Lincoln's Last Days

by Bill O'Reilly

  Lee’s father, General Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, was a hero of the American Revolution. His wife, Mary Custis Lee, was the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, who was the wife of George Washington, America’s top general in the American Revolution and our nation’s first president.

  When Ulysses Grant was promoted to the rank of brigadier general, his father, Jesse Grant, thinking of all the many business failures his son had experienced over the years, told him, “Be careful. You’re a general now; it’s a good job, don’t lose it.”

  During the Civil War, the word elephant was one slang word meaning “combat.” The phrase “seeing the elephant” meant going into battle.

  The Battle of Gettysburg. This image is a stereoptic picture. When the card was slipped into a stereoscope the viewer had the illusion of seeing the image in 3-D.

  In 1862, Union troops were given small single-man tents to replace the large, heavy tents they had been using. Because they had to crawl into the tents like dogs, the troops called them “dog tents.” That term later evolved into “pup tents.”

  The Battle of Gettysburg had the largest concentration of Confederate artillery, 150 guns. The earsplitting roar of their cannon fire was heard as far away as Pittsburgh, 160 miles northwest.

  Many times during the Civil War, both sides would call a truce either at the end of the day or at the end of the battle so that the soldiers could gather their dead and wounded.

  A Union drummer boy.

  Volunteers had to be at least eighteen years old to enlist. Some boys under the minimum age would write the number 18 on a piece of paper and insert it in their shoe. When a recruiter asked their age, the boys would say they were “over eighteen.”

  Though boys under the age of eighteen were not allowed to fight, boys as young as twelve were allowed to enlist and serve in the noncombat position of drummer boy. Troop movement commands at the time were communicated by different drumbeats and bugle calls. Even though drummer boys couldn’t fight, they had to be close enough to the battlefield that the men in their unit could hear their drumbeat orders. As a result, drummer boys saw as much combat as older soldiers, and a number of them wound up getting wounded or killed by enemy gunfire.

  The youngest soldier believed to have been wounded in the Civil War was drummer boy William Black. He was twelve years old when an exploding shell shattered his left arm and shoulder.

  Women were not allowed to enlist in the military during the Civil War. It has been estimated that as many as 400 women cut their hair short, disguised themselves as men, and fought as soldiers on both sides. Women were able to get away with this because recruiting inspections did not include a physical examination, and quite a few soldiers were too young to shave.

  Frances Clayton, a female who as Jack Williams fought as a Union soldier in the war.

  Dr. Mary Walker, who was the only woman authorized by the Union army to serve on the front lines with Union troops, became the first woman to receive the Medal of Honor in November 1865. So far she is the only woman to have received the nation’s highest decoration for valor.

  The Civil War caused three amendments to be added to the Constitution, the second largest group after the ten amendments that form the Bill of Rights. Known as the Civil War or Reconstruction Amendments, they are the Thirteenth Amendment, passed in 1865, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, which recognized racial equality; and the Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, which gave African-American men the right to vote. Women would not get the right to vote until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed.

  This unit of soldiers was charged with defending Washington, D.C.

  Transportation During the Civil War

  DURING THE 1800s, a person got from one place to another one of four ways: by foot, animal (usually a horse), ship, or boat. By the second half of the century there was a fifth option—train. Obviously, travel by foot was the slowest, an average of two or three miles an hour. Trains were fastest, but not by today’s standards. Though some trains were able to go sixty miles per hour, they were exceptions, and such a speed was achieved only over a short distance. The average speed of trains was fifteen to twenty miles per hour. By far the most common means of transportation during the Civil War was the horse.

  In 1860, the North had approximately 4.4 million horses, and the South had about 1.7 million. The average cost of these horses was about $150 each, almost a year’s pay for most people. When the cost of caring for, feeding, and equipping the animals was added, it became more economical for people living in cities to rent horses from livery stables, much as people rent cars today. Daily rental prices varied, depending on the horse and planned use, but the cost was usually under a dollar a day. You could also rent vehicles to attach to your horse. Carriages came in a wide variety of models, styles, and price ranges for commercial and private use. They included stagecoaches, wagons, private coaches, broughams, cabriolets, phaetons, buggies, and surreys.

  An inexpensive two-passenger buggy.

  While the exact number of horses in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War is unknown, it’s safe to say that the total reached the upper tens of thousands. An idea of what the city must have smelled like during its hot and humid summers is suggested by the goings-on at Giesboro Point Cavalry Depot, just south of Washington. From January 1864 to the end of the war, Giesboro managed a total of 170,622 cavalry horses and was estimated to have handled 700 tons of horse manure a day.

  A cavalry depot. The long white buildings in the back are stables for thousands of horses.

  Flags of the Civil War

  THE UNITED STATES AND THE Confederate States of America had their own national flags during the Civil War. These banners were powerful symbols for each side, so much so that during the war soldiers willingly risked their lives to capture an enemy’s flag or prevent their own flag from being taken. The United States had one flag design, the familiar Stars and Stripes, which changed only when additional stars were added to indicate that a new state had been accepted into the Union. The Confederacy had three official flags.

  It’s worth noting that even after the Southern states left to form the Confederacy, stars indicating their states were not removed from the Union flag. Since President Lincoln refused to officially recognize the Confederacy, the stars remained.

  The United States flag got a second nickname during the Civil War, Old Glory. The phrase originated with William Driver, a retired shipmaster who lived in Nashville, Tennessee. He had named the flag as a young man, when he received it as a gift, and flew it on his ship during the 1820s and 1830s. When Tennessee seceded, Driver, a Union sympathizer, carefully stowed away the flag and waited. Union forces took control of the city on February 25, 1862, so he proudly pulled out his flag and, with an escort of soldiers, went to the tower of the state capitol and hoisted Old Glory. The nickname stuck.

  Old Glory showing thirty-four stars in its field.

  The first Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars, was adopted on March 4, 1861. It had three horizontal bars of equal width (two red bars, and one white bar in the middle) and a blue field in the upper left corner containing a circle of seven stars to represent the seven original Confederate states. As other states seceded, the number of stars was increased to thirteen.

  This design was thought too similar to the United States flag and on May 1, 1863, a second design, nicknamed the Stainless Banner, was authorized. This flag was white, with a red field in the upper left-hand corner containing a blue cross bordered in white and thirteen stars.

  But this second design, with its large white section, was thought too similar to the traditional all-white flag of truce. A third national flag, nicknamed the Blood-Stained Banner, was authorized on March 4, 1865. It had a large vertical red stripe on its outer edge.

  The Stars and Bars, the Confederate battle flag.

  The Stars and Bars that people regard today as the national symbol of the Confederacy is actually a battle flag that
was used by Confederate armies, not an official Confederate state flag.

  Weapons of the Civil War

  THE NEED FOR MODERN WEAPONS in large quantities inspired an industrial and invention revolution in both the North and South. Advances in mass production assembly enabled both sides to quickly arm their troops. But because most manufacturing plants were in the North, it was better able to supply its army throughout the war. The South suffered many shortages, and often its soldiers fought with weapons that had been taken from the bodies of Union soldiers.

  Three of the many kinds of weapons used in the war are particularly important: the minié ball, the breech-loading repeating rifle, and the ironclad ship.

  The minié ball, named after its inventor, Claude Minié, was a widely used lead bullet that had a tendency to shatter bones. At a time when medical knowledge and practice had changed little since medieval times, minié ball wounds were particularly life-threatening.

  Most rifles and muskets at the start of the war were single-shot muzzle-loaders, that is, a bullet was inserted through the front, or muzzle, of the weapon. After shooting, the process was repeated. A good muzzle-loader could on average fire about three to four shots a minute. Breech-loading repeating rifles, which became available in the North in the winter of 1862, greatly increased a shooter’s firepower. Instead of being inserted into the barrel from the front, bullets were loaded from its rear, called the breech, with the help of a spring-loaded hollow tube that held either seven (Spencer carbine) or fifteen (Henry rifle) bullets. As angry Confederates said, with some exaggeration, repeating rifles were “rifles you load on Sunday and fire all week.”

  A fifteen-inch gun near Washington, D.C., August 1865.

  A photograph of Union private Walter Jones (left) and his New Testament Bible that stopped the minié ball bullets that would have killed him.

  The most revolutionary weapon used in the Civil War was the ironclad warship, a ship covered entirely in iron. At the start of the war, all navies had ships with wooden hulls. The USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, two ironclad ships, fought each other for two days in the Battle of Hampton Roads. The battle ended in a draw on March 9, 1862. From that point on, wooden-hulled naval ships were obsolete.

  The ironclads Monitor and Virginia fighting in the Battle of Hampton Roads.

  Medicine During the Civil War

  MANY YEARS AFTER THE WAR, Dr. William A. Hammond, who from 1862 to 1864 served as the eleventh surgeon general of the U.S. army, said that “the Civil War was fought at the end of the medical Middle Ages.” By that, he meant even the most knowledgeable doctors in the country were ignorant of the existence of germs and bacteria, the source of infections and diseases.

  A Union army ambulance team practicing the gathering of wounded from a battlefield.

  Of the hundreds of thousands of troops who died in the war, disease killed more than twice as many men as battlefield wounds. Before the war, hospitals didn’t exist. Patients were treated at home. Even surgeries were performed at the patient’s home. Such a system was impractical once the war began, and hospitals were quickly created. Most of the military hospitals were managed by a civilian organization called the Sanitary Commission.

  For a soldier who was severely wounded in the hand, arm, foot, or leg, the most common medical treatment at the time was to cut the wounded flesh, or even the entire limb, from the rest of the body, a process called amputation. A typical surgeon’s kit from the period contained a variety of knives and bone saws, thus inspiring the slang term for doctors “sawbones.”

  An illustration of some farm buildings used as a Union field hospital. Note that on the left of the illustration, surgery is being performed out in the open under a cloth awning.

  Amputation surgery was a brutal process conducted in assembly-line fashion. If anesthetic to render the patient unconscious, like chloroform or ether, was available, the patient was given that. Often, though, there were no painkilling drugs on hand. Instead, a bullet was placed in the soldier’s mouth, and he bit on that when the pain became hard to bear. Union general Carl Schurz witnessed amputations being performed at a field hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. He later wrote that after the doctor had done his examination, “the surgeon snatched his knife from between his teeth … wiped it rapidly once or twice across his bloodstained apron, and the cutting began.” Good surgeons were ones who could work quickly, removing the limbs in a minute or less.

  The survival rates depended on what was amputated. Patients who had a hand or fingers, or a foot or toes, cut off had the best chance of survival—the percentage of deaths being 2.9 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. The dead-liest amputation was at the hip. Sixty-six such amputations were done during the war. Fifty-five patients—83.3 percent—died.

  Four Union soldiers who survived the war. The soldier in the lower right was a prisoner of war who almost starved to death.

  As for President Lincoln, even today’s medicine could not have saved him. His truly was a fatal wound.

  Abraham Lincoln Time Line

  June 12, 1806

  Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks marry in Kentucky.

  February 12, 1809

  Abraham Lincoln is born in a log cabin on Nolin Creek in what is now LaRue County, Kentucky.

  1817

  Lincoln family moves to Perry County, Indiana.

  October 5, 1818

  Nancy Lincoln dies.

  December 2, 1819

  Thomas Lincoln marries the widow Sarah Bush Johnston.

  March 1830

  The Lincoln family resettles near Decatur, Illinois.

  1831

  Abraham Lincoln moves to New Salem, Illinois, where he works as a store clerk.

  March 1832

  Lincoln becomes a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly but will lose the election in August.

  April 1832

  Lincoln enlists in the Illinois militia for the Black Hawk War but does not see any combat.

  August 4, 1834

  Lincoln is elected to the Illinois General Assembly. He will serve four terms and begin to study law during this time.

  1835

  Lincoln becomes the local head of the Whig Party.

  September 9, 1836

  Lincoln receives his law license.

  April 1837

  Lincoln moves to the new state capital of Springfield, Illinois, and opens a legal practice to support himself when the legislature is not in session.

  December 1839

  Meets Mary Todd at a Christmas dance.

  November 4, 1842

  Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd are married.

  August 1, 1843

  Robert Todd Lincoln is born.

  March 10, 1846

  Edward Baker Lincoln is born.

  May 1, 1846

  Lincoln is nominated as the Whig candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.

  August 3, 1846

  Lincoln is elected to the House of Representatives, although the post doesn’t begin until December 1847. He will serve one term.

  1849

  Lincoln leaves politics to become a full-time lawyer.

  February 1, 1850

  Edward Baker Lincoln dies of tuberculosis.

  December 21, 1850

  William Wallace “Willie” Lincoln is born.

  January 17, 1851

  Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas, dies.

  April 4, 1853

  Thomas “Tad” Lincoln is born.

  May 29, 1856

  At the first Republican State Convention in Illinois, Lincoln gives a speech. He has helped to organize the new political party and will go on to campaign for the Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont.

  June 16, 1858

  Lincoln becomes the Republican candidate for the Senate, opposing Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. He delivers his “House Divided” speech on this day.

  August 21 to October 15, 1858

  Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas partici
pate in a series of seven debates throughout Illinois. The Lincoln–Douglas Debates, as they are known, focus on the divisive issue of slavery and establish Lincoln’s national reputation.

  1859

  Stephen Douglas is reelected to the U.S. Senate.

  May 18, 1860

  Lincoln is nominated as the Republican candidate for president of the United States.

  November 6, 1860

  Lincoln is elected president.

  December 20, 1860

  South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union. It is soon followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, and they form the Confederate States of America. Eventually they will be joined by Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

  February 11, 1861

  The Lincoln family leaves Springfield, Illinois, for Washington, D.C.

  February 22 to 23, 1861

  Alerted about a possible assassination attempt in Baltimore (the Baltimore Plot), Lincoln disguises himself and secretly travels by train through Baltimore to Washington, D.C.

  March 4, 1861

  Lincoln is inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the United States.

  April 12, 1861

  In South Carolina, Confederate troops attack the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, beginning the American Civil War.