in his mind overshadowed all others. He urged his Ministers to put
aside all thoughts of hatred and revenge. "He hoped there would be no
persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect
him to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of
them. 'Frighten them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them
off,' said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives
have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect
harmony and union. There was too much desire on the part of our very
good friends to be masters, to interfere and dictate to those States,
to treat the people not as fellow citizens; there was too little respect
for their rights. He didn't sympathize in these feelings."(6)
There was a touch of irony in his phase "our very good friends." Before
the end of the next day, the men he had in mind, the inner group of
the relentless Vindictives, were to meet in council, scarcely able to
conceal their inspiring conviction that Providence had intervened, had
judged between him and them.(7) And that allusion to the "rights" of the
vanquished! How abominable it was in the ears of the grim Chandler, the
inexorable Wade. Desperate these men and their followers were on the
fourteenth of April, but defiant. To the full measure of their power
they would fight the President to the last ditch. And always in their
minds, the tormenting thought-if only positions could be reversed, if
only Johnson, whom they believed to be one of them at heart, were in the
first instead of the second place!
While these unsparing sons of thunder were growling among themselves,
the lions that were being cheated of their prey, Lincoln was putting his
merciful temper into a playful form. General Creswell applied to him for
pardon for an old friend of his who had joined the Confederate Army.
"Creswell," said Lincoln, "you make me think of a lot of young folks who
once started out Maying. To reach their destination, they had to cross
a shallow stream and did so by means of an old flat boat when the
time came to return, they found to their dismay that the old scow had
disappeared. They were in sore trouble and thought over all manner of
devices for getting over the water, but without avail. After a time, one
of the boys proposed that each fellow should pick up the girl he liked
best and wade over with her. The masterly proposition was carried out
until all that were left upon the island was a little short chap and a
great, long, gothic-built, elderly lady. Now, Creswell, you are trying
to leave me in the same predicament. You fellows are all getting your
own friends out of this scrape, and you will succeed in carrying off one
after another until nobody but Jeff Davis and myself will be left on the
island, and then I won't know what to do--How should I feel? How should
I look lugging him over? I guess the way to avoid such an embarrassing
situation is to let all out at once."(8)
The President refused, this day, to open his doors to the throng of
visitors that sought admission. His eldest son, Robert, an officer in
Grant's army, had returned from the front unharmed. Lincoln wished to
reserve the day for his family and intimate friends. In the afternoon,
Mrs. Lincoln asked him if he cared to have company on their usual drive.
"No, Mary," said he, "I prefer that we ride by ourselves to-day."(9)
They took a long drive. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly
happy and tender.(10) He talked much of the past and the future. It
seemed to Mrs. Lincoln that he never had appeared happier than during
the drive. He referred to past sorrows, to the anxieties of the war, to
Willie's death, and spoke of the necessity to be cheerful and happy in
the days to come. As Mrs. Lincoln remembered his words: "We have had
a hard time since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with
God's blessings, we may hope for four years of peace and happiness,
and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in
quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this time, we will save
up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back
to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and
practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11)
They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which
had been fixed for that night. The management of the Ford's Theatre,
where Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance
of Our American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that "the
President and his lady" would attend. The President's box had been
draped with flags. The rest is a twice told tale--a thousandth told
tale.
An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament,
with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated
killing the President. A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination
had made of Lincoln another Caesar. The occasion called for a Brutus.
While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives,
scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath
their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered
region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering
about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself,
were unbalanced. They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet.
The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden
opportunity. He knew every passage of Ford's Theatre. He knew,
also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded himself with guards. During the
afternoon, he made his way unobserved into the theatre and bored a hole
in the door of the presidential box, so that he might fire through it
should there be any difficulty in getting the door open.
About ten o'clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd
play; the President's party were as much amused as any. Suddenly, there
was a pistol shot. A moment more and a woman's voice rang out in a sharp
cry. An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to
their feet. Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the
President's box. One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished
a knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" Then he vanished through the
flies. It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had
made his way without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln. At
point-blank distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head. In
the confusion which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the
city; was pursued; and was himself shot and killed a few days later.
The bullet of the assassin had entered the brain, causing instant
unconsciousness. The dying President was removed to a house on Tenth
Street, No. 453, where he was laid on a bed in a small room at the rear
of the hall on the ground floor.(12)
Swift panic took possession of the city. "A crowd of people rushed
instinctively to the White House, and bursting through the doors,
shouted the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay who sat
gossiping in an upper room. . . . They ran down-stairs. Finding a
carriage at the door, they entered it and drove to Tenth Street."(13)
To right and left eddied whirls of excited figures, men and women
questioning, threatening, crying out for vengeance. Overhead amid
driving clouds, the moon, through successive mantlings of darkness,
broke periodically into sudden blazes of light; among the startled
people below, raced a witches' dance of the rapidly changing
shadows.(14)
Lincoln did not regain consciousness. About dawn his pulse began to
fail. A little later, "a look of unspeakable peace came over his worn
features"(15), and at twenty-two minutes after seven on the morning of
the fifteenth of April, he died.
THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
It is said that a complete bibliography of Lincoln would include at
least five thousand titles. Therefore, any limited bibliography must
appear more or less arbitrary. The following is but a minimum list in
which, with a few exceptions such as the inescapable interpretative
works of Mr. Rhodes and of Professor Dunning, practically everything has
to some extent the character of a source.
Alexander. A Political History of the State of New York. By De Alva
Stanwood Alexander. 3 vols. 1909.
Arnold. History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. By
Isaac N. Arnold. 1866.
Baldwin. Interview between President Lincoln and Colonel John B.
Baldwin. 1866.
Bancroft. Life of William H. Seward. By Frederick Bancroft. 2 vols.
1900.
Barnes. Memoir of Thurlow Weed. By Thurlow Weed Barnes. 1884.
Barton. The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazar Barton. 1920.
Bigelow. Retrospections of an Active Life. By John Bigelow. 2 vols.
1909.
Blaine. Twenty Years of Congress. By James G. Blaine. 2 vols. 1884.
Botts. The Great Rebellion. By John Minor Botts. 1866.
Boutwell. Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs. By George S.
Boutwell 2 vols. 1902.
Bradford. Union Portraits. By Gamaliel Bradford. 1916.
Brooks. Washington in Lincoln's Time. By Noah Brooks, 1895.
Carpenter. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. By F. B.
Carpenter. 1866.
Chandler. Life of Zachary Chandler. By the Detroit Post and Tribune.
1880.
Chapman. Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln. By Ervin Chapman. 1917. The
Charleston Mercury.
Chase. Diary and Correspondence of Salmon Chase. Report, American
Historical Association, 1902, Vol. II.
Chittenden. Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration.
By L. Chittenden. 1891.
Coleman. Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his
Correspondence and Speeches. By Ann Mary Coleman. 2 vols. 1871.
Conway. Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel
Conway. 2 vols. 1904.
Correspondence. The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H.
Stephens, and Howell Cobb. Edited by U. B. Phillips. Report American
Historical Association, 1913, Vol. II.
Crawford. The Genesis of the Civil War. By Samuel Wylie Crawford. 1887.
C. W. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. 1863.
Dabney. Memoir of a Narrative Received from Colonel John B. Baldwin, of
Staunton, touching the Origin of the War. By Reverend R. L. Dabney, D.
D., Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 1. 1876.
Davis. Rise and Fail of the Confederate Government. By Jefferson Davis.
2 vols. 1881.
Dunning. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics.
By William A. Dunning. 1898.
Field. Life of David Dudley Field. By Henry M. Field. 1898.
Flower. Edwin McMasters Stanton. By Frank Abial Flower. 1902.
Fry. Military Miscellanies. By James B. Fry. 1889.
Galaxy. The History of Emancipation. By Gideon Welles. The Galaxy, XIV,
838-851.
Gilmore. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. By
James R. Gilmore. 1899.
Gilmore, Atlantic. A Suppressed Chapter of History. By James R. Gilmore,
Atlantic Monthly, April, 1887.
Globe. Congressional Globe, Containing the Debates and Proceedings.
1834-1873.
Godwin. Biography of William Cullen Bryant. By Parke Godwin.
1883. Gore. The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. By J. Rogers Gore. 1921.
Gorham. Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton. By George C.
Gorham. 2 vols. 1899.
Grant. Personal Memoirs. By Ulysses S. Grant. 2 vols. 1886.
Greeley. The American Conflict. By Horace Greeley. 2 vols. 1864-1867.
Gurowski. Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862. By Adam
Gurowski. 1862.
Hanks. Nancy Hanks. By Caroline Hanks Hitchcock. 1900.
Harris. Public Life of Zachary Chandler. By W. C. Harris, Michigan
Historical Commission. 1917.
Hart. Salmon Portland Chase. By Albert Bushnell Hart. 1899.
Hay MS. Diary of John Hay. The war period is covered by three volumes
of manuscript. Photostat copies in the library of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, accessible only by special permission.
Hay, Century. Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln. By John
Hay, Century Magazine, November, 1890.
The New York Herald.
Herndon. Herndon's Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life: The History
and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By W. H. Herndon and J.
W. Weik. 3 vols. (paged continuously). 1890.
Hill. Lincoln the Lawyer. By Frederick Trevers Hill 1906.
Hitchcock. Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan
Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. Edited by W. Croffut. 1909.
Johnson. Stephen A. Douglas. By Allen Johnson. 1908.
The Journal of the Virginia Convention. 1861.
Julian. Political Recollections 1840-1872. By George W. Julian. 1884.
Kelley. Lincoln and Stanton. By W. D. Kelley. 1885.
Lamon. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward H. Lamon. 1872.
Letters. Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln. Now first brought
together by Gilbert A. Tracy. 1917.
Lieber. Life and Letters of Francis Lieber. Edited by Thomas S. Perry,
1882.
Lincoln. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by John G. Nicolay
and John Hay. 2 vols. New and enlarged edition. 12 volumes. 1905. (All
references here are to the Colter edition.)
McCarthy. Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction. By Charles M. McCarthy,
1901.
McClure. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times. By A. K. McClure. 1892.
Merriam. Life and Times of Samuel Bowles. By G. S. Merriam. 2 vols.
1885.
Munford. Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession. By Beverley
B. Munford. 1910.
Moore. A Digest of International Law. By John Bassett Moore. 8 vols.
1906.
Newton. Lincoln and Herndon. By Joseph Fort Newton. 1910.
Nicolay. A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln. By John G. Nicolay. 1902.
Nicolay, Cambridge. The Cambridge Modern History: Volume VII.
The United States. By various authors. 1903.
Miss Nicolay. Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln. By Helen Nicolay.
1912.
N. and H. Abraham Lincoln: A History. By John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
10 vols. 1890.
N. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. First
series. 27 vols. 1895-1917.
O. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols.
1880-1901.
Outbreak. The Outbreak of the Rebellion. By John G. Nicolay. 1881.
Own Story. McClellan's Own Story. By George B. McClellan. 1887.
Paternity. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazer Barton.
1920.
Pearson. Life of John A. Andrew. By Henry G. Pearson. 2 vols. 1904.
Pierce. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. By Edward Lillie Pierce.
4 vols. 1877-1893.
Porter. In Memory of General Charles P. Stone. By Fitz John Porter.
1887.
Public Man. Diary of a Public Man. Anonymous. North American Review.
1879.
Rankin. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Henry B. Rankin.
1916.
Raymond. Journal of Henry J. Raymond. Edited by Henry W. Raymond.
Scribner's Magazine. 1879-1880.
Recollections. Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward Hill Lamon.
1911.
Reminiscences. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished
Men of his Time. Edited by Allen Thorndyke Rice. 1886.
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, first session,
Thirty-Ninth Congress.
Rhodes. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. By
James Ford Rhodes. 8 vols. 1893-1920.
Riddle. Recollections of War Times. By A. G. Riddle. 1895.
Schrugham. The Peaceful Americans of 1860. By Mary Schrugham. 1922.
Schure. Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schure.
Selected and edited by Frederick Bancroft. 1913.
Scott. Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott, LL.D. Written by himself.
2 vols. 1864.
Seward. Works of William H. Seward. 5 vols. 1884.
Sherman. Memoirs of William T. Sherman. By himself. 2 vols. 1886.
Sherman Letters.
Letters of John Sherman and W. T. Sherman. Edited by Rachel Sherman
Thorndike. 1894.
Southern Historical Society Papers.
Stephens. Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. By
Alexander H. Stephens. 2 vols. 1869-1870.
Stoddard. Inside the White House in War Times. By William O. Stoddard.
1890.
Stories. "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories. With introduction and
anecdotes by Colonel Alexander McClure. 1901.
The New York Sun.
Swinton. Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. By William Swinton. 1866.
Tarbell. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ida M. Tarbell. New edition. 2
vols. 1917.
Thayer. The Life and Letters of John Hay. By William Roscoe Thayer. 2
vols. 1915.
The New York Times.
The New York Tribune.
Tyler. Letters and Times of the Tylers. By Lyon G. Tyler. 3 vols.
1884-1896.
Van Santvoord. A Reception by President Lincoln. By C. J. Van Santvoord.
Century Magazine, Feb., 1883.
Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard. 2 vols. 1902.
Wade. Life of Benjamin F. Wade. By A. G. Riddle. 1886.
Warden. Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon
Portland Chase. By R. B. Warden. 1874.
Welles. Diary of Gideon Welles. Edited by J. T. Morse, Jr. 3 vols. 1911.
White. Life of Lyman Trumbull. By Horace White. 1913.
Woodburn. The Life of Thaddeus Stevens. By James Albert Woodburn. 1913.
NOTES
I. THE CHILD OF THE FOREST.
1. Herndon, 1-7, 11-14; 1, anon, 13; N. and H., 1, 23-27. This is the
version of his origin accepted by Lincoln. He believed that his mother
was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia planter and traced to that
doubtful source "all the qualities that distinguished him from other
members" of his immediate family. Herndon, 3. His secretaries are silent
upon the subject. Recently the story has been challenged. Mrs. Caroline
Hanks Hitchcock, who identifies the Hanks family of Kentucky with a lost
branch of a New England family, has collected evidence which tends
to show that Nancy was the legitimate daughter of a certain Joseph H.
Hanks, who was father of Joseph the carpenter, and that Nancy was not
the niece but the younger sister of the "uncle" who figures in the
older version, the man with whom Thomas Lincoln worked. Nancy and Thomas
appear to have been cousins through their mothers. Mrs. Hitchcock argues
the case with care and ability in a little book entitled Nancy Hanks.
However, she is not altogether sustained by W. E. Barton, The Paternity
of Abraham Lincoln.
Scandal has busied itself with the parents of Lincoln in another way. It
has been widely asserted that he was himself illegitimate. A variety of
shameful paternities have been assigned to him, some palpably absurd.
The chief argument of the lovers of this scandal was once the lack of
a known record of the marriage of his parents. Around this fact grew
up the story of a marriage of concealment with Thomas Lincoln as the
easy-going accomplice. The discovery of the marriage record fixing the
date and demonstrating that Abraham must have been the second child gave
this scandal its quietus. N. and H., 1, 23-24; Hanks, 59-67; Herndon,
5-6; Lincoln and Herndon, 321. The last important book on the subject is
Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.
2. N. and H., 1-13.
3. Lamon, 13; N. and H., 1, 25.
4. N. and H., 1, 25.
5. Gore, 221-225.
6. Herndon, 15.
7. Gore, 66, 70-74, 79, 83-84, 116, 151-154, 204, 226-230, for all this
group of anecdotes.
The evidence with regard to all the early part of Lincoln's life is
peculiar in this, that it is reminiscence not written down until the
subject had become famous. Dogmatic certainty with regard to the
details is scarcely possible. The best one can do in weighing any of the
versions of his early days is to inquire closely as to whether all its
parts bang naturally together, whether they really cohere. There is a
body of anecdotes told by an old mountaineer, Austin Gollaher, who knew
Lincoln as a boy, and these have been collected and recently put into
print. Of course, they are not "documented" evidence. Some students are
for brushing them aside. But there is one important argument in their
favor. They are coherent; the boy they describe is a real person and his
personality is sustained. If he is a fiction and not a memory, the old
mountaineer was a literary artist--far more the artist than one finds it
easy to believe.
8. Gore, 84-95; Lamon, 16; Herndon, 16.
9. Gore, 181-182, 296, 303-316; Lamon, 19-20; N. and H., I, 28-29.
II. THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH.
1. N. and H., I, 32-34.
2. Lamon, 33-38, 51-52, 61-63; N. and H., 1, 34-36.
3. N. and H., 1, 40.
4. Lamon, 38, 40, 55.
5. Reminiscences, 54, 428.
III. A VILLAGE LEADER.
1. N. and H., 1, 45-46, 70-72; Herndon, 67, 69, 72.
2. Lamon, 81-82; Herndon, 75-76.
3. Lincoln, 1, 1-9.
4. Lamon, 125-126; Herndon, 104.
5. Herndon, 117-118.
6. N. and H., 1, 109.
7. Stories, 94.
8. Herndon, 118-123.
9. Lamon, 159-164; Herndon, 128-138; Rankin, 61-95.
10. Lamon, 164.
11. Lamon, 164-165; Rankin, 95.
IV. REVELATIONS.
1. Riddle, 337.
2. Herndon, 436.
3. N. and H., I, 138.
4. Lincoln, I, 51-52.
5. McClure, 65.
6. Herndon, 184.185.
7. Anon, 172-183; Herndon, 143-150, 161; Lincoln, 1, 87-92.
8. Gossip has preserved a melodramatic tale with regard to Lincoln's
marriage. It describes the bride to be, waiting, arrayed, in tense
expectation deepening into alarm; the guests assembled, wondering,
while the hour appointed passes by and the ceremony does not begin; the
failure of the prospective bridegroom to appear; the scattering of the
company, amazed, their tongues wagging. The explanation offered is an
attack of insanity. Herndon, 215; I,anon, 239-242. As might be expected
Lincoln's secretaries who see him always in a halo give no hint of such
an event. It has become a controversial scandal. Is it a fact or a myth?
Miss Tarbell made herself the champion of the mythical explanation and
collected a great deal of evidence that makes it hard to accept the
story as a fact Tarbell, I, Chap. XI. Still later a very sane memoirist,
Henry B. Rankin, who knew Lincoln, and is not at all an apologist, takes
the same view. His most effective argument is that such an event could
not have occurred in the little country town of Springfield without
becoming at the time the common property of all the gossips. The
evidence is bewildering. I find myself unable to accept the disappointed
wedding guests as established facts, even though the latest student of
Herndon has no doubts. Lincoln and Herndon, 321-322. But whether the
broken marriage story is true or false there is no doubt that Lincoln
passed through a desolating inward experience about "the fatal first
of January"; that it was related to the breaking of his engagement; and
that for a time his sufferings were intense. The letters to Speed are
the sufficient evidence. Lincoln, I, 175; 182-189; 210-219; 240; 261;
267-269. The prompt explanation of insanity may be cast aside, one
of those foolish delusions of shallow people to whom all abnormal
conditions are of the same nature as all others. Lincoln wrote to a
noted Western physician, Doctor Drake of Cincinnati, with regard to his
"case"--that is, his nervous breakdown--and Doctor Drake replied but
refused to prescribe without an interview. Lamon, 244.
V. PROSPERITY.
1. Carpenter, 304-305.
2. Lamon, 243, 252-269; Herndon, 226-243, 248-251; N. and H., 201,
203-12.
3. A great many recollections of Lincoln attempt to describe him. Except
in a large and general way most of them show that lack of definite
visualization which characterizes the memories of the careless observer.
His height, his bony figure, his awkwardness, the rudely chiseled
features, the mystery in his eyes, the kindliness of his expression,
these are the elements of the popular portrait. Now and then a closer
observer has added a detail. Witness the masterly comment of Walt
Whitman. Herndon's account of Lincoln speaking has the earmarks of
accuracy. The attempt by the portrait painter, Carpenter, to render
him in words is quoted later in this volume. Carpenter, 217-218.
Unfortunately he was never painted by an artist of great originality,
by one who was equal to his opportunity. My authority for the texture of
his skin is a lady of unusual closeness of observation, the late Mrs.
M. T. W. Curwen of Cincinnati, who saw him in 1861 in the private car of
the president of the Indianapolis and Cincinnati railroad. An exhaustive
study of the portraits of Lincoln is in preparation by Mr. Winfred
Porter Truesdell, who has a valuable paper on the subject in The Print
Connoisseur, for March, 1921.
4. Herndon, 264.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 515.
7. A vital question to the biographer of Lincoln is the credibility of
Herndon. He has been accused of capitalizing his relation with Lincoln
and producing a sensational image for commercial purposes. Though his
Life did not appear until 1890 when the official work of Nicolay and Hay
was in print, he had been lecturing and corresponding upon Lincoln for
nearly twenty-five years. The "sensational" first edition of his Life
produced a storm of protest. The book was promptly recalled, worked
over, toned down, and reissued "expurgated" in 1892.