Chapter 8

Deep and strong was his devotion to liberty; yet deeper and stronger still was his devotion to the Union; for he believed that without the Union permanent liberty for either race on this continent would be impossible. And because of this belief, he was reluctant, perhaps more reluctant than most of his associates, to strike slavery with the sword. For many months, the passionate appeals of millions of his associates seemed not to move him. He listened to all the phases of the discussion, and stated, in language clearer and stronger than any opponent had used, the dangers, the difficulties, and the possible futility of the act. In reference to its practical wisdom, Congress, the Cabinet and the country were divided. Several of his generals had proclaimed the freedom of slaves within the limits of their commands. The President revoked their proclamations. His first Secretary of War had inserted a paragraph in his annual report advocating a similar policy. The President suppressed it.

On the 19th of August, 1862, Horace Greeley published a letter, addressed to the President, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," in which he said, "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile."

To this the President responded in that ever-memorable reply of August 22, in which he said:--

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it,--and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

"What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause."

Thus, against all importunities on the one hand and remonstrances on the other, he took the mighty question to his own heart, and, during the long months of that terrible battle-summer, wrestled with it alone. But at length he realized the saving truth, that great, unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. On the 22nd of September, he summoned his Cabinet to announce his conclusion. It was my good fortune, on that same day, and a few hours after the meeting, to hear, from the lips of one who participated, the story of the scene. As the chiefs of the Executive Departments came in, one by one, they found the President reading a favorite chapter from a popular humorist. He was lightening the weight of the great burden which rested upon his spirit. He finished the chapter, reading it aloud. And here I quote, from the published Journal of the late Chief Justice, an entry, written immediately after the meeting, and bearing unmistakable evidence that it is almost a literal transcript of Lincoln's words.

"The President then took a graver tone, and said: 'Gentlemen, I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery; and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an order I had prepared upon the subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since then my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made a promise to myself and (hesitating a little) to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfil that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This I say without intending anything but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. If there is anything in the expressions I use, or in any minor matter which any one of you thinks had best be changed, I shall be glad to receive your suggestions. One other observation I will make. I know very well that many others might, in this matter as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I must do the best I can and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.'

"The President then proceeded to read his Emancipation Proclamation, making remarks on the several parts as he went on, and showing that he had fully considered the subject in all the lights under which it had been presented to him."

The Proclamation was amended in a few matters of detail. It was signed and published that day. The world knows the rest, and will not forget it till "the last syllable of recorded time."

THE EMANCIPATION GROUP[7]

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate of the Freedman's Memorial Statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington, after a design by Thomas Ball. The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The verses which follow were written for the unveiling of the statue, December 9, 1879.

Amidst thy sacred effigies If old renown give place, O city, Freedom-loved! to his Whose hand unchained a race

Take the worn frame, that rested not Save in a martyr's grave; The care-lined face, that none forgot, Bent to the kneeling slave.

Let man be free! The mighty word He spake was not his own; An impulse from the Highest stirred These chiselled lips alone.

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide, Along his pathway ran, And Nature, through his voice, denied The ownership of man.

We rest in peace where these sad eyes Saw peril, strife, and pain; His was the nation's sacrifice, And ours the priceless gain.

O symbol of God's will on earth As it is done above! Bear witness to the cost and worth Of justice and of love.

Stand in thy place and testify To coming ages long, That truth is stronger than a lie, And righteousness than wrong.

[7] _By special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CHRISTMAS GIFT[8]

BY NORA PERRY

'Twas in eighteen hundred and sixty-four, That terrible year when the shock and roar Of the nation's battles shook the land, And the fire leapt up into fury fanned,

The passionate, patriotic fire, With its throbbing pulse and its wild desire To conquer and win, or conquer and die, In the thick of the fight when hearts beat high

With the hero's thrill to do and to dare, 'Twixt the bullet's rush and the muttered prayer. In the North, and the East and the great Northwest, Men waited and watched with eager zest

For news of the desperate, terrible strife,-- For a nation's death or a nation's life; While over the wires there flying sped News of the wounded, the dying and dead.

"Defeat and defeat! Ah! what was the fault Of the grand old army's sturdy assault At Richmond's gates?" in a querulous key Men questioned at last impatiently,

As the hours crept by, and day by day They watched the Potomac Army at bay. Defeat and defeat! It was here, just here, In the very height of the fret and fear,

Click, click! across the electric wire Came suddenly flashing words of fire, And a great shout broke from city and town At the news of Sherman's marching down,--

Marching down on his way to the sea Through the Georgia swamps to victory. Faster and faster the great news came, Flashing along like tongues of flame,--

McAllister ours! And then, ah! then, To that patientest, tenderest, noblest of men, This message from Sherman came flying swift,-- "I send you Savannah for a Christmas gift!"

[8] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

V

DEATH OF LINCOLN

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN![9]

BY WALT WHITMAN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

[9] _By permission of David McKay._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEATH--A DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE AT FORD'S THEATRE[10]

WALT WHITMAN

The day (April 14, 1865) seems to have been a pleasant one throughout the whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant, too--the long storm, so dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended at last by the sunrise of such an absolute National victory, and utter breaking down of secessionism--we almost doubted our senses! Lee had capitulated beneath the apple tree at Appomattox. The other armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly followed.

And could it really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and passion, of failure and disorder and dismay, was there really come the confirmed, unerring sign of peace, like a shaft of pure light--of rightful rule--of God?

But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular afternoon paper, the little Evening Star, had scattered all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner in a hundred different places: "The President and his lady will be at the theatre this evening." Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.

So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. I remembered where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.

On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--and over all, and saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the Nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all perfumes.

The President came betimes and, with his wife, witnessed the play, from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the National flag. The acts and scenes of the piece--one of those singularly witless compositions which have at least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature--a piece ("Our American Cousin") in which, among other characters so called, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never seen, or at least ever seen in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had progressed through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, come interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet partially to be described as I now proceed to give it:

There is a scene in the play representing the modern parlor, in which two unprecedented English ladies are informed by the unprecedented and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage catching purposes; after which, the comments being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Great as that was, with all its manifold train circling around it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, etc., of the New World, in point of fact, the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence--the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance.

Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--and yet a moment's hush--somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill--and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starred, and striped space-way of the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage (a distance of perhaps 14 or 15 feet), falls out of position, catching his boot heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)--and the figure, Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walks along not much back of the foot-lights--turns fully towards the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firm and steady voice the words _Sic Semper Tyrannis_--and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making the mimic ones preposterous--had it not all been rehearsed, in blank, by Booth, beforehand?)

A moment's hush, incredulous--a scream--the cry of murder--Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, "He has killed the President." And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed) the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up--that noise adds to the queerness of the scene--there is extricable confusion and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampled on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival--the audience rush generally upon it--at least the strong men do--the actors and actresses are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with moral fright showing through the rouge--some trembling, some in tears, the screams and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to clamber up--etc., etc.

In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President's Guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--some 200 altogether--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones--inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting "Clear out! clear out!..." Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside the play house that night.

Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to hang him on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse, the silent, resolute half dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms--made indeed a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night and discharged in the morning.

And in the midst of that night pandemonium of senseless hate, infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd--the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint pots, spangles and gaslight--the life blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down....

Such, hurriedly sketched, were the accompaniments of the death of President Lincoln. So suddenly, and in murder and horror unsurpassed, he was taken from us. But his death was painless.

[10] _By permission of David McKay._

HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY[11]

(May 4, 1865)

BY WALT WHITMAN

Hush'd be the camps to-day, And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons, And each with musing soul retire to celebrate Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts, Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing, poet, in our name. Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there, Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

[11] _By permission of David McKay._

TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(1865)

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

O, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power--a nation's trust.

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done--the bond are free; We bear thee to an honored grave, Whose noblest monument shall be The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light, Among the noble host of those cause of right.

CROWN HIS BLOODSTAINED PILLOW

BY JULIA WARD HOWE

Crown his blood-stained pillow With a victor's palm; Life's receding billow Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty Lay this gift sincere; Of a purpose weighty, And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted Was this passive hand, And this heart, high-fated, Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely In a Nation's care, Where her waters queenly Make the West more fair.

In the greenest meadow That the prairies show, Let his marble's shadow Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living, Made his country free; Heed the Second's giving, Death for Liberty."

THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN[12]

BY WALT WHITMAN