The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln

by David Alan Johnson

  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain did not hear the news until Sunday afternoon. He had made his headquarters in a grand prewar manor house—“an old mansion of the ancient regime,” he called it—and was listening to a German band from his former brigade playing cheerful tunes. While the general was enjoying his peaceful day, a cavalryman rode up with a message. There was nothing unusual about receiving a military telegram, even on a Sunday afternoon, but there was something about the messenger's look and manner that caught Chamberlain's attention.

  The rider dismounted and handed the telegram to General Chamberlain's chief of staff, saying, “I think the general would wish to treat this as personal.”24 The officer walked over to General Chamberlain and handed him the “flimsy,” a telegram written on yellow tissue paper.

  Washington, April 15, 1865

  The President died this morning. Wilkes Booth the assassin. Secretary Seward dangerously wounded. The rest of the Cabinet, General Grant, and other high officers of the Government included in the plot of destruction.

  General Chamberlain's first thought was of the effect this news would have on the men; he was afraid that they would rise up against the local residents and destroy their town. “It might take but little to rouse them to a frenzy of blind revenge,” he reflected. “They, for every reason, must be held in hand.” He ordered a double guard to be placed on the entire camp immediately. “Tell the regimental commanders to get all their men in, and allow no one to leave.” Next, he called a meeting with his officers to tell them the “appalling news,” as well as to issue an order that word of the assassination was to be kept secret from the soldiers. The news must be “prudently broken” to the men; “what if now this blackest crime should fire their hearts to reckless and implacable vengeance?”

  The general was so shaken by the telegram that it affected his demeanor. The lady of the prewar mansion—“there were never any men at home in those days”—came out to ask the general what was wrong. “It is bad news for the South,” he answered.

  “Is it Lee or Davis?” she asked, with some anxiety in her voice. “I must tell you, madam, with a warning,” he replied. “I have put your house under a strict guard. It is Lincoln.” When he spoke, the woman's face brightened with relief. General Chamberlain was sorry to see her change of expression. “The South has lost its best friend, madam,” was the only thing he could say to her.

  After meeting with his officers, the general and two other officers rode off to see General George Gordon Meade. “We found him sad—very sad,” as well as filled with foreboding. At that point in time, nobody knew who was behind the assassination—possibly Jefferson Davis and other members of the Confederate government had planned it. “The plan is to destroy the Government by assassination,” General Meade said. “They probably have means to get possession of the capital before anybody can stop them. There is nothing for it but to push the army to Washington, and make Grant military dictator until we can restore constitutional government.” If General Meade was thinking along these lines, this gives some idea of how the army as a whole was thinking.

  Secretary of State William Seward learned of President Lincoln's death on the morning after Ford's Theatre, according to his daughter Fanny. The New York Tribune reported that “he bore up well under the depressing announcement with remarkable fortitude.”25 A few days later, Secretary Seward asked to have his bed moved closer to the window. When he saw the flags at the War Department flying at half-staff, he said to an attendant that he now fully realized that the president was dead. “If he had been alive he would have been the first to call on me; but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and there's the flag at half mast.” The truth had finally registered in his mind.26

  Jefferson Davis received the news of President Lincoln's assassination on April 18, when he arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina. John C. Breckinridge, Davis's Secretary of War, had learned of the assassination in a telegram from General Sherman; Breckinridge passed the information along to President Davis. The messenger who delivered the dispatch also read its contents to some nearby Confederate troops. The soldiers cheered the news, “not appreciating the evil it portended,” but President Davis immediately realized the full implication of Lincoln's death.27

  “For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn,” President Davis would write, “yet in view of the political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than a great misfortune to the South.” He was not about to call Abraham Lincoln a friend of the South, but he could see that Lincoln was not an enemy, either, and was probably the closest thing to a friend that the South could have hoped for.

  “He had power over the Northern people, and was without personal malignity toward the people of the South,” Davis continued, “his successor was without power in the North and the embodiment of malignity toward the Southern people, perhaps the more so because he had betrayed and deserted them in their hour of need.” When Tennessee had seceded from the Union, Andrew Johnson did not go with his state; he retained his seat in the US Senate. In 1862, President Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of the state. To the North, Andrew Johnson was considered a courageous Southern Unionist who refused to commit treason and desert his country, but to Jefferson Davis and most of the South he was a traitor who turned his back on his native state.

  General Robert E. Lee declared that President Lincoln's assassination was nothing less than a disgrace and a horrible crime. The war was over. General Lee wanted nothing more than for the former Confederate states to come back into the Union in peace and honor. Lincoln's death at the hands of a fanatical Confederate sympathizer could only impede an honorable peace, and would also stand in the way of a true reconciliation between North and South. The general realized that Lincoln's death was not an auspicious event, either to the South or to the restoration of peace.

  Not everyone in the South agreed with General Lee. As far as many Southerners were concerned, Abraham Lincoln was a monster and a tyrant and should have been killed a lot sooner. A woman from North Carolina referred to the president as “Lincoln the oppressor” and wondered why Booth had not shot him before. But she also wondered exactly what Andrew Johnson would be like, and wrote, “Lincoln the rail splitter was bad enough, Johnson, the renegade tailor, is worse.”28

  Newspapers throughout the South varied in their carrying of the news of the assassination, as well as in their points of view regarding the incident itself. A North Carolina paper lamented the news of Lincoln's death, and also feared that it might be the cause for additional hostility from the North. “Abraham Lincoln was the best friend the South had in all the North,” the paper's editor wrote. “We pray God that his untimely and cruel death may not add to the miseries of our afflicted state. North Carolina had no agency in the awful deed.”29

  Not every editor was as diplomatic, or even pretended to have any regrets over Lincoln's death. Some even ridiculed other Southern newspapers that lamented the assassination. At least one Texas newspaper came right out and said it was glad that President Lincoln was dead. “It is certainly a matter of congratulation that Lincoln is dead,” the paper's editor wrote, “because the world is now happily rid of the monster that disgraced the form of humanity.”30

  Some editors did not give any opinion at all regarding what had happened at Ford's Theatre. A South Carolina newspaper treated the story as a foreign news event, and reported the overseas reaction to the assassination: “The news of the assassination of President Lincoln and attempted assassination of Secretary Seward had reached England, producing there, and throughout Europe, a most profound sensation of horror, and calling forth expressions everywhere of earnest sympathy and respect.”31

  And not every editor managed to get his facts straight. A newspaper in Alabama ran this as its headline: “GLORIOUS NEWS—Lincoln and Seward Assassinated!—LEE DEFEATS GRANT—Andy Johnson Inaugurated President.”32 The short piece went on to state that Lincoln and Seward w
ere both dead. “Lincoln was shot through the head in the theatre; Seward was slain while in bed,” and added, “This is said to be true beyond a doubt.” The article added, “A gentleman just from Selma says it is believed in Selma that Lee and Johnston had effected a junction and whipped Grant soundly.”

  Nearly every account in every newspaper, North and South, had one item in common—now that President Lincoln was gone, editors and reporters wondered what would happen next. Andrew Johnson was a completely unknown entity. Many in the North regarded him with suspicion; Southerners tended to look at him with foreboding. Nobody, North or South, knew exactly what to expect. The assassination had created an entirely new world. Nobody could say whether this new world would be better or worse, but everyone had their anxieties.

  John Wilkes Booth wrote a letter explaining exactly why he felt compelled to kill the president: he had not done anything to support the Confederacy for four years, and now he had to something great and decisive to make up for his inactivity. In a letter to his mother dated 1864, he explained, “For, four years I have lived (I may say) A slave in the north (A favored slave its [sic] true, but no less hateful to me on that account.)” After saying this, he went on to make his point, “Not daring to express my thoughts or sentiments, even in my own home Constantly hearing every principle, dear to my heart, denounced as treasonable, And knowing the vile and savage acts committed on my countrymen their wives & helpless children, that I have cursed my willful idleness, And begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence.”33

  An entry in Booth's diary, dated “April 13th/14 Friday the Ides,” he attempted another explanation: “Until to day [sic] nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done.”34 He also gave his own account of what happened at Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14: “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A Col- was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bones of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country.”

  According to his own version, he is the hero of the story. “After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet cold and starving, with every mans hand against me, I am here in despair,” Booth wrote. “And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero.” Comparing himself to Brutus, who assassinated Julius Caesar, and the Swiss folk hero William Tell, he wrote, “My action was purer than either of theirs.”35

  John Wilkes Booth was trailed and cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. The barn was set alight; Booth was fatally shot by one of the pursuing troops. After being dragged from the barn, he asked the soldiers to tell his mother that he died for his country. David Herold, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt, who owned the boarding house where the conspirators sometimes met, were tried and convicted of conspiracy to murder the president, the vice-president, and the general-in-chief of the army. They were found guilty and sentenced to death. On July 7, 1865, all four were hanged at Washington's Old Arsenal Penitentiary.

  Following his brother's death in 1963, Senator Robert F. Kennedy said, “An assassin never changed the course of history.”1 Even when he made this statement, Senator Kennedy knew that it was not true; he was saying it only in an attempt to soften the blow of President Kennedy's murder. Assassins have changed the course of history many times throughout the centuries, from Brutus and Julius Caesar in 44 BCE to Gavrilo Princip, the killer of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914. And John Wilkes Booth changed it as well.

  With the powers of insight and observation of someone born in another country, the Marquis de Chambrun realized that a “great Change” would take place now that Andrew Johnson was in the White House.2 Abraham Lincoln had the determination, the political shrewdness, and the personality, along with the necessary unscrupulousness, to implement whatever measures would be needed to reunify the country. He was determined to make Reconstruction succeed according to his own moderate terms, and was willing to make any alliances and break any rules to accomplish his goals.

  But Chambrun had absolutely no faith in Andrew Johnson's political judgment and had the feeling that he would not be able to implement President Lincoln's policy of leniency toward the South. Now that Lincoln was dead, Chambrun feared that Reconstruction would be a failure, or at least would not be the conciliatory program that Lincoln wanted to pursue, and might end up doing more harm than good. Only Lincoln had the drive and the ability to push through Lincoln's ideas for a lenient and tolerant reunification. “I firmly believe that it is impossible to compute as yet the loss that this country has suffered,” Chambrun would write. “Without any doubt, Mr. Lincoln was embarked on a course which was perilous even for himself, but he alone could have followed it. Without him, there is no way out. Only the common road, where nothing can oppose the radical program.”3

  The most immediate and noticeable change brought about by President Lincoln's assassination was in the attitude of the North toward the South. “Vengeance on the rebel leaders is the universal cry heard from one end of the country to another,” the marquis noted. “Lincoln's recommendations are forgotten…. Today, all idea of pardon is obliterated.”4

  In the days immediately after being sworn in as president, Andrew Johnson seemed intent on a program of retribution toward the South—the polar opposite of what President Lincoln had in mind. As far as President Johnson was concerned, Southerners were nothing but traitors and did not deserve either clemency or leniency, only revenge. General Grant summed up President Johnson's point of view with this simple sentence, which he heard Johnson repeat many times: “Treason is a crime and must be made odious.”5 The Marquis de Chambrun frequently also heard the president say the same thing. “He is always saying, ‘I'll show them; I'll teach them that treason is a crime…and must be punished.’”6 Chambrun thought President Johnson had become obsessed with punishing traitors, and wondered what effect this preoccupation would have on the country. “To punish traitors may be the order of the day, but afterwards what?”

  Not everyone was as reflective as the marquis. Many thousands throughout the North agreed with Andrew Johnson's policy of punishment for the former Confederate states, and wanted nothing but vengeance for the South. The radical wing of the Republican Party looked forward to a Carthaginian peace—the Radicals intended to make punitive measures against the South official policy and also wanted to execute or imprison every Confederate leader that could be brought to justice, including Jefferson Davis. Andrew Johnson's remarks that treason was a crime that must be punished was just what they wanted to hear. “Johnson is right,” a well-known radical senator wrote in a letter to his wife. “He now thinks just as we do and desires to carry out radical measures and punish treason and traitors.”7

  But shortly after taking office, President Johnson changed his entire outlook concerning Reconstruction. He made it very clear to the country, as well as to the Congress, that he intended to carry out most of Abraham Lincoln's plans for a soft peace. President Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation of May 1865 promised a full pardon to all Southerners who swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. The proclamation also restored all property, except slaves, that had been confiscated by the Federal government. Excluded from the proclamation were high-ranking Confederate officials, including anyone “who held the pretended offices of Governors of States in insurrection against the United States,” any and all “military and naval officers in the rebel service who were educated by the government in
the Military Academy at West Point, or the United States Naval Academy,” and anyone with taxable property worth more than twenty thousand dollars. A total of fourteen “classes of persons” were excluded from the proclamation.8

  At the end of May, President Johnson also issued Proclamation 135—“Reorganizing a Constitutional Government in North Carolina.” Under this proclamation, the president appointed a provisional governor who would head a convention to form a new government and also write a new constitution. But only men who had been registered to vote in 1861 would be eligible to elect delegates to the convention.9

  These proclamations made residents of the former Confederate states not only happy and satisfied but also relieved—after hearing what President Johnson had been saying about punishing traitors, they did not know what to expect. Democrats and most Republicans were also glad to hear about the president's proclamations. But the Radical Republicans were taken completely by surprise, and were more than just slightly annoyed by the president's change of heart. The Radicals did not like the new policy, and they also did not like the new president's failure to grant recently freed slaves the right to vote. A good many Radicals had been secretly relieved—and some not so secretly—when President Lincoln had been shot; they did not want anything to do with his plans for clemency and reconciliation. But now it looked as though they were going to have to deal with Lincoln's “charity for all” program just the same, and they were not happy about it.

  Andrew Johnson's views on Reconstruction might have changed, but there were many throughout the North who were in full agreement with the Radical Republicans. These angry and unforgiving people did not want charity for the South either; they wanted revenge. General William Tecumseh Sherman found out about this feeling toward the South the hard way in mid-April, about a month before President Johnson's Amnesty Proclamations were issued, when he drew up surrender terms with General Joseph E. Johnston. General Sherman received word from the Confederate general on April 16, the day following President Lincoln's death. “On the 16th I received a reply from General Johnston, agreeing to meet me the next day at a point midway between our own advance at Durham and his rear at Hillsboro,” he wrote in his memoirs.10