Part 4 (1/2)
News of the appalling deed spread through the city, and it was found necessary to restrain the anxious, weeping people by a double guard around the house. The surgeons from the first examination of the wound, p.r.o.nounced it mortal; and the shock and the agony of that terrible night to Mrs. Lincoln was enough to distract the reason, and break the heart of the most self-controlled. Robert Lincoln sought, by manly self-mastery to control his own grief and soothe his mother, and aid her to sustain her overwhelming sorrow.
When at last, the n.o.ble heart ceased to beat, the Rev. Dr. Gurley, in the presence of the family, the household, and those friends of the President who were present, knelt down, and touchingly prayed the Almighty Father, to aid and strengthen the family and friends to bear their terrible sorrow.
I will not attempt with feeble pen to sketch the scenes of that terrible night; I leave that for the pencil of the artist!
As has been said, the name of the a.s.sa.s.sin was John Wilkes Booth! He was shot by Boston Corbett, a soldier on the 21st of April.
ATTEMPTED a.s.sa.s.sINATION OF SECRETARY SEWARD.
On the same night of the a.s.sa.s.sination of the President, an accomplice of Booth attempted to murder Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, in his own house, while confined to his bed from severe injuries received by being thrown from his carriage. He was terribly mangled; and his life was saved by the heroic efforts of his sons and daughter and a nurse, whose name was Robinson. Some of the accomplices of Booth were arrested, tried, convicted, and hung; but all were the mere tools and instruments of the Conspirators. Mystery and darkness yet hang over the chief instigators of this most cowardly murder: none can say whether the chief conspirators will ever, in this world, be dragged to light and punishment.
The terrible news of the death of Lincoln was, on the morning of the 15th, borne by telegraph to every portion of the Republic. Coming, as it did, in the midst of universal joy, no language can picture the horror and grief of the people on its reception. A whole nation wept. Persons who had not heard the news, coming into crowded cities, were struck with the strange aspect of the people. All business was suspended; gloom, sadness, grief, sat upon every face. The flag, which had everywhere, from every spire and masthead, roof, and tree, and public building, been floating in glorious triumph, was now lowered; and, as the hours of that dreary 15th of April pa.s.sed on, the people, by common impulse, each family by itself, commenced draping their houses and public buildings in mourning, and before night the whole nation was shrouded in black.
There were no cla.s.ses of people in the Republic whose grief was more demonstrative than that of the soldiers and the freedmen. The vast armies, not yet disbanded, looked upon Lincoln as their father. They knew his heart had followed them in all their campaigns and marches and battles. Grief and vengeance filled their hearts. But the poor negroes everywhere wept and sobbed over a loss which they instinctively felt was to them irreparable. On the Sunday following his death, the whole people gathered to their places of public wors.h.i.+p, and mingled their tears together over a bereavement which every one felt like the loss of a father or a brother. The remains of the President were taken to the White House. On the 17th, on Monday, a meeting of the members of Congress then in Was.h.i.+ngton, was held at the Capitol, to make arrangements for the funeral. This meeting named a committee of one member from each State and Territory, and the whole Congressional delegation from Illinois, as a Congressional Committee to attend the remains of Mr. Lincoln to their final resting-place in Illinois. Senator Sumner and others desired that his body should be placed under the dome of the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton. It was stated that a vault had been prepared there for the remains of Was.h.i.+ngton, but had never been used, because the Was.h.i.+ngton family and Virginia desired them to remain in the family vault at Mount Vernon. It was said it would be peculiarly appropriate for the remains of Lincoln to be deposited under the dome of the Capitol of the Republic he had saved and redeemed.
The funeral took place on Wednesday, the 19th. The services were held in the East Room of the Executive Mansion. It was a bright, genial day--typical of the kind and genial nature of him whom a nation was so deeply mourning.
After the sad ceremonies at the National Capital, the remains of the President and of his beloved son Willie, who died at the White House during his presidency, were placed on a funeral car, and started on its long pilgrimage to his old home in Illinois, and it was arranged that the train should take nearly the same route as that by which he had come from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton in a.s.suming the Executive Chair.
And now the people of every State, city, town, and hamlet, came with uncovered heads, with streaming eyes, with their offerings of wreaths and flowers, to witness the pa.s.sing train. It is impossible to describe the scenes. Minute-guns, the tolling of bells, music, requiems, dirges, military and civic displays, draped flags, black covering every public building and private house, everywhere indicated the pious desire of the people to do honor to the dead: two thousand miles, along which every house was draped in black, and from which, everywhere, hung the national colors in mourning. The funeral ceremonies at Baltimore were peculiarly impressive: nowhere were the manifestations of grief more universal; but the sorrow of the negroes, who thronged the streets in thousands, and hung like a dark fringe upon the long procession, was especially impressive. Their coa.r.s.e, homely features were convulsed with a grief which they could not control; their emotional natures, excited by the scene, and by each other, until sobs and cries and tears, rolling down their black faces, told how deeply they felt their loss. When the remains reached Philadelphia, a half million of people were in the streets, to do honor to all that was left of him, who, in old Independence Hall, four years before, had declared that he would sooner die, sooner be a.s.sa.s.sinated, than give up the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He _had_ been a.s.sa.s.sinated because he would _not_ give them up. All felt, when the remains were placed in that historic room, surrounded by the memories of the great men of the Past, whose portraits from the walls looked down upon the scene, that a peer of the best and greatest of the revolutionary worthies was now added to the list of those who had served the Republic.
Through New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Indiana, to Illinois, all the people followed the funeral train as mourners, but when the remains reached his own State, where he had been personally known to every one, where the people had all heard him on the stump and in court, every family mourned him as a father and a brother. The train reached Springfield on the 3d of May; and the corpse was taken to Oak Ridge Cemetery, and there, among his old friends and neighbors, his clients, and const.i.tuents, surrounded by representatives from the Army and Navy, with delegations from every State, with all the people, the world for his mourners--was he buried.
PERSONAL SKETCHES OF LINCOLN.[8]
[8] The substance of what follows is from chapter 29th of ”The History of Abraham Lincoln, and The Overthrow of Slavery,” by Isaac N. Arnold.
In the remaining pages, I shall attempt to give a word-picture of Mr.
Lincoln, his person, his moral and intellectual characteristics, and some personal recollections, so as to aid the reader, as far as I may be able, in forming an ideal of the man.
Physically, he was a tall, spare man, six feet and four inches in height. He stooped, leaning forward as he walked. He was very athletic, with long, sinewy arms, large, bony hands, and of great physical power.
Many anecdotes of his strength are given, which show that it was equal to that of two or three ordinary men. He lifted with ease five or six hundred pounds. His legs and arms were disproportionately long, as compared with his body; and when he walked, he swung his arms to and fro more than most men. When seated, he did not seem much taller than ordinary men. In his movements there was no grace, but an impression of awkward strength and vigor.
He was naturally diffident, and even to the day of his death, when in crowds, and not speaking or acting, and conscious of being observed, he seemed to shrink with bashfulness. When he became interested, or spoke, or listened, this appearance left him, and he indicated no self-consciousness. His forehead was high and broad, his hair very dark, nearly black, and rather stiff and coa.r.s.e, his eyebrows were heavy, his eyes dark-gray, very expressive and varied; now sparkling with humor and fun, and then deeply sad and melancholy; flas.h.i.+ng with indignation at injustice or wrong, and then kind, genial, droll, dreamy; according to his mood.
His nose was large, and clearly defined and well shaped; cheek-bones high and projecting. His mouth coa.r.s.e, but firm. He was easily caricatured--but difficult to represent as he was, in marble or on canva.s.s. The best bust of him is that of Volk, which was modeled from a cast taken from life in May, 1860, while he was attending court at Chicago.
Among the best portraits, in the judgment of his family and intimate friends, are those of Carpenter, in the picture of the Reading of the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation before the Cabinet, and that of Marshall.
He would be instantly recognized as belonging to that type of tall, thin, large-boned men, produced in the northern portion of the Valley of the Mississippi, and exhibiting its peculiar characteristics in a most marked degree in Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. In any crowd in the United States, he would have been readily pointed out as a Western man.
His stature, figure, manner, voice, and accent, indicated that he was of the Northwest. His manners were cordial, familiar, genial; always perfectly self-possessed, he made every one feel at home, and no one approached him without being impressed with his kindly, frank nature, his clear, good sense, and his transparent truthfulness and integrity.
There is more or less of expression and character in handwriting.
Lincoln's was plain, simple, clear, and legible, as that of Was.h.i.+ngton; but unlike that of Was.h.i.+ngton, it was without ornament.
In endeavoring to state those qualities which gave him success and greatness, among the most important, it seems to me, were a supreme love of truth, and a wonderful capacity to ascertain it. Mentally, he had a perfect eye for truth. His mental vision was clear and accurate: he saw things as they were. I mean that every thing presented to his mind for investigation, he saw divested of every extraneous circ.u.mstance, every coloring, a.s.sociation, or accident which could mislead. This gave him at the bar a sagacity which seemed almost instinctive, in sifting the true from the false, and in ascertaining facts; and so it was in all things through life. He ever sought the real, the true, and the right. He was exact, carefully accurate in all his statements. He a.n.a.lyzed well; he saw and presented what lawyers call the very _gist_ of every question, divested of all unimportant or accidental relations, so that his statement was a demonstration. At the bar, his exposition of his case, or a question of law, was so clear, that, on hearing it, most persons were surprised that there should be any controversy about it. His reasoning powers were keen and logical, and moved forward to a demonstration with the precision of mathematics. What has been said implies that he possessed not only a sound judgment, which brought him to correct conclusions, but that he was able so to present questions as to bring others to the same result.
His memory was capacious, ready, and tenacious. His reading was limited in extent, but his memory was so ready, and so retentive, that in history, poetry, and general literature, no one ever remarked any deficiency. As an ill.u.s.tration of the power of his memory, I recollect to have once called at the White House, late in his Presidency, and introducing to him a Swede and a Norwegian; he immediately repeated a poem of eight or ten verses, describing Scandinavian scenery and old Norse legends. In reply to the expression of their delight, he said that he had read and admired the poem several years before, and it had entirely gone from him, but seeing them recalled it.