Chapter 30

Shortly before the end, he had a strange dream. Though he spoke of it almost with levity, it would not leave his thoughts. He dreamed he was wandering through the White House at night; all the rooms were brilliantly lighted; but they were empty. However, through that unreal solitude floated a sound of weeping. When he came to the East Room, it was explained; there was a catafalque, the pomp of a military funeral, crowds of people in tears; and a voice said to him, "The President has been assassinated."

He told this dream to Lamon and to Mrs. Lincoln. He added that after it had occurred, "the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the Old Book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts--supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc."

But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on precautions against assassination, Lincoln turned the matter into a joke. He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own death. He called Lamon's alarm "downright foolishness."(4)

Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation. He narrated it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth, which happened to be Good Friday. There was some anxiety with regard to Sherman's movements in North Carolina. Lincoln bade the Cabinet set their minds at rest. His dream of the night before was one that he had often had. It was a presage of great events. In this dream he saw himself "in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same... moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." This dream had preceded all the great events of the war. He believed it was a good omen.(5)

At this last Cabinet meeting, he talked freely of the one matter which in his mind overshadowed all others. He urged his Ministers to put aside all thoughts of hatred and revenge. "He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect him to take any part in hanging or killing 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."(6)

There was a touch of irony in his phase "our very good friends." Before the end of the next day, the men he had in mind, the inner group of the relentless Vindictives, were to meet in council, scarcely able to conceal their inspiring conviction that Providence had intervened, had judged between him and them.(7) And that allusion to the "rights" of the vanquished! How abominable it was in the ears of the grim Chandler, the inexorable Wade. Desperate these men and their followers were on the fourteenth of April, but defiant. To the full measure of their power they would fight the President to the last ditch. And always in their minds, the tormenting thought-if only positions could be reversed, if only Johnson, whom they believed to be one of them at heart, were in the first instead of the second place!

While these unsparing sons of thunder were growling among themselves, the lions that were being cheated of their prey, Lincoln was putting his merciful temper into a playful form. General Creswell applied to him for pardon for an old friend of his who had joined the Confederate Army.

"Creswell," said Lincoln, "you make me think of a lot of young folks who once started out Maying. To reach their destination, they had to cross a shallow stream and did so by means of an old flat boat when the time came to return, they found to their dismay that the old scow had disappeared. They were in sore trouble and thought over all manner of devices for getting over the water, but without avail. After a time, one of the boys proposed that each fellow should pick up the girl he liked best and wade over with her. The masterly proposition was carried out until all that were left upon the island was a little short chap and a great, long, gothic-built, elderly lady. Now, Creswell, you are trying to leave me in the same predicament. You fellows are all getting your own friends out of this scrape, and you will succeed in carrying off one after another until nobody but Jeff Davis and myself will be left on the island, and then I won't know what to do--How should I feel? How should I look lugging him over? I guess the way to avoid such an embarrassing situation is to let all out at once."(8)

The President refused, this day, to open his doors to the throng of visitors that sought admission. His eldest son, Robert, an officer in Grant's army, had returned from the front unharmed. Lincoln wished to reserve the day for his family and intimate friends. In the afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln asked him if he cared to have company on their usual drive. "No, Mary," said he, "I prefer that we ride by ourselves to-day."(9) They took a long drive. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy and tender.(10) He talked much of the past and the future. It seemed to Mrs. Lincoln that he never had appeared happier than during the drive. He referred to past sorrows, to the anxieties of the war, to Willie's death, and spoke of the necessity to be cheerful and happy in the days to come. As Mrs. Lincoln remembered his words: "We have had a hard time since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God's blessings, 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 time, we will save up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11)

They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which had been fixed for that night. The management of the Ford's Theatre, where Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance of Our American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that "the President and his lady" would attend. The President's box had been draped with flags. The rest is a twice told tale--a thousandth told tale.

An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament, with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated killing the President. A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination had made of Lincoln another Caesar. The occasion called for a Brutus. While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives, scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself, were unbalanced. They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet. The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden opportunity. He knew every passage of Ford's Theatre. He knew, also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded himself with guards. During the afternoon, he made his way unobserved into the theatre and bored a hole in the door of the presidential box, so that he might fire through it should there be any difficulty in getting the door open.

About ten o'clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd play; the President's party were as much amused as any. Suddenly, there was a pistol shot. A moment more and a woman's voice rang out in a sharp cry. An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to their feet. Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the President's box. One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished a knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" Then he vanished through the flies. It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had made his way without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln. At point-blank distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head. In the confusion which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the city; was pursued; and was himself shot and killed a few days later.

The bullet of the assassin had entered the brain, causing instant unconsciousness. The dying President was removed to a house on Tenth Street, No. 453, where he was laid on a bed in a small room at the rear of the hall on the ground floor.(12)

Swift panic took possession of the city. "A crowd of people rushed instinctively to the White House, and bursting through the doors, shouted the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay who sat gossiping in an upper room. . . . They ran down-stairs. Finding a carriage at the door, they entered it and drove to Tenth Street."(13)

To right and left eddied whirls of excited figures, men and women questioning, threatening, crying out for vengeance. Overhead amid driving clouds, the moon, through successive mantlings of darkness, broke periodically into sudden blazes of light; among the startled people below, raced a witches' dance of the rapidly changing shadows.(14)

Lincoln did not regain consciousness. About dawn his pulse began to fail. A little later, "a look of unspeakable peace came over his worn features"(15), and at twenty-two minutes after seven on the morning of the fifteenth of April, he died.

THE END

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is said that a complete bibliography of Lincoln would include at least five thousand titles. Therefore, any limited bibliography must appear more or less arbitrary. The following is but a minimum list in which, with a few exceptions such as the inescapable interpretative works of Mr. Rhodes and of Professor Dunning, practically everything has to some extent the character of a source.

Alexander. A Political History of the State of New York. By De Alva Stanwood Alexander. 3 vols. 1909.

Arnold. History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. By Isaac N. Arnold. 1866.

Baldwin. Interview between President Lincoln and Colonel John B. Baldwin. 1866.

Bancroft. Life of William H. Seward. By Frederick Bancroft. 2 vols. 1900.

Barnes. Memoir of Thurlow Weed. By Thurlow Weed Barnes. 1884.

Barton. The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazar Barton. 1920.

Bigelow. Retrospections of an Active Life. By John Bigelow. 2 vols. 1909.

Blaine. Twenty Years of Congress. By James G. Blaine. 2 vols. 1884.

Botts. The Great Rebellion. By John Minor Botts. 1866.

Boutwell. Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs. By George S. Boutwell 2 vols. 1902.

Bradford. Union Portraits. By Gamaliel Bradford. 1916.

Brooks. Washington in Lincoln's Time. By Noah Brooks, 1895.

Carpenter. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. By F. B. Carpenter. 1866.

Chandler. Life of Zachary Chandler. By the Detroit Post and Tribune. 1880.

Chapman. Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln. By Ervin Chapman. 1917. The Charleston Mercury.

Chase. Diary and Correspondence of Salmon Chase. Report, American Historical Association, 1902, Vol. II.

Chittenden. Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration. By L. Chittenden. 1891.

Coleman. Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his Correspondence and Speeches. By Ann Mary Coleman. 2 vols. 1871.

Conway. Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway. 2 vols. 1904.

Correspondence. The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb. Edited by U. B. Phillips. Report American Historical Association, 1913, Vol. II.

Crawford. The Genesis of the Civil War. By Samuel Wylie Crawford. 1887.

C. W. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. 1863.

Dabney. Memoir of a Narrative Received from Colonel John B. Baldwin, of Staunton, touching the Origin of the War. By Reverend R. L. Dabney, D. D., Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 1. 1876.

Davis. Rise and Fail of the Confederate Government. By Jefferson Davis. 2 vols. 1881.

Dunning. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics. By William A. Dunning. 1898.

Field. Life of David Dudley Field. By Henry M. Field. 1898.

Flower. Edwin McMasters Stanton. By Frank Abial Flower. 1902.

Fry. Military Miscellanies. By James B. Fry. 1889.

Galaxy. The History of Emancipation. By Gideon Welles. The Galaxy, XIV, 838-851.

Gilmore. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. By James R. Gilmore. 1899.

Gilmore, Atlantic. A Suppressed Chapter of History. By James R. Gilmore, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1887.

Globe. Congressional Globe, Containing the Debates and Proceedings. 1834-1873.

Godwin. Biography of William Cullen Bryant. By Parke Godwin.

1883. Gore. The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. By J. Rogers Gore. 1921.

Gorham. Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton. By George C. Gorham. 2 vols. 1899.

Grant. Personal Memoirs. By Ulysses S. Grant. 2 vols. 1886.

Greeley. The American Conflict. By Horace Greeley. 2 vols. 1864-1867.

Gurowski. Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862. By Adam Gurowski. 1862.

Hanks. Nancy Hanks. By Caroline Hanks Hitchcock. 1900.

Harris. Public Life of Zachary Chandler. By W. C. Harris, Michigan Historical Commission. 1917.

Hart. Salmon Portland Chase. By Albert Bushnell Hart. 1899.

Hay MS. Diary of John Hay. The war period is covered by three volumes of manuscript. Photostat copies in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, accessible only by special permission.

Hay, Century. Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln. By John Hay, Century Magazine, November, 1890.

The New York Herald.

Herndon. Herndon's Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life: The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By W. H. Herndon and J. W. Weik. 3 vols. (paged continuously). 1890.

Hill. Lincoln the Lawyer. By Frederick Trevers Hill 1906.

Hitchcock. Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. Edited by W. Croffut. 1909.

Johnson. Stephen A. Douglas. By Allen Johnson. 1908.

The Journal of the Virginia Convention. 1861.

Julian. Political Recollections 1840-1872. By George W. Julian. 1884.

Kelley. Lincoln and Stanton. By W. D. Kelley. 1885.

Lamon. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward H. Lamon. 1872.

Letters. Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln. Now first brought together by Gilbert A. Tracy. 1917.

Lieber. Life and Letters of Francis Lieber. Edited by Thomas S. Perry, 1882.

Lincoln. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 2 vols. New and enlarged edition. 12 volumes. 1905. (All references here are to the Colter edition.)

McCarthy. Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction. By Charles M. McCarthy, 1901.

McClure. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times. By A. K. McClure. 1892.

Merriam. Life and Times of Samuel Bowles. By G. S. Merriam. 2 vols. 1885.

Munford. Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession. By Beverley B. Munford. 1910.

Moore. A Digest of International Law. By John Bassett Moore. 8 vols. 1906.

Newton. Lincoln and Herndon. By Joseph Fort Newton. 1910.

Nicolay. A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln. By John G. Nicolay. 1902.

Nicolay, Cambridge. The Cambridge Modern History: Volume VII.

The United States. By various authors. 1903.

Miss Nicolay. Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln. By Helen Nicolay. 1912.

N. and H. Abraham Lincoln: A History. By John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 10 vols. 1890.

N. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. First series. 27 vols. 1895-1917.

O. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. 1880-1901.

Outbreak. The Outbreak of the Rebellion. By John G. Nicolay. 1881.

Own Story. McClellan's Own Story. By George B. McClellan. 1887.

Paternity. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazer Barton. 1920.

Pearson. Life of John A. Andrew. By Henry G. Pearson. 2 vols. 1904.

Pierce. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. By Edward Lillie Pierce. 4 vols. 1877-1893.

Porter. In Memory of General Charles P. Stone. By Fitz John Porter. 1887.

Public Man. Diary of a Public Man. Anonymous. North American Review. 1879.

Rankin. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Henry B. Rankin. 1916.

Raymond. Journal of Henry J. Raymond. Edited by Henry W. Raymond. Scribner's Magazine. 1879-1880.

Recollections. Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward Hill Lamon. 1911.

Reminiscences. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished

Men of his Time. Edited by Allen Thorndyke Rice. 1886.

Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, first session, Thirty-Ninth Congress.

Rhodes. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. By James Ford Rhodes. 8 vols. 1893-1920.

Riddle. Recollections of War Times. By A. G. Riddle. 1895.

Schrugham. The Peaceful Americans of 1860. By Mary Schrugham. 1922.

Schure. Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schure. Selected and edited by Frederick Bancroft. 1913.

Scott. Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott, LL.D. Written by himself. 2 vols. 1864.

Seward. Works of William H. Seward. 5 vols. 1884.

Sherman. Memoirs of William T. Sherman. By himself. 2 vols. 1886. Sherman Letters.

Letters of John Sherman and W. T. Sherman. Edited by Rachel Sherman Thorndike. 1894.

Southern Historical Society Papers.

Stephens. Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. By Alexander H. Stephens. 2 vols. 1869-1870.

Stoddard. Inside the White House in War Times. By William O. Stoddard. 1890.

Stories. "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories. With introduction and anecdotes by Colonel Alexander McClure. 1901.

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Tarbell. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ida M. Tarbell. New edition. 2 vols. 1917.

Thayer. The Life and Letters of John Hay. By William Roscoe Thayer. 2 vols. 1915.

The New York Times.

The New York Tribune.

Tyler. Letters and Times of the Tylers. By Lyon G. Tyler. 3 vols. 1884-1896.

Van Santvoord. A Reception by President Lincoln. By C. J. Van Santvoord. Century Magazine, Feb., 1883.

Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard. 2 vols. 1902.

Wade. Life of Benjamin F. Wade. By A. G. Riddle. 1886.

Warden. Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase. By R. B. Warden. 1874.

Welles. Diary of Gideon Welles. Edited by J. T. Morse, Jr. 3 vols. 1911.

White. Life of Lyman Trumbull. By Horace White. 1913.

Woodburn. The Life of Thaddeus Stevens. By James Albert Woodburn. 1913.

NOTES

I. THE CHILD OF THE FOREST.

1. Herndon, 1-7, 11-14; 1, anon, 13; N. and H., 1, 23-27. This is the version of his origin accepted by Lincoln. He believed that his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia planter and traced to that doubtful source "all the qualities that distinguished him from other members" of his immediate family. Herndon, 3. His secretaries are silent upon the subject. Recently the story has been challenged. Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, who identifies the Hanks family of Kentucky with a lost branch of a New England family, has collected evidence which tends to show that Nancy was the legitimate daughter of a certain Joseph H. Hanks, who was father of Joseph the carpenter, and that Nancy was not the niece but the younger sister of the "uncle" who figures in the older version, the man with whom Thomas Lincoln worked. Nancy and Thomas appear to have been cousins through their mothers. Mrs. Hitchcock argues the case with care and ability in a little book entitled Nancy Hanks. However, she is not altogether sustained by W. E. Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.

Scandal has busied itself with the parents of Lincoln in another way. It has been widely asserted that he was himself illegitimate. A variety of shameful paternities have been assigned to him, some palpably absurd. The chief argument of the lovers of this scandal was once the lack of a known record of the marriage of his parents. Around this fact grew up the story of a marriage of concealment with Thomas Lincoln as the easy-going accomplice. The discovery of the marriage record fixing the date and demonstrating that Abraham must have been the second child gave this scandal its quietus. N. and H., 1, 23-24; Hanks, 59-67; Herndon, 5-6; Lincoln and Herndon, 321. The last important book on the subject is Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.

2. N. and H., 1-13.

3. Lamon, 13; N. and H., 1, 25.

4. N. and H., 1, 25.

5. Gore, 221-225.

6. Herndon, 15.

7. Gore, 66, 70-74, 79, 83-84, 116, 151-154, 204, 226-230, for all this group of anecdotes.

The evidence with regard to all the early part of Lincoln's life is peculiar in this, that it is reminiscence not written down until the subject had become famous. Dogmatic certainty with regard to the details is scarcely possible. The best one can do in weighing any of the versions of his early days is to inquire closely as to whether all its parts bang naturally together, whether they really cohere. There is a body of anecdotes told by an old mountaineer, Austin Gollaher, who knew Lincoln as a boy, and these have been collected and recently put into print. Of course, they are not "documented" evidence. Some students are for brushing them aside. But there is one important argument in their favor. They are coherent; the boy they describe is a real person and his personality is sustained. If he is a fiction and not a memory, the old mountaineer was a literary artist--far more the artist than one finds it easy to believe.

8. Gore, 84-95; Lamon, 16; Herndon, 16.

9. Gore, 181-182, 296, 303-316; Lamon, 19-20; N. and H., I, 28-29.

II. THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH.

1. N. and H., I, 32-34.

2. Lamon, 33-38, 51-52, 61-63; N. and H., 1, 34-36.

3. N. and H., 1, 40.

4. Lamon, 38, 40, 55.

5. Reminiscences, 54, 428.

III. A VILLAGE LEADER.

1. N. and H., 1, 45-46, 70-72; Herndon, 67, 69, 72.

2. Lamon, 81-82; Herndon, 75-76.

3. Lincoln, 1, 1-9.

4. Lamon, 125-126; Herndon, 104.

5. Herndon, 117-118.

6. N. and H., 1, 109.

7. Stories, 94.

8. Herndon, 118-123.

9. Lamon, 159-164; Herndon, 128-138; Rankin, 61-95.

10. Lamon, 164.

11. Lamon, 164-165; Rankin, 95.

IV. REVELATIONS.

1. Riddle, 337.

2. Herndon, 436.

3. N. and H., I, 138.

4. Lincoln, I, 51-52.

5. McClure, 65.

6. Herndon, 184.185.

7. Anon, 172-183; Herndon, 143-150, 161; Lincoln, 1, 87-92.