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Grant's final movements began on March 31. Lincoln at City Point sat all day in the telegraph office at headquarters as at critical moments he did in Washington, receiving reports from Grant and sending them on to Stanton. It was he who first informed the War Department of Sheridan's success at Five Points on April 1. It was he who on the morning of April 3 wired the Secretary of War that at last Petersburg was evacuated and Richmond said to be. A few hours later he went at Grant's request to Petersburg for a last interview with the general before he followed his army which was now moving after the retreating Confederate army. The city had suffered terribly from the long siege, many of its houses being destroyed and all being more or less riddled by shot and shell. Even to-day a visitor to Petersburg is shown house after house where great cannon balls are embedded in the walls. As Lincoln rode through the streets, busy as he was with the stupendous event he had so long desired, he noticed the destruction with a sorry shake of his head. The talk with Grant was held on the porch of a comfortable house still standing, and then the two parted, Grant to go to Appomattox, Lincoln to City Point.

The news of the abandonment of Richmond on April 2 had by this time reached City Point. Lincoln's first exclamation on receiving the news was "I want to see Richmond." A party was at once arranged and on the morning of April 4 he started up the river. The trip must have been full of exciting interest to the President, leading as it did by a score of places which had been made forever famous by the struggles of war which he knew now to be overMalvern Hill, Deep Bottom, Dutch Gap, Varina! It was full of real danger, too, for there was no way of knowing positively that the stream was free from torpedoes or the banks entirely cleared of the enemy. The entrance into

Richmond was even more dangerous. Here was the Presi dent of the United States with four companions and a guard of only ten marines, entering on foot a city which for four years he had been doing his utmost to capture by force. That city was in a condition of the wildest confusion. The army and government had abandoned it. Fire had destroyed a large part of it and was still raging. The Federals who had entered the day before had not as yet established any effective patrol. A hostile people filled the streets and hung from the windows. And yet through this chaos of misery, disorganization, and defeat Abraham Lincoln walked in safety. More, as it was noised abroad that he had come his passage became a triumph. The negroes full of superstitious veneration for the name of Lincoln flocked about him weeping. "Bres de Lord," cried one, “dere is de great Messiah," and throwing himself on his knees he kissed the President's feet. It was only after a long struggle that the guard was able to conduct Mr. Lincoln from this tumultuous rejoicing crowd and bring him safe to the house of Jefferson Davis-now the headquarters of the federal troops.

"Get

The President remained two days in Richmond carefully going over the situation and discussing the best means of restoring Union authority and of dealing with the individuals who had been in insurrection. The President was emphatic in his opinion. The terms must be liberal. them to plowing once," he said in Admiral Porter's pres ence, "and gathering in their own little crops, eating popcorn at their own firesides, and you can't get them to shoulder a musket again for half a century." Being cheered at City Point the day after he left Richmond by a crowd of Confederate prisoners, he said again to Admiral Porter: "They will never shoulder a musket again in anger, and if Grant is wise he will leave them their guns to shoot crows

with and their horses to plow with; it would do no harm." As to the people of Richmond his one counsel to the military governor was to "let them down easy." Nor would he while there listen to a word of harshness in the treatment of even the leaders of the rebellion. One day when visiting Libby Prison, a member of the party remarked to him that Jefferson Davis ought to be hung, "Judge not that ye be not judged," Charles Sumner heard him quote. No bitterness was in his soul, only a great thankfulness that the end seemed so near and a firm determination to regulate with mercy all questions of reconstruction.

Returning to City Point Mr. Lincoln learned that Mr. Seward had been thrown from a carriage and injured and he resolved to go at once to Washington. He had only just reached there when he received word that on April 9 General Lee had surrendered his army to General Grant at Appomattox. This could mean but one thing, the war was over. No force was now left to the enemy which must not surrender on hearing that the principal Confederate force had laid down its arms. Immediately the President and his associates began the glad task of shutting down the vast war machinery in operation—the first act being to issue an order suspending the draft.

CHAPTER XXX

THE END OF THE WAR

"THE war is over." Throughout the breadth of the North this was the jubilant cry with which people greeted one another on the morning of April 14, 1865. For ten days reports of victories had been coming to them; Petersburg evacuated, Richmond fallen, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet fled, Lee surrendered, Mobile captured. Nothing of the Confederacy, in short, remained but Johnston's army, and it was generally believed that its surrender to Sherman was but a matter of hours. How completely the conflict was at an end, however, the people of the North had not realized until they read in their newspapers, on that Good Friday morning the order of the Secretary of War suspending the draft, stopping the purchase of military supplies, and removing military restrictions from trade. The war was over indeed,

Such a day of rejoicing as followed the world has rarely seen. At Fort Sumter scores of well-known citizens of the North, among them Henry Ward Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison, General Robert Anderson, and Theodore Tilton, raised over the black and shattered pile the flag which four years ago Charleston, now lying desolate and wasted, had dragged down.

Cities and towns, hamlets and country road-sides blossomed with flags and bunting. Stock exchanges met to pass resolutions. Bells rang. Every man who could make a speech was on his feet. It was a Millennium Day, restoring broken homes, quieting aching hearts, easing distracted minds. Even those who mourned-and who could count the number whom that dreadful four years had stripped of those

they held dearest ?-even those who mourned exulted. Their dead had saved a nation, freed a people. And so a subtle joy, mingled triumph, resignation, and hope, swept over the North. It was with all men as James Russell Lowell wrote to his friend Norton that it was with him: "The news, my dear Charles is from Heaven. I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, and ended by holding my peace and feeling devoutly thankful.”

One man before all others in the nation felt and showed his gladness that day-the President, Abraham Lincoln. For weeks now as he had seen the end approaching, little by little he had been thankfully laying aside the ways of war and returning to those of peace. His soul, tuned by nature to gentleness and good-will, had been for four years forced to lead in a pitiless war. Now his duties were to “bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan; " to devise plans by which the members of the restored Union could live together in harmony, to plan for the future of the four million human beings to whom he had given freedom. All those who were with him in this period remarked the change in his feelings and his ways. He seemed to be aroused to a new sense of the beauty of peace and rest, to love to linger in quiet spots, and to read over and over with infinite satisfaction lines of poetry which expressed repose. The perfect tranquillity in death seemed especially to appeal to him. Mrs. Lincoln once related to her friend, Isaac Arnold, that, while at City Point, in April, she was driving one day with her husband along the banks of the James, when they passed a country grave-yard. "It was a retired place, shaded by trees, and early spring flowers were opening on nearly every grave. It was so quiet and attractive that they stopped the carriage and walked through it. Mr. Lincoln seemed thoughtful and impressed. He said: 'Mary, you

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