vessel in which practically all the old electorate of Louisiana could
find their places the moment they gave up the war and accepted the two
requisites, union and emancipation. That electorate could proceed at
once to rebuild the social-political order of the State without any
interval of "expiation." All the power of the Administration would
be with them in their labors. That this was the wise as well as the
generous way to proceed, the best minds of the North had come to see.
Witness the conversion of Trumbull. But there were four groups of
fanatics who were dangerous: extreme Abolitionists who clamored for
negro equality; men like Wade and Chandler, still mad with the lust of
conquest, raging at the President who had stood so resolutely between
them and their desire; the machine politicians who could never
understand the President's methods, who regarded him as an officious
amateur; and the Little Men who would have tried to make political
capital of the blowing of the last trump. All these, each for a separate
motive, attacked the President because of Louisiana.
The new government had chosen Senators. Here was a specific issue over
which the Administration and its multiform opposition might engage in a
trial of strength. The Senate had it in its power to refuse to seat the
Louisiana Senators. Could the Vindictive leaders induce it to go to
that length? The question took its natural course of reference to the
Judiciary Committee. On the eighteenth of February, Trumbull opened what
was destined to be a terrible chapter in American history, the struggle
between light and darkness over reconstruction. Trumbull had ranged
behind Lincoln the majority of his committee. With its authority he
moved a joint resolution recognizing the new government of Louisiana.
And then began a battle royal. Trumbull's old associates were promptly
joined by Sumner. These three rallied against the resolution all the
malignancy, all the time-serving, all the stupidity, which the Senate
possessed. Bitter language was exchanged by men who had formerly been as
thick as thieves.
"You and I," thundered Wade, "did not differ formerly on this subject
We considered it a mockery, a miserable mockery, to recognize this
Louisiana organization as a State in the Union." He sneered fiercely,
"Whence comes this new-born zeal of the Senator from Illinois? . . .
Sir, it is the most miraculous conversion that has taken place since
Saint Paul's time."(7)
Wade did not spare the President. Metaphorically speaking, he shook a
fist in his face, the fist of a merciless old giant "When the foundation
of this government is sought to be swept away by executive usurpation,
it will not do to turn around to me and say this comes from a President
I helped to elect. . . . If the President of the United States operating
through his major generals can initiate a State government, and can
bring it here and force us, compel us, to receive on this floor these
mere mockeries, these men of straw who represent nobody, your Republic
is at an end . . . talk not to me of your ten per cent. principle. A
more absurd, monarchial and anti-American principle was never announced
on God's earth."(8)
Amidst a rain of furious personalities, Lincoln's spokesman kept his
poise. It was sorely tried by two things: by Sumner's frank use of
every device of parliamentary obstruction with a view to wearing out the
patience of the Senate, and by the cynical alliance, in order to balk
Lincoln, of the Vindictives with the Democrats. What they would not risk
in 1862 when their principles had to wait upon party needs, they now
considered safe strategy. And if ever the Little Men deserved
their label it was when they played into the hands of the terrible
Vindictives, thus becoming responsible for the rejection of Lincoln's
plan of reconstruction. Trumbull upbraided Sumner for "associating
himself with those whom he so often denounced, for the purpose of
calling the yeas and nays and making dilatory motions" to postpone
action until the press of other business should compel the Senate to set
the resolution aside. Sumner's answer was that he would employ
against the measure every instrument he could find "in the arsenal of
parliamentary warfare."
With the aid of the Democrats, the Vindictives carried the day. The
resolution was "dispensed with."(9)
As events turned out it was a catastrophe. But this was not apparent at
the time. Though Lincoln had been beaten for the moment, the opposition
was made up of so many and such irreconcilable elements that as long as
he could hold together his own following, there was no reason to suppose
he would not in the long run prevail. He was never in a firmer, more
self-contained mood than on the last night of the session.(10) Again,
as on that memorable fourth of July, eight months before, he was in his
room at the Capitol signing the last-minute bills. Stanton was with
him. On receiving a telegram from Grant, the Secretary handed it to
the President Grant reported that Lee had proposed a conference for
the purpose of "a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy
difficulties by means of a military convention." Without asking for the
Secretary's opinion, Lincoln wrote out a reply which he directed him to
sign and despatch immediately. "The President directs me to say that he
wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the
capitulation of General Lee's army, or on some minor or purely military
matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or
confer upon any political questions, such questions the President holds
in his own hands and will submit them to no military conferences or
conventions. Meanwhile, you are to press to the utmost your military
advantages."(11)
In the second inaugural (12) delivered the next day, there is not the
faintest shadow of anxiety. It breathes a lofty confidence as if his
soul was gazing meditatively downward upon life, and upon his own work,
from a secure height. The world has shown a sound instinct in fixing
upon one expression, "with malice toward none, with charity for all," as
the key-note of the final Lincoln. These words form the opening line
of that paragraph of unsurpassable prose in which the second inaugural
culminates:
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves,
and with all nations."
XXXVI. PREPARING A DIFFERENT WAR
During the five weeks which remained to Lincoln on earth, the army was
his most obvious concern. He watched eagerly the closing of the enormous
trap that had been slowly built up surrounding Lee. Toward the end of
March he went to the front, and for two weeks had his quarters on a
steamer at City Point. It was during Lincoln's visit that Sherman came
up from North Carolina for his flying conference with Grant, in which
the President took part. Lincoln was at City Point when Petersburg fell.
Early on the morning of April third, he joined Grant who gives a strange
glimpse in his Memoirs of their meeting in the deserted city which so
recently had been the last bulwark of the Confederacy.(1) The same day,
Richmond fell. Lincoln had returned to City Point, and on the following
day when confusion reigned in the burning city, he walked through its
streets attended only by a few sailors and by four friends. He visited
Libby Prison; and when a member of his party said that Davis ought to
be hanged, Lincoln replied, "Judge not that ye be not judged."(2) His
deepest thoughts, however, were not with the army. The time was at hand
when his statesmanship was to be put to its most severe test. He had
not forgotten the anxious lesson of that success of the Vindictives
in balking momentarily the recognition of Louisiana. It was war to the
knife between him and them. Could he reconstruct the Union in a wise and
merciful fashion despite their desperate opposition?
He had some strong cards in his hand. First of all, he had time.
Congress was not in session. He had eight months in which to press
forward his own plans. If, when Congress assembled the following
December, it should be confronted by a group of reconciled Southern
States, would it venture to refuse them recognition? No one could have
any illusions as to what the Vindictives would try to do. They would
continue the struggle they had begun over Louisiana; and if their power
permitted, they would rouse the nation to join battle with the President
on that old issue of the war powers, of the dictatorship.
But in Lincoln's hand there were four other cards, all of which Wade
and Chandler would find it hard to match. He had the army. In the last
election the army had voted for him enthusiastically. And the army was
free from the spirit of revenge, the Spirit which Chandler built upon.
They had the plain people, the great mass whom the machine politicians
had failed to judge correctly in the August Conspiracy. Pretty
generally, he had the Intellectuals. Lastly, he had--or with skilful
generalship he could have--the Abolitionists.
The Thirteenth Amendment was not yet adopted. The question had been
raised, did it require three-fourths of all the States for its adoption,
or only three-fourths of those that were ranked as not in rebellion.
Here was the issue by means of which the Abolitionists might all be
brought into line. It was by no means certain that every Northern State
would vote for the amendment. In the smaller group of States, there was
a chance that the amendment might fail. But if it were submitted to the
larger group; and if every Reconstructed State, before Congress met,
should adopt the amendment; and if it was apparent that with these
Southern adoptions the amendment must prevail, all the great power of
the anti-slavery sentiment would be thrown on the side of the President
in favor of recognizing the new State governments and against the
Vindictives. Lincoln held a hand of trumps. Confidently, but not rashly,
he looked forward to his peaceful war with the Vindictives.
They were enemies not to be despised. To begin with, they were
experienced machine politicians; they had control of well-organized
political rings. They were past masters of the art of working up popular
animosities. And they were going to use this art in that dangerous
moment of reaction which invariably follows the heroic tension of a
great war. The alignment in the Senate revealed by the Louisiana battle
had also a significance. The fact that Sumner, who was not quite one of
them, became their general on that occasion, was something to remember.
They had made or thought they had made other powerful allies. The Vice
President, Andrew Johnson-the new president of the Senate-appeared at
this time to be cheek by jowl with the fiercest Vindictives of them all.
It would be interesting to know when the thought first occurred to them:
"If anything should happen to Lincoln, his successor would be one of
us!"
The ninth of April arrived and the news of Lee's surrender.
"The popular excitement over the victory was such that on Monday, the
tenth, crowds gathered before the Executive Mansion several times during
the day and called out the President for speeches. Twice he responded
by coming to the window and saying a few words which, however, indicated
that his mind was more occupied with work than with exuberant rejoicing.
As briefly as he could he excused himself, but promised that on the
following evening for which a formal demonstration was being arranged,
he would be prepared to say something."(3)
The paper which he read to the crowd that thronged the grounds of
the White House on the night of April eleventh, was his last public
utterance. It was also one of his most remarkable ones. In a way, it
was his declaration of war against the Vindictives.(4) It is the final
statement of a policy toward helpless opponents--he refused to call them
enemies--which among the conquerors of history is hardly, if at all, to
be paralleled.(5)
"By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national
authority--reconstruction--which has had a large share of thought from the
first, is pressed more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with
great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations,
there is no authorized organ for us to treat with-no one man has
authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must
begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor
is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ
among ourselves as to the mode, manner and measure of reconstruction.
As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon
myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly
offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my
knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up
and seeking to sustain the new State government of Louisiana."
He reviewed in full the history of the Louisiana experiment From that he
passed to the theories put forth by some of his enemies with regard to
the constitutional status of the Seceded States. His own theory that
the States never had been out of the Union because constitutionally
they could not go out, that their governmental functions had merely been
temporarily interrupted; this theory had always been roundly derided by
the Vindictives and even by a few who were not Vindictives. Sumner had
preached the idea that the Southern States by attempting to secede had
committed "State suicide" and should now be treated as Territories.
Stevens and the Vindictives generally, while avoiding Sumner's subtlety,
called them "conquered provinces." And all these wanted to take them
from under the protection of the President and place them helpless at
the feet of Congress. To prevent this is the purpose that shines between
the lines in the latter part of Lincoln's valedictory:
"We all agree that the Seceded States, so called, are out of their
proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of
the government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to
again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it
is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or
even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union,
than with it Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing
the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between
these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge
his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from
without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never
having been out of it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which
the new Louisiana government rests would be more satisfactory to all
if it contained 50,000 or 30,000, or even 20,000 instead of only about
12,000, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective
franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it
were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who served our
cause as soldiers.
"Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it
stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be
wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and
disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation
with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State
government? Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of
Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the
rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State
government, adopted a free State constitution, giving the benefit of
public schools equally to black and white and empowering the Legislature
to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature
has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed
by Congress abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These 12,000
persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom
in the State--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things,
the nation wants--and they ask the nation's recognition and its
assistance to make good their committal.
"Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and
disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white man: You are worthless or
worse; we will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the blacks we
say: This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your
lips we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering the
spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where
and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and
black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical
relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it.
If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new government of
Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the
hearts and nerve the arms of 12,000 to adhere to their work, and argue
for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow
it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, in seeing
all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and energy, and daring,
to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he
not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it
than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of
Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we
shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
"Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of
the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this
proposition it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those
States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly
ratify the amendment I do not commit myself against this further than
to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be
persistently questioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of
all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the
question: Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation
with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State
government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to
other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and
such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and with also
new and unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible
plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such
exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement.
Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present
situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new
announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall not
fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper."
XXXVII. FATE INTERPOSES
There was an early spring on the Potomac in 1865. While April was still
young, the Judas trees became spheres of purply, pinkish bloom. The
Washington parks grew softly bright as the lilacs opened. Pendulous
willows veiled with green laces afloat in air the changing brown that
was winter's final shadow; in the Virginia woods the white blossoms
of the dogwood seemed to float and flicker among the windy trees like
enormous flocks of alighting butterflies. And over head such a glitter
of turquoise blue! As lovely in a different way as on that fateful
Sun-day morning when Russell drove through the same woods toward Bull
Run so long, long ago. Such was the background of the last few days of
Lincoln's life.
Though tranquil, his thoughts dwelt much on death. While at City Point,
he drove one day with Mrs. Lincoln along the banks of the James. They
passed a country graveyard. "It was a retired place," said Mrs. Lincoln
long afterward, "shaded by trees, and early spring flowers were opening
on nearly every grave. It was so quiet and attractive that we stopped
the carriage and walked through it. Mr. Lincoln seemed thoughtful and
impressed. He said: 'Mary, you are younger than I; you will survive me.
When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this.'"(1)
His mood underwent a mysterious change. It was serene and yet charged
with a peculiar grave loftiness not quite like any phase of him his
friends had known hitherto. As always, his thoughts turned for their
reflection to Shakespeare. Sumner who was one of the party at City
Point, was deeply impressed by his reading aloud, a few days before his
death, that passage in Macbeth which describes the ultimate security of
Duncan where nothing evil "can touch him farther."(2)
There was something a little startling, as if it were not quite of this
world, in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart. "His
whole appearance, poise and bearing," says one of his observers, "had
marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable
sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of
his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable
expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his
life had been achieved."(3)
It was as if the seer in the trance had finally passed beyond his
trance; and had faced smiling toward his earthly comrades, imagining he
was to return to them; unaware that somehow his emergence was not in the
ordinary course of nature; that in it was an accent of the inexplicable,
something which the others caught and at which they trembled; though
they knew not why. And he, so beautifully at peace, and yet thrilled as
never before by the vision of the murdered Duncan at the end of life's
fitful fever--what was his real feeling, his real vision of himself?
Was it something of what the great modern poet strove so bravely to
express--
"And yet Dauntless the slughorn to my lips I set,
And blew: Childe Roland to the dark tower came."
Shortly before the end, he had a strange dream. Though he spoke of it
almost with levity, it would not leave his thoughts. He dreamed he
was wandering through the White House at night; all the rooms were
brilliantly lighted; but they were empty. However, through that unreal
solitude floated a sound of weeping. When he came to the East Room, it
was explained; there was a catafalque, the pomp of a military funeral,
crowds of people in tears; and a voice said to him, "The President has
been assassinated."
He told this dream to Lamon and to Mrs. Lincoln. He added that after
it had occurred, "the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may
appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which relates
the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages and seemed to
encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning
the leaves of the Old Book, and everywhere my eye fell upon
passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own
thoughts--supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc."
But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on
precautions against assassination, Lincoln turned the matter into a
joke. He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own
death. He called Lamon's alarm "downright foolishness."(4)
Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation. He
narrated it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth, which
happened to be Good Friday. There was some anxiety with regard to
Sherman's movements in North Carolina. Lincoln bade the Cabinet set
their minds at rest. His dream of the night before was one that he
had often had. It was a presage of great events. In this dream he saw
himself "in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same...
moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." This
dream had preceded all the great events of the war. He believed it was a
good omen.(5)