USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Washington : the capital city and its part in the history of the nation > Part 13
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Early's dash upon Washington happily thwarted of its purpose, the attention of the public was again divided between the larger fortunes of the armies in the field and the prog- ress of what has been justly termed the most anxious campaign for President in the history of the republic. Though the ensuing election re- sulted in the easy choice of Lincoln for a second term, in the winter and spring of 1864 it looked, to those who watched the politicians only, that it would be difficult for him to obtain the re-
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nomination, which he did not hesitate to say that he desired. His unswerving refusal to use emancipation except as a military measure had given deep offence to the radical wing of his party, and the opposition thus engendered found expression in a convention of the disaffected ones, which met in Cleveland on the last day of May and by acclamation nominated Fremont for the Presidency. However, those who saw danger in the Fremont movement over-estimated the extent of the discontent with Lincoln. The President, as the sequel proved, held in fuller measure than any other man the confidence of the people of the North. They understood and trusted him, and, reading aright his own homely argument against swapping horses while cross- ing a stream, believed that he should be given the opportunity to finish the task he had taken in hand. Thus, when the Republican convention met in Baltimore on June 7 it was a foregone conclusion that it would nominate Lincoln; and it did so on the first ballot.
L'et for a time all signs pointed to its candi- date as the leader of a forlorn hope, for the Baltimore convention was held on the eve of the darkest period of the war. The loyal North,
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which had seen, in Grant's steady beating back of Lee towards Richmond, an early and tri- umphant peace, had now to face the costly re- pulse at Cold Harbor and the as yet barren siege of Petersburg, while Sherman, after con- tinuous fighting all the way from Nashville to Atlanta, appeared unable to drive Johnston and his army from the latter city. It also came out that the Army of the Potomac in its march from the Rapidan to the James had lost upward of fifty thousand men; and a visit to the lines in front of Petersburg convinced Lincoln that if the Confederacy was to be successfully throt- tled there must be a fresh outpouring of men and money. Though his friends urged that another draft might prove fatal to his chances, the President did not hesitate in the face of this new emergency. " We must lose nothing, even if I am defeated," said he. "I am quite willing the people should understand the issue. My re-election will mean that the rebellion is to be crushed by force of arms."
On July 18 he called for half a million volun- teers for one, two, and three years, and about the same time another great loan was placed upon the market. The country greeted both
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demands with anger and discontent, mingled with desponding grief at the added and seem- ingly fruitless sacrifices it was called upon to make. All its indignation and despair centred for the moment on Lincoln, who was denounced as a military dictator, and as a tyrant so blood- thirsty that he refused any means but force to secure peace with the Confederates. There was talk among Republicans of replacing him by another candidate, and the President himself became convinced that he would be defeated. " This morning," he wrote on August 23, in a private memorandum, "it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be elected." The same belief inspired the Demo- cratic convention, which, when it met six days later at Chicago, selected McClellan as its can- didate for President, and adopted a platform that declared the war a failure and that peace must be sought in a convention of Federals and Confederates.
The Democrats erred fatally, however, in ac- cepting the despair of the country as a sign that peace would be welcome even at the cost of the Union, and their candidate could not repair their error, though in his letter of acceptance
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he practically repudiated the party platform. Moreover, the aspect of the contest was speedily changed by brilliant and decisive victories in the field. Sherman captured Atlanta and Farragut took Mobile Bay, while Sheridan drove Early in headlong flight from the Shenandoah Val- ley. "Sherman and Farragut," said Seward, " have knocked the bottom out of the Chicago nominations ;" and the result confirmed this prophecy. Thereafter the tide of popular favor again set steadily towards Lincoln; Fremont retired from the contest before the end of Sep- tember, and McClellan came out of the election the worst defeated candidate in our history, getting only twenty-one electoral votes to two hundred and twelve secured by Lincoln, who carried every State that took part in the elec- tion except New Jersey, Delaware, and Ken- tucky. The people of the North by the first election of Lincoln had declared their antago- nism to slavery. Despite burdensome taxation, weariness of war, and mourning in every house- hold, they decided on the election day of 1864 to finish the work they had begun.
Lincoln's formal inauguration for his second Presidential term took place on March 4, 1865. II .- 18
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It was a sombre and drizzly day, but the weather did not prevent a vast multitude from witness- ing the ceremonies on the east portico of the Capitol. Just as Lincoln, tall and gaunt among the group about him, advanced to begin his inaugural address the sun emerged from be- hind obscuring clouds, and for a time flooded the spectacle with glory and with light. The address was received in profound silence, and there were moist eyes and tearful cheeks in the listening throng when the President, in closing, pronounced the noble words, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firm- ness 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 widows and his orphans; to do all which may achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." After the cheers which greeted this conclusion had died away, the oath was administered by the chief justice. Then a salvo of artillery burst upon the air, and the President, having made his way to his carriage, was escorted back to the White House by a great procession. There was
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the usual reception at the White House that evening, and, later on, the traditional inaugu- ration ball. " But chiefly memorable in the mind of those who saw that second inaugura- tion," writes Noah Brooks, "must still remain the tall, pathetic, melancholy figure of the man who, then inducted into office in the midst of the glad acclaim of thousands of people, and illumined by the deceptive brilliance of a March sunburst, was already standing in the shadow of death."
The oath of office at Lincoln's second inaugu- ration was administered by Chief Justice Chase, whose appointment to succeed Roger B. Taney was one of the memorable events of the war period. It was also a signal proof of Lin- coln's wisdom and magnanimity. Chase entered the Cabinet in 1861 regarding Lincoln as an inferior mind. This mistaken belief he cher- ished to the end, and, thoughi as Secretary of the Treasury he materially assisted in solving the appalling political problem which was pre- sented in the early days of the war, his failure to see beneath the surface prevented him from ever justly estimating the ability and statesman- ship of Lincoln. Add to this Chase's natural
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growth of confidence in his own powers, his increasing ambition to lead, and his disposition to press his opinions on others, and there is no cause to wonder that the Secretary and his chief drifted apart. This tendency culminated when the radical element became hostile to the candidacy of Lincoln for a second term, and turned to Chase for a successor. Thenceforward they were political rivals in fact, whatever ef- forts might be made to smooth their current relations. Lincoln's greater suavity and real kindliness of heart made the situation easier for him; but Chase was too vehement to maintain his self-control, especially when his own State promptly declared for the renomination of the President. His pride and self-esteem met a rebuff which could not fail to humiliate and irritate. From that time matters ran on rapidly towards a separation. Late in June, 1864, Chase tendered his resignation, and it was accepted by the President, who appointed William Pitt Fessenden to succeed him.
Chief Justice Taney died in the following October, and the friends of Chase at once claimed that the place thus vacated belonged to him. Hostility to his appointment, on the
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other hand, was immediately manifested in every section of the Union, the most emphatic protests coming from his own State of Ohio. A majority of the leading Republicans of that State resented the suggestion that Chase should become chief justice, nor did they hesitate to declare that it was an insult to Lincoln himself to ask him to appoint Chase. To these repre- sentations Lincoln made no reply, and he com- municated his intention to no one, but on the 6th of December he nominated Chase to the Senate for chief justice. The nomination, which the President had written out in full with his own hand, was confirmed without reference to a committee. There is little doubt that Lincoln intended from the first to appoint Chase, but elected to keep silent until he was ready to act. The whole incident was in keeping with the noblest attributes of Lincoln's character. Any other President would not have appointed Chase, whose personal affronts had been continuous and flagrant. "Lincoln," to quote Colonel Mc- Clure, " appointed him not because he desired Chase for chief justice so much as because he feared that, in refusing to appoint him, he might permit personal prejudice to do injustice to the
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nation." Four other appointments to the Su- preme Court were made by Lincoln,-Noah H. Swayne, of Ohio, Samuel F. Miller, of Iowa, David Davis, of Illinois, and Stephen J. Field, of California.
A few weeks before Lincoln's second inaugu- ration Congress gave legal effect to his Eman- cipation Proclamation by the passage of an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the length and breadth of the land. Almost immediately afterwards came the end of the war. Sherman had left Atlanta in November to begin his march through Geor- gia and the Carolinas, and in the following month Thomas met and annihilated Hood's army at Nashville. Meantime, Grant, assisted by Sheridan, was drawing the net closer about Lee, forcing him the while to weaken himself by desperate efforts to keep open his lines of supply to the South. April 2, Lee withdrew from Richmond, which was no longer tenable, and sought to effect a junction with Johnston, whom Sherman had driven before him into North Carolina; but everywhere he was cut off and outnumbered, and on April 9 he surren- dered to Grant at Appomattox.
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News of the fall of Petersburg and Richmond reached Washington in the forenoon of April 3, and spread like wildfire through the city, which was speedily ablaze with excitement. Everybody who had a piece of bunting flung it to the breeze, while a salute of eight hundred guns, ordered by the Secretary of War, rose above the shouts and hurrahs of the joyful, laughing crowds which filled the streets. De- partments and business places closed for the day; impromptu parades marched through the streets arm in arm, and bands of music boomed and blared from every public place, while of speech-making and speech-makers there seemed an unlimited supply. Indeed, " wherever a man was found who could make a speech," writes an eye-witness, "or who thought he could make a speech, there a speech was made; and a great many men who had never before made one found themselves thrust upon a crowd of enthusiastic sovereigns who demanded of them something by way of jubilant oratory." The citizen who drowns his joy in the flowing bowl was also
prompt to make his presence known. " Thou- sands besieged the drinking-saloons, champagne popped everywhere, and a more liquorish crowd
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was never seen in Washington. Many a man of years of habitual sobriety seemed to think it a patriotic duty to 'get full' on that eventful night, and to advertise the fact of fulness as widely as possible. One big, sedate Vermonter, chief of an executive bureau, stood long on the corner of F and Fourteenth Streets, with owlish gravity giving away fifty-cent 'shin- plasters' to every colored person who came past him, brokenly saying with each gift, ‘Babylon has fallen!'" Nor did the jubilation cease until the following night, when all the public build- ings and a great proportion of private resi- dences and business houses were alight with fire- works and illuminations of every description.
Greater things, however, were yet to come, for in the early morning of April 10 a salute of five hundred guns brought the residents of the capi- tal from their beds and into the streets to learn that Lee had surrendered to Grant, and that the Army of Northern Virginia had at last laid down its arms. Again, though it was a rainy morning and the streets were thick with mud, there was marching, cheering, singing, and specch-making without end. All day long laughing, joyous crowds filled the streets, and
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repeated the scenes enacted after the fall of Richmond. The following night the city was again illuminated, and the President addressed a throng which completely filled the semicir- cular avenue in front of the White House. It was the last speech of his life, and never did hie deliver a more impressive one. It dealt chiefly with the future and with the new prob- lems that had come with the close of the war, -problems demanding the highest statesman- ship, the greatest wisdom, and the firmest gen- erosity. Mayhap, it was not the sort of speech that had been expected by the silent, reverent multitude, stretching far out into the darkness, but those who heard it and who still live can boast no more fondly cherished recollection than of that historic moment and the tender sympathy of the words which fell from the lips of the speaker. It was a great leader's part- ing message to his people. When those grouped about him gazed again upon Lincoln's face he had become the gentlest memory in our history.
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CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN'S DEATH AND AFTER
INCOLN'S death had been often threat- ened during his four years in the Presi- dency, and at least one attempt had been made to carry these threats into execution. That was in August, 1864, when he was fired upon from ambush while riding, late at night and unat- tended, from the White House to his summer cottage at the Soldiers' Home. But on April 14, 1865, his friends felt that they no longer need fear for his safety. The war was ended, and the most helpful friend of the vanquished South was the wise and generous man who was already taking thought as to how he could most speedily heal its wounds.
For days Lincoln had carried about with him a lighter heart and a more cheerful countenance than had been his during the four years of weary, wearing strife, and never had he seemed to his intimates more cheerful and serenely joy- ful than on the sunny morning of that 14th of April. He laughed and chatted with the family
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party which met at the White House break- fast, and he lingered at table to receive from his son Robert an account of the closing scenes of the Virginia campaign, in which the younger Lincoln had served as aide-de-camp on Grant's staff. Later in the morning there was a meeting of the Cabinet, mainly devoted to a discussion of Sherman's movements against Johnston and the return of the revolted States to their old relations. The President's talk was all of clem- ency towards the Southern people and their leaders. "He hoped," writes Secretary Welles, " that there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need ex- pect he would take any part in hanging or kill- ing 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."
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The same spirit was again evidenced by the President before the end of the day. To Assist- ant Secretary Dana at the War Department came a telegram from the provost-marshal in Port- land, Maine, saying, “ I have positive informa- tion that Jacob Thompson will pass through Portland to-night in order to take a steamer for England. What are your orders?" Thomp- son, a whilom member of Buchanan's Cabinet, was a conspicuous Confederate, and for some time had been employed in Canada as a semi- diplomatic agent of that government. Dana took the telegram to Stanton. His order was prompt : "Arrest him! But," he added, "first see the President." All business was over at the White House, and Dana found no one in the President's office, but as he was turning to go out, Lincoln called to him from a little side room, where he was washing his hands. " Halloo, Dana," said he. "What is it? What's up?" Dana read him the telegram. " What does Stanton say?" he asked. "He says arrest him, but that I should refer the question to you," was the answer. " Well," said Lincoln, slowly, wiping his hands; "no, I rather think not. When you have an elephant by the hind
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leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run." n." Thompson was not arrested.
Late in the afternoon the President set out for his daily drive accompanied only by his wife. Long afterwards Mrs. Lincoln repeated to Isaac N. Arnold her husband's words that day. "Mary," said he, "we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God's blessing 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 term we will try and save up more, but we shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois, and I will open a law office at Spring- field or Chicago, and practise law, and at least do enough to give us a livelihood." It was late in the afternoon when the President and his wife returned from their drive, and the former went up to his office to receive a group of old friends from Illinois. He chatted with his callers until a peremptory summons to dinner compelled him to reluctantly dismiss them, with the explanation that a theatre-party had been made up by Mrs. Lincoln for that evening-
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General and Mrs. Grant being her guests-to see Laura Keene, at Ford's Theatre, in "Our American Cousin."
Fraught no less with tragic interest were the movements on that fateful day of another resi- dent of Washington. This was John Wilkes Booth, the actor, who was lodged at the Na- tional Hotel. Booth was then twenty-six years old, a man of striking presence, handsome face, and winning manners, who as an actor gave promise of being the equal, if not the superior, of his father and elder brother. Yet withal he was of a wayward, untoward disposition, verg- ing often upon madness, and given to violent excesses of every kind. He was the only mem- ber of his family who espoused the Southern cause, but he served it with all the ardor of his passionate, eccentric nature, and during the previous month, as it came out afterwards, had been the master-spirit in a plot to kidnap the President, either at one of the theatres or in the highways of the District, and convey him through southern Maryland to the lower Po- tomac, and then across into Virginia and the Confederate lines. Booth's associates in this conspiracy were David E. Herold, a Washington
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drug-clerk; George Atzerot, a German coach- painter of little intelligence and less morality ; John H. Surratt, a member of the Confederate secret service resident in Washington; and three ex-Confederate soldiers,-Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin, and Lewis Payne.
The plot failed, through no fault of its origi- nators, and late in March the conspirators sepa- rated, Surratt, Arnold, and O'Laughlin leaving Washington. Booth and the others, however, lingered at the capital, and at mid-day of April 14 the former appeared at Ford's Theatre, where he was informed that the President and General Grant were to attend the play that even- ing. An insane impulse to kill Lincoln had, doubtless, found a lodging in his thoughts through the failure of his abduction plot, and this now took instant and definite shape in the face of the opportunity chance held out to him. He grew thoughtful and abstracted, and soon left the theatre. During the afternoon he sought and found Atzerot and Payne and made an ap- pointment with them for a later hour. Then he effected a meeting with Herold, whom he wanted as a guide in the flight which must follow his attempt upon the President's life. After that he
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returned to the theatre, and having unquestioned entrance to every corner, made provision against interruption while in the President's box by pre- paring a large wooden bar to fit in the corner of the wall and the panel of the door, in which a small peep-hole was bored in order that, before entering, he might the better take in the relative position of the occupants. He must also have noted that unusual preparations had been made to receive the Presidential party. The parti- tion between the two upper boxes at the left of the stage had been removed, comfortable upholstered chairs put in, and the front draped with flags. Early in the evening Booth had his appointed interview with Payne and Atze- rot, who, it was arranged, should attempt the lives of Secretary Seward and Vice-President Johnson at the same time that their leader struck down the President and General Grant, for such was the sinister scope the actor's plans had assumed with the flight of the hours. Be- tween eight and nine o'clock he reappeared at the theatre, having first committed the horse he had procured for his flight to the care of a boy stationed in an alley at the rear of the building.
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The theatre was already crowded with a cu- rious, eager throng, for it had been announced in the afternoon papers that the " President and his Lady" and the "Hero of Appomattox" would attend Miss Keene's benefit that evening. The Presidential party was tardy in its arrival, and when it came it was made up differently from what had been expected: Mrs. Lincoln had received word upon returning from her afternoon drive that General and Mrs. Grant had decided to go North that night; and two young friends, the daughter of Senator Ira Harris and his step-son, Major Rathbone, had been invited to take their place. Though the party did not leave the White House until after eight o'clock, there was a corresponding delay in the rise of the curtain, and the first act had but fairly begun when a loud outburst of "Hail to the Chief" by the orchestra announced its entrance. The audience rose, and there were cheers and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs as the President, bowing and smiling, made his way along the gallery behind the seats of the dress-circle, and, with his wife and friends, passed through the narrow entrance into the box. The new-comers, still bowing and smiling 11 .- 19
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to the enthusiastic crowd below, seated them- selves, the President in a large arm-chair at the left of the box with Mrs. Lincoln beside him, and then the actors on the stage, who had stood silent the while, went on with the play.
They had reached the second scene of the third act when Booth, who was a privileged person to the attendants of the theatre, passed unnoticed and unchecked behind the seats of the dress-circle and approached the entrance to the Presidential box. Halting behind a pile of loose chairs in the aisle, he drew a visiting-card from his pocket and handed it to the messenger at the door, saying he knew the President. A moment later he was in the passage behind the box, and, having closed the door, barred it in- side with the large wooden stick he had provided for the purpose: This done he opened and en- tered the door leading from the passage to the box. He carried a Derringer pistol in his right hand, and moved so cautiously that no one heard him. The President was sitting with bowed head intent upon the play. Booth crept up within a foot of his chair, took aim at his head, and fired. The report of the shot rang
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