WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE
General Grant fired a salute in honor of the Atlanta victory with
shotted guns from every battery on his siege lines of thirty-seven miles
before Richmond and Petersburg. To Sherman he sent a remarkable
message--the kind which great men know how to pen:
"You have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any
General in this war, with a skill and ability which will be acknowledged
in history as unsurpassed if not unequaled."
From the depths of despair the North swung to the wildest enthusiasm and
in the election which followed Abraham Lincoln was swept into power
again on a tidal wave. He received in round numbers two million five
hundred thousand votes, McClellan two millions. His majority by States
in the electoral college was overwhelming--two hundred and twelve to his
opponent's twenty-one.
The closing words of his second Inaugural rang clear and quivering with
emotion over the vast crowd:
"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."
As the last echo died away among the marble pillars above, the sun burst
through the clouds and flooded the scene. A mighty cheer swept the
throng and the guns boomed their second salute. The war was closing in
lasting peace and the sun shining on the finished dome of the Capitol of
a new nation.
Betty Winter, leaning on John Vaughan's arm, was among the first to
grasp his big, outstretched hand:
"A glorious day for us, sir," she cried, "a proud one for you!"
With a far-away look the President slowly answered:
"And all that I am in this world, Miss Betty, I owe to a woman--my angel
mother--blessings on her memory!"
"I trust her spirit heard that beautiful speech," the girl responded
tenderly.
She paused, looked up at John, blushed and added:
"We are to be married next week, Mr. President----"
"Is it so?" he said joyfully. "I wish I could be there, my children--but
I'm afraid 'Old Grizzly' might bite me. So I'll say it now--God bless
you!"
He took their hands in his and pressed them heartily. His eyes suddenly
rested on a shining black face grinning behind John Vaughan.
"My, my, can this be Julius Cæsar Thornton?" he laughed.
"Yassah," the black man grinned. "Hit's me--ole reliable, sah, right
here--I'se gwine ter cook fur 'em!"
* * * * *
From the moment of Abraham Lincoln's election the end of the war with a
restored Union was a foregone conclusion.
In the fall of Atlanta the heart of the Confederacy was pierced, and it
ceased to beat. Lee's army, cut off from their supplies, slowly but
surely began to starve behind their impregnable breastworks. Sherman's
march to the sea and through the Carolinas was merely a torchlight
parade. The fighting was done.
When Lee's emaciated men, living on a handful of parched corn a day,
staggered out of their trenches in the spring and tried to join
Johnston's army they marched a few miles to Appomattox, dropping from
exhaustion, and surrendered.
When the news of this tremendous event reached Washington, the Cabinet
was in session. Led by the President, in silence and tears, they fell on
their knees in a prayer of solemn thanks to Almighty God.
General Grant won the gratitude of the South by his generous treatment
of Lee and his ragged men. He had received instructions from the loving
heart in the White House.
Long before the surrender in April, 1865, the end was sure. The
President knowing this, proposed to his Cabinet to give the South four
hundred millions of dollars, the cost of the war for a hundred days, in
payment for their slaves, if they would lay down their arms at once. His
ministers unanimously voted against his offer and he sadly withdrew it.
Among all his councillors there was not one whose soul was big enough to
understand the far-seeing wisdom of his generous plan. He would heal at
once one of the Nation's ugliest wounds by soothing the bitterness of
defeat. He knew that despair would send the older men of the South to
their graves.
Edmund Ruffin, who had fired the first shot against Sumter and returned
to his Virginia farm when his State seceded, was a type of these ruined,
desperate men. On the day that Lee surrendered he placed the muzzle of
his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger with his foot, and blew his own
head into fragments.
When Senator Winter demanded proscription and vengeance against the
leaders of the Confederacy, the President shook his head:
"No--let down the bars--let them all go--scare them off!"
He threw up his big hands in a vivid gesture as if he were shooing a
flock of troublesome sheep out of his garden.
"Triumphant now, you will receive our enemies with open arms?" the
Senator sneered.
"Enemies? There are no such things. The Southern States have never
really been out of the Union. Their Acts of Secession were null and
void. They know now that the issue is forever settled. The restored
Union will be a real one. The Southern people at heart are law-abiding.
It was their reverence for the letter of the old law which led them to
ignore progress and claim the right to secede under the Constitution.
They will be true to Lee's pledge of surrender. I'm going to trust them
as my brethren. Let us fold up our banners now and smelt the guns--Love
rules--let her mightier purpose run!"
So big and generous, so broad and statesmanlike was his spirit that in
this hour of victory his personality became in a day the soul of the New
Republic. The South had already unconsciously grown to respect the man
who had loved yet fought her for what he believed to be her highest
good.
He was entering now a new phase of power. His influence over the people
was supreme. No man or set of men in Congress, or outside of it, could
defeat his policies. Even through the years of stunning defeats and
measureless despair his enemies had never successfully opposed a measure
on which he had set his heart.
His first great work accomplished in destroying slavery and restoring
the Union, there remained but two tasks on which his soul was set--to
heal the bitterness of the war and remove the negro race from physical
contact with the white.
He at once addressed himself to this work with enthusiasm. That he could
do it he never doubted for a moment.
His first care was to remove the negro soldiers from the country as
quickly as possible. He summoned General Butler and set him to work on
his scheme to use these one hundred and eighty thousand black troops to
dig the Panama Canal. He summoned Bradley, the Vermont contractor, and
put him to work on estimates for moving the negroes by ship to Africa or
by train to an undeveloped Western Territory.
His prophetic soul had pierced the future and seen with remorseless
logic that two such races as the Negro and Caucasian could not live side
by side in a free democracy. The Radical theorists of Congress were
demanding that these black men, emerging from four thousand years of
slavery and savagery should receive the ballot and the right to claim
the white man's daughter in marriage. They could only pass these
measures over the dead body of Abraham Lincoln.
The assassin came at last--a vain, foolish dreamer who had long breathed
the poisoned air of hatred. It needed but the flash of this madman's
pistol on the night of the 14th of April to reveal the grandeur of
Lincoln's character, the marvel of his patience and his wisdom.
The curtains of the box in Ford's theatre were softly drawn apart by an
unseen hand. The Angel of Death entered, paused at the sight of the
smile on his rugged, kindly face, touched the drooping shoulders, called
him to take the place he had won among earth's immortals and left to us
"the gentlest memory of our world."
THE END