Part 52 (2/2)

This reconciliation on the fall of the sword was a token of the forgivingness of the North toward the chastened foes.

”CLOSE YOUR EYES!”

The Marquis of Chambrun, a French volunteer, who entered the Lincoln circle, relates in a more elegant strain the above incident. He states that Thompson and Sanders were informed upon, and Stanton repeated the information to the President with a view of having them intercepted.

But the other in his tender voice responded:

”Let us close our eyes, and leave them pa.s.s unnoticed.”

DON'T JUDGE BY APPEARANCES.

The President's recklessness seems incredible as to going about the capital, as far as he knew and wished, without escort, but his ”browsing,” to use his word, about the perilous front while the concluding actions were enveloping Petersburg preliminarily to the rush at Richmond, partake of the nature of a fanatic's daring. This is the support to the otherwise taxing story told by Doctor J. E.

Burriss, of New York, then a volunteer soldier at the place. He states that Lincoln, so shabbily dressed as to be taken for a farmer or planter, was so treated by soldiery before a tobacco-warehouse under guard. They wanted tobacco, and begged him to allow some to be turned out. He approached a young lieutenant commanding the post, but the latter was insolent to the ”old Southerner.” The latter sent a soldier to General Grant, who himself rode up, post-haste, at the summons.

The soldiers were given some of the Indian weed, and the donor, turning to the impertinent officer, who had thought him a converted reb, said:

”Young sir, do not judge by appearances; and for the future treat your elders with more respect.”

”NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM FURTHER.”

Returning to Was.h.i.+ngton from Richmond, Lincoln read twice to friends on the journey, from his pocket Shakespeare:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.

”WENT AND RETURNED!”

The last days of March, 1865, contained the three battles, closing with that of Five Forks, signalizing the collapse of the Confederacy at Richmond. The President, at the front, sent the news of victories to the Cabinet at home. After the battles, the advance of the triumphing Unionists. On Monday morning Lincoln was enabled to telegraph the talismanic words so often dreamed of in the last agonizing years of fluctuating hope:

”_Richmond has fallen_! I am about to enter!”

Secretary Stanton, of the war office, immediately implored: ”Do not peril your life!”

But in the morning he received this line from the most independent President known since Jackson:

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