as they did very quickly. From the Sabbath stillness
of a bright spring forenoon, the streets became noisy with
crowds, and the scene quickly shifted. The Confederate
Cabinet was convened, public papers and stores were hur
riedly packed for shipment towards Danville. Such ord
nance supplies as could not be transported were rolled into
the canal; commissary stores were thrown open and their
hoarded contents of pork, flour, and sugar distributed to
ravenous crowds of men, women, and children, poor and
half-famished, who grasped hungrily at all they could con
vey to their several homes. Citizens who had the means
made preparations for flight ; but the far greater population
of Richmond, compelled to stay behind, devised methods
of cover and concealment. Banks opened their portals and
depositors flocked thither for their money and valuables.
The streets soon filled up with hurrying pedestrians, loaded
wagons, ,,and mounted officers, who galloped hither and
thither with orders to execute. Towards nightfall, as the
confusion and excitement increased, fierce vagabond crowds
of half -drunken men and women gathered, starving and
distracted, before the public commissary stores, swearing
and fighting with one another over the spoils they were late
in securing; barrels of whiskey, not seasonably destroyed
as they should have been, were stoven in madly, and while
the pale liquor ran in the gutters it was dipped up in mugs,
tin pans, buckets, and whatever other available vessel came
to band, or lapped witli the tongue, by miserable beings
who became more and more maddened by the stimulant.
Meanwhile the turbulence on the streets culminated, by
dusk of this Sunday, at the railroad depots, where trains,
overcrowded and overloaded, moved out into the murky
darkness amid the flitting and waving of lanterns. Confed
erate officials had secured the chief accommodations, while
a clamoring multitude of common people, with baggage,
606 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
had to scramble for places, or be left behind. Under
Ewell, who took the final orders of his War Department,
and left at seven the next morning, the details of evacua
tion were completed. Troops in gray were withdrawn, leav
ing the defensive works on the north side of the James
unoccupied. But long before daylight of the 3d, sleepers
and watchers at Richmond were startled by a series of
explosions which shook the whole city. Unfinished gun
boats at the river, nine in number, were blown up; the
arsenal was fired, and heaven s vault resounded with the
bursting of its loaded shells. Already had the torch been
applied to every Confederate armory, machine shop, and
storehouse, whose contents since midnight had been burn
ing briskly ; and, most deplorably, under the mandates of
the flying administration, whole warehouses of tobacco and
cotton were set on fire, and a vast waste of valuable mer
chandise fed a general conflagration of no military gain
whatever. The rear guard of Early s retreating troops
burnt three great bridges as they fled; and a vast civic
fire was under fierce headway towards morning, exciting
the rapacity of rioters, while the helpless and peaceably
disposed inhabitants stood among their scanty effects on
Capitol Square, keeping anxious vigil. 1
Hither came, early on the 3d, the first Union brigade
from Devens s division, sent by Weitzel as a provost guard,
just after Richmond s mayor and committee had come forth
to surrender the city. A grandson of John Quincy Adams,
and a namesake of the Minister at St. James, was among
these rescuing officers. The stars and stripes were
promptly hoisted over the Capitol, and deliverance came
to a stricken and unnerved people through their so-called
foes. For the first care of the Union soldiery, in this atmos
phere of paralyzed dismay, was to subdue the consuming
flames and get them under control, to reestablish civic order
1 De Leon, c. 37 ; 10 N. & II. c. 10 ; 4 B. & L. 726. Ewell seems
to have earnestly endeavored to prevent such fires from being started,
realizing the private waste and misery that would ensue ; but against
his remonstrance the War Department pursued its inexorable purpose.
10 N. & H. 206.
1865. LINCOLN VISITS THE CITY. 607
and security. Confederate writers confess that from these
"Yankee invaders," whose brutal rapacity with their negro
allies had been pictured and vaguely awaited as hell s own
torment, Richmond actually received, on this day of humili
ation, generous aid and protection against the needless
funeral pyre to which Southern military friends had de
voted her. And, more than this, now and for many days
did Weitzel feed the Richmond poor upon Union rations,
saving them from starvation, as did Grant Lee s famishing
army upon the surrender at Appomattox, soon after. 1
Abraham Lincoln, who had lingered at City Point after
his return from Petersburg, 2 made a visit to Richmond, on
the 4th of April, in company with Admiral Porter. The
Union flotilla steamed cautiously up the tortuous James
River above Drewry s Bluff, and, finding obstructions to
the progress of the vessels, transferred the Presidential
party of five to a twelve-oared barge, rowed by sailors of
the navy. Their landing was made at a pier near the late
Libby prison, where neither wagon nor escort was at hand
to receive them. Never, perhaps, in the world s history,
did a conqueror enter the capital city of his stubborn foe
with so little pomp and ostentation. Guided by one of the
negroes who had quickly swarmed about, and with a guard
improvised from ten sailors armed with their carbines, the
distinguished guests walked the tiresome distance of more
than a mile to Weitzel s headquarters, occupying the late
Executive mansion of the Confederacy, from which Davis
had fled two days before. Richmond s fire was not yet
wholly quenched, and blackened ruins showed visible signs
of public disorder. After resting here and partaking of re
freshments, the real President held an informal reception,
which was attended chiefly by Union officers, and in the
afternoon rode in a carriage, with Weitzel and Porter,
attended by a cavalry escort, to visit various points of
interest. At Weitzel s headquarters, this day, and, on the
next, aboard Porter s flagship in the stream, Lincoln ac
corded interviews to John A. Campbell and other prominent
1 10 N. & II. c. 10 ; siiprv, p. 000. 2 Supra, p. 595.
G08 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
citizens, on the subject of political reconstruction; 1 and by
the 6th he was back again at City Point. 2
There was submission, at this time, but little sign of a
reconciled mood in the late rebellious capital. Richmond s
proud daughters remained at first in their homes, dreading
both victors and deserters from the vanquished; their houses
were tightly closed, the shutters fastened, and curtains
drawn down. In the streets it was little different, for few
but negroes mingled at large with the blue-coated soldiers,
whose considerate courtesy was shown in many unobtrusive
acts. Clad usually in deep mourning, and with heavy black
veils over their faces, they stole out at last, broken-hearted,
moving about like shadows of the past, compelled, many of
them, in their utter destitution, through want of food or
money, to accept the charity of Union rations, after each
slender stock had been consumed at home. There was no
such display of disdain or loathing as the fair rebels of
New Orleans had once shown ; but deep dejection and sor
row, rather, and a cold though courteous dignity, which
proclaimed impassable barriers. Lee s surrender brought
back Southern paroled soldiers by scores and hundreds, and
these were welcomed with suppressed demonstrations of
delight and sympathy; Lee himself, among the number,
passing with silent salute to his own door, never again to
be seen abroad in uniform. Prayers for the President of
the United States were not offered up in churches, as they
had lately been for the Confederate President; and Weitzel
started out so lenient in his military rule, so tolerant of
stubborn sentiment for the lost cause, that Stan ton had
begun to make reprimand, when calamity fell upon the
whole land like a thunderbolt, and Northern policy changed
towards the South under a change of administration. 3
1 Campbell, lately assistant Secretary of War to the Confederacy,
had remained behind to tender his submission. He figured at the end
of this conflict as in the beginning (supra, p. 14), an amateur negoti
ator, whose efforts bore no other fruit than a misunderstanding. See
10 N. & H. c. 11 ; Am. Cycl. 1865, 798.
2 10 N. & H. c. 11 ; 4 B. & L. 728.
8 De Leon, 367 ; 10 N. & H. 226.
1865. FLAG RAISED AT SUMTER. 609
The 14th of April was a day not to be forgotten in
American annals. It opened at Charleston harbor in a
public thanksgiving; it ended at Washington in
the saddest tragedy this modern age ever witnessed.
The day was Good Friday, observed by a large part of the
Christian world in solemn religious commemoration; and
yet in these United States, even upon the most devout of
churchmen had the grand tidings of the previous week
exerted a joyous influence, as upon loyal people generally.
To the mass of the South there was relief felt, at least, to
think there would be war no longer. A national thanks
giving was celebrated at Charleston harbor, where, just
four years earlier, Civil War began with the humiliation
of Fort Sumter. Following Charleston s capture, in Feb
ruary, the government at Washington resolved that on this
coming anniversary the flag of the Union should receive a
conspicuous salute on the spot where it had first been con
spicuously outraged. Sherman being absent, the ceremonies
were placed in charge of General Gillmore. Garrison, the
late agitator of abolition, figured among the guests of honor;
Henry Ward Beecher, famous as preacher and philanthro
pist, was the orator of the day; and precisely as the bells
of a Union flotilla struck the hour of noon, Robert Ander
son, with his own hands, hoisted to its place above Sumter s
battered ruins the identical flag he had lowered in grief
four years before. They that sowed in tears now reaped
in joy ; and that joy was swollen to abundant gratitude by
the news of Lee s surrender, which had reached Charleston
the night before. 1
At Washington, too, this was a day of deep peace and
thankfulness. Lee s surrender and the fall of Richmond
were universally considered the end of organized insurrec
tion, and the President, relieved of the long strain which
had furrowed his face and deepened in his eyes their look
of tender and inexpressible sadness, now turned from pre
server to pacificator of the people. The sense of popular
responsibility Aveighed upon him still, and "with malice
* 10 N. & H. 277-280 ; 4 Garrison, 138.
610 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
toward none, with charity for all," as he had so admirably
expressed it, 1 he strove on to finish his stupendous work.
Grant, arriving that very morning in Washington, had
gone to the White House, where he met the President and
Cabinet, Friday being the regular day of the meeting. It
was here that, in that vein of prophetic mysticism which,
though checked by common sense, made a striking element
of his character, Lincoln related a dream he had the previ
ous night, where a strange and indescribable vessel moved
rapidly on towards a dark and unbounded shore. On this,
the last day he was destined to meet his official counsellors,
the vast topic of reestablishing normal relations with the
insurrectionary States was taken up; and the President
sketched out the policy he purposed pursuing, so far as his
own authority and influence might extend. He meant that
these States should be reanimated and their local govern
ments set into orderly and successful relation with the
Union before the new Congress met next December. He
deeply desired to close this prolonged era of sectional strife
without overmuch discussion; and, most of all, he wished
to avoid the shedding of blood, or any vindictive punish
ment. No one need expect that he himself would take any
part in hanging or killing these fellow-citizens, even the
worst of them. " Frighten them out of the country, open
the gates, let down the bars, scare them off, " he continued,
lifting up his hands with an appropriate gesture; "but
enough lives have been sacrificed ; we must extinguish our
resentments if we expect harmony and union. " : Seward
was absent from this Cabinet meeting, being confined to
the sick room by injuries he had received when thrown
from his carriage a few days before. Stanton offered a
plan of temporary military government, to which Welles
and Dennison objected, so far as it proposed uniting two
States under one government; and that objection the Presi-
1 Supra, p. 565.
2 Welles, in Galaxy, April, 1872 ; 10 N. & H. 283. Conversations
are related by Sherman and others, held during these past six weeks,
where the President, by parable or precept, had indicated the same
clement disposition towards the leaders of the late Confederacy.
1865. THE LAST CABINET MEETING. Gil
dent sustained. With the autonomy of each Southern State
strictly preserved, it was agreed that Stanton s scheme
should be reported anew, at a meeting set for the following
Tuesday. "This," said Lincoln impressively, as he dis
missed his Cabinet, " is the great question pending we
must now begin to act in the interest of peace." 1
The rest of this tranquil day was one of unusual enjoy
ment to Lincoln, passed in the companionship of his family
and personal friends; and in the evening he went, by ap
pointment, to Ford s Theatre, accompanied by his wife and
two younger intimates. Grant and his wife were to have
shared the box engaged by him, but they changed their
minds, and, cancelling their acceptance, left the city by an
afternoon train. Forever mournful was the tragedy per
formed at this theatre, which interrupted the progress of
that pleasing play, "Our American Cousin," before a large
audience whose eyes were fixed upon the stage. John
Wilkes Booth, a young actor of histrionic parentage, fool
ishly fanatical for secession, and the self-appointed avenger
of a South whose Brutus he theatrically thought himself,
used the present opportunity for fulfilling a plot against
the President s life that hitherto had miscarried. Familiar
with this building behind the scenes, and with those em
ployed there, he arranged an evening exhibition of his own
as daring and sensational as it was horrible, and before
spectators whose political sympathies he seemingly meant
to brave. Yet the boldest of risks may sometimes be taken
more securely than the lightest, and Booth, in his morbid
mood, invited the whole country for witnesses. Holding a
pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, while all were
intent upon the comedy, he opened noiselessly the door of
the .P^jesident s box, for which he had already arranged a
special fastening, put his pistol to Lincoln s head and fired
then dropping that weapon, he brandished the knife wildly
as he rushed forward through the box, placed his left hand
i Welles, iu Galaxy, April. 1872 ; 10 N. & H. 285.
612 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
on its front railing, and vaulted lightly over to the stage
below. It was not a great leap for one accustomed to such
feats as a player. Turning to the audience, with uplifted
knife, he shouted out Virginia s State motto, " Sic semper
tyrannis," fled to the rear of the theatre through passages
well known to him, mounted a horse which waited in the
alley-way, and was galloping eastward along the avenue
towards the navy -yard bridge before any in that great multi
tude of spectators and performers, dazed and horror-stricken
for a moment, could follow and seize upon him. " He has
shot the President!" was the cry, as the assassin dropped
and disappeared behind the footlights, as though taking
some strange cue of his own in the interrupted play. He had
fallen upon the stage in his hasty leap, his spur catching
in the folds of a flag with which the President s box was
draped; but he instantly rose as though unhurt, when, in
fact, his leg was broken. President Lincoln scarcely moved
after the pistol shot, his head drooped forward slightly, his
eyelids closed. Amid the intensest excitement the stage
performance broke up ; army surgeons entered the box, and,
perceiving that the wound was mortal, with a large bullet
buried in his brain, directed the removal of the unconscious
victim to a small brick house across the street. There
Abraham Lincoln breathed his last, shortly after seven
o clock the next morning, April 15th, with a distinguished
group surrounding his bed in the strange little chamber,
while his wife and eldest son, Robert, were near by. For
nine long hours, recognizing no one, and silent, too, except
for an automatic moaning as he breathed, the President
lingered in unconscious existence ; then a look of unspeak
able peace stole over his worn features, and the great heart
stopped beating. 1
Booth, it seems, had created a little coterie of conspira
tors, fascinated by his engaging person and the classic
coloring he had imparted to a project, such as, long ago,
made Harmodius famous. Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a
i 10 N. & II. c. 14 ; Am. Cycl. 1865, 476. See also 4 Pierce s Sum-
ner, 236 ; Century, February, 1893.
1865. LINCOLN ASSASSINATED. 613
discharged soldier from Florida, George Atzerodt, a spy
and blockade-runner of the Potomac, David E. Herold, a
druggist s clerk, and John H. Surratt, were of the mystic
number; and at a small boarding-house in Washington,
kept by Mary E. Surratt, the widowed mother of the last
named, this little band had concocted various schemes for
Lincoln s abduction, which failed of opportunity. The
present plot was hatched with great haste, for only about
noon did their leader learn from the press that the Presi
dent meant to attend this theatre in the evening. Booth
hurriedly assigned the parts for a more complete tragedy
than had been planned before, counting upon his own address
and audacity for gaining the requisite facilities at Ford s
Theatre, where he was well known and liked. 1 The Flo-
ridian, called Payne, went that same night, in pursuance
of Booth s orders, to Seward s mansion to commit another
murder; and boldly forcing himself into the sick chamber
upstairs against the resisting members of the Secretary s
household, he stabbed the injured statesman as he lay there,
inflicting three terrible wounds in his cheek and neck; but
Seward saved his life by rolling off between the bed and
the wall, whereupon Payne, breaking loose from attendants
about the house who seized him, bounded down the stair
case and reached the front door unhurt; then, leaping his
horse, he rode freely off, like Booth from the more terrible
encounter a few squares away. Atzerodt s part, which was
to dispose of Vice-President Johnson, failed utterly of exe
cution. Payne was arrested in Mrs. Surratt s house a few
days after. Booth, identified on all sides as he stood
brandishing his dagger at the footlights after leaping from
the box where he had fired the fatal shot, rode on witli
Herold, who joined him down the river bank of the Potomac,,
and for ten days the two eluded pursuers, having gained the
Virginia side. There, finding food and shelter hard to pro-
1 Booth went so far as to prepare a careful statement of his reasons
for assassination, which he intrusted to a fellow-actor to appear in the
next day s newspapers ; but the latter burned it secretly in the terror
of the night. 10 N. & H. 293.
\
614 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
cure, even from among those of pronounced secession sym
pathies, suffering from his broken leg, and scarcely less
from the wound given his vanity by the abhorrent comments
of the press, which he read upon the flight, Booth was at
last traced, with his accomplice, to the barn of a lonely
farmhouse. There a sergeant of the capturing squad of
Union soldiers shot him down for refusing to come forth
and surrender. Herold, however, gave himself up, and all
but one of Booth s fellow-conspirators were speedily arrested
and tried by a military commission, which met at Washing
ton, in the arsenal building, during the months of May and
June. Payne, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mrs. Surratt were
hanged, while others, more remotely connected with the
plot, were sentenced to imprisonment for life. 1
The assassination of public rulers was so strange, in that
day, so abhorrent to public sentiment, that the whole world
stood aghast at the new recurrence of an ancient and
mediaeval practice; but since then this same enlightened
century has witnessed, painfully enough, other instances of
that brutal resort by irresponsible zealots, even as against
the chief magistrate of a Republic, chosen by the people.
Such methods do not win that public support needful nowa
days to effect great public changes, nor accomplish more
than substitute in a well-ordered nation one constitutional
magistrate for another, like any casualty of death. Lin
coln, from the very outset of his Presidency, had been
threatened through the mails with brutal and vulgar menace,
mostly anonymous, the expression of vile and cowardly
minds. Friends had warned him against such threats; and
Lamon, while marshal of the District of Columbia, made
himself a sort of body guard, solicitous that the man he
loved should not expose himself to danger. Lincoln was
too intelligent not to know that attempts on his life were
i 10 N. & H. c. 15 ; Am. Cycl. 1865, 476. John H. Surratt, who
escaped at this time, was brought back from Egypt in 1867, and put
upon civil trial, but the jury disagreed in its verdict.
1865. A NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT. 615
intended by individuals, but he had the full courage of high
station, and wore the strong breastplate of a heart untainted.
We have seen him walking the streets of captured Rich
mond, not ^strongly guarded, a few days earlier. Often at
the nation s capital had the President sallied forth in the
darkness, on foot and with only a single friend; unadver-
tised, he had often taken his recreation at the theatre ; but
the wide publicity of his intention cost him, on this latest
occasion, his priceless life. 1
How terrible the corresponding cost to the South, that
vanquished section could but slowly realize. So far from
tyrant, it lost in Lincoln the best and the most capable
benefactor among its Northern conquerors. That spirit of
clemency and moderation, with which he was already open
ing the work of reuniting the country, strongly supported
by loyal opinion, took flight with his noble soul, and em
bittered hostility, vindictiveness and suspicion, hindered
long the reconciliation of a national household. 2 The uni
versal sorrow and indignation felt by the bereaved multitude
of the American people at the tragic death of their Presi
dent, was shared by the chief powers of Europe. France
and England hastened to accord their sympathy, and Queen
Victoria wrote a letter of condolence, with her own hand,
to Mrs. Lincoln, from "a widow to a widow." 8 British
feeling was profoundly moved; as John Bright wrote to an
American senator, "The whole people positively mourn,
and it would seem as if again we were one nation with
you." 4
Warned not to go out of doors without a guard, when
waited upon in the gray of that drizzling morning of
1 Century, January, 1865 (Brooks).
2 For months it was widely believed at the North that Booth s con
spiracy was instigated by the Davis government. See 10 N. & II. 312.
Davis admits that he and his fellow-fugitives of the Confederate ad
ministration exulted rather than mourned when the news of Lincoln s
assassination reached them ; but no complicity whatever was at all
likely. Ib. 313.
8 Am. Cycl. 1865, 367, 407. 4 4 Pierce s Sunnier, 240.
616 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.
April 15th by those who brought the first tidings that death
had just devolved upon him the Presidency, Andrew John
son perceived at once that a new departure in the policy of
reconstruction was looked for by the able administration
senators, led by Sumner, whom Lincoln s generous pre
possessions had displeased; and Stanton s draft of military
government was now laid aside, upon their foreboding
criticism. A strong and determined pressure was brought
at once upon the new Executive to induce greater severity
towards the South, and more guarantees for the colored race. 1
But rebellion had collapsed, and all fears that armed con