.: Hurley, 1960), 272, ACWLD; ain’t: John L. Smith to Hannah Smith, near Burkeville, Va., Apr. 18, 1865, Smith Papers, HSP; bitter: Henry A. Chambers diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Chambers Papers, SHC.
24. broke down: J. E. Whitehorne diary, Apr. 9, 1865, ts., SHC; dry eye: John Walters, Norfolk Blues: The Civil War Diary of the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, ed. Kenneth Wiley (Shippensburg, Pa.: Burd Street Press, 1997), 223 (Apr. 9, 1865, entry); see also C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (1981; reprint, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 788 (Apr. 7, 1865, entry); heart, ailments, unhappiness: Chesson and Roberts, Exile in Richmond, 376, 381, 385 (Apr. 10, 18, 21, 1865, entries).
25. enjoying, nauseum, anxious: Lucy Muse (Walton) Fletcher diary, Apr. 25, 9, 1865, Fletcher Papers, Duke; wild: Mary (Cabell) Early diary, Apr. 17, 10, 1865, Early Family Papers, ser. D, part 3, reel 14, VHS-SWF, and Elizabeth (Alsop) Wynne diary, Apr. 22, 1865, Wynne Family Papers, ser. D, part 3, reel 52, VHS-SWF. (“The past two or three weeks seem like a dream, & yet I feel as if they had been years”); revulsion: Eliza F. Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864–1865 (New York: D. Appleton, 1908), 171 (Apr. 21, 1865, entry), DocSouth, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/andrews/menu.html; give up: Emma F. LeConte diary, Apr. 20, 1865, reel 22, SHC-AWD-South.
David Herbert Donald writes, “Nearly every Southern manuscript collection for the period echoes the note of unbelief that defeat had really happened”; see “A Generation of Defeat,” in From the Old South to the New: Essays on the Transitional South, ed. Walter J. Fraser Jr. and Winfred B. Moore Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), 9.
On Confederates’ thoughts of suicide, see chap. 7, below.
26. thousand: Anna M. Ferris diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Ferris Family Papers, FHL; Lexington: Joseph Cabell Breckinridge diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Breckinridge Family Papers, LC; Baltimore: Thomas Francis Johnson diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Johnson Family Papers, MDHS; William Owner diary, Apr. 14, 1865, LC; caboodles: “Joe” to [Christian A. Fleetwood?], Baltimore, Apr. 9, 1865, Fleetwood Papers, LC.
27. victors: see, e.g., Lucretia Hale to Charles Hale, Brookline, Mass., Apr. 14, 1865, box 50, Hale Family Papers, SSC (“everybody”); light, midnight: Julia Adelaide Shepard to father, near Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, in “Lincoln’s Assassination Told by an Eye-Witness,” Century Magazine 77 (1909), 918; candles: Henry I. Colyer to mother, Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, in Justin G. Turner, “April 14, 1865: A Soldier’s View,” American Book Collector 15 (1965), 9; Chicago: Stephen Thurston Farwell diary, Apr. 10, 11, 1865, Farwell Collection, Princeton; Hartford: Mary Bushnell Cheney to Francis Louise Bushnell, [Hartford, Conn.?], Apr. 15, 1865, ts., Cheney Family Papers, SSC; New York: Maria Lydig Daly, Diary of a Union Lady, 1861–1865, ed. Harold Earl Hammond (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1962), 351 (Apr. 10, 1865, entry).
28. victory: Mary Peck to Henry J. Peck, Jonesville, N.Y., Apr. 12, 1865, Peck Correspondence, NYSL; Cincinnati: “From Cincinnati,” New York Anglo-African, Apr. 29, 1865; Sacramento: Frederick G. Niles diary, Apr. 12, 1865, HL; horses: Hattie Schenck to cousin, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Apr. 22, 1865, Schenck Family Papers, NYSL; inanimate: Henry S. Thacher diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Thacher Family Papers, MHS.
29. depended: Daniel E. Sutherland, ed., A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 162 (Apr. 23, 1865, entry); Bible, hard, measure: Cloe (Whittle) Greene diary, Apr. 11, June 16, 1865, reel 4, WM-AWD-South.
30. until: Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” Mar. 4, 1865, CWL, 8:333; hell-born: Daniel Franklin Child diary, Apr. 10, 1865, Child Papers, MHS; color: Caroline Barrett White diary, Apr. 10, 1865, White Papers, AAS; acquiescent: Robert H. Williams to Ellen Williams, City Point, Va., Apr. 5, 1865, Goff-Williams Papers, HL; eager: Hallock Armstrong to Mary Armstrong, near Petersburg, Va., Apr. 15, 1865, in Letters from a Pennsylvania Chaplain at the Siege of Petersburg: 1865 (N.p.: Privately published, 1961), 27, ACWLD; cruel, magnanimity: Anna M. Ferris diary, Apr. 3, 14, 1865, Ferris Family Papers, FHL.
31. disposed: “Lee’s Surrender—Peace,” New York Anglo-African, Apr. 15, 1865; hereafter: Frederick Douglass, “The Fall of Richmond: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 April 1865,” FDP, ser. 1, 4:73.
32. weary: Lydia Maria Child to Sarah B
lake Shaw, [no place], Apr. [n.d.], 1865, Child Letters, SL; sidearms: Anna Cabot Lowell diary, Apr. 10, 1865 (on Mary Putnam), MHS; mortified: Caroline Dunstan diary, Apr. 10, 1865, NYPL; squirm: William L. Dorr to Sarah Bradley Gamble, South Side Railroad, Va., Apr. 9, 1865, Gamble Papers, SL; country: John Wolcott Phelps commonplace book, Apr. 17, 1865, Phelps Papers, NYPL; lay down: “Lee’s Surrender—Peace,” New York Anglo-African, Apr. 15, 1865.
33. killed: Sarah G. Putnam diary, Apr. 2 [sic], 1865, MHS; baby, chores, news: James C. Mohr and Richard E. Winslow, eds., The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 542 (Apr. 4, 1865, entry); surrender, furs: Elizabeth Rogers Mason Cabot diary, Apr. 10, 1865, MHS; wood: John B. Orton diary, Apr. 14, 1865, NYSL; marrage: William Benjamin Gould diary, Apr. 21, 1865, MHS.
34. far less: Sophia E. Perry diary, Apr. 10, 1865, CP.
35. heard, worked: Alden Spooner Forbes diary, Apr. 15, 27, 1865, ts., ser. N, reel 10, MDAH-RSP.
36. speech: Abraham Lincoln, “Last Public Address,” Apr. 11, 1865, CWL, 8:399–405. Lincoln had earlier discussed which black men should vote, writing to the governor of Louisiana; see Abraham Lincoln to Michael Hahn, Washington, D.C., Mar. 13, 1864, CWL, 7:243.
37. noble: Franklin Boyts to Josiah Boyts, Washington, D.C., Apr. 12, 1865, in Boyts diary, HSP; subjugation: John Glenn diary, Apr. 15, 1865, Glenn Papers, MDHS.
38. citizenship: William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1900), 2:289 (“Frederick Stone, counsel for Harold [sic] after Booth’s death, is authority for the statement”); country: John Wilkes Booth, “To Whom It May Concern,” Philadelphia, November 1864, in “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, ed. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 125; on April 14, 1865, Booth wrote a letter to the National Intelligencer with a similar statement (147). On Booth’s white supremacy, see Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 2:810–16.
39. alive: R. B. Milliken to “Friend Byron,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, #54, Lincoln Room Miscellaneous Papers, HLH; illumination: Charles T. Cotton diary, Apr. 14, 1865, Columbia; continuous: “Carrie” to sister, Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, box 2, fol. 27, Richard John Levy and Sally Waldman Sweet Collection, NYPL; glory: James Thomas Ward diary, Apr. 13, 1865, Ward Papers, LC; blazing: John B. Stonehouse to John B. Stonehouse Jr., Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, #00368, GLC-NYHS.
40. Sumter: Programme of the Order of Exercises at the Re-Raising of the United States Flag, on Fort Sumter, Charleston, S.C., April 14th, 1865 (Port Royal, S.C.: New South Office, 1865); Beecher: Henry Ward Beecher, Oration at the Raising of “The Old Flag” at Sumter; and Sermon on the Death of Abraham Lincoln (Manchester: Alexander Ireland, 1865), 12, 19, 24, 25, 13, 14.
41. ceremonies: “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, Apr. 18, 1865; Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Charleston, S.C., Apr. 16, 1865, BFP; Wilbert L. Jenkins, Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post–Civil War Charleston (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 38–39; Garrison, Wilson, Thompson: The Trip of the Steamer Oceanus to Fort Sumter and Charleston, S.C. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: “The Union” Steam Printing Press, 1865), 96–114 (“regards,” 114); elated: William Lloyd Garrison Jr. to Martha Coffin Wright, Boston, Apr. 25, 1865, box 56, Garrison Family Papers, SSC; cheered: Laura Towne to unknown, Saint Helena Island, S.C., Apr. 23, 1865, in Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862–1884, ed. Rupert Sargent Holland (1912; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 159; gun salute: John Wesley Marshall diary, Apr. 14, 1865, LC; other celebrations: Frank S. Mckey to Samuel W. Very, Boston, Apr. 18, 1865, Blair and Lee Family Papers, Princeton; same flag: Samuel Canby diary, Apr. 14, 1865, DHS; traitors: Daniel Franklin Child diary, Apr. 14, 1865, Child Papers, MHS.
42. suppose: Emma F. LeConte diary, Apr. 13, 1865, reel 22, SHC-AWD-South.
43. letters: Nathan Seymour to Thomas Day Seymour, Hudson, Ohio, Apr. 13, 1865, Seymour Family Papers, Yale-Sterling; unparalleled: Caroline Barrett White diary, Apr. 10, 1865, White Papers, AAS; inscribed: Amos A. Lawrence diary, Apr. 6, 9, 1865, MHS; fast, written: Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Charleston, S.C., Apr. 16, 1865, BFP; changes: Emma F. LeConte diary, Apr. 13, 1865, reel 22, SHC-AWD-South; brain: Mary (Cabell) Early diary, Apr. 9, 1865, Early Family Papers, ser. D, part 3, reel 14, VHS-SWF; never: Margaret (Brown) Wight diary, Apr. 2, 1865, Wight Family Papers, ser. D, part 1, reel 21, VHS-SWF.
44. sundown: Trip of the Steamer Oceanus, 84; above: Sarah Browne diary, Apr. 14, 1865, BFP; joy: Amos A. Lawrence diary, Apr. 17, 1865, MHS.
Interlude: Rumors
1. grapevine: Joel Calvin McDiarmid diary, Apr. 5, 1865, in Voices from Company D: Diaries by the Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia, ed. G. Ward Hubbs (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 368; latest, Madam: Samuel Pickens diary, Apr. 16, 17, 30, 1865, in Hubbs, Voices from Company D, 372, 373; Madam, grapevine: Henry Clay Weaver to Cornelia S. Wiley, Raleigh, N.C., Apr. 19, 28, 1865, Weaver Papers, LC; Grant: William Hamilton to mother, Nottaway Court House, Va., Apr. 25, 1865 (part of Apr. 24 letter), Hamilton Papers, LC; Stanton: William Williston Heartsill, Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army, ed. Bell Irvin Wiley (1876; reprint, Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1954), 242–43 (May 7, 1865, entry), ACWLD; Sewards: Numerous letters and diaries discuss the Seward deaths; Tad: Samuel Pickens diary, Apr. 16, 1865, in Hubbs, Voices from Company D, 372.
2. shot: Henry Morrill to C. Henry Albers, Memphis, Tenn., Apr. 15, 1865, Morrill Papers, Western Americana, Yale-Beinecke; traced: Lyman P. Spencer diary, Apr. 15, 1865, Spencer Papers, LC; hardly: “Civil War Diary of James Wesley Riley: Who Served with the Union Army in the War Between the States, April 22, 1861–June 18, 1865,” ts. (C. W. Denslinger, 1960), 103 (Apr. 15, 1865, entry); hope: Allen H. Babcock diary, Apr. 16, 1865, Babcock Papers, NYSL; swore: Henry J. Peck to Mary Peck, Appomattox Court House, Va., Apr. 16, 1865, Peck Correspondence, NYSL; Sheridan: Samuel Comfort to George Comfort, Nottaway Station, Va., Apr. 16, 1865, Comfort Papers, Princeton; noon: Thomas Day Seymour to Nathan Seymour, Richmond, Va., Apr. 17, 1865, Seymour Family Papers, Yale-Sterling; camp story: Warren Goodale to children, in and around Petersburg, Va., Apr. 15ff., 1865, Goodale Papers, MHS; rumor makers: Chauncey Welton to parents, Raleigh, N.C., Apr. 19, 1865, Welton Papers, SHC; rumor, dead, alive: E. P. Failing diary, Apr. 17, 18, 1865, Failing-Knight Papers, MHS; wires: Mary Ann Anderson, ed., The Civil War Diary of Allen Morgan Geer: Twentieth Regiment, Illinois Volunteers (Denver: R. C. Appleman, 1977), 215 (Apr. 17, 1865, entry).
3. lowered flag: Creed Thomas Davis diary, Apr. 18, 1865, ser. A, reel 13, VHS-CMM; slavery: Norman D. Brown, ed., One of Cleburne’s Command: The Civil War Reminiscences and Diary of Capt. Samuel T. Foster, Granbury’s Texas Brigade, CSA (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 165–66 (Apr. 19, 1865, entry); April Fools: Eliza F. Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864–1865 (New York: D. Appleton, 1908), 172 (Apr. 21, 1865, entry), DocSouth, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/andrews/menu.html; Johnson: Samuel A. Agnew diary, Apr. 21, 22, 23, 1865, SHC, available at www2.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/a/Agnew, Samuel_A.html#, and Heartsill, Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days, 242–43 (May 7, 1865, entry), ACWLD; theatric: John F. Marszalek, ed., The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861–1866 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 436 (Apr. 22, 1865, entry); reports: Kate Cumming, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 275 (Apr. 22, 1865, entry), NAWLD.
4. float: James William Latta diary, Apr. 25, 1865, Latta Papers, LC; all kinds: John Whitten diary, Apr. 26, 1865, LC; unlikeliness: “From the Regiments,” letter from “M.F.,” 11th U.S. Heavy Artillery, Fort Banks, La., Apr. 12 [sic], 1865, New
York Anglo-African, published May 20, 1865; Congress: Eleanor H. Cohen diary, Apr. 30, 1865, in Memoirs of American Jews, 1775–1865, 3 vols., ed. Jacob Rader Marcus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955), 3:366, NAWLD; not prove: John Johnston, “Personal Reminiscence of the Civil War, 1861–1865,” diary transcriptions, Apr. 28, 1865, Johnston Papers, SHC.
5. Grover’s: James Tanner to Henry Walch, Washington, D.C., Apr. 17, 1865, in “Documents: The Assassination of President Lincoln, 1865,” American Historical Review 29 (1924), 514; awakened: Annie G. Dudley Davis diary, Apr. 15, 1865, HL; messenger: Gideon Welles diary, Apr. 15, 1865, and “Copy. M. J. Welles. 14 April ‘65,” box 41, fol. marked “Welles, Mary Hale, correspondence,” Welles Papers, LC.
6. Stonehouse: John B. Stonehouse to John B. Stonehouse Jr., Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, #00368, GLC-NYHS; lamp: photograph of Ford’s Theatre, 1865, #LCB8184-7765, LC.
Chapter 2. Shock
1. Sarah Browne to Albert Browne, Salem, Mass., Apr. 20, 1865, both letters of this date, BFP.
2. Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Hilton Head Island, S.C., Apr. 18, 1865, BFP.
orders: W. A. Nichols, assistant adjutant general, in B. F. Morris, Memorial Record of the Nation’s Tribute to Abraham Lincoln (Washington, D.C.: W. H. and O. H. Morrison, 1865), 112.
3. Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Charleston, S.C., Apr. 21, 1865, BFP.
4. Harris and Rathbone: Clara Harris to “Mary,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 25, 1865, NYHS. See also “Affidavit of Major Rathbone” and “Affidavit of Miss Harris,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 17, 1865, in Morris, Memorial Record, 42–44.
5. reserved: R. B. Milliken to “Friend Byron,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, #54, Lincoln Room Miscellaneous Papers, HLH; whim: Charles A. Sanford to Edward Payson Goodrich, Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, in “Two Letters on the Event of April 14, 1865,” Bulletin of the William L. Clements Library of American History 47 (Feb. 12, 1946), facsimile, n.p.; sleeping: Julia Adelaide Shepard to father, near Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, in “Lincoln’s Assassination Told by an Eye-Witness,” Century Magazine 77 (1909), 918; cannot: Frederick A. Sawyer, “Account of what I saw of the Death of Mr. Lincoln written April 15, 1865,” in “An Eyewitness Account of Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination,” ed. Ronald D. Rietveld, Civil War History 22 (1976), 62.