The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln
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Gideon Welles, Secretary Stanton, and the others in the carriage entered the house and walked through to the president's room. “The giant sufferer lay extended across the bed, which was not long enough for him,” Welles noted. “His large arms, which were occasionally exposed, were of a size which one would scarce have expected from his spare appearance.” Lincoln still had the arms of a rail-splitter. “His slow, full respiration lifted the clothes with each breath that he took. His features were calm and striking.”
Several people were already in the room when Secretary Welles arrived; he estimated that at least six of them were doctors. Senator Sumner was also there, along with Speaker Colfax and all of the cabinet members except for William Seward. “The room was small and overcrowded,” was Secretary Welles's understatement. He asked one of the doctors about the president's “true condition,” fearing that he already knew it. Lincoln had already deteriorated during the time that Welles had been in the Petersen house—“his right eye began to swell and that part of his face became discolored.” The doctor confirmed Welles's worst suspicions. “He replied the President was dead to all intents, although he might live three hours, perhaps longer.”
Out in the streets of Washington, nobody had any real idea of what was happening. The only source of information that night was rumor, but there were so many rumors that they only served to add to the collective confusion and anxiety. And the fact that so many of them contradicted one another did not help the situation. Some of the stories in circulation claimed that the president had only suffered a slight wound, but that Andrew Johnson was dead. One account insisted that the entire cabinet, including William Seward, had been assassinated. Another said that General Grant had been killed aboard a train on his way to New Jersey.
Several of the rumors being circulated involved Confederate leaders: the Confederate government had been behind the president's shooting, which was the signal for a general uprising; guerilla warfare would soon break out, with armed Confederate extremists seizing bridges and other strategic points around the city. But none of these rumors gave any indication of who these mysterious conspirators might be, when they were planning their insurrection, or even how many of them were under suspicion. There were certainly enough soldiers on the street to make anyone believe that something sinister was about to take place—mounted cavalry and foot soldiers could be seen all over the city. During the early hours of Saturday morning, the best thing anyone could hope for was that the coming day would bring better news, or at least more reliable information.
At the Petersen house, the assembled family members, cabinet members, friends, and colleagues were fully aware that President Lincoln had absolutely no chance of surviving, or even of living through the night, and they waited for him to die. By about one o'clock, the doctors had already pronounced him brain dead—“he would have some movements, some twitching, things like that,” a doctor would state more than 150 years after the event, “and it's a foregone conclusion that he was brain-dead by about 1:00 a.m.”1 Robert Lincoln had also joined the group, but there was nothing he could do except look at his father and wait, along with all the others.
The president's pillow had become saturated with blood. During the early morning hours, his head was raised and a new pillow was placed under his head. His breathing was uneven, sometimes shallow and sometimes with a heavy rasping noise. Mary Lincoln came into the room every now and again, distraught and on the verge of hysteria, shouting at her husband to wake up and unnerving everyone present. At one point, when the president's breathing became particularly loud, Mary let out a penetrating scream and fell to the floor. Secretary Stanton, who was never the soul of tact and discretion under the best of circumstances, lost his temper and shouted, “Take that woman out and do not let her in again.”2
Everyone's nerves were being taxed to the limit; they had been listening to President Lincoln's groans and had been watching him expire before their eyes for the past few hours. At about six o'clock, Gideon Welles decided that he had to get away from that house, if only for a few minutes, and took a short walk: “It was a dark and gloomy morning, and rain set in before I returned to the house,” which was about fifteen minutes later.3 He passed several groups of people along the way, “all anxious and solicitous,” and all asking about the president. When he replied that Lincoln could not survive, the reaction was always overwhelming grief.
After returning to the house, Secretary Welles settled into what he called the “back parlor,” where Secretary Stanton and several others were discussing the assassination. He went back to the president's room a short while before seven o'clock. It was evident that President Lincoln “was rapidly drawing near the closing moments.”4 Robert Lincoln stood near the head of the bed. On two occasions, according to Secretary Welles, “he gave way to overpowering grief and sobbed aloud,” leaning on Senator Sumner's shoulder. But, as Welles pointed out, the end was not far off: “The respiration of the President became suspended at intervals, and at last entirely ceased at twenty-two minutes past seven.” Secretary Stanton famously pronounced, “Now he belongs to the ages.”5
A Presbyterian minister, Dr. Phineas Gurley, knelt on the floor and said a prayer. Mary Lincoln was escorted out of William Petersen's house and back to the White House, screaming when she saw Ford's Theatre across the street. After the doctors, friends, and relatives left the room, a cabinet meeting was held in the same room. According to a newspaper account, “Immediately after the President's death a cabinet meeting was called by Secretary Stanton, and held in the room in which the corpse lay. Secretaries Stanton, Welles and Usher [John P. Usher, Secretary of the Interior], Postmaster General Dennison, and Attorney General Speed present.”6 The account concludes with, “The results of the Conference are yet unknown.”
The meeting's main activity was to contact Andrew Johnson by letter, to inform him officially of the president's death and also to let him know that “the government devolved upon him.”7 The letter was straightforward and to the point:
WASHINGTON CITY, April 15, 1865.
SIR: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, was shot by an assassin last evening at Ford's Theatre, in this city, and died at the hour of twenty-two minutes after seven o'clock. About the same time at which the President was shot, an assassin entered the sick chamber of Hon. W. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, and stabbed him in several places in the throat, neck and face, severely, if not mortally, wounding him. Other members of the Secretary's family were dangerously wounded by the assassin while making his escape.
By the death of President LINCOLN, the office of President has devolved, under the Constitution, upon you. The emergency of the government demands that you should immediately qualify, according to the requirements of the Constitution, and enter upon the duties of President of the United States. If you will please make known your pleasure, such arrangements as you deem proper will be made.
Your obedient servants,
HUGH MCCULLOCH,
Secretary of the Treasury.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.
GIDEON WELLES,
Secretary of the Navy.
WILLIAM DENNISON.
Postmaster-General.
J. P. USHER,
Secretary of the Interior.
JAMES SPEED,
Attorney-General.8
Secretary Welles went to his house for breakfast, where he discovered that his wife had gone to the White House—Mary Lincoln had sent for her. Mrs. Welles would stay at the White House throughout the day, in spite of the fact that she had been unwell during the entire past week. The secretary himself—“wearied, shocked, exhausted, but not inclined to sleep”—rode over to the White House after breakfast through “a cheerless cold rain.”9 Several hundred recently freed slaves stood about in front of the White House, loudly weeping and showing their grief over the loss of President Lincoln. The crowd did not disperse throughout the entire day, even though the rain would not let up.
Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president a few hours later, at about ten o'clock. By Johnson's request, the short ceremony was held in his room at the Kirkwood Hotel; it was administered by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. Before leaving to perform the ceremony, the chief justice checked the US Constitution to make certain he was proceeding correctly—no president had ever been assassinated before, and he wanted to check to be sure that Johnson's swearing in was correct according to the Constitution. After satisfying himself that the succession procedure was accurate and that he could go ahead, he left for the Kirkwood to perform the ceremony.
About ten people had assembled in Andrew Johnson's room to witness the procedure, including Hugh McCulloch, secretary of the treasury; Attorney General Speed; and several senators. Johnson put his left hand on the Bible, raised his right hand, and repeated the oath as Chief Justice Chase recited it: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” When the ceremony had ended, Chief Justice Chase duly informed Andrew Johnson that he was now president of the United States. President Johnson responded by making a short speech, which began, “Gentlemen, I must be permitted to say that I have been almost overwhelmed by the announcement of the sad event which has so recently occurred.”11
“I hardly thought that the authority could be passed so easily from one who was great and popular into the hands of a man who has yet neither power nor prestige,” the Marquis de Chambrun wrote. “But such is the law!”12
“Washington, as well as the whole country, was plunged in an agony of grief, and the excitement knew no bounds,” Colonel Horace Porter wrote.13 General Grant made the same observation: “The joy that I had witnessed among the people in the street and in public places in Washington…had been turned into grief; the city was in reality a city of mourning.”14 Along with the rest of the country, the city not only mourned, it also seethed with anger. The headline of the New York Times ran: “AWFUL EVENT—President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin—The Deed Done at Ford's Theatre Last Night—The Act of a Desperate Rebel.”15
In just about every town throughout the North, flags flew at half-staff and were frequently draped in black crepe. All official government buildings were also hung with black—city halls, town halls, court houses, libraries. Dry good shops ran out of their supply of black cloth within the space of an hour or so. Banks and businesses closed for the day. Newspapers announced that they would not print an edition on the following day. “The Washington tragedy absorbed all thought and all conversation,” a news reporter observed. “In the stores, on the street corners, in the railroad cars, men, women and children of all classes could talk of nothing else. All agreed that the crime that had been committed was the greatest of modern times.”16
The day following the president's death, April 16, was Easter Sunday. Clergymen throughout the North memorialized President Lincoln in their sermons. Some pointed out the Lincoln, like Jesus, was killed on Good Friday. Also like Jesus, Lincoln was a martyr—Jesus died for the sins of mankind, while Lincoln died for the sins of his country, especially slavery. Other sermons compared Lincoln with Moses. They both led their people to the Promised Land, but had not been allowed to go there themselves: “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go there.”17 The Chicago Tribune also thought that Lincoln was a martyr to slavery: “On the sacred anniversary on the day made holy by the crucifixion of Him…we mourn another martyrdom…another martyr to the demon—Slavery.”18
There was a widespread feeling that John Wilkes Booth had acted with the approval of Jefferson Davis, a suspicion that turned out to be completely unfounded. Throughout the North, there were many who called for some measure of revenge against Confederate leaders, as well as for defensive measures to prevent any further assassinations or possible insurrections or uprisings. These feelings were not just held by the public at large.
General Ulysses S. Grant was also on edge, and he issued an order to keep a heightened lookout and tighten all security—he still had Charles Dana's warning on his mind to keep a close watch on all suspicious persons. As soon as he returned to Washington from Burlington, General Grant ordered General Edward Ord to arrest the mayor of Richmond, as well as all members of the city council. He also wanted General Ord to round up and arrest any Confederate officers who had not taken the oath of allegiance to the United States. General Ord objected that such measures might serve to incite an open rebellion. General Lee was in Richmond; arresting General Lee in the former Confederate capital might cause residents to riot in the streets, or even to take up arms. Grant saw the rationale behind General Ord's objections and canceled his order. But he still advised Ord to increase his vigilance against anyone in Richmond who even looked suspicious, who might turn out to be an assassin or a saboteur.
General Grant also ordered General Philip Sheridan to prepare to make an advance against General Joseph E. Johnston. General Johnston and his army were still at large in North Carolina, and General Sherman did not have enough cavalry to suit General Grant. Phil Sheridan had an outstanding cavalry corps, one of the best in the Union army. Grant ordered him to move south, and to keep himself in readiness to go after Joe Johnston if necessary. All of this took place less than a week after Appomattox, where General Grant offered Lee the most generous and lenient terms possible. His change of heart gives a good indication of how the country at large felt about the South following the assassination.
William Crook did not hear anything at all about the assassination until Saturday morning, April 15. He had gone to bed early on Friday night, and had slept right through all the hysteria of the night before. His reaction to the president's death was completely different from anyone else's: “My first thought was, If I had been on duty at the theatre, I would be dead now.”19 If he had been stationed outside the president's box at Ford's Theatre, William Crook reasoned that he would have confronted John Wilkes Booth and would have been killed by Booth instead of President Lincoln. But he had not been assigned to protect the president that night. That job had been given to John F. Parker, a policeman on Washington's metropolitan force, who was to have guarded President Lincoln from four o'clock in the afternoon until midnight.
John F. Parker had been at his station when the president arrived at Ford's Theatre, and had sat in a chair outside the president's box. But at around nine o'clock he left the theater and went to a nearby bar to have a drink. When John Wilkes Booth came to the theater, Parker was still at the bar.
William Crook's next thought was to wonder if John F. Parker was dead. “Had Parker been at his post at the back of the box—Booth still being determined to make the attempt that night—he would have been stabbed, probably killed.”20 Crook reasoned that the struggle between Parker and Booth “would have given the alarm,” and that Major Rathbone and President Lincoln himself could have disarmed Booth, “who was not a man of great physical strength.” Crook was angered and frustrated by Parker's dereliction of duty. “It makes me feel rather bitter,” he said, “when I remember what the President had said, just a few hours before, that he knew he could trust all his guards.”
Parker was never brought up on charges for his misconduct on the night of April 14. During the early morning hours of April 15, he walked into his precinct station with a prostitute named Lizzie Williams in tow. The desk sergeant dismissed her, simply because there was no evidence of any criminal activities against her. The sergeant did not ask Parker any questions, either about Ford's Theatre or the assassination. When his shift en
ded, Parker went home. He remained a member of the Washington police force for three more years, when his lackadaisical attitude toward his job finally caught up with him—he was found asleep on his shift, when he should have been walking his beat, and was dishonorably dismissed from the police force.
Commander John S. Barnes, who had worried about the president's safety while he was in Richmond, was awakened by an orderly early on Saturday morning. The orderly said that the flagship, the USS Minnesota, had hoisted her colors at half-mast, and also that Admiral Porter had signaled for Commander Barnes to come on board at once. It was a very early hour in the day to receive such an order; the commander was afraid that something must have happened to Admiral Porter. He dressed as quickly as he could and was rowed over to the Minnesota.
Commander Barnes was met at the gangway by Commodore Rockendorf, who escorted Barnes to his cabin. Once they were out of sight of the ship's crew, the commodore handed Commander Barnes a telegram from Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy: “President Lincoln was assassinated last night in Ford's Theater, and is dead.”21
Barnes read and reread the dispatch, while Commodore Rockendorf tactfully walked away in silence. “It seemed as though the fact could not impress itself upon my mind. For some moments I could not utter a word.”22 When the impact of Secretary Welles's telegram finally took effect, “I am not ashamed to say I sat down and gave way to a bitter grief that was heartfelt and sincere.”
Elisha Hunt Rhodes learned of the assassination in camp at Burkesville, Virginia. A corporal informed him that “President Lincoln was dead, murdered.”23 Colonel Rhodes told the corporal not to repeat the story to anyone in camp, but a short while later a messenger rode up with a circular from General Meade that gave the news in more detail. The dispatch was read to the officers and men of the regiment by the adjutant. “The sad news was received in grief and silence, for we feel that we have lost a personal friend,” Colonel Rhodes remembered. “The soldiers feel that the leaders of the Rebellion are responsible, and I fear that if Lee's Army had not surrendered that they would have fared hard at our hands.”