The Day Lincoln Was Shot (6 page)

Two ladies bumped over a corduroy road on Saturday. This was an army road and, in a circuitous way, it led to the front.
One of the ladies was Mrs. Lincoln. The other was Julia Dent Grant. They rode in an army ambulance and both held on to the overhead hoops to keep from falling. They sat on a crossboard seat. Directly in front were an army driver and General Adam Badeau, who had been ordered to escort the distinguished ladies to a troop review.

Mrs. Lincoln chattered happily as the wagon swayed over the pine logs. Even here, in a forest of saplings and old undergrowth, she was dressed lavishly. Mrs. Grant did not carry the conversation. She was a plain, almost homely woman with a long nose, and what she smelled in the presence of the First Lady of the Land was trouble, Julia Grant could never explain it, but she always felt nervous in the presence of Mrs. Lincoln. So, as the mules walked, she merely nodded yes, and yes and yes.

On her side, Mrs. Lincoln was careful too. She now knew that General Grant had indeed issued an order for all wives of general officers to go to the rear, but he had exempted his own wife. Mrs. Lincoln did not mention it, although it may have been close to her tongue.

For his part, General Badeau, a tactful man and a keen intellect, filled the gaps in the conversation by explaining that it was Crawford's division which would pass in review, and that the salute would be taken by General George Meade, Commander of the Army of the Potomac. The ladies paid little attention. However, when he moved blithely on to the subject of Grant ordering women out of the area, he got complete attention. The wagon jarred and swayed as he explained, with humor, that when such an order came through, the men in the ranks regarded it as a sure sign that a battle was impending. This time, he said, General Grant had permitted no exemptions except, of course, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Charles Griffin. Mrs. Griffin remained at the front, he said, because she had a special permit from the President.

Mrs. Lincoln's rages were always almost instantaneous. This time, she almost rose from her seat. “What do you mean by that, sir?” she snapped. “Do you mean to say that she saw the President alone?” Mrs. Grant turned to her in alarm. General Badeau looked over his shoulder at the stricken woman. “Do you know that I never allow the President to see any woman alone?”

The pitch of the voice rose higher. Julia Grant looked ill. Badeau swung all the way around and tried to smile reassuringly. “That,” said Mrs. Lincoln, “is a very equivocal smile, sir! Let me out of this carriage at once!” She started to clamber toward the canvas side of the wagon. “I will ask the President if he saw that woman alone.”

Mrs. Grant tried to soothe Mrs. Lincoln. The First Lady was now livid. She wasn't listening. The general, who seemed confused, apologized even though he wasn't certain of the offense. Mrs. Lincoln ordered the ambulance stopped at once. When the mules continued their slow pace, she reached past the driver's shoulder and tried to yank the reins. The general's wife, almost in tears, begged Mrs. Lincoln to please sit down. Just sit.

The First Lady sat. She was silent, and her face twitched. The ambulance continued on the road. Nobody spoke. When it arrived at the parade grounds, General Meade came to the steps at the back of the ambulance and assisted Mrs. Lincoln.

After the review was over, Mrs. Lincoln returned to the ambulance and got in and stared at the back of Adam Badeau's head. “General Meade is a gentleman, sir,” she said. “He says it was not the President who gave Mrs. Griffin the permit, but the Secretary of War.”

At City Point, Mrs. Grant spoke to General Badeau in private and begged him “never to mention this distressing and mortifying affair again.”

The month of March closed with minor chords. In Washington City, the headquarters of General C. C. Augur, at 151/2
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, was badly damaged by fire and Augur had to move most of his staff to Fourteenth Street. It meant that the White House would not have the protection of extra guards next door. In the War Department, Stanton and Eckert and Bates listened to the snap of the telegraph keys and hoped for momentous news, but the best they got was signed “Lincoln”: “There has been much hard fighting this morning. . . . Our troops, after being driven back on the Boydton plank road, turned and drove the enemy in turn and took the White Oak road. . . . There have been four flags captured today.”

The massive crescendos began to be heard in the opening days of April and some of the counterpoint was lost in the bedlam of sound. For instance, on April 2, the Confederacy fell. No one in the North knew it, and no newspaper carried the news, but, shortly after church services in Richmond, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet fled the city. That was the end, even though Lee and Johnston still fought in the East. There was no roll of covered drums, no ceremony, perhaps few tears.

On this Sunday, the Confederacy died and there was no longer an amalgamation of seceded states. An idea born of pride was gone, and had taken its place in the pages of history. After four years of battling a brother who was bigger, stronger, better fed, better armed, the South was whipped.

The President, still at the front, did not know it. His daily dispatch to Stanton said: “All going finely. Parke, Wright, and Ord, extending from the Appomattox to Hatcher's Run, have all broken through the enemy's intrenched lines, taking some forts, guns and prisoners. Sheridan, with his own cavalry, Fifth Corps, and part of the Second, is coming in from the west on the enemy's flank.”

The next day, everybody knew the news. It started when Lincoln sent a coded message to the Secretary of War announcing the portentous intelligence that the city of Petersburg had been evacuated by the Confederate Army and that Grant was “sure” Richmond too had been abandoned. Stanton had slept in his office and, when the code clerk had reduced the message to straight English, the Secretary of War was awakened and told the news.

He was barely savoring the exultation of it when a telegraph key started an insistent chatter in straight English:

“From Richmond,” it began. Two army operators listened, in bug-eyed disbelief, then emitted a whoop and ordered a fifteen-year-old apprentice telegrapher, Willie Kettles, to copy the rest of it. The two operators threw up a front window and began to roar, in unison: “Richmond has fallen! Richmond has fallen! Richmond has fallen!” Citizens on the walk below looked up anxiously. The two yelled the louder. Drays on the cobbles, and carriages too, came to a stop. The faces below began to comprehend; they began to crease in attitudes of smiles, and relief, and sudden sadness and ecstasy. An aged man threw his hat down and jumped on it. A woman blessed herself. A wagon driver burst into tears and blew his nose.

The cry was taken up, and boys skittered down Pennsylvania Avenue in the cool yellow sunshine passing the word and bumping into people and the word began to spread quickly and wildly. When it reached the offices of the Washington
Star,
an editor ran out front and printed in chalk on a big blackboard:

GLORY
!!!
HAIL COLUMBIA
!!!
HALLELUJAH
!!!
RICHMOND OURS
!!!

In a public park, a battery of guns was limbering up when the word came. The officer in charge became so excited that he ordered an immediate salute of eight hundred rounds, three hundred for Petersburg and five hundred for Richmond. The cannonading was massive and, as it echoed across the
Navy Yard, an officer heard it and, not knowing the news, decided to fire one hundred rounds on a big Dahlgren gun on the chance that the news might be important. In an hour, the offices of Washington City were almost empty, and many of the stores were without clerks. Stranger hugged stranger and the taverns did a brisk morning business. The courts adjourned. Children skipped home from school. The banks closed. Church bells tolled in the hollows between mountainous crashes of artillery. Flags appeared before the homes of the loyal and the disloyal. Horse cars stopped running. An impromptu parade started on Sixth Street, the first of many. Negro families emerged from shacks shyly, like children hoping to be asked to a party. Unbidden orators stood on the several hotel steps, faces red, arms waving, but not a word was heard in the bedlam.

Mr. Stanton, surrendering to a rare moment of happiness, leaned from a War Department window and held up a hand for silence. He asked the crowd below to beg Providence “to teach us how to be humble in the midst of triumph.” In the momentary vacuum, someone said that Richmond was burning, and the crowd roared: “Let 'er burn!” Willie Kettles was introduced from the telegraph window as the “man” who had received the auspicious message. Willie bowed gravely from the waist.

On E Street, two squadrons of cavalry met and, without orders, got into parade formation and in a moment a brigade of infantry fell in behind. As the parade moved, it grew. An hour later, the cavalrymen led it across the south grounds of the White House and they were surprised to find that they were being reviewed by General C. C. Augur.

This was going to go on, sporadically, for twelve days. It was the wildest celebration known to the young Republic and it would not end until the nation was plunged into deepest grief. On some days, it would flag a little, through surfeit or
exhaustion, and then fresh news of victory would come and it would revive in Washington City and New York and Spring-field and St. Paul and in the crossroad settlements across the country. The feeling in most minds was that two incredible things had happened: the war was over; we won it.

And yet it was not quite over. Lee's army was still in the field. It was a striking unit in being; it had its fighting units intact, its stores, its staff. It was dying in dignity, and no one in the Army of the Potomac was celebrating.

The President sent word to Stanton that he was about to sail upriver to take a look at burned-out Richmond, and the Secretary of War was beset with misgivings. Had he the power, Stanton would have placed the President under military detention to keep him out of Richmond. He knew that Mrs. Lincoln had returned to Washington yesterday, and would not return to her husband for a few days, but Stanton did not visit the White House on this Monday, April 3, to ask her to stop Lincoln. There is no record that he even visited to ask how she enjoyed her trip.

Instead, Stanton tried the direct approach. He sent a message to Lincoln:

“I congratulate you and the nation on the glorious news in your telegram just recd. Allow me respectfully to ask you to consider whether you ought to expose the nation to the consequences of any disaster to yourself in the pursuit of a treacherous and dangerous enemy like the rebel army. . . . Commanding Generals are in the line of their duty in running such risks. But is the political head of a nation in the same condition?”

The President read it, was comforted by the solicitude of his Secretary of War, and took a boat up the river to Richmond. When he disembarked at a riverbank on the edge of the Confederate capital, Admiral Porter was at his side. A small group of Negroes saw the overly tall man with the stovepipe
hat scrambling up the bank and, when they saw the quizzical, sad smile on the thick lips, a few recognized him from half-remembered pictures. They began to shout and bow and a group gathered about him, a few kneeling to kiss his black shoes.

“Don't kneel to me,” the President said sharply. “This is not right.” He glanced around the circle of dark faces and saw the wonderment in them. “You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. I am but God's humble instrument, but you may rest assured that, as long as I live, no one shall put a shackle to your limbs, and you shall have all the rights which God has given to every other free citizen of this Republic.”

He had injected the somber note:
“As long as I live. . . .”

Admiral Porter tried to push the Negroes away. They were as pliant as full wheat. They moved back when pushed. When the hand was removed, they returned. Negroes seemed to be coming from everywhere and the admiral looked around helplessly for help. There was none. The people pressed around the President and they sang and chanted. A few bold ones tried to touch the sleeve of his coat. Lincoln stepped forward, determined to see a part of Richmond, and the circle moved with him. Later, Lincoln was seen and rescued by a roving squadron of U.S. Cavalry. Both groups were equally surprised.

All of the nation's news came from the front in these final days. Washington City—normally the master maker of news—was, for the moment, a listening post. Congress had adjourned; many legislators had gone home to mend fences. The streets were full of men in uniform, men from Ohio and Vermont and Illinois and Delaware and Missouri who were on leave from one of the many camps in and around the city, and who wanted, before the war was done, to say that they had seen the new Capitol dome and the White House.

The most momentous event on Tuesday, April 4, was the arrival of the steamer
Thomas Powell
with three hundred wounded aboard. The most trivial news was that Mrs. Lincoln, preparing to return to City Point, Virginia, sat in the White House and wrote notes for two of the President's guards, detailing them to duty at the White House and, in effect, exempting them from being drafted into the Army. Both guards, John Parker and Joseph Sheldon, had been notified that they were being drafted, and both had asked Mrs. Lincoln for the note.

It was news of a happy sort that the State Department had ordered a grand illumination of all Federal buildings in the District of Columbia for this Tuesday night in celebration of the fall of the Confederate capital. All day, hundreds of workmen crawled along the façades of buildings carrying bunting. The Navy Department built a big model of a full-rigged ship and held it aloft in front of the building with piano wire. Over the front of the Treasury building, a gigantic ten-dollar bill could be seen. The main War Department building was hidden by hundreds of flags.