Lincoln
Page 92
Here Lincoln lay for the next nine hours. Dr. Leale and Dr. Charles S. Taft, who had also been in the audience for Our American Cousin, were constantly in attendance, and during the night, as Taft noted, “nearly all the leading men of the profession in the city tendered their services.” When Dr. Robert King Stone, the Lincolns’ family doctor, arrived at about eleven o’clock, he became the physician in charge, and he consulted with Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, the surgeon general of the United States. From the first, all of them agreed that there was no chance of recovery. The doctors agreed that the average man could not survive the injury Lincoln had received for more than two hours, but Dr. Stone noted that the President’s “vital tenacity was very strong, and he would resist as long as any man could.” He never regained consciousness.
Mary was with her husband through the long night. Frantic with grief, she sat at his bedside, calling on him to say one word to her, to take her with him. When Robert came in with Senator Sumner, he saw what desperate shape his mother was in and sent for Elizabeth Dixon—wife of Connecticut Senator James Dixon—who was perhaps Mary’s closest friend in the capital. Mrs. Dixon persuaded her to retire to the front room of the Petersen house, where she rested as well as she could, returning every hour to her husband’s side. On one of these visits she sobbed bitterly, “Oh, that my little Taddy might see his father before he died!” but the physicians wisely decided that this was not advisable. Once when Lincoln’s breathing became very stertorous, Mary, who was approaching exhaustion, became frightened, leapt up with a piercing cry, and fell fainting on the floor. Coming in from the adjoining room, Stanton called out loudly, “Take that woman out and do not let her in again.”
During the night, as crowds gathered in the street in front of the Petersen house, all the members of the cabinet except Seward came to see their fallen chief. Much of the night Secretary Welles sat by the head of the President’s bed, listening to the slow, full respiration of the dying man. Vice President Johnson was summoned, but Sumner urged him not to stay long, knowing that Mary Lincoln detested him and might cause a scene. The Reverend Phineas D. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which the Lincolns frequently attended, came to give spiritual comfort.
Stanton promptly took charge. Making an adjacent room in the Petersen house his headquarters, he summoned Assistant Secretary of War Dana to help him and began rapidly dictating one order after another designed to keep the government functioning during the crisis. Stanton immediately started an investigation of the assassination, taking testimony from witnesses, ordering all bridges and roads out of the capital closed, and directing the military to search for the murderers. By dawn he had a massive manhunt under way. He soon learned that there had been not one but two assaults. Though Atzerodt decided not to attack Andrew Johnson and spent the night wandering aimlessly about the city, Paine, following Booth’s directions, had burst into Seward’s house; he fiercely attacked the Secretary of State, who was still bedridden after his carriage accident, and left him bleeding copiously and barely alive. By morning Paine and Atzerodt were under arrest, and the other conspirators—including those who had only been involved in the kidnapping plot—were promptly seized. But Booth, who was accompanied by Herold, escaped. Not until April 26 did Stanton’s men trace him to a farm in northern Virginia, where he was shot.
Long before that, Lincoln was dead. As the night of April 14–15 wore on, his pulse became irregular and feeble, and his respiration was accompanied by a guttural sound. Several times it seemed that he had ceased breathing. Mary was allowed to return to her husband’s side, and, as Mrs. Dixon reported, “she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name.” As his breath grew fainter and fainter, she was led back into the front room. At twenty-two minutes past seven, on the morning of April 15, the struggle ended, and the physicians came in to inform her: “It is all over! The President is no more!”
In the small, crowded back room there was silence until Stanton asked Dr. Gurley to offer a prayer. Robert gave way to overpowering grief and sobbed aloud, leaning on Sumner for comfort. Standing at the foot of the bed, his face covered with tears, Stanton paid tribute to his fallen chief: with a slow and measured movement, his right arm fully extended as if in a salute, he raised his hat and placed it for an instant on his head and then in the same deliberate manner removed it. “Now,” he said, “he belongs to the ages.”
“THE RAILSPLITTER”
This 1860 life-sized oil painting, by an unknown artist, suggests the mythic qualities that helped elect Lincoln President. Forgotten here are Lincoln’s highly successful law practice and his career in politics in order to stress, in a frontier setting, the homely virtues of physical strength and hard manual labor.
Chicago Historical Society
Sarah Bush (Johnston) Lincoln (1788-1869). Lincoln’s stepmother was one of the most powerful influences in his life. In her old age, when this photograph was taken, she recalled: “Abe was a good boy. . . . His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together . . . in the same channel.”
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Mary Lincoln, around 1846. This is the earliest daguerreotype of Mrs. Lincoln, made, as she said, “when we were young and so desperately in love.”
The Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln, around 1846. Made at the same time as the portrait of Mary Lincoln, this daguerreotype was probably the work of N. H. Shepherd, one of the first photographers in Springfield, Illinois.
The Library of Congress
John Todd Stuart
Courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield
Stephen T. Logan
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
The Lincoln & Herndon Law Office. This unusually tidy view was sketched after the senior partner had been elected President.
Courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield
LINCOLN’S LAW PARTNERS
William H. Herndon
L. C. Handy Studios
Lincoln at the age of forty-five. Taken in Chicago in 1854, this daguerreotype by Polycarp von Schneidau shows Lincoln as he reappeared on the political stage to fight the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Chicago Historical Society
An 1860 photograph of the Lincoln House at Eighth and Jackson Streets in Springfield, Illinois, which was almost doubled in size after renovation in the 1850s. Lincoln and Tad stand just inside the fence.
The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (#2149)
ILLINOIS POLITICAL ADVISERS
Orville Hickman Browning David Davis
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
David Davis
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Lyman Trumbull
Chicago Historical Society
Stephan A. Douglas
The National Archives
RIVALS IN THE GREAT DEBATES OF 1858
Abraham Lincoln
The Library of Congress
The President-elect grows a beard. In response to suggestions by Grace Bedell and others, Lincoln decided to let his whiskers grow. By the time he posed for this photograph in Chicago on November 25, 1860, he had a half beard.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Lincoln’s disguise on his night trip from Harrisburg to Washington. To avoid a threatened assassination plot, Lincoln made a secret night trip through Baltimore on February 23, 1861, on his way to the national capital for his inauguration. Cartoonists had a field day with his supposed disguise in a Scottish kilt and tarn.
“THE MACLINCOLN HARRISBURG HIGHLAND FLING”
The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (#439)
TWO CABINET RIVALS
William H. Seward, Secretary of State
The National Archives
Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury
The National Archives
FOUR GENERALS WHO CAUSED LINCOLN PROBLEMS
General Winfield Scott
M
eserve-Kunhardt Collection
General John C. Frémont
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
General Irvin McDowell
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
General Henry W. Halleck
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SONS
William Wallace (“Willie”) Lincoln (1850-1862)
Courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield
Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926)
Chicago Historical Society
Thomas (“Tad”) Lincoln (1853–1871) and his father
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Mary Lincoln dressed for a ball. The only profile photograph of Mrs. Lincoln, probably taken in 1861, shows her love for beautiful clothing and her fondness for floral headdresses.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
The Lincolns’ White House reception, February 5, 1862. This was the most elaborate entertainment ever offered by the Lincolns. Upstairs, Willie Lincoln was desperately ill.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
LINCOLN RECEIVES A DELEGATION OF PLAINS INDIANS
On March 27, 1863, Lincoln received chiefs of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Apache, and other Western tribes in the East Room and promised to maintain peace “with all our red brethren.”
Collection of Professor and Mrs. Gabor S. Boritt, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
If the Indian chiefs were not entirely reassured by Lincoln’s promise, it was perhaps because they remembered that in the previous year General John Pope had ruthlessly put down an insurrection among the Sioux in Minnesota.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
LINCOLN’S OFFICE IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Lincoln’s office was on the second floor of the White House, in the East Wing. The painting over the fireplace is of Andrew Jackson. This sketch was drawn by C. K. Stellwagen in October 1864.
Western Reserve Historical Society
Lincoln and his secretaries. John G. Nicolay is seated to Lincoln’s right, while John Hay is standing.
Collection of Lloyd Ostendorf
LINCOLN ON McCLELLAN:
“He has the slows”
General George B. McClellan
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Lincoln visits McClellan’s headquarters after Antietam. Baffled by McClellan’s inexplicable reluctance to advance after defeating Lee’s army at Antietam, Lincoln visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.
Library of Congress
THREE REPUBLICAN RADICALS WHO PUSHED LINCOLN TOWARD EMANCIPATION
Charles Sumner
The National Archives
Horace Greeley
The National Archives
“A PRACTICAL REMINDER” Colonel David H. Strother’s cartoon captured the impatience felt by Lincoln and many other Northerners at McClellan’s slowness in advancing on the Confederate capital of Richmond.
Chicago Historical Society
Frederick Douglass
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
“FIRST READING OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN” This engraving, made from Francis B. Carpenter’s huge oil painting completed in 1864, shows the President reading the draft of his Emancipation Proclamation to members of the cabinet. On the left are Edward M. Stanton (seated) and Salmon P. Chase; William H. Seward is seated in front of the table, and Gideon Welles, Caleb B. Smith, Montgomery Blair, and Edward Bates are behind it. A parchment copy of the Constitution lies on the cabinet table, and a painting of Andrew Jackson is faintly visible through the chandelier.
Library of Congress
“ABRAHAM LINCOLN WRITING THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION” This chromolithograph, made from an oil painting by David Gilmour Blythe in 1863, depicts a homespun Lincoln (his rail-splitter’s maul is in the foreground) who has pushed aside the state-rights theories of John C. Calhoun and John Randolph and has carelessly allowed a bust of James Buchanan to hang from the bookcase, while he rests his hand on the Holy Bible and heeds the injunction of Andrew Jackson: “The Union Must & Shall be Preserved.”
The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (#2051)
TWO VIEWS OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
“WRITING THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION” Adalbert Johann Volck’s 1864 etching gives the Copperhead version of the same event, showing Lincoln, with his foot on the Constitution, writing with a pen dipped in the devil’s inkstand. On the wall one painting depicts John Brown as a saint and another shows the atrocities that followed a slave insurrection in Santo Domingo.
The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (#3252)
Because he was so tall, Lincoln did not like standing for a portrait, but this full-length photograph, made by one of Mathew Brady’s assistants in April 1863, shows a poised and surprisingly youthful President.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864
“THIS REMINDS ME OF A LITTLE JOKE” This cartoon, from Harper’s Weekly of September 17, 1864, suggests how insignificant McClellan’s candidacy seemed in the weeks before the presidential election.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Lincoln’s 1864 running mate, Andrew Johnson
Chicago Historical Society
“LONG ABRAHAM LINCOLN A LITTLE LONGER” Harper’s Weekly of November 26, 1864, indicates how the presidential election enhanced Lincoln’s stature.
The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (#1942)
“THE PEACE MAKERS” As the war drew to a close, Lincoln visited Grant’s army in Virginia, and there, aboard the River Queen, he conferred with Grant, W. T. Sherman, who came up from North Carolina, and Admiral David D. Porter about the terms for ending the fighting. This painting by George P. A. Healy, which hangs in the White House, was one of President George Bush’s favorites.
Collection of the white House
General Ulysses S. Grant
Chicago Historical Society
Taken by Alexander Gardner in Washington on November 8, 1863, this profile view shows how Lincoln had matured as President into a benign, self-assured leader who (despite the admonitions of the photographer to make absolutely no movement) dared venture a small smile.
Collection of The New-York Historical Society
LINCOLN ENTERS THE CITY OF RICHMOND, APRIL 4, 1865
This engraving, published in 1866, shows Lincoln, accompanied by Tad, as he ventured into the capital of the Confederacy escorted by only a handful of Marines. He received a boisterous welcome from the former slaves, but most white Virginians remained behind closed windows.
Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865. The weariness in this portrait by Alexander Gardner reveals how much the overwork and anxiety of four years of war had cost Lincoln.
Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
John Wilkes Booth
Chicago Historical Society