flict would be renewed or prolonged were quickly dismissed.
Lincoln s death came in the midst of his complete triumph.
Following the surrender of Lee s army, that under Johnston
was expected to capitulate when Lincoln met Grant on the
last day of his life; Sherman had already returned from
City Point to Goldsboro on the 30th of March. He reor
ganized his army and replenished its stores, so as to move
forward by the 10th of April, in concert with Grant. But
scarcely had he resumed the march with his splendid
phalanx when he received the good news of Appomattox,
and thenceforward was apprehensive only of dispersal and
a prolonged guerilla warfare. His resolute foe, who had
fought and baffled him on so many fields, was sick to
the heart of war and longed to conclude it. At Ealeigh,
whence Johnston had fled at his approach, Sher
man, on the 14th, received from that general, under
a flag of truce, a proposal, dated the day before, that hos
tilities should be suspended long enough for the civil
authorities to arrange a peace. Such an offer should have
been objected to, as asking an armistice for the two govern-

1 Congress was not to convene before December, but Sumner and a
few other Republican leaders of the radical wing still tarried at the
capital. See Julian, 255, 257; 10 N. & H. 316. "It is probable
that the policy towards leading rebels will be modified," writes Sum
ner, April 18, just before the funeral. 4 Pierce, 239. And see ib. 244,
as to his earliest interviews with the new President. The Stan ton
draft he thoroughly objected to, because it conferred no franchise
upon the negro. Ib.



1865, JOHNSTON S SURRENDER. 617

ments to negotiate on equal terms ; a thing repugnant, of
course, to the whole policy of this national administration. 1
But Sherman, eager for peace and friendly towards his able
opponent, made no adverse comment, but invited a personal
conference in terms so unreserved and cordial, that Johnston
felt encouraged to ask conditions better than Lee had gained,
and more consonant to the wishes of his Confederate Presi
dent. On the 17th Johnston and Sherman met on the road,
and terms were discussed which, on the 18th, were embodied
in an agreement signed by both and forwarded to their re
spective governments. News of the President s assassina
tion having just arrived, Johnston expressed his unfeigned
distress at the calamity; and in this sympathetic mood of
old military friends, Sherman allowed too little for the
Northern indignation which was likely to have hardened a
negotiation like the present, or even for the probable temper
of a changed administration. The President s instructions
to Grant on the 3d of March had peremptorily forbidden
his generals in the field to "decide, discuss, or confer upon
any political question." Sherman, it seems, had received
no notice of these instructions, for which there was blame
somewhere; yet such a reservation to himself had marked
Lincoln s course of dealing from the very first aspects of
the emancipation issue. Sherman, in any case, was too
contemptuous of politics and politicians to arrange judi
ciously on such points, if, indeed, to be a political negotiator
at all. Compassionate, as he acknowledges, for an army
whose commander had frankly and honestly confessed him
self unable to cope with him, and anxious to end the war
without shedding another drop of blood, flattered, too, as
his own story seems to intimate, with the idea of arranging
for a universal surrender of Southern hostilities, he ex
tended his leniency, as there was no need of his doing,
beyond Grant s terms at Appomattox, when Johnston



1 This proposal had, in fact, been dictated by Jefferson Davis, who
was then in Greensboro, on his flight southward ; Mallory of the fugi
tive Cabinet wrote it down on the spot ; and Johnston simply signed
and sent the despatch to Sherman. Davis, 488 ; Johnston, 400.



618 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.

demurred to them, and not only assured full political and
property rights to the whole Southern people, as part of
this military arrangement, but provided for at once rees
tablishing the Southern State governments and confirming
their legitimacy. 1 The capitulation thus arranged was
curtly disapproved at Washington, and the truce termi
nated; but later, on the 25th, by which time Johnston
refused to obey the futile and selfish directions sent him
by the Confederate President, whose remaining authority
was but an empty breath, the two commanders met once
more, and a written surrender was readily narrowed to
terms such as Grant had accorded to Lee s army. 2

The present surrender embraced in scope Johnston s own
army, inclusive of troops then operating in Georgia and
Florida. 3 Canby, who commanded the Union forces in the
Gulf, had, in March, opened his campaign against Mobile
with a military force nearly twice as great as that corn-
March- manded by the Confederate Taylor, and a naval
May. fleet, under Admiral Thatcher, cooperated. After
a heavy bombardment and gallant assaults made upon the
defences of this city, from the 9th to the llth of April,
Mobile was captured. On the 4th of May the Confederate
fleet, which fled up the Tombigbee Eiver, was forced to sur
render; * and on that same day Taylor arranged with Canby
the capitulation of all Confederate armies east of the Mis-



1 10 N. & H. c. 12 ; Am. Cycl. 1865, 66, 72. Breckinridge, the Con
federate Secretary of War, was thrust into the present conference,
though Sherman, as he relates, refused to consider him in that official
character, and himself drafted the terms which he submitted Johnston
for signature. 2 Sherman, 352. "I notified General Johnston,"
writes Davis (who by this time had fled to some distance), "that I
approved his action ; in doing so I doubted whether the agreement
would be ratified by the United States Government." Davis, 489.

2 Ib. ; 2 Sherman, 346-370. Stan ton offended Sherman by the rude
and unkind method he pursued in setting aside the previous capitula
tion.

3 Prisoners with Johnston, 36,817 ; surrendered in Georgia and
Florida, as reported by General J. H. Wilson, 52,453 ; total, 89,270.
2 Sherman, 370.

* 9 N. & H. c. 10.



1865. THE HOSTILE ARMIES DISBANDED. 619

sissippi River not already paroled. 1 The insurgent forces
west of the Mississippi were commanded by General E.
Kirby Smith, upon whom Davis s fugitive government fixed
its last hopes, after Lee and Johnston had surrendered.
For, stubborn to the last, the President without a people
meant to move thither, gathering stragglers as he fled, and,
in the green pastures of Texas, renew his perishing cause.
For a time Smith s attitude seemed so threatening, that
Sheridan was sent from Washington to bring him to reason.
After one more skirmish, near Brazos, quite needless, Smith,
too, on the 26th of May, surrendered his whole armed force
to Canby, receiving the same generous terms accorded to the
other Confederate armies. 2 And thus was slavery s grand
levy of war against the United States brought to a con
clusive end.

The mustering out of the vast Union host had already
begun, at the close of April. The volunteer soldier re
turned peacefully to his home and civil pursuit, and an
army of a million men, like the host which had so long
opposed it, melted gently away, as the winter s burden of
snow in a northern zone when the summer solstice ap
proaches. During this whole Civil War 2,200,000 men
had been enrolled for the Union cause, while nearly a mil
lion men served on the side of disunion. The immediate
cost of this long and tremendous struggle of four years to
the Union, over and above the ordinary expenses of civil
government, was about $ 3,250,000,000; to the Confederates
somewhat less than half that amount. 3

1 10 N. & II. 327. About 42,000 were thus surrendered, besides
those embraced in the naval surrender to Thatcher.

2 The number here surrendered aggregated 17,600. Davis, 490.

3 10 N. & II. 330. About 2,700,000 names are on the rolls, but these
included reenlistments. Cf. 4 B. & L. 767. The total aggregate of
deaths during the war on the Union side (exclusive of sailors and
marines) was about 360,000, and of this number 110,000 were killed
or mortally wounded in battle. The number of Confederate dead
cannot be accurately ascertained, but it is believed, in the absence of
complete statistics, to have been nearly as great as on the Union side.
Cf. 10 N. & II. 339 ; 4 B. & L. 767, 768.

As to the employment of Indians on either side, see 5 N. & H. 292.



620 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, CHAP. III.

The capture of Jefferson Davis in his flight from Rich
mond gave a somewhat ignominious exit to the Confederate
government, whose death-clutch upon the normal Southern
States and their people loosened with its military potency
like some departing nightmare. When this President and
the remnant of his Cabinet left Richmond by railway, on
the night of April 2d, incumbered with the public archives,
they passed through Danville to Greensboro, one more lurid
manifesto issuing on the way. At Greensboro, on the 12th,
Johnston and Beauregard, then close at hand, were called
to a council of war, at which Benjamin, Mallory, and
Reagan, of the fleeing civil advisers, were present, besides
President Davis himself, who still maintained the arrogance
of a constitutional director. By afternoon of that day
arrived Breckinridge, also of the Cabinet, with positive
tidings that Lee and his whole army had surrendered. At
a second conference, held within twenty-four hours, 1 Davis
was still for fight, but yielded so far to the wishes of his
generals and of all but Benjamin of his civil advisers, as to
dictate the despatch already mentioned, which Johnston at
once tendered to Sherman. 2 On April 14th, without wait
ing to hear results, the administration continued its fugitive
journey southward. At Charlotte, where the stay was pro
longed, Breckinridge brought the duplicate memorandum
made by Johnston and Sherman in his presence. This, on
the 24th, Davis officially ratified ; but, almost immediately
after, came the further news that this agreement had been
rejected at Washington, with orders sent Sherman to
resume the offensive. Davis, as President, now ordered
Johnston to disband his infantry, and, with cavalry and
light artillery, seek a retreat; but Johnston disobeyed,
as we have seen, and the government took a last flight
toward Kirby Smith and the trans-Mississippi region,
dwindling daily in dignity and resources. All of Davis s
Cabinet but Reagan, who lived in Texas, dropped out, with
one or another pretext, unwilling to trust longer their chief s
illusions. Finally, at daybreak of May 10th, the Presiden-

1 See 10 N. & H. 260. 2 Supra, p. 617.



1865. CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 621

fcial remnant was surprised and captured by Union cavalry
scouts, while encamped among pine woods near Irwinville,
in southern Georgia. 1 This terminated the Southern Con
federacy in its civil embodiment. Of all the Southern
leaders, civil or military, in this great rebellion, the Mis-
sissippian alone showed neither a dignified reticence nor a
willingness to be sensibly reconciled; but his later historical
writings betray a rancorous hatred of the Union he had
sought to destroy, whose honors he had perverted, and
whose clemency he appeared to the last incapable of appre
ciating.

Seward, recovering almost miraculously from the mur
derous assault of the fearful night and from his previous
injuries, retained his premiership in the Cabinet for the
remaining period of the four years term for which Lincoln
had reappointed him. Pursuing the same perse- 1865 _
vering and yet forbearing course as before in foreign 1S69 -
relations, with President Johnson s acquiescence, he pro
cured, before retiring finally from office and public life, the
amplest fruits of that wise diplomacy which Lincoln had
supervised and approved. With France, the opportunity
soon came to reassert the Monroe doctrine in terms whose
import could neither be mistaken nor safely disregarded. 2



1 10 N. & II. c. 13 ; 4 B. & L. 702 ; Am. Cycl. 1865, 77. Women
and children were of the present party, and Davis, when arrested, had
his wife s raglan and shawl thrown over his head and shoulders, prob
ably for disguise and escape. See Davis, 701.

Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for two years at Fortress Monroe,
and then indicted for treason ; but in May, 1867, he was released on
bail (Horace Greeley serving as one of his bondsmen), and the case
never came to trial. Under President Johnson s general amnesty
proclamation he received a final immunity from prosecution and lived
unmolested, at his home in Mississippi, for more than twenty years
longer.

2 When the Union-Republican convention that renominated Lincoln,
in 1864, adopted a strong resolution on this subject, at a time when
active intervention in Mexico would still have been dangerous to the
safety of our government, the President, in his letter of acceptance,
construed that resolution as in approval rather than disapproval, of the
course the State department was then taking. 7 N. & II. 421.



622 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAK. CHAP. III.

Polite and plausible through life, the Emperor Louis Napo
leon withdrew his invading army from Mexico, and left his
exotic establishment to perish. The unfortunate youth
Maximilian, refusing to leave with the imperial troops,
was shot, in 1867; Juarez reestablished the constitutional
Republic, and Mexico, under him and an able military suc
cessor, entered upon a brighter and more orderly career
than that distracted country had ever known before, bound
lastingly in gratitude by the disinterested friendship of the
neighboring Republic that had once despoiled her. Great
Britain, too, offered amends, within these four years, for
the wrong she had done by allowing hostile cruisers to be
built in her ports. True, the treaty of friendship and
indemnity which Seward negotiated failed in the Senate,
because of a bitter wrangle between our new Executive and
Congress; but the just spirit it manifested was of new avail
when Grant became President, and, under the award of
Geneva, the long score of grievances during this distressing
era was effaced.



But such grand triumphs won at last could not restore
to the helm that great captain and pilot whose firm and
steady guidance through the long tempest assured his pre
eminent ability to steer among the dangerous shoals which
yet remained. The American people mourned the untimely
death of Abraham Lincoln long and sincerely; and in the
depth of their universal sorrow, enhanced by an indignant
sense of the degrading crime that had so miserably removed
him, they and the civilized world began to realize, as never
before, the true grandeur of his character and the conspicu
ous place he was destined to occupy in history. At our
nation s capital all insignia of rejoicing over late military
successes disappeared at once, and the city was shrouded
in black. A funeral was prepared such as no potentate,
ancient or modern, ever received before, in the intensity of
real sorrow that pervaded the breasts of a great governed
community and found expression from lofty and lowly alike.
Lincoln s body, embalmed and prepared for the grave, re-



1805. A PUBLIC FUNERAL. 623

posed for four days in state at the White House under a tall
canopy, enclosed in a black casket, and embosomed in rare
and costly flowers. On Wednesday, the 19th of
April, after an impressive service in the east room,
the remains were borne in sad and solemn pomp to the
Capitol, escorted by a well-appointed military force, in
which colored troops took part, and attended in procession,
or as pall-bearers, by the highest dignitaries of the nation,
with State delegates and foreign ministers, besides. The
day, by official request, was observed as one of mourning
throughout the land, and no American, in the loyal States
at least, who was old enough to comprehend a public sorrow,
can forget the quiet depth of grief manifested in his own
local neighborhood on that occasion. It was the anniversary
of the first hostile bloodshed in two most memorable Ameri
can revolutions; thousands of miles from Washington the
occasion was kept as reverentially as though the funeral
pageant itself wound visibly by. Stores were closed, busi
ness was suspended, the people poured out for a holiday;
the weather was mild and inviting, yet none sought sportive
recreation, but local inhabitants would assemble rather as
for prayer and worship. With grief subdued and spon
taneous, civic crowds thronged about the journal bulletin
boards to share by electric sympathy, were it possible, in
the obsequies telegraphed from the Potomac. All day
during the 20th, also, the President s body lay in state in
the rotunda of the nation s Capitol, under its now completed
dome, visited by more than twenty-five thousand persons,
many of whom were sick soldiers in hospital, who left their
beds for a farewell gaze. On April 21st, at sunrise, after
final prayers, the casket was transferred to a train, whose
funeral car left Washington, with a guard of honor, for a
slow journey of twelve days towards Springfield. For Illinois
had claimed her greatest citizen for a last sepulture among
the scenes where he had grown to greatness, and whence he
had set forth for his immortal task, with sad parting from
his neighbors. The route reversed as nearly as possible
that traversed by Lincoln in February, 1861 ; and in promi
nent cities on the way, at Baltimore, Harrisburg, Phila-



624 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. III.

delphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus,
Indianapolis, and Chicago, the journey was broken and
the corpse borne in renewed pageant procession, to repose
in state for other crowds to visit tenderly, before the sad
progress was resumed. Again and again, and from day to
day, were bells tolled, minute guns fired, and solemn dirges
played by the bands, while fresh flowers were piled high
upon the black coffin ; and through public halls, in one city
or another, festooned with crape and adorned with battle
flags, surged the great stream of mournful people. So, too,
all along the route, wherever the funeral train might travel
without such interruption, tracks near each way station
were seen bordered by sad spectators, gathered in wagons
or on foot, who looked silently with uncovered heads or in
groups sang hymns and dirges as the car of death glided by.
Even by night, while the train travelled on, multitudes
thus waiting reverentially were revealed by the fitful glare
of torches. In this manner, and after an interior Northern
tour of seventeen hundred miles, the final removal from the
train, drawn by the last locomotive, was made at Spring
field on the 3d of May ; and, following a night s repose in
the Illinois State House, Lincoln s final interment took
place the next day at Oak Ridge Cemetery, and with dirges
due and sad array the coffin lid was closed forever, and the
remains of the martyred President were laid at rest. 1 All
through the fortnight of protracted mourning and pageantry
that funeral train was sadly watched by the people, as it
approached or receded, and in States like those of New
England, not on the iron course at all, the people shared at
heart in solemn tribute, and spectators, as it were, in spirit,
followed the corpse of their lost leader to its distant tomb.



" There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has
ever seen! " said Stanton, in tears, at this President s death-
couch; 2 and, probably, for a eulogy so brief no fitter one



i Am. Cycl. 1865, 476-478 ; 10 N. & H. c. 16.
* Chittenden s Lincoln, 186



1865. CHARACTER OF LINCOLN. 625

could have been pronounced. Well did that stern subordi
nate headstrong, impulsive, born to be unpopular real
ize how much of his own splendid opportunity arid success
in achieving he owed to that generous and genial direction.
Abraham Lincoln need hardly be compared with the great
rulers of mankind in other ages and countries ; it is enough
to take him in his most admirable adaptation to the age and
country in which his destiny was cast. He clearly under
stood the thirty millions of Americans over whom he had
been placed by the people s choice, and the tremendous task
given him by his Maker to be accomplished. Lincoln was
not a profound scholar, but his mind was acute and his logi
cal faculties clear and active; he had a lawyer s self-culture
to comprehend the relations of republican society; he had
studied American political history and problems of govern
ment, and no one understood better his country s institu
tions, State and national, in their practical workings. He
had fair public experience, besides; and his excellence as
an administrator in affairs lay in his consummate tact and
skill as a manager and director of political forces under the
complex and composite system of this American govern
ment. His high qualifications in this respect were first
made manifest in his own important State of Illinois ; and,
though not among the chief founders of the new national
party which brought him into the Presidency, he promptly
came forward as one of its leaders, and, once placed in
direction, he guided it confidently for the rest of his life,
unapproachable as chieftain and popular inspirer. As
President of the United States he harnessed together the
greatest intellects of this party, statesmen diverse as the
winds in temper and sentiment, better capable than himself
to push forward the car of legislation or handle the multi
farious details of executive work; and he held the reins
over them with infinite considerateness and discretion, con
ciliating, assuaging rivalries, maintaining good humor, and
encouraging each to his greatest work. He kept his Cabinet
in the closest touch with Congress, and both Cabinet and
Congress in generous accord witli public opinion, which last
he carefully watched and tilled like a good gardener, plant-



626 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. IIL

ing seed, nurturing the growth of new ideas, and bringing,
in proper time, the ripe fruit. Raw haste, the falsehood
of extremes on one side or the other, he sedulously avoided ;
yet he sowed and cultivated. And, once again, while con
ducting the cause of the whole Union, of national integrity,
he was yet highly regardful of State pride and State magis
tracy, seeking not suppression, but assistance, as to this
element of allegiance ; and the harshest military rigor he
ever exercised over State rebellion was tempered by clem
ency, forgiveness, and compassion. Not an insurgent com
monwealth of the South did he attempt to reorganize and
reconstruct, save through the spontaneous aid of its own
recognized inhabitants and such native and natural leaders
of the jurisdiction as were found available; while of border
slave States, at first doubtful and wavering in allegiance,
because of a divided interest and affection, the two that he
grappled most violently became not only stanch to the
Union, but converts to emancipation, from their own choice,
before war ended. The armed potency, almost unexampled,
which this President exercised through four distressful
years, was always exercised unselfishly and as a patriot, in
the name and for the welfare of the real constitutional gov
ernment which he represented, and for the permanent wel
fare of the whole American people. Rarely leaving and
never going far from the nation s capital during that entire
period, he there came in contact with people from all parts
of the land, soldiers and civilians, men, women, and
children, and by his rare personality, in whose external
expression pathos and humor were remarkably blended, he
dispelled unfavorable prejudice and endeared himself grad
ually to all classes of our people, at the same time giving
reassurance as of one genuine, self-possessed, and trust
worthy, who knew well his responsibilities and was capable
of exercising them.

Lincoln was an American of Americans, the best and
noblest type of an indigenous democracy, such as several
generations of native independence and self-government had
developed in lowly life. He was the ideal of the common
American voter, - the common citizen, sharing with the



1865. CHARACTER OF LINCOLN. 627

average of our race the wish to better, honorably, the con
ditions of humble origin; proud of his own native land, and
desirous that its example to the world should be unblem
ished. Like the vast majority of Americans, he was con
servative while in progression, and loved that liberty which