The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln

by David Alan Johnson

  The ceremony went on all day long; the divisions came forward, surrendered their weapons and flags, and withdrew. Federal wagons came to collect everything during the intervals between the coming and going of the Confederate units. Once in a while, the contents of the cartridge boxes were found to be unserviceable, and the ammunition would be emptied into the street.

  Throughout the day, while the ceremony was taking place, General Chamberlain had the chance to speak with several Confederate generals. Most of them were completely taken by surprise concerning the generosity shown by both President Lincoln and General Grant. “You astonish us,” one of them said, “by your honorable and generous conduct. I fear we should not have done the same by you had the case been reversed.”11 “I will go home,” another Confederate officer said, “and tell Joe Johnston we can't fight such men as you. I will advise him to surrender.”

  But it was not all kind words and forgiveness and magnanimity. General Chamberlain spoke with another Confederate officer concerning the good will that the men on both sides had shown toward each other, and remarked that brave men might become good friends in spite of the war. The Confederate officer did not agree at all. “You are mistaken, sir,” he said. “You may forgive us, but we won't be forgiven. There is a rancor in our hearts…which you little dreamed of. We hate you, sir.”12

  General Chamberlain did his best to calm the officer, trying to make light conversation and mentioning that everyone would soon be going home. “Home!” the Confederate repeated with anger in his voice. “We haven't any. You have destroyed them. You have invaded Virginia, and ruined her. Her curse is on you.”13 Staff officers both in blue and gray who overheard the outburst thought it was comical and laughed at the display of bad temper. But the unhappy Confederate officer was not joking. Many thousands of Southerners were in full agreement with him.

  President Lincoln was well aware that not everyone shared his, and General Grant's, feeling of generosity concerning the South. Many throughout the North felt the same anger and bitterness toward their former enemy, and cursed the former Confederate states. The next four years looked to be a long battle with the Radical Republicans for the president, but Lincoln was not worried. He would deal with his opponents, in Congress and elsewhere, when the time came, and he was confident that he would be able to carry out his program for reconciliation and reunification during the coming four years.

  In North Carolina, General William Tecumseh Sherman was still in pursuit of General Joseph Johnston's army, and marched into Smithfield on Tuesday, April 11. Joe Johnston had already left Smithfield by the time General Sherman arrived. He was moving as quickly as he could toward Raleigh—he “retreated hastily,” according to Sherman—and had burned several bridges during his retreat.14 This left General Sherman with the job of rebuilding the destroyed bridges, which took up most of the day.

  That night, General Sherman received an urgent message from General Grant: General Lee had surrendered “his whole army” to him at Appomattox. He immediately announced the news to his troops in a special field order:

  [Special Field Orders, No. 54]

  HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI IN THE FIELD, SMITHFIELD, NORTH CAROLINA, April 12, 1865.

  The general commanding announces to the army that he has official notice from General Grant that General Lee surrendered to him his entire army, on the 9th inst., at Appomattox Court-House, Virginia.

  Glory to God and our country, and all honor to our comrades in arms, toward whom we are marching!

  A little more labor, a little more toil on our part, the great race is won, and our Government stands regenerated, after four long years of war.

  W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General commanding.15

  “Of course, this created a perfect furor of rejoicing,” General Sherman wrote, in a massive understatement. Men cheered and shouted and threw their hats in the air, just as General Grant's men had done at Appomattox three days earlier. Now that General Lee had surrendered, the question on everyone's mind concerned General Johnston and what he would do. General Sherman wondered, “would he surrender at Raleigh? Or would he allow his army to disperse into guerilla bands, to ‘die in the last ditch?’”16

  “I know well that Johnston's army could not be caught,” he said, “the men could escape us, disperse, and assemble again at some place agreed on, and thus the war might be prolonged indefinitely.”17 The general remembered what the president had said about the Confederate troops. Aboard the River Queen at City Point, President Lincoln had told Grant and Sherman that he wanted all surrendered troops “back at their homes, engaged in their civil pursuits.” A guerilla war was the last thing General Sherman wanted.

  That evening, part of his army had come in contact with the rear guard of Confederate troops under Wade Hampton as they moved toward Raleigh. General Sherman himself headed infantry units on a more southerly course, trying to prevent Joe Johnston from retreating southward and escaping to fight a guerilla war, the alternative both President Lincoln and himself hoped to avoid.

  The many warnings that President Lincoln had received regarding assassination attempts began to affect his sleep. During the second week of April, Lincoln told his friend Ward Lamon, his wife, and one or two others who were present, the details of a recent dream. It was a frightening dream; the president had kept the details to himself for a few days, but he wanted to talk about it because it was disturbing him. Because it had put him in such a grave and solemn mood, Mrs. Lincoln wanted to hear about the dream as much as her husband wanted to talk about it.

  Lincoln began by explaining that he had gone to bed fairly late on the night of the dream, which had been about ten days earlier, after waiting up for dispatches from the front. When he finally did go to bed, he had a disturbed sleep and began dreaming. In the dream that had distressed him so much, Lincoln heard “subdued sobs,” as though a number of people were crying.18 It seemed to him that he got out of bed and went downstairs, where he heard “the same pitiful sobbing,” but he could not see anyone sobbing. “I went from room to room; no living person was in sight.” But he kept hearing the same “mournful sounds of distress” everywhere he went. He kept on looking, trying to find out exactly what was taking place and why anyone should be sobbing and behaving so strangely, and finally found himself in the East Room.

  Inside the East Room, he saw a catafalque, along with a corpse “wrapped in funeral vestments” and with its face covered. Soldiers were stationed around the catafalque, acting as guards, and a crowd of people stood by, “weeping pitifully.” Lincoln asked one of the soldiers, “Who is dead in the White House?”

  “The President,” the soldier replied, “he was killed by an assassin.” This was followed by “a large burst of grief” from the crowd, which woke Lincoln from his dream. He was not able to sleep any more that night, and remained “strangely annoyed” by the dream ever since.

  Mrs. Lincoln was also frightened by the dream. “This is horrid!” she said. “I wish you had not told it.” She went on to say that she was glad that she did not believe in dreams, or else she would be living “in terror from this time forth.”

  “Well,” the president answered, “it is only a dream, Mary. Let us say no more about it and try to forget it.” But the dream had badly frightened President Lincoln. Ward Lamon noticed that Lincoln seemed to be “grave, gloomy, and at times visibly pale” because of his nightmare. He also remembered that the president quoted from Hamlet, “to sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub!” with an accent on the last three words.

  The story of President Lincoln's White House nightmare has been told many times, and has been included in a number of Lincoln biographies. It is worth retelling because it gives some insight into Abraham Lincoln's frame of mind during this point in time. He had his hopes and plans for the future of the country now that the war was nearly over, as well as his own ideas concerning reconstruction. But at the same time he also feared, and was even resigned to the possibility, that he wo
uld not live long enough to carry them out.

  President Lincoln was not in the best of spirits on this particular morning; he was in another one of his weary and sad moods. In an attempt to cheer himself up, he decided to go for a horseback ride through Washington. It was certainly a nice day for it; the weather was perfect. A ride might help, and it certainly could not hurt.

  On his way through town, the president happened to come across Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Maunsell B. Field, who was riding in a carriage along Fourteenth Street. Secretary Field recalled that he heard a “clatter” coming up from behind, and saw the president approaching on horseback, followed by “the usual cavalry escort.”1 President Lincoln drew alongside the carriage and carried on a casual conversation with Assistant Secretary Field. “I noticed that he was in one of those moods when ‘melancholy seemed to be dripping from him,’ and his eye had that expression of profound weariness and sadness which I never saw in other human eyes.” After talking for a while, Lincoln “put his spurs to his horse” and rode off with his escort.

  In spite of his melancholy mood, President Lincoln did accomplish some routine paperwork. He wrote three passes for travelers with business in Alabama and Virginia, and also approved a recommendation for the post of collector of Internal Revenue for a district in California. The most important business undertaken by the president was a meeting with Secretary of War Stanton and General U. S. Grant involving the reduction of the Union army. Because the meeting involved General Grant, it also turned out to be the most exciting business of the day.

  General Ulysses S. Grant was the man of the hour. The only man in the country, or at least in the North, more popular than General Grant was President Lincoln himself. When the public found out that the general and his wife were guests at the Willard, which was the most prestigious hotel in Washington, a crowd began to form outside the main entrance and eventually surrounded the entire building. In order for General Grant to leave the hotel to keep his appointment with the president, the manager had to send for the police. A police escort arrived shortly, and accompanied the general through the streets of Washington to the War Department. General Grant's entrance certainly livened up what otherwise would have been a mundane meeting with the president and Secretary Stanton, and may even have given Lincoln a lift out of his doldrums.

  The subject of the meeting would also have been encouraging for President Lincoln; it involved preparations for the final winding down of the war. The president, his general-in-chief, and his secretary of war discussed the demobilization of the army along with the limiting of the purchase of arms and ammunition, which was costing the government millions of dollars every day. Now that General Lee had surrendered, it was agreed that there would be no more major battles or campaigns, which meant that there would no longer be any need for major military expenditures. This was exactly what President Lincoln wanted to hear.

  Among the Lincoln papers is a document headed “Memorandum Respecting Reduction of the Regular Army.”2 The document details how the army was to be reduced, how existing regiments would be scaled down, and how discharged officers and enlisted men would be paid off, according to their rank at the time of discharge. Lincoln used the War of 1812 as a precedent. “At the close of the last British war—in 1815—the Regular Army was reduced and fixed at 14,000,” he wrote.

  Later in the same day, Secretary Stanton issued an order “to stop drafting and recruiting, to curtail purchases, to reduce the number of general and staff officers, and to remove all military restrictions.”3 Demobilization was finally under way. But the organizing of the postwar army, which would have a maximum number of 76,000 men, would not begin until July 28, 1866. The president and General Grant were in full agreement over downsizing the army and taking all necessary steps toward planning a peacetime military force.

  Four days after Appomattox, the residents of Washington were still celebrating. “The city became disorderly with the men who were celebrating too hilariously,” according to William Crook.4 Mrs. Grant received visitors all day long, all of whom offered their congratulations to her husband and herself. Visitors also came to see President Lincoln at the White House throughout the day, shaking his hand, offering their congratulations, and sometimes just stopping to say hello. Everyone in town seemed to be intoxicated—sometimes literally, giving every bar in Washington capacity business—but also mentally and emotionally. The entire city seemed to be breathing a collective sigh of relief.

  Julia Grant was excited by the holiday atmosphere; “all the bells rang out merry greetings, and the city was literally swathed in flags and bunting,” she would later remember.5 Even Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was normally anything but the most cheerful person in the world, “was in his happiest mood.” He took Mrs. Grant aside to show her a few war trophies: “many stands of arms, flags, and, among other things, a stump of a large tree perforated on all sides by bullets, taken from the field at Shiloh.”

  Mary Lincoln was also in a cheerful mood. “We are rejoicing beyond expression over our great and glorious victories,” is what she said to the New York Herald's James Gordon Bennett.6 Her son Robert was home from the front and her husband would no longer have the strain and anxiety of the war to tax his health. Abraham Lincoln was probably about thirty pounds underweight, and appeared gaunt and unhealthy to everyone who saw him. Now that the war was nearly over, Mrs. Lincoln hoped that her husband's health and well-being would soon return.

  After sundown, the city was illuminated once again. “Last night, Washington was ablaze with glory,” according to the Evening Star. “The very heavens seemed to have come down.”7 The illumination was as much a social event as it was a celebration. “All the great men of the nation who were necessarily in Washington at that time were assembled that night,” Julia Grant remembered.8 “Such congratulations, such friendly, grateful grasps of the hand and speeches of gratitude.”

  General Grant and his wife had a minor disagreement over whether Mrs. Grant would be accompanied to the illumination by Secretary and Mrs. Stanton or by her husband. General Grant wanted his wife to go with the Stantons, while he escorted Mrs. Lincoln. But Julia Grant told her husband that she would not go at all unless he went with her. The general came up with another suggestion: he would ride out with Julia to the Stanton residence, leave her at the house, and then come back to escort Mrs. Lincoln to the illumination—the president elected not to go to the light show, leaving General Grant in charge. This arrangement suited Mrs. Grant; the Grants, Mrs. Lincoln, and the Stantons all watched the light show together.

  The celebrations and excitement did not seem to amuse William Crook, the president's bodyguard. But the fact that the war was nearly over helped to calm him and put his mind at ease. “Those about the President lost somewhat of the feeling, usually present, that his life was not safe,” he said somewhat awkwardly.9 “It did not seem possible that, now that the war was over and the government…had been so magnanimous in its treatment of General Lee, after President Lincoln had offered himself a target for Southern bullets in the streets of Richmond and had come out unscathed, there could be danger.” Crook had allowed himself to relax after the president left Richmond, “and had forgotten to be anxious since.” With Lee's army having surrendered, the threat of assassination also ended, at least to William Crook's way of thinking.

  MORNING

  President Lincoln had a full day ahead of him, as well as a full evening. He was out of bed by about seven o'clock, and was at breakfast by eight. Mary joined him for breakfast, along with their son Robert. Captain Robert Lincoln had come to Washington along with General Grant and was full of stories about what he had seen and done as a member of the general-in-chief's staff. One of his stories was about the surrender at Appomattox—he had been standing on the porch of Wilmer McLean's house when General Lee surrendered. He also brought a portrait of General Lee to show his father, setting it on the breakfast table. After looking at the picture for a while, the president pronounced th
at it was a good face—he made no insulting or disparaging remarks about General Lee.

  Father and son also discussed Robert's postwar plans. President Lincoln said that he would like to see Robert go back to Harvard to finish law school. After graduating from Harvard, Lincoln joked, there might be enough evidence to tell if young Robert would make a good lawyer or not.

  After breakfast, the president went to his office to deal with the business of the day. He met with lame-duck senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, who had been appointed minister to Spain; spoke with an attorney from Detroit named William Alanson Howard; and received a visit from California congressman Cornelius Cole. President Lincoln also had an extended discussion with Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, although no one took any notes of this conversation. Speaker Colfax was interested in becoming a member of Lincoln's cabinet.

  Among the messages President Lincoln sent were notes to Secretary of State William Seward and General Grant on the same subject: that day's cabinet meeting. He contacted Secretary Seward, “please assemble the Cabinet at 11 A.M. today,” and requested that General Grant come at eleven o'clock instead of nine o'clock, as he had previously instructed.1 The general was slightly upset by the president's note. He had been planning to leave for Burlington, New Jersey, with his wife to visit their children and was afraid that the two-hour postponement might prevent him from leaving Washington on time.

  The cabinet meeting started on time. Frederick Seward, who was also assistant secretary of state, took his father's place at the meeting. William Seward was still too incapacitated by his injuries to attend. Everyone was anxious to meet General Grant. When the president shook the general's hand, the cabinet members broke into spontaneous applause. Grant was the hero of the hour, even to Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Welles, who could very well have been jaded by such an occasion.