by H. W. Brands
“It is a pity Mr. Lincoln”: Meade to Mrs. Meade, July 26, 1864, in The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, ed. George Gordon Meade (1913), 2:215–16.
Chapter 52
“The President appeared to be”: John T. Mills diary, Aug. 19, 1864, in Collected Works, 7:506–7.
“Let us, at the very outset”: August Belmont opening remarks, Aug. 29, 1864, in Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Held in 1864 at Chicago (1864), 3.
“justice, humanity, liberty”: Democratic party platform, Aug. 29, 1864, at American Presidency Project.
“I told Mr. Lincoln”: Weed to Seward, Aug. 22, 1864, Century Magazine, Aug. 1889, 548.
“No, sir,” Hamilton replied: Hamilton quoted in J. K. Butler to Benjamin Butler, Aug. 11, 1864, in Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler (1917), 5:35–36.
“The President’s ‘To whom it may concern’ ”: Douglass to Theodore Tilton, Oct. 15, 1864, in Descriptive Catalogue of the Gluck Collection of Manuscripts and Autographs in the Buffalo Public Library (1899), 35–36.
“This morning, as for some days past”: Lincoln memo, Aug. 23, 1864, in Collected Works, 7:514.
“I would say, ‘General’ ”: John Hay diary, Nov. 11, 1864, in Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, ed. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger (1997), 248.
Chapter 53
“devout acknowledgment to the Supreme Being”: Lincoln proclamation, Sept. 3, 1864, in Collected Works, 7:533–34.
“It does look”: From entry for Oct. 15, 1864, in The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (1988 ed.), 251.
“It has long been”: Lincoln response to serenade, Nov. 10, 1864, in Collected Works, 8:100–101.
“Most heartily do I congratulate”: Lincoln response to serenade, Oct. 19, 1864, in Collected Works, 8:52.
emancipation was permanent: Lincoln reply to Maryland Union Committee, Nov. 17, 1864, in Collected Works, 8:113–14.
“Hence there is only a question”: Lincoln annual message, Dec. 6, 1864, in Papers of the Presidents.
“Your brother died”: Isaac N. Arnold, The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (1866), 469.
“There is a task”: Lincoln response to serenade, Feb. 1, 1865, in Collected Works, 8:254–55.
Chapter 54
“Should the war continue”: Lee to Hunter, Jan. 11, 1865, War of the Rebellion, ser. 4, 3:1012–13.
“I think that the proposition”: Cobb to James Seddon, Jan. 8, 1865, War of the Rebellion, ser. 4, 3:1009.
“whatever capacity”: In General Orders No. 14, March 23, 1865, in War of the Rebellion, ser. 4, 3:1161.
“At this second appearing”: Second inaugural address, March 4, 1865, in Papers of the Presidents.
Chapter 55
“There was murder in the air”: Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 440–45.
“I will fight with all my heart”: Booth, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me,” 55–60.
“He is Bonaparte”: Ibid., 65n.
“When I aided in the capture”: Ibid., 125.
“If the South is to be aided”: Ibid., 149. This is the reconstruction of a letter written by Booth, handed to an associate for delivery and then destroyed by that associate before delivery. The associate later reproduced the letter from memory. Its wording might not be precisely accurate, but its gist seems to capture Booth’s thinking.
Chapter 56
“I certainly have no”: Life and Reminiscences of Jefferson Davis by Distinguished Men of His Times (1890), 50.
“I walked up to a plantation house”: Memoirs of Sherman, 2:180–81.
“The colored people express”: Carolyn L. Harrell, When the Bells Tolled for Lincoln: Southern Reactions to the Assassination (1997), 57–58.
“Slavery was not abolished”: W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1963 ed.), 188.
“It certainly is not a story”: Douglass speech, May 30, 1881, West Virginia Archives.
“He was preeminently”: Douglass address, April 14, 1876, in Oration by Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. W. BRANDS holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. For three decades he has been writing works of history and biography, two of which, The First American and Traitor to His Class, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
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