6. Ibid., p. 392.
7. Ibid.; Official Records, p. 640.
8. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 276.
9. Ibid.
10. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 85.
11. Ibid.
12. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), pp. 149–50.
13. Official Records, p. 619.
14. Ibid.
15. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 623.
16. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 150.
17. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, pp. 77–78.
18. Ibid., p. 78.
19. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), p. 169.
20. Dorus M. Fox, History of Political Parties, National Reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe Movement (Des Moines, IA: Iowa Printing, 1895), p. 218.
21. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1992), p. 619.
April 8, 1865, Saturday: A Hospital Visit and a Reception
1. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 79.
2. Ibid., p. 80.
3. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), pp. 171.
4. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 751.
5. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, pp. 171–72.
6. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 82.
7. Ibid.
8. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 750.
9. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 83.
10. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 221.
11. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 624.
12. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 461.
13. Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 624.
14. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), Series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 641.
15. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 462.
16. Ibid.
17. Official Records, vol. 46, part 3, p. 641.
18. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 463.
19. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 59.
20. “The Sequel to the President's ‘Peace Mission,’” Sun (New York), April 4, 1865, p. 2.
21. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 59.
22. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, vol. 2 (New York: American News Company, 1879), p. 354.
April 9, 1865, Sunday: “Lee Has Surrendered”
1. John S. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington to Richmond in 1865: II. The President Enters the Confederate Capital,” Appleton's Magazine 9, no. 6 (June 1907): 751.
2. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 83.
3. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, in The New Temple Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935), act 3, scene 2, p. 41.
4. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 83.
5. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, in The New Temple Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935), act 3, scene 2, p. 35.
6. Barnes, “With Lincoln from Washington,” p. 751.
7. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 84.
8. Ibid., pp. 85–86.
9. Ibid., p. 84.
10. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 58.
11. Ibid.
Abraham Lincoln's biographers have not written very much about his first hearing of General Lee's surrender. General Grant states that he telegraphed Secretary of War Stanton of the surrender at 4:30 p.m. Such an important message would have circulated throughout the city immediately. Julia Grant mentions that she was first given the news on “Sunday afternoon,” but she does not specify the exact time. An account of Lincoln's visit to the recuperating Secretary of State Seward by his daughter Fanny, in her diary entry of April 9, 1865, puts the time later in the evening, when Secretary Stanton came to visit Secretary Seward. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005, p. 725), states that Secretary of War Stanton showed Lincoln Grant's telegram when he reached the White House. It is more than possible that General Grant's “General Lee surrendered” telegram reached Washington by the time the president arrived from City Point, and that the word would have spread throughout the city immediately.
12. US War Department, ed., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), series 1, vol. 46, part 3, p. 644.
13. Ibid.
14. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 461.
15. Official Records, p. 665.
16. George A. Forsyth, Thrilling Days in Army Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 187.
17. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 180.
18. Ibid., p. 181.
19. Ibid.
20. Official Records, p. 665.
21. Chamberlain, Passing of the Armies, p. 186.
22. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 222.
23. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), pp. 151–52.
24. Ibid., p. 152.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Fanny Seward's diary entry of April 9, 1865, in transcript by Patricia Carley Johnson, “Sensitivity and Civil War: The Selected Diaries and Papers, 1858–1866, of Frances Adeline (Fanny) Seward” (PhD thesis; Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 1964).
28. Ibid.
29. Winston Churchill, The Great Democracies, vol. 4, A History of the English Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1958), p. 262.
30. “The End of the Rebellion,” in Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 10, 1965, p. 2.
31. J. F. C. Fuller, Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1957), p. 245.
April 10, 1865, Monday: Return to the White House
1. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 60.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. “Glory! Glory!! Glory!!! The Rebellion Ended!” Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1865, p. 1.
5. “Hang Out Your Banners, Union Victory!” New York Times, April 10, 1865, p. 1.
6. “General Lee and His Army Have Surrendered!” Albany Evening Journal, April 10, 1865, p. 4.
7. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol
. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 278.
8. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 343.
9. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 93.
10. Ibid., p. 90.
11. Ibid., p. 91.
12. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 62.
13. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 393. The complete version of the president's remarks can be found in the appendix.
14. Ibid., p. 394. The full text of the president's remarks can be found in the appendix.
15. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 62.
16. Ibid., p. 63.
17. Ibid.
18. Elisha Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 222.
19. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 188.
20. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 490.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., pp. 490–91.
23. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: Two Volumes in One (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1894), p. 634.
24. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 491. In Charles Marshall's An Aide-de-Camp of Lee: The Papers of Col. Charles Marshall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927, p. 275), Colonel Marshall states that General Grant asked General Lee to meet with Lincoln: “If you and Mr. Lincoln will agree upon terms, your influence in the South will make the Southern people accept what you accept, and Mr. Lincoln's influence in the North will make reasonable people of the North accept what he accepts, and all my influence will be added to Mr. Lincoln's.” The colonel went on to say, “I think myself, and have always thought, that if General Lee and Mr. Lincoln would have met as General Grant proposed, we could have had immediate restoration of peace and brotherhood among the people of these States.” But according to Horace Porter, General Grant never said any such thing.
25. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 491.
April 11, 1865, Tuesday: A Fair Speech
1. Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), p. 904. Daily National Republican, April 12, 1865.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 396–98.
3. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 279.
4. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), pp. 92–93.
5. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed. Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 63.
6. “The Celebration Last Night,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 12, 1865, p. 1.
7. The quotes from Lincoln's speech are from Lincoln, Collected Works, pp. 399–405.
8. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Buffalo, NY: Stansil & Lee, 1931), pp. 174–75.
9. Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 210.
10. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 405. The full text of the president's address can be found in the appendix.
11. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 93.
12. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 64.
13. New-York Tribune, April 12, 1865.
14. “A Grand Illumination—Speech by the President,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 12, 1865, p. 1.
15. Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln, p. 93.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 93–94.
April 12, 1865, Wednesday: Only a Dream
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 405.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 406.
4. Ibid.
5. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), pp. 279–80.
6. Lincoln, Collected Works, p. 407.
7. Ibid., pp. 406–407.
8. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 195.
9. Ibid., pp. 195–96.
10. Ibid., p. 196.
11. Ibid., pp. 200–201.
12. Ibid., p. 201.
13. Ibid., p. 202.
14. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, p. 344.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. The description of Lincoln's dream is from Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Washington, DC: published by the editor, 1911), pp. 115–17.
April 13, 1865, Thursday: “Melancholy Seemed to Be Dripping from Him”
1. Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and of Some Women (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874), p. 321.
2. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 408.
3. Ibid., p. 409.
4. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 68.
5. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 154.
6. Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 257.
7. “The Grand Display Last Night,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 14, 1865, p. 1.
8. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 154.
9. Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, p. 65.
April 14, 1865, Friday: Ford's Theatre
1. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), pp. 410–12.
2. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 282.
3. Ibid., pp. 282–83.
4. Ibid., p. 291.
5. Ibid.
6. Gideon Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson: Their Plan of Reconstruction and the Resumption of National Authority,” Galaxy 13, no. 4 (April 1872): 526.
7. Ibid.
8. Charles Dana, Recollections of the Civil War: With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties (New York: D. Appleton, 1902), pp. 273–74.
9. Ibid., p. 274.
10. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey, 1984), p. 497.
11. The story of the messenger inviting Mrs. Grant to Ford's Theatre is from Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. 155.
12. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 497.
13. Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 14, 1865, p. 2.
14. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 497–98.
15. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, pp. 155–56. A footnote explains that “Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby's partisan rangers” had come close to captur
ing General Grant in Virginia in 1864.
16. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, p. 498.
17. Dent Grant, Personal Memoirs, p. 156.
18. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, pp. 498–99.
19. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, vol. 2 (New York: American News Company, 1879), p. 356.
20. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, two vols. in one ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 345–46.
21. Ibid., pp. 346–47.
22. Ibid., p. 347.
23. “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, April 18, 1865, p. 8.
24. Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, “When Old Glory Returned to Fort Sumter,” New York Times, April 16, 2015, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/when-old-glory-returned-to-fort-sumter/#more-156636.
25. “Fort Sumter: Restoration of the Stars and Stripes,” New York Times, April 18, 1865, p. 8.
26. Roberts and Kytle, “When Old Glory Returned.”
27. Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner's Account (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 36.
28. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 376.
29. Charles W. Johnson, ed., The Official Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions: 1856, 1860, and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), p. 242.
30. “The Nomination of Mr. Lincoln—How the News Is Received,” New York Times, June 9, 1864, p. 4.
31. Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 192.
32. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 410.
33. Mary Bushrod's story is from Esther May Carter, She Knew Lincoln (Cuyahoga Falls, OH: published by the author, 1930), pp. 5–11.
34. Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 284.
35. Ibid., p. 285.
36. Margarita Spalding Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, Body-Guard to President Lincoln (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 65.
37. William Crook's description of his walk to the War Department and back with President Lincoln are from Gerry, comp. and ed., Through Five Administrations, pp. 65–68.
38. Lincoln, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 413. Congressman Ashmun framed the card and placed it next to a card of his own, upon which he wrote, “The above is the last autograph of President Lincoln. It was written & given to me at half past 8 P.M. April 14, 1865, just as he and Mrs. Lincoln were starting off for the Theatre where he was assassinated.”
The Last Weeks of Abraham Lincoln Page 33
