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 Washington 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:
"Received your despatch; went to Richmond, and returned this morning!"
Expostulated with by Speaker Colfax on the apparent rashness, for he
had completed "the foolhardy act" by occupying President Jefferson
Davis' vacated house, he replied with the calm of a man of destiny:
"I should have been alarmed myself if any other person had been
President and gone there; but _I_ did not feel in any danger whatever."
(NOTE.--Mark the analogy in great men. General Grant says of his first
emotions in war--the Mexican--"If some one else had been colonel, and I
had been lieutenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt any
trepidation.")
* * * * *