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CHAP. XVI.

THE LINCOLN MONUMENT AT SPRINGFIELD.

parable canvas of the Transfiguration as the chief ornament of his funeral.

An association was immediately formed to build a monument over the grave of Lincoln. The work was in the hands of his best and oldest friends in Illinois, and was pushed with vigor. Few large subscriptions were received, with the exception of $50,000 voted by the State of Illinois and $10,000 by New York; but innumerable small contributions afforded all that was needed. The soldiers and sailors of the nation gave $28,000, of which the disproportionately large amount of $8,000 was the gift of the negro troops, whose manhood Lincoln had recognized by putting arms in their

hands.1 In all $180,000 was raised, and the monu- CHAP. XVI. ment, built after a design by Larkin G. Mead, was dedicated on the 15th of October, 1874. The day was fine, the concourse of people was enormous; there were music and eloquence and a brilliant decorative display. The orator of the day was General Richard J. Oglesby, who praised his friend with warm but sober eulogy; General Sherman added his honest and hearty tribute; and General Grant, twice elected President, uttered these carefully chosen words, which had all the weight that belongs to the rare discourses of that candid and reticent soldier:

From March, 1864, to the day when the hand of the assassin opened a grave for Mr. Lincoln, then President of the United States, my personal relations with him were as close and intimate as the nature of our respective duties would permit. To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head, and for his patience and patriotism. With all his disappointments from failures on the part of those to whom he had intrusted commands, and treachery on the part of those who had gained his confidence but to betray it, I never heard him utter a complaint, nor cast a censure, for bad conduct or bad faith. It was his nature to find excuses for his adversaries. In his death the nation lost its greatest hero; in his death the South lost its most just friend.

1 Besides contributing thus generously to the Springfield monument, the freed people gave another touching instance of their gratitude by erecting in a public square on Capitol Hill in

Washington a noble group in
bronze, including Lincoln, and
entitled "Emancipation." The
subscription for this purpose was
started by a negro washerwoman.
The statue is by Thomas Ball.

CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF REBELLION

CH. XVII.

IN

N the early years of the war, after every considerable success of the national arms, the newspapers were in the habit of announcing that "the back of the rebellion was broken." But at last the time came when the phrase was true; after April, 1865. Appomattox, the rebellion fell to pieces all at once, Lee surrendered less than one-sixth of the Confederates in arms on the 9th of April; the armies that still remained to them, though inconsiderable when compared with the mighty host under the national colors, were yet infinitely larger than any Washington had commanded, and were capable of strenuous resistance and of incalculable mischief. Leading minds on both sides thought the war might be indefinitely prolonged. We have seen that Jefferson Davis, after Richmond fell, issued his swelling manifesto, saying the Confederates had "now entered upon a new phase of the struggle," and that he would "never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy." General Sherman, so late as the 25th of April, said, Committee "I now apprehend that the rebel armies will disperse; and instead of dealing with six or seven States, we will have to deal with numberless bands

Sherman to
Grant,
Report

on Conduct

of the War, 1864-65. Part III., p. 18.

of desperadoes." Neither side comprehended fully CH. XVIL the intense weariness of war that had taken possession of the South; and peace came more swiftly and completely than any one had ever dared to hope.

The march of Sherman from Atlanta to the sea and his northward progress through the Carolinas had predisposed the great interior region to make an end of strife, a tendency which was greatly promoted by Wilson's energetic and masterly raid. The rough usage received by Taylor and by Forrest at his hands, and the blow their dignity suffered in the chase of their fugitive President, made their surrender more practicable. An officer of Taylor's staff came to Canby's headquarters on the 19th of April to make arrangements for the surrender of all the Confederate forces east of the Mississippi not already paroled by Sherman and by Wilson - embracing some 42,000 men. On the 4th of May the terms were agreed upon and signed at the village of Citronelle in Alabama. General Taylor gives a picturesque incident of his meeting with General Canby. The Union officers invited the Confederates to a luncheon, and while the latter were enjoying a menu to which they had long been unaccustomed, the military band in attendance began playing "Hail, Columbia." Canby - with a courtesy, Taylor says, equal to anything recorded by Froissart-excused himself, and walked to the door; the music ceased for a moment, and then the air of "Dixie" was heard. The Confederates, not to be left in arrears of good-breeding, then demanded the national air, and the flag of the reunited country was toasted by both sides.

1865.

CH. XVII. The terms agreed upon were those accorded by Grant to Lee, with slight changes of detail, the United States Government furnishing transportation and subsistence on the way home to the men lately engaged in the effort to destroy it. The Confederates willingly testify to the cordial generosity with which they were treated. "Public property," says General Taylor, "was turned over and receipted for, and this as orderly and quickly as in time of peace between officers of the same service." At the same time and place the Confederate commodore Ebenezer Farrand surrendered to Rear-Admiral Henry K. Thatcher all the naval forces of the Confederacy in the neighborhood of Mobile-a dozen vessels and some hundreds of officers.

1865.

General E. Kirby Smith commanded all the insurgent forces west of the Mississippi. On him the desperate hopes of Mr. Davis and his flying Cabinet were fixed, after the successive surrenders of Lee and Johnston had left them no prospect in the East. They imagined they could move westward, gathering up stragglers as they fled, and, crossing the river, could join Smith's forces, and "form an army, which in that portion of the country, abounding in supplies and deficient in rivers and railroads, could have continued the war. . ." "To this hope," adds Mr. Davis, "I persistently clung." Smith, on the 21st of April, called upon his soldiers to continue the fight. "You possess the means of long resisting invasion. You have hopes of succor from abroad. . . The great resources of this department, its vast extent, the numbers, the discipline, and the efficiency of the army, will

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