Where the Buck Stops

by Harry Truman

  They didn’t win, of course, and it took the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to end slavery forever in this country. The Thirteenth Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, abolished slavery without payment to slave owners. (That was an important financial consideration, since the government, already hard hit by the costs of the war, would have had to pay plenty if they had to compensate slave owners. In the years just before the war, the average price for a field hand in places like Missouri and Louisiana ranged from $1,200 to $1,600, and in one slave auction, a horrible phrase, the average price for “a prime field hand” was $1,900, with one particularly strong man going for $2,850.) The Fourteenth Amendment, which became law on July 28, 1868, stated that no state could “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” And the Fifteenth Amendment, which became law on March 30, 1870, gave all citizens the right to vote without considerations of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

  There have been plenty of abuses of those laws, of course, and slavery continued in other parts of the world for a long time after that and is still continuing. In Brazil, for example, slavery wasn’t abolished until 1888. And as recently as 1950, I saw a survey which estimated that there were 4 million men, women, and children held and working as slaves in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and other places.

  The Civil War finally ended on April 9, 1865, with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Lee was a truly great general; the only other generals who were under consideration to head the Confederate Army when the war started, and who stayed in the war until it was over, were Pierre Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston - both graduates, like Lee, of West Point, though Lee graduated first in his class and I think the other two were a little further back in the ratings - but I don’t think either of them could have handled the Confederate Army as well as Lee did, particularly in his campaigns in Virginia.

  But when Lee moved into Pennsylvania and was driven back after those three horrible days of battles, from July 1 to July 4, 1863, at Gettysburg, and Grant took Vicksburg on that same July 4 and split the Confederacy by controlling the Mississippi River, that had more to do with ending the war than all those military maneuvers in Virginia. The bulk of the resources outside the area before that had been coming in from New Orleans, and that also cut Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana off from the Confederate government, and it was really the beginning of the end of the whole effort of the South to win the war. And when Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address on November 10 of that year, he talked as though the outcome of the war was still in doubt, but the truth was that the North had already won even though the war dragged on for another year and a half.

  The cost on both sides was horrible: 359,528 men dead on the Union side, 258,000 dead on the Confederate side, with hundreds of thousands additional wounded. The bitterness between North and South continued for many decades, and no candidate for president from the Deep South has been elected to this day.33 And five days after the end of the war, Lincoln was shot to death by John Wilkes Booth.

  I WAS ONCE asked if I’d classify Lincoln as a liberal or a conservative. I don’t like either of those terms, particularly in connection with Lincoln. I’d rather just say that he was a good president who worked for the benefit of the people and for the preservation of his country, and you can put him in any class you want - with the common people and the slaves and everybody else. He did everything he possibly could to save the Union, and he was willing to save the Union under any compromise if he possibly could, and he did save it.

  He certainly wasn’t a man of indecision, as some people said at the time. He was a man who wanted to get all the facts, and when members of his cabinet told him what he ought to do in this situation or that, he’d listen and make no statement, and that’s the way he got that reputation with some people of being unable to make a decision. But the simple fact is that he was able to make a decision, all right, but he wouldn’t make it until he had all the information he thought he ought to have. Then, when he finally got all the facts together, he made his decision. That’s the difference, and there’s a big difference between a man of indecision, and a man who assembles all necessary information before making his decision. Lincoln had to make decisions and take chances, and he studied each situation and made decisions that he felt were best for the people of the United States and for the rest of the world, and that’s the reason he turned out to be a great president.

  He was called a dictator and a tyrant, and that’s why Booth shot him, but I don’t think he ever went beyond the scope of the Constitution. He was a man who understood the Constitution, and he understood its intentions and the powers that aren’t put down in writing, aren’t in the actual language, but are there to be used by a president in emergencies. And he knew how much he could stretch it, stretching it to the point where it almost cracked, but he never actually cracked it.

  During the emergency of the Civil War, he had to sidestep the things that were hampering him in his job, but it was absolutely necessary that he do that. He suspended habeas corpus, permitting military authorities to arrest and try people suspected of interfering with Union troop movements or otherwise helping the South, and he ordered the arrest of writers, publishers, and public speakers who wrote things or said things against the government or the government’s operation of the war - actions I would never have taken, nor would any other modern president, but which Lincoln felt were unavoidable because there was so much bitterness, so much secret help to southern friends and relatives by northerners, and so much opposition to things the government was already doing, like the first military draft in our history, that he didn’t want the situation inflamed still further.

  But even with those extreme actions, I don’t think he ever went beyond the scope of the Constitution; I think he just met the existing situation with emergency measures, and the Constitution provides for that. Suppose he hadn’t? Suppose he’d just hung around, not knowing what to do and ending up doing nothing, and one of those northern generals, Grant or old Bill Sherman or someone else, was willing to say that this or that has got to be done and we’ll take over the government and do it, and marched into the White House with his people? Lincoln maintained and used his authority as commander in chief of the armed forces, and I don’t think he ever went outside his authority as commander in chief and president in doing the things that were necessary to save the Union. He worked with a Congress that was often hostile to him, and he worked with a hostile Supreme Court, and with a cabinet that was hostile most of the time, and he also had to fire four or five generals before he got one who won the war for him. But he managed to get around the obstacles and smooth things over so he could get things done that were absolutely essential.

  His cabinet was particularly bad. His secretary of war during most of the Civil War was Edwin M. Stanton, and Stanton was everything and anything, just a chameleon. He was whatever was in. If you’ll read an outline of his history, you’ll find that he was for whatever he thought would help Stanton, and he didn’t give a damn about principle at all. Seward was so-so; he was so egotistical that he once wrote, “It seems to me that if I am absent only three days, this Administration, the Congress, and the district would fall into consternation and despair,” and Lincoln had to remind him from time to time that the name of the president was Abraham Lincoln and not William Henry Seward. Salmon P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury from 1861 to 1864, disagreed with Lincoln on almost every financial matter and kept quitting until Lincoln finally accepted his resignation. About the only really good man in the whole administration was Gideon Welles, who was a funny-looking old fellow with funny whiskers, but who was totally honest and loyal and smart. Welles’ diary, incidentally, tells a lot about the character of every man in that cabinet, and it’s worth reading.

  Lincoln also had one of the balkiest Congresses that any president ever had. The Congress even set up a thing called the Committee on the Conduct of the War, also
called the Committee of Fifteen, as a watchdog organization to make sure the president didn’t do anything wrong. I’m very familiar with their activities because I was interested in the subject and read everything I could find after I organized a committee of my own during World War II; but there was a big difference because my committee consisted of people I picked myself to help me out, whereas that Committee of Fifteen was made up of the most anti-southern members of the period, and let me tell you, they were a real thorn in Lincoln’s side. In particular, there was an old fool named Benjamin F. Wade, a senator from Ohio, and a senator named Zachariah Chandler from Michigan, and a fellow from Massachusetts whose name was Kootz or something like that, and they should have been tried for treason, all three of them, though they weren’t.

  But Lincoln knew how to handle people. He was a good lawyer and he always represented his clients well because he knew how to put forth the fundamental basis of his cases in a manner so that the jury understood him, and he could win. He knew how to win an election. He knew how to win over the people after he was elected. So he was patient with people and listened to what they had to say, and although that Committee on the Conduct of the War interfered with the conduct of the war no end and was a thorn in Lincoln’s side all the time, he still managed to make the operation work in spite of them. And that’s one of the gifts that a man has to have when he’s in that sort of situation.

  There’s no doubt about the fact that Lincoln had to sidestep some things that were hampering him in the job that had to be done at the time, but Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing in World War II; he had to, when we had some of the same difficulties. He went ahead and accomplished the important purpose, to save the free world, and I had some of the same difficulties and did some sidestepping myself. I’ll say a few words about that in the final chapter of this book, but as far as Lincoln was concerned, there’s just one simple point; he saved the Union. And that’s the important thing.

  The Union forces allowed Confederate soldiers to keep their horses and their weapons when they returned home, but they weren’t quite as courteous to Jefferson Davis. It was customary in those days to keep a fellow in chains when he was put in jail for a major crime, and Davis was captured in Irwinville, Georgia, in April 1865, and kept in chains in Fortress Monroe in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, for two years. Ironically, Davis’ real popularity came after the southern surrender, after the war was over. During the war, his popularity went down all the time. He had trouble with the southern governors, he had trouble with his generals, he had trouble with his Congress, and he was not a conciliatory person. He always wanted everybody to agree with him, and if they didn’t agree with him, there was trouble. But after the surrender, after they threw Davis in prison in chains, his popularity began to rise. The Committee of Fifteen was still calling the shots, and they did every dirty thing they possibly could, and it ended up making Davis the most popular man in the South. He was finally released on bail in May 1867, but the government never proceeded further against him, and he lived quietly and peacefully until his death in 1889.

  I don’t think Lincoln would have allowed them to do what they did to Davis, if he’d been alive, but he was gone himself by that time. No American, perhaps no person of any nationality, will ever forget that tragic event, but I’ll describe it because it’s possible to forget some of the details. It happened on April 14, 1865, Good Friday, when Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater in Washington to see a comedy, Our American Cousin, starring a popular actress named Laura Keane. Two friends were already in the presidential box, Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. The Lincolns arrived late, and the performance was stopped to allow the audience to rise and cheer them. Then the play continued for ninety more minutes, reaching the second scene in the third act. At this point, Lincoln’s single bodyguard, a man named John F. Parker, walked away for a moment, and John Wilkes Booth appeared suddenly in the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a single-shot 44-caliber derringer.

  It was part of a plot to assassinate Lincoln and others in his administration, and at about the same time, two other conspirators, David E. Herold and Lewis Thornton Powell, who was also known as Lewis Payne, went to Seward’s house and stabbed him and three other people repeatedly, though all eventually recovered. Andrew Johnson, who became Lincoln’s vice president in his second term, was also on the hit list, but the man assigned to that sorry job, George A. Atzerodt, lost his nerve and never approached Johnson.

  Booth was a member of a famous acting family; his father, Junius Brutus Booth, was one of the world’s best-known actors, almost as popular as Edmund Kean, and he had two brothers who were very famous, too, Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., and Edwin Booth. John Wilkes Booth was a popular performer as well. Most members of the Booth family were Union sympathizers, but John Wilkes Booth went the other way and constantly expressed enthusiasm for the Confederate cause even though he continued to act throughout the North during the war. Shortly before the end of the war, on March 20, Booth joined in a plot to kidnap Lincoln and take him to Richmond, Virginia, but when Lincoln failed to appear where Booth and six other men hid and waited for him, the assassination plan was set up.

  After he shot Lincoln, Booth jumped down to the stage, shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” He caught his foot on the flag of the presidential box as he jumped, breaking his left leg as he hit the stage, but he managed to escape from the theater and jump onto a horse that the other conspirators left for him. Then he joined Herold at a place called Garrett’s Farm near Bowling Green, Caroline County, Virginia, but soldiers found the farm after two weeks of searching. The two men were hiding in a tobacco barn on the farm, and Herold gave up immediately, but Booth refused to surrender and the soldiers set fire to the barn and later found Booth shot to death in the rubble.

  One of the soldiers, a man named Boston Corbett, claimed to have fired the shot that killed Booth, but some historians say that Booth probably committed suicide by shooting himself. Atzerodt and Powell were also captured soon afterwards, and Herold, Atzerodt, and Powell were sentenced to death and hanged. Two other men, Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlin, both of them former Confederate soldiers from Maryland, took part in the kidnapping plan but not in the assassination and were given life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas, Florida. And Edward Spangler, a stagehand at Ford’s Theater, was convicted of helping Booth escape and given a six-year prison sentence.

  There were also two miscarriages of justice connected with Lincoln’s murder. The boarding house in which Booth lived while he and his friends were plotting was run by a widow named Mary Eugenia Surratt; her twenty-one-year-old son, John Harrison Surratt, joined the other men in the kidnapping attempt, but went into hiding when that attempt failed and didn’t take part in the assassination. Despite this, Mrs. Surratt was arrested along with the other people because “she knew about the assassination plan and didn’t tell the authorities,” and even though it’s now pretty clear that she took no part in the assassination at all, she was hanged along with Herold, Powell, and Atzerodt.

  The other unjust sentencing was that of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, who set Booth’s broken leg, for which he was tried along with the conspirators and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mudd was a Confederate sympathizer, but had nothing whatever to do with the assassination, and the sentence was unquestionably harsh, particularly in view of the fact that a more active participant, Edward Spangler, got only six years.

  John Surratt was captured and tried on June 10, 1867, for his part in the conspiracy, but probably because people now understood the injustice in the case of his mother, the jury voted eight to twelve in favor of acquittal. He continued to be held in prison, but was finally released a year after the trial and lived quietly until his death in 1916. Michael O’Laughlin died of yellow fever in prison in 1867, and President Johnson pardoned Mudd, Spangler, and Arnold in 1869.

  The bullet that entered Lincoln’s head was made o
f brittomia, an amalgam of antimony, copper, and tin, and it split in half as it entered, one part lodging in the brain and the other in the right eye socket. There was a physician in the audience that night, Dr. Charles Leale, and he was rushed to Lincoln’s side and got rid of a blood clot to relieve pressure on the brain, but he said immediately that the president would not recover. Lincoln was carried across the street to Peterson’s Boardinghouse and put down on a bed, which was so small that it wouldn’t hold his six-foot-four-inch frame and he had to be laid down diagonally, and he died the following morning. It was a sad end to a short life that might have continued for many more years, years in which I’m sure Lincoln would have done many more good things for his country.34

  Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, never really recovered from his assassination as she sat alongside him, and from the other tragedies in her life. Her little eleven-year-old son, Willie, had died in the White House just three years before, as I mentioned earlier, and now her husband was brutally murdered; and then, in 1871, her youngest son, Tad, died, aged only eighteen. She also suffered terribly during the Civil War because she was a southerner herself, born in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 13, 1818, and had a brother and three half-brothers in the Confederate Army. It’s no real wonder that, in 1875, she began to behave irrationally, saying that people were trying to kill her, and her sole surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, had to place her in an institution in Batavia, Illinois. But she was sufficiently recovered after three months to be released to the care of her sister, Mrs. Ninian Edwards, in Springfield, Illinois, and the following year she was declared entirely competent to handle her own affairs. The tragedies certainly shortened her life, however, and she died on July 16, 1882, at the age of sixty-four.