Part 58 (1/2)
On Sat.u.r.day morning, Lincoln and his guests visited Petersburg. At a certain spot, the marquis recalled, ”he gave orders to stop the carriage.” On his previous visit, Lincoln had noticed a ”very tall and beautiful” oak tree that he wanted to examine more closely. ”He admired the strength of its trunk, the vigorous development of branches,” which reminded him of ”the great oaks” in the Western forests. He halted the carriage again when they pa.s.sed ”an old country graveyard” where trees shaded a carpet of spring flowers. Turning to his wife, Lincoln said, ”Mary, you are younger than I. You will survive me. When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this.” On the train ride back to City Point, Lincoln observed a turtle ”basking in the warm suns.h.i.+ne on the wayside.” He asked that the train be stopped so that the turtle could be brought into the car. ”The movements of the ungainly little animal seemed to delight him,” Elizabeth Keckley recalled. He and Tad shared ”a happy laugh” all the way back to the wharf.
Such distractions could not forestall the afternoon's grim task. Lincoln visited injured soldiers at City Point, moving ”from one bed to another,” the marquis recalled, ”saying a friendly word to each wounded man, or at least giving him a handshake.” At one bed, he held the hand of a twenty-four-year-old captain who had been cited for bravery. ”The dying man half-opened his eyes; a faint smile pa.s.sed over his lips. It was then that his pulse ceased beating.” Lincoln remained among the wounded for five hours and returned to the steamer depleted. ”There has been war enough,” he said when the marquis inquired about troubles with France over Mexico, ”during my second term there will be no more fighting.”
That evening, as the River Queen prepared to return to Was.h.i.+ngton, Grant's officers and staff came to say farewell. Lincoln had hoped to remain at City Point until Lee's surrender, but he felt he should visit Seward. ”As the twilight shadows deepened the lamps were lighted, and the boat was brilliantly illuminated,” Elizabeth Keckley recalled, ”it looked like an enchanted floating palace.” When the military band came aboard, Lincoln asked them to play ”La Ma.r.s.eillaise” in honor of the Marquis de Chambrun.
As the River Queen steamed toward Was.h.i.+ngton on Sunday, ”the conversation,” Chambrun recalled, ”dwelt upon literary subjects.” Holding ”a beautiful quarto copy of Shakespeare in his hands,” Lincoln read several pa.s.sages from Macbeth, including the king's pained tribute to the murdered Duncan: Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.
Lincoln read the lines slowly, marveling ”how true a description of the murderer that one was; when, the dark deed achieved, its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim,” and when he finished, ”he read over again the same scene.” Lincoln's ominous selection prompted James Speed to deliver Seward's warning about the increased threat upon his life. ”He stopped me at once,” Speed recalled, ”saying, he had rather be dead than to live in continual dread.” Moreover, he considered it essential ”that the people know I come among them without fear.”
Early that evening, the steamer pa.s.sed by Mount Vernon, prompting Chambrun to say to Lincoln, ”Mount Vernon and Springfield, the memories of Was.h.i.+ngton and your own, those of the revolutionary and civil wars; these are the spots and names America shall one day equally honor.” The remark brought a dreamy smile to Lincoln's face. ”Springfield!” he said. ”How happy, four years hence, will I be to return there in peace and tranquility.”
Years later, Chambrun remained intrigued by Lincoln's temperament. On first impression, he ”left with you with a sort of impression of vague and deep sadness.” Yet he ”was quite humorous,” often telling hilarious stories and laughing uproariously. ”But all of a sudden he would retire within himself; then he would close his eyes, and all his features would at once bespeak a kind of sadness as indescribable as it was deep. After a while, as though it were by an effort of his will, he would shake off this mysterious weight under which he seemed bowed; his generous and open disposition would again reappear.”
Lincoln's bodyguard, William Crook, believed he understood something of the s.h.i.+fting moods that mystified the French aristocrat. He had observed that Lincoln seemed to absorb the horrors of the war into himself. In the course of the two-week trip, Crook had witnessed Lincoln's ”agony when the thunder of the cannon told him that men were being cut down like gra.s.s.” He had seen the anguish on the president's face when he came within ”sight of the poor, torn bodies of the dead and dying on the field of Petersburg.” He discerned his ”painful sympathy with the forlorn rebel prisoners,” and his profound distress at ”the revelation of the devastation of a n.o.ble people in ruined Richmond.” In each instance, Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.
DIRECTLY UPON HIS RETURN to Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln went to Seward's bedside. ”It was in the evening,” Fred Seward recalled, ”the gas-lights were turned down low, and the house was still, every one moving softly, and speaking in whispers.” His father had taken a turn for the worse. A high fever had developed, and ”grave apprehensions were entertained, by his medical attendants, that his system would not survive the injuries and the shock.” Frances had hurried down from Auburn to find her husband in a more serious state than she had imagined, his face ”so marred and swollen and discolored that one can hardly persuade themselves of his ident.i.ty; his voice so changed; utterance almost entirely prevented by the broken jaw and the swollen tongue. It makes my heart ache to look at him.” His mind was ”perfectly clear,” however, and he remained, as always, ”patient and uncomplaining.”
”The extreme sensitiveness of the wounded arm,” Fred recalled, ”made even the touch of the bed clothing intolerable. To keep it free from their contact, he was lying on the edge of the bed, farthest from the door.” When Lincoln entered the room, he walked over to the far side of the bed and sat down near the bandaged patient. ”You are back from Richmond?” Seward queried in a halting, scarcely audible voice. ”Yes,” Lincoln replied, ”and I think we are near the end, at last.” To continue the conversation more intimately, Lincoln stretched out on the bed. Supporting his head with his hand, Lincoln lay side by side with Seward, as they had done at the time of their first meeting in Ma.s.sachusetts many years before. When f.a.n.n.y came in to sit down, Lincoln somehow managed to unfold his long arm and bring it ”around the foot of the bed, to shake hands in his cordial way.” He related the details of his trip to Richmond, where he had ”worked as hard” at the task of shaking seven thousand hands as he had when he sawed wood, ”& seemed,” f.a.n.n.y thought, ”much satisfied at the labor.”
Finally, when he saw that Seward had fallen into a much-needed sleep, Lincoln quietly got up and left the room. Drained by Seward's grievous condition, Lincoln revived when Stanton burst into the White House bearing a telegram from Grant: ”General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this afternoon upon terms proposed by myself.” It was later said that ”the President hugged him with joy” upon hearing the news, and then went immediately to tell Mary.
Although it was close to 10 p.m., Stanton knew that Seward would want to be awakened for this news. ”G.o.d bless you,” Seward said when Stanton read the telegram. This was the third time Stanton had come to see Seward that Sunday. ”Don't try to speak,” Stanton said. ”You have made me cry for the first time in my life,” Seward replied.
BOTH GRANT AND LEE had acquitted themselves admirably at the courtly surrender ceremony that afternoon at the Appomattox Court House. ”One general, magnanimous in victory,” historian Jay Winik writes, ”the other, gracious and equally dignified in defeat.” Two days earlier, Grant had sent a note to Lee asking him to surrender. In light of ”the result of the last week,” Grant wrote, he hoped that Lee understood ”the hopelessness of further resistance” and would choose to prevent ”any further effusion of blood.” At first Lee refused to accept the futility of his cause, contemplating one last attempt to escape. But Sunday morning, with his troops almost completely surrounded, Lee sent word to Grant that he was ready to surrender.
As the distinguished silver-haired general dressed for the historic meeting, his biographer writes, he ”put on his handsomest sword and his sash of deep, red silk.” Thinking it likely he would be imprisoned before day's end, he told General William Pendleton, ”I must make my best appearance.” He need not have worried, for Grant was determined to follow Lincoln's lenient guidelines. The terms of surrender allowed Confederate officers, after relinquis.h.i.+ng their arms and artillery, ”to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority,” on the condition that they never ”take up arms” against the Union ”until properly exchanged.”
As Grant continued to work out the terms, he later recalled, ”the thought occurred to me that the officers had their own private horses and effects, which were important to them, but of no value to us; also that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to call upon them to deliver their side arms.” He therefore added a provision allowing officers to take their sidearms, as well as their private horses and baggage. This permission, Lee observed, ”would have a happy effect upon his army.” Before the two men parted, Lee mentioned that ”his army was in a very bad condition for want of food.” Grant responded immediately, promising to send rations for twenty-five thousand men.
As Lee rode back to his headquarters, word of the surrender spread through the Confederate lines. He tried to speak to his men, but ”tears came into his eyes,” and he could manage to say only ”Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you.” If Lee had trouble expressing his grief and pride, his soldiers showed no such reservations. In an overwhelming display of respect and devotion, they spontaneously arranged themselves on ”each side of the road to greet him as he pa.s.sed, and two solid walls of men were formed along the whole distance.” When their cheers brought tears to Lee's eyes, they, too, began to weep. ”Each group began in the same way, with cheers, and ended in the same way, with sobs, all along the route to his quarters.” One soldier spoke for all: ”I love you just as well as ever, General Lee!”
At dawn the next day, Noah Brooks heard ”a great boom.” The reverberation of a five-hundred-gun salute ”startled the misty air of Was.h.i.+ngton, shaking the very earth, and breaking the windows of houses about Lafayette Square.” The morning newspapers would carry the details, but ”this was Secretary Stanton's way of telling the people that the Army of Northern Virginia had at last laid down its arms.”
”The nation seems delirious with joy,” noted Welles. ”Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering-all, all jubilant. This surrender of the great Rebel captain and the most formidable and reliable army of the Secessionists virtually terminates the Rebellion.” A spontaneous holiday was announced in all departments. Employees poured into the streets.
An exuberant crowd of several thousand gathered at the White House. ”The bands played, the howitzers belched forth their thunder, and the people cheered,” reported the National Intelligencer. Despite shouted demands for him to speak, Lincoln hesitated. He was planning a speech for the following evening and did not want to ”dribble it all out” before he completed his thoughts. If he said something mistaken, it would make its way into print, and a person in his position, he modestly said, ”ought at least try not to make mistakes.” Still, the crowd was so insistent that the president finally appeared at the second-story window, where he ”was received in the most enthusiastic manner, the people waving their hats, swinging their umbrellas, and the ladies waving their handkerchiefs.”
When the a.s.sembly quieted down, Lincoln acknowledged their euphoria with a smile of his own. ”I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves.” These words drew even wilder cheers. Lincoln then announced a special request for the band. ”I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” he began. ”Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.” This was followed by tumultuous applause. ”I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.” In requesting the patriotic song of the South, Lincoln believed that ”it is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again.” The band followed ”Dixie” with ”Yankee Doodle,” and ”the crowd went off in high good-humor.”
”If possible,” Mary wrote, ”this is a happier day, than last Monday,” when the news of Richmond's capture had reached Was.h.i.+ngton. Her exhilaration was evident in a note she wrote to Charles Sumner the next morning, inviting him and the marquis to join her in a carriage ride around the city to see the grand illumination and to hear the president speak. ”It does not appear to me,” she wrote, ”that this womanly curiosity will be undignified or indiscreet, qu'en pensez vous?”
Illuminated once again, the city was spectacular to behold. The windows of every government building were ablaze with candles and lanterns, and the lights of the newly completed Capitol dome were visible for miles around. ”Bonfires blazed in many parts of the city, and rockets were fired” in ongoing celebrations. Knowing the president was going to address the public, Stanton put his men to work decorating the front of the War Department ”with flags, corps badges and evergreens.”