XXXV. DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN-PEACE. JOHNSTON-DAVIS-TAYLOR-KIRBY SMITH. 1 PRESIDENT LINCOLN had gone days later this time attended by Mrs. down to the front in anticipation of Grant's final movement against Lee's right south of Petersburg, and was thenceforward in constant communication with the Lieutenant-General commanding in the field, while Lee made his assault on our lines, Sheridan crossed the James, moving from our farthest right to our extreme left, and Grant impelled the advance of that left with such memorable results. He was mainly at City Point, receiving reports from Grant and telegraphing their substance to the War Department for dissemination over the country till the day after Richmond fell; when he accompanied Admiral Porter in a gunboat up to Rockett's, a mile below the city, and thence was rowed up to the wharf, and walked thence, attended by Admiral Porter and by a few sailors armed with carbines, to Gen. Weitzel's headquarters, in the house so recently and suddenly abandoned by Jefferson Davis. Recognized and stared at by all, his hearty greetings, aside from those of our soldiers, were all but confined to the Blacks, who crowded in thousands to welcome and bless their emancipator; so that it became necessary to summon a military force to clear a way for him through the streets. After holding a hasty levee, the President took a rapid drive through the principal streets, and, at 6 P. M., left on his return to City Point; whence he repeated his visit to Richmond two 1 March 24. Lincoln, by Vice-President Johnson, several U. S. Senators, &c. He was now waited on by several leading Confederates, who, seeing that their cause was hopelessly lost, were naturally anxious to make the best terms possible; and to whom, in a spirit of kindness and magnanimity that had never been shaken, he lent a favorable ear. In deference to a suggestion by some of their number, he wrote the following: "HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED "It has been intimated to me that the gen STATES, CITY POINT, April 6, 1865. "Major-Gen. WEITZEL, Richmond, Va.: tlemen who have acted as the Legislature of Virginia, in support of the Rebellion, may now desire to assemble at Richmond ginia troops and other support from resistunce to the General Government. If they attempt it, give them permission and protection, until, if at all, they attempt some action hostile to the United States; in which case, you will notify them, giving them reasonable time to leave, and at the end of which time arrest any who remain. Allow Judge Campbell to see this, but do not make it public. Yours, etc., and take measures to withdraw the Vir A. LINCOLN." The President returned, on the day of Lee's surrender, to Washington; whence he dispatched to Gen. Weitzel a recall of the permission above given the object contemplated by it having been otherwise fully attained. He had, the day before, issued two Proclamations: one of them closing, till further orders, in accordance with law, certain ports in the Rebel States whereof the blockade had been raised by their capture respectively; the other, de'April 4. April 12. PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LAST DAYS. 747 manding henceforth for our National downfall of the Rebellion because it vessels in foreign ports, on penalty involved the overthrow of Slavery, of retaliation, those privileges and had gone down to Port Royal and immunities which had hitherto been Charleston to raise, with fitting obdenied them on the plea of according servances, over the ruins of the hisequal belligerent rights to the Re- toric fortress, the identical flag which public and its internal foes. He had waved over it during its first made, next evening, to a vast crowd bombardment, and which had been assembled before the Executive Man- thoughtfully preserved for this pursion expressly to hear it, an address pose. The whole country was aglow on Reconstruction, whereof it is only with loyal rejoicings and congratupertinent here to say that-while lations; and the President, after atcarefully remitting to Congress all tending a meeting of his Cabinet to questions connected with the repre- receive a personal report from Gen. sentation of the revolted States in Grant, just arrived from Appomattox, either House, and avowing his desire listening to the story of Lee's surthat a qualified Right of Suffrage be render from his son, Capt. Robert Linaccorded to the Blacks of those coln, who, being on Grant's staff, had States-he evinced an utter absence been an eye-witness of the scene, of resentment or bitterness toward and giving audience to several public the late Rebels, and an anxious wish men-among them John P. Hale, that the Confederate States should just appointed Minister to Madrid, be restored to all the functions of and Speaker Colfax, who was taking self-government and equal power in leave for an overland journey to Calithe Union at the earliest day con-fornia and Oregon-concluded to sistent with the National integrity, seek relaxation from his many and tranquillity, and safety. On the following day, an order issued from the War Department, previously approved by Gen. Grant, which appeared throughout the land in the journals of next morning," putting a stop to all drafting and recruiting for our armies, with the purchase of arms, munitions, provisions, &c.; and it was announced that the number of our general and staff officers would be reduced, and all military restrictions on trade and commerce removed forthwith. That day was the fourth anniversary of the surrender of Fort Sumter to the Rebels by Maj. Anderson; and a large number of loyal citizens, who rejoiced the more heartily in the 'April 12. weighty cares by spending the evening at Ford's Theater, where Gen. Grant and he had been publicly announced as probable visitors that night, while the former had been compelled by inexorable duties to disappoint the expectation thus excited. At 8 P. M., the President and his wife, with two others, rode to the theater, and were ushered into the private box previously secured by him; where, at 10 P. M., while all were intent on the play, an actor of Baltimore birth-John Wilkes Booth by name, son of the more eminent English-born tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth-availing himself of that freedom of the house usually accorded at theaters to actors, entered at the * April 14. front door, stood for a few moments, of whom, Maj. H. R. Rathbone-the after presenting a card to the Presi- only man there beside the President dent's messenger, in the passage-way-turning his eyes, saw, through the behind the dress circle, surveying the sulphurous smoke, a stranger standspectacle before him; then entered ing behind him, whom he instantly the vestibule of the President's pri- clutched; but Booth, tearing away vate box, shut the door behind him, from his grasp, and dropping his pis fastened it from the inside by placing tol, made a pass at him with the daga short plank (previously provided) ger, inflicting a serious wound on his against it, with its foot against the left arm. Rushing now to the front opposite wall, and then, holding a of the box, theatrically flourishing his pistol and a dagger in either hand, weapon, and exclaiming 'Sic semper. stepped through the inner door into tyrannis! Booth put his hand on the the box just behind the President, railing in front of the box, and leaped who was leaning forward with his over, alighting on a corner of the eyes fixed on the stage, and fired his stage; but, catching with one of pistol, while holding it close to the back his spurred heels in the American of the President's head, piercing his flag draped across the front of the skull behind the left ear, and lodging box, he fell; spraining his ankle so the ball, after traversing the brain, just as to cripple his flight and afford a behind the right eye. Mr. Lincoln's clue to the detectives who were soon head fell slightly forward, his eyes on his trail. Recovering immediclosed, but he uttered no word or ately from his fall, he faced the aucry; and, though life was not extinct dience, brandished his dagger, exfor nine hours thereafter, he gave, claimed "The South is avenged!" thenceforth to his death in a neigh- and ran across the stage to and out boring house, at 7:22 next morn- of the back. door, which he shut, ing, no sign of intelligence; and it and, mounting his horse-which a is probable that he never on earth half-witted, stage-struck youth was knew that he had been shot, or was there holding for him-rode off and conscious even of suffering, much less across the Anacosta bridge out of of malice and murder. Hating and Washington; seeking refuge in the wishing ill to none, he had never adjacent region of southern Marycomprehended the hell of demoniac land; whose Whites, being intensely passion which seethed and surged pro-Slavery, were mainly Rebel symaround him, and which the utter pathizers, and were therefore counted collapse of the Rebellion had only on to conceal him and aid his escape. intensified; hence, he had ever treated lightly the anonymous threats which men placed as he was receive as matters of course, and had disregarded all entreaties that he should take precautions against assassination. The report of Booth's pistol startled the house, but especially the President's companions in the box; That President Lincoln was the victim of a conspiracy of partisans of the Rebellion is established by undeniable proof; not so the charge that the chiefs and master-spirits of the Confederacy were implicated in the crime. Booth himself was, so far as has been shown, the projector and animating soul of the monstrous PAYNE'S MURDEROUS ASSAULT ON GOV. SEWARD. 749 clined to let him go unasked up to the Secretary's sick room; but the stranger rushed by him and up stairs to the third story: making his way readily to the door of the sufferer's chamber, where he was confronted by Gov. S.'s son Frederick, who barred his way; when he drew and presented a pistol, which snapped; whereupon he struck Frederick twice over the head with it, fracturing his skull and felling him to the floor in utter insensibility. The noise of this encounter brought from the sick room Miss Fannie Seward, the Secretary's only daughter, by whom the villain instantly rushed, and, throwing himself on the bed, inflicted, with a plot; which at first contemplated Secretary; then confined to his bed primarily the capture and forcible by very serious injuries received when abduction of the President—a scheme recently thrown from his carriagewhich of course involved a proba- his horses having taken fright and bility, but not a certainty, of feloni-run away. The colored porter deous bloodshed. Booth was simply one of the many badly educated, loose-living young men infesting the purlieus of our great cities, who, regarding Slavery as the chief bulwark of their own claim to birthright in a superior caste, and the Federal Constitution as established expressly and mainly to sustain and buttress Slavery, could never comprehend that any political action adverse to whatever exactions and pretensions of the Slave Power could possibly be other than unjustly aggressive and treasonable. Few of this class were radically Disunionists; they sympathized with the Rebellion, not because it aimed at a division of the Republic, but because it was impelled by devo- | bowie-knife, three heavy stabs aimed tion to Slavery; and was thus hallowed, in their view, as a laudable effort, however irregular, to achieve and firmly secure the chief end of both the Constitution and the Union. There is no particle of evidence that Booth, or any of his fellow conspirators, had been in any wise offended by, or that they cherished any feeling of aversion to, the President, save as the 'head center' of resistance to the Slaveholders' Rebellion. Almost at the identical moment of Booth's entry into the theater, a stranger, afterward identified as Lewis Payne Powell, son of a Florida clergyman, but generally known to his intimates as Payne, presented himself at the door of Secretary Seward's house on President Square, where he claimed to be charged with an errand from his physician, Dr. Verdi, to the at the throat of his intended victim; who, instinctively divining the assassin's purpose, had raised himself on his left elbow, and offered all the resistance compatible with his slender frame and crippled condition-he having had his right arm broken and his lower jaw fractured when thrown from his carriage. The wounds thus inflicted on his face. and neck were terrible, but, because of his resistance, not fatal; and, before a fourth blow could take effect, the assassin was grasped by an invalid soldier named Robinson, who was in attendance as a nurse; whom he savagely assaulted and wounded with his bloody weapon, but did not succeed in mastering. Gov. Seward, meanwhile, exerting his remaining strength, succeeded in rolling off the farther side of the bed; while Miss window and the porter ran into the street crying for help. The assassin, aware that another moment's delay must seal his doom, now broke from the soldier's grasp, and rushed to escape; meeting at the head of the first flight of stairs Maj. Augustus Seward, another son of the Secretary, whom he struck with his dagger; being next confronted, just below, by Mr. Hansell, one of the Secretary's attendants, whom he stabbed in the back; thus clearing his way to the street, where he mounted a horse he had left there, and rode rapidly off unheeded. Seward shrieked 'murder' from the | ments to severity or bitterness on the part of the loyal, had ever found utterance through his lips. Inflexibly resolved that the Rebellion should be put down, he was equally determined that its upholders, having submitted to the Nation's authority, should experience to the utmost the Nation's magnanimity. Such was the palpable drift of his speech, delivered two nights prior to his death, as of all his prior inculcations. And now, the butchery of this gentle, forbearing spirit, by the hand, hardly less blundering than bloody, of a proRebel assassin, incited a fierce, agonized, frantic yell for retaliation, that, for the moment, could only be braved at the cost of great personal obloquy and sacrifice; and the appearance of an official proclamation, signed by the new President, and countersigned by William Hunter, as acting Secretary of State, charging that the appalling crime of Booth and his associates had been The quiet accession to the Presidency of Vice-President Johnsonthe funeral honors to the good, beloved President, so suddenly snatched away at the moment when long years of trial and disaster had at length been crowned by a fullness of triumph and gladness rarely paralleled—the slow and long dubious recovery of the stricken Secretary and his selfdevoted son-the flight, pursuit, and capture of Booth, so severely wounded by his captors that he died a few hours afterward-the arraignment, trial, and conviction before a military court of Payne and several of their fellow-conspirators or accomplices may here be hurriedly passed over, as non-essential to this history. Not so the burst of unmeasured, indignant wrath, the passionate grief, the fierce cry for vengeance, which the crime of the assassins very generally incited. Mr. Lincoln was widely known as radically, immovably averse to aught that savored of severity in dealing with the defeated insurgents. No 'railing accusations,' no incite "incited, concerted, and procured by and Gen. Lee had only assumed to surrender the army under his immediate command; though he manifestly realized that this capitulation was May 2. |