Lincoln (166 page)

544
“if they do”:
Strong,
Diary,
p. 501.

544
“greed for spoils”:
John G. Nicolay to John Hay, Oct. 19, 1864, Nicolay MSS, LC.

544
“those votes himself”:
Zornow, p. 202.

544
“half filled seats
”: Henry D. Cooke to John Sherman, Nov. 8, 1864, Sherman MSS, LC.

544
went off smoothly:
Zornow, chap. 16, offers the best analysis of the voting. There is also much excellent material in William B. Hesseltine,
Lincoln and the War Governors
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), chap. 17, which, however, overestimates the importance of the soldier vote.

545
“pretty sure-footed”:
Hay,
Diary,
pp. 233–234.

Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), by William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David Winfred Gaddy, offers a provocative account of attempts to kidnap and kill Lincoln. Tidwell’s
April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995) offers further evidence of Booth’s connection with the Southern secret service. Michael Les Benedict,
A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974), and Herman Belz,
Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), provide illuminating accounts of the Thirteenth Amendment and of the failure of Ashley’s reconstruction bill. The fullest account of the Hampton Roads peace conference is in Edward C. Kirkland,
The Peacemakers of 1864
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1927). Donald C. Pfanz,
The Petersburg Campaign: Abraham Lincoln at City Point, March 20-April 9, 1865
(Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1989), gives a detailed chronology of Lincoln’s visit to Grant’s army.

546
“the national honor”:
Strong,
Diary,
p. 511.

546
“in all history”:
James A. Briggs to John Sherman, Nov. 12, 1864, Sherman MSS, LC.

546
“was a possibility”: CW,
8:101.

546
“limitations in politics”:
Hay,
Diary,
pp. 234, 239.

547
“any man’s bosom”: CW,
8:101.

547
“insatiable for our blood”:
Larry E. Nelson,
Bullets, Ballots, and Rhetoric: Confederate Policy for the United States Presidential Contest of 1864
(University: University of Alabama Press, 1980), p. 158.

547
“despotic Caesar himself”:
Michael Davis,
The Image of Lincoln in the South
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971), p. 68.

547
“used
to things!”:
Carpenter,
Six Months,
pp. 62–63.

548
“of its instruments”:
Ibid., pp. 65–66.

548
“in this city”:
Ward Hill Lamon,
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865,
ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Washington, D.C.: 1911), p. 275.

548
Lincolns’ private rooms:
For these increasingly careful security precautions, see George S. Bryan,
The Great American Myth
(New York: Carrick & Evans, 1940), pp. 60–66. See also “Guarding Mr. Lincoln,”
Surratt Courier
12 (Mar. 1987), pp. 1, 7.

549
“out of the City”:
Lizzie W.S. to AL, July 1, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

549
“with your help”:
Seymour Ketchum to AL, Nov. 2, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

549
“the public good”:
Tidwell,
Come Retribution,
p. 234.

549
“of such means”:
Ibid., p. 235.

549
retaliation against Lincoln:
Joseph George, Jr., “‘Black Flag Warfare’: Lincoln and the Raids Against Richmond and Jefferson Davis,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
115 (July 1991): 317–318. Jefferson Davis himself knew of Confederate plans to kidnap Lincoln, and he was the more willing to entertain the idea, because he believed there had been several Northern-inspired plots against his own life. (Davis to J. William Jones, May 10, 1876, Davis Personal Papers, Virginia State Library; J. Thomas Scharf, interview with Jefferson Davis, July 8, 1887, in
Baltimore Sunday Herald,
July 10, 1887.) The Confederate President discussed the proposed kidnapping with his young adjutant, Colonel Walter H. Taylor, who was, Davis said much later, “the only man who ever talked to me on the subject of his [Lincoln’s] capture or at least the only one who I believed intended to do what he proposed.” But he declined to endorse Taylor’s plan “on the ground that the attempt would probably involve the killing, instead of bringing away the captive alive” (Davis to Taylor, Aug. 31, 1889, C. Seymour Bullock MSS, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina). Immediately afterward Davis reported this conversation to his wife, saying that “Taylor was a brave man and of course did
not see that Mr. Lincoln could not be captured alive.” After Davis explained that “the plan was impracticable for that reason if for no other,” Taylor agreed to drop it, because he “would not lend himself to a plan of assassination any more than I would” (Varina Howells Davis to Henry T. Loutham, May 10, 1898, Jefferson Davis MSS, University of Alabama). For all these references on Davis, Taylor, and the kidnapping plot, I am indebted to Professor Joan E. Cashin.

549
Thomas Nelson Conrad:
For an excellent account of Conrad’s scheme, see Terry Alford, “The Silken Net: Plots to Abduct Abraham Lincoln During the Civil War” (unpublished paper, Annandale, Va., Apr. 21, 1987).

549
“and at hand”:
Anonymous to AL, Sept. 21, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

550
“plug-hat”:
Lamon,
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,
pp. 266–269, places this episode in 1862, but Tidwell,
Come Retribution,
p. 237, shows that it occurred in Aug. 1864.

550
“humiliating failure”:
Alford, “The Silken Net.”

550
“threats like these”:
John W. Forney,
Anecdotes of Public Men
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 2:425.

550
“nineteen
enemies”:
Carpenter,
Six Months,
p. 276. See also Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin,
Lincoln and the Patronage
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), chap. 11.

550
“more substantial service”:
Wayne C. Temple and Justin G. Turner, “Lincoln’s ‘Castine’: Noah Brooks,”
LH
73 (Fall 1971): 170.

551
“cases—
not
principles”: John T. Hall to AL, Oct. 17, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

552
“otherwise certainly attain”:
Segal,
Conversations,
p. 361.

552
“opinions are known”:
David M. Silver,
Lincoln’s Supreme Court
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), pp. 207–208.

552
“the rest hold back”: Segal,
Conversations,
p. 361.

552
had given him:
Kenneth A. Bernard,
Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War
(Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1966), pp. 278–279.

552
“than do it.”):
Virginia Woodbury Fox, Diary, Dec. 10, 1864, Levi Woodbury MSS, LC.

552
“a reasonable objection”:
Undated memorandum of a conversation with AL, Lamon MSS, HEH.

553
“if not fearful”: CW,
8:181.

553
“whole detached force”: CW,
8:l48n.

553
“bales of cotton”:
W. T. Sherman to AL, Dec. 22, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

553
“a great light”: CW,
8:182.

553
“any respect whatsoever”: Congressional Globe,
38 Cong., 2 sess. (Dec. 15, 1864), pp. 50–51.

553
Era of Good Feeling:
Washington
Daily National Intelligencer,
Jan. 17, 1865.

554
“will of the majority”: CW,
8:149.

554
“to a close”:
Segal,
Conversations,
pp. 362–364.

554
“man in America”:
Fawn Brodie,
Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1959), p. 204.

554
“in these matters”:
Nicolay and Hay, 10:85; Donald,
Sumner,
p. 194n.

554
influenced his change:
Allan G. Bogue,
The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 253n.

554
“all the evils”: CW,
8:254.

555
“to be in it”: CW,
8:248.

555
“they smelt Peace”:
J. M. Ashley to WHH, Nov. 23, 1866, HWC; Arlin Turner, “Elizabeth Peabody Visits Lincoln, February, 1865,”
New England Quarterly
48 (Mar. 1975): 119–120.

555
was an armistice:
Brooks D. Simpson,
Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of
War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 73.

555
ending the war:
Kirkland,
The Peacemakers of 1864,
pp. 218–222, 236n.

556
“shall be adopted”: CW,
8:151–152.

556
“by Constitutional Amendments”:
The best account of Singleton’s expedition is in Randall,
Lincoln the President,
4:330–331.

556
“when Savannah falls”:
Blair’s detailed memorandum of his visit to Richmond and his conversations with Jefferson Davis, to which the cataloguer has given the date of January 12, 1865, is in the Lincoln MSS, LC. For an excellent account of the background of Blair’s mission, see Howard C. Westwood, “Lincoln and the Hampton Road Peace Conference,”
LH
81 (Winter 1979): 243–256.