Ida Tarbell
McClure’s Magazine/August, 1899
“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, an 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 he had seen the end approaching, and 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 at this time 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. For the first time since he entered the Presidency he took a holiday. He loved to linger in quiet spots, and he read over and over with infinite satisfaction lines of poetry which expressed repose. The perfect tranquility in death seemed especially to appeal to him. Mrs. Lincoln related to her friend, Isaac Arnold, that, while visiting Grant’s headquarters, at City Point, in April, she was driving one day with her husband along the banks of the James, when they passed a country graveyard. “It was a retired place, shaded with 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 are younger than I. You will survive me. When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this.’”
A few days after this, as he was sailing down the James bound for Washington, Charles Sumner, who was in the party, was much impressed by the tone and manner in which Mr. Lincoln read aloud two or three times a passage from Macbeth:
“Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further!”
There was a marked change in his appearance. All through 1863 and 1864 his thin face had day by day grown more haggard, its lines had deepened, its pallor had become a more ghastly gray. His eye, always sad when he was in thought, had a look of unutterable grief. Through all these months Lincoln was, in fact, consumed by sorrow. “I think I shall never be glad again,” he said once to a friend. But as one by one the weights lifted, a change came over him; his form straightened, his face cleared, the lines became less accentuated. “His whole appearance, poise, and bearing had marvelously changed,” says the Hon. James Harlan. “He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved.”
Never since he had become convinced that the end of the war was near had Mr. Lincoln seemed to his friends more glad, more serene, than on the 14th of April. The morning was soft and sunny in Washington, and as the spring was early in 1865, the Judas-trees and the dogwood were blossoming on the hillsides, the willows were green along the Potomac, and in the parks and gardens the lilacs bloomed—a day of promise and joy to which the whole town responded. Indeed, ever since the news of the fall of Richmond reached Washington the town had been indulging in an almost unbroken celebration, each new victory arousing a fresh outburst and rekindling enthusiasm. On the night of the 13th, there had been a splendid illumination, and on the 14th, the rejoicing went on. The suspension of the draft and the presence of Grant in town—come this time not to plan new campaigns, but to talk of peace and reconstruction—seemed to furnish special reason for celebrating.
At the White House the family party which met at breakfast was unusually happy. Captain Robert Lincoln, the President’s oldest son, then an aide-de-camp on Grant’s staff, had arrived that morning, and the closing scenes of Grant’s campaign were discussed with the deepest interest by father and son. Soon after breakfast the President received Schuyler Colfax, who was about to leave for the West, and later in the morning the cabinet met, Friday being its regular day. General Grant was invited to remain to its session. There was the greatest interest at the moment in General Sherman’s movements, and Grant was plied with questions by the cabinet. The President was least anxious of all. The news would soon come, he said, and it would be favorable. He had no doubt of this, for the night before he had had a dream which had preceded nearly every important event of the war. “He said it was in my department, it related to the water,” Secretary Welles afterward wrote; “that he seemed to be in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and that he was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; that he had had this singular dream preceding the firing on Sumter; the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc. . . . Victory did not always follow his dream, but the event and results were important. He had no doubt that a battle had taken place, or was about being fought, and Johnston will be beaten, for I had this strange dream again last night. It must relate to Sherman; my thoughts are in that direction, and I know of no other very important event which is likely just now to occur.’”
The greater part of the meeting was taken up with a discussion of the policy of reconstruction. How were they to treat the States and the men who had tried to leave the Union, but who now were forced back into their old relations? How could practical civil government be reestablished; how could trade be restored between North and South; what should be done with those who had led the States to revolt? The President urged his cabinet to consider carefully all these questions, and he warned them emphatically, Mr. Welles says, that he did not sympathize with and would not participate in any feelings of hate and vindictiveness. “He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect he would take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them off, said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union. There was too much desire on the part of our very good friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate to those States, to treat the people not as fellow-citizens; there was too little respect for their rights. He didn’t sympathize in these feelings.”
The impression he made on all the cabinet that day was expressed twenty-four hours later by Secretary Stanton: “He was more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him, rejoiced at the near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and abroad, manifested in marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him.”
In the afternoon the President went for his usual drive. Only Mrs. Lincoln was with him. Years afterward Mrs. Lincoln related to Isaac Arnold what she remembered of Mr. Lincoln’s words that day: “Mary,” he said, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois, and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this term we will try and save up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois, and I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago, and practice law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood.”
It was late in the afternoon when he returned from his drive, and as he left his carriage he saw going across the lawn toward the Treasury a group of friends, among them Richard Oglesby, then Governor of Illinois. “Come back, boys, come back,” he shouted. The party turned, and joined the President on the portico, and went up to his office with him.
“How long we remained there I do not remember,” says Governor Oglesby. “Lincoln got to reading some humorous book; I think it was by ‘John Phoenix.’ They kept sending for him to come to dinner. He promised each time to go, but would continue reading the book. Finally he got a sort of peremptory order that he must come to dinner at once. It was explained to me by the old man at the door that they were going to have dinner and then go to the theater.”
A theater party had been made up by Mrs. Lincoln for that evening—General and Mrs. Grant being her guests—to see Laura Keene, at Ford’s Theater, in “Our American Cousin.” Miss Keene was ending her season in Washington that night with a benefit. The box had been ordered in the morning, and unusual preparations had been made to receive the Presidential party. The partition between the two upper proscenium boxes at the left of the stage had been removed, comfortable upholstered chairs had been put in, and the front of the box had been draped with flags. The manager, of course, took care to announce in the afternoon papers that the “President and his Lady” and the “Hero of Appomattox” would attend Miss Keene’s benefit that evening.
By eight o’clock the house was filled with the half-idle, half-curious crowd of a holiday night. Many had come simply to see General Grant, whose face was then unfamiliar in Washington. Others, strolling down the street, had dropped in because they had nothing better to do. The play began promptly, the house following its nonsensical fun with friendly eyes and generous applause, one eye on the President’s box.
The Presidential party was late. Indeed it had not left the White House until after eight o’clock, and then it was made up differently from what Mrs. Lincoln had expected, for in the afternoon she had received word that General and Mrs. Grant had decided to go North that night. It was suggested then that the party be given up, but the fear that the public would be disappointed decided the President to keep the engagement. Two young friends, the daughter of Senator Ira Harris and his stepson, Major H. R. Rathbone, had been invited to take the place of General and Mrs. Grant.
Schuyler Colfax and Mr. Ashmun, of Massachusetts, had called early in the evening, and the President had talked with them a little while. He rose finally with evident regret to go to his carriage. The two gentlemen accompanied him to the door, and he paused there long enough to write on a card, “Admit Mr. Ashmun and friend to-morrow morning at nine o’clock.” As he shook hands with them he said to Mr. Colfax: “Colfax, don’t forget to tell those people in the mining regions what I told you this morning.”’ Then, entering the carriage, he was driven to the theater on Tenth Street, between E and F.
When the Presidential party finally entered the theater, making its way along the gallery behind the seats of the dress circle, the orchestra broke into “Hail to the Chief,” and the people, rising in their seats and waving hats and handkerchiefs, cheered and cheered, the actors on the stage standing silent in the meantime. The party passed through the narrow entrance into the box, and the several members laid aside their wraps, and bowing and smiling to the enthusiastic crowd below, seated themselves, Mr. Lincoln in a large arm-chair at the left, Mrs. Lincoln next to him, Miss Harris next, and to the extreme right, a little behind Miss Harris, Major Rathbone; and then the play went on.
The party in the box was well entertained, it seemed, especially the President, who laughed good-humoredly at the jokes and chatted cheerfully between the acts. He moved from his seat but once, rising then to put on his overcoat, for the house was chilly. The audience was well entertained, too, though not a few kept an eye on the box entrance, still expecting General Grant. The few whose eyes sought the box now and then noticed, in the second scene of the third act, that a man was passing behind the seats of the dress circle and approaching the entrance to the box. Those who did not know him noticed that he was strikingly handsome, though very pale; that was all. They did not look again. It was not General Grant.
One man did watch him. He knew him, and wanted to see who in the Presidential box it could be that he knew well enough to call on in the middle of an act. If any attendant saw him, there was no question of his movements. He was a privileged person in the theater, having free entrance to every corner. He had been there in the course of the day; he had passed out and in once or twice during the evening.
Crowding behind some loose chairs in the aisle, the man took from his pocket a package of visiting cards, and, selecting one, gave it to the messenger at the door, saying he knew the President. A moment later he passed out of sight through the door leading into the passage behind the box. He closed the door behind him, and did a curious thing for a visitor to a theater party. He picked up a piece of stout plank which he seemed to know just where to find, and slipped one end into a hole gouged into the wall close to the door-casing. The plank extended across the door, making a rough but effective bolt. Turning to the door which led from the passage to the boxes, he may have peered through a tiny hole which had been drilled through the panel. If he did, he saw a quiet party intent on the play, the President just then smiling over a bit of homely wit.
Opening the door so quietly that no one heard him, the man entered the box. Then if any eye in the house could but have looked, if one head in the box had been turned, it would have been seen that the man held in his right hand a Derringer revolver, and that he raised the weapon and aimed it steadily at the head of the smiling President.
No eye saw him, but a second later and every ear heard a pistol shot. Those in the house unfamiliar with the play thought it a part of the performance, and waited expectant. Those familiar with “Our American Cousin,” the orchestra, attendants, actors, searched in amazement to see from where the sound came. Only three persons in all the house knew just where it was—three of the four in the box knew, it was there by their side—a tragedy. The fourth saw nothing, heard nothing, thought nothing. His head had fallen quietly on his breast, his arms had relaxed a little, the smile was still on his lips.
Then from the box, now filled with white smoke, came a woman’s sharp cry, and there was a sound of a struggle. Major Rathbone, at the sound of the shot, had sprung to his feet and grappled with the stranger, who now had a dagger in his hand, and who struck viciously with it at the Major’s heart. He, warding the blow from his breast, received it in his upper arm, and his hold relaxed. The stranger sprang to the balustrade of the box as if about to leap, but Major Rathbone caught at his garments. They were torn from his grasp, and the man vaulted toward the stage, a light, agile leap, which turned to a plunge as the silken flag in front caught at a stirrup on his boot. As the man struck the floor his left leg bent and a bone snapped, but instantly he was up; and limping to the middle of the stage, a long strip of the silken banner trailing from his stirrup, he turned full on the house, which still stared straight ahead, searching for the meaning of the muffled pistol shot. Brandishing his dagger and shouting—so many thought, though there were others whose ears were so frozen with amazement that they heard nothing—“Sic semper tyrannis!” he turned to fly. Not, however, before more than one person in the house had said to himself, “Why, it is John Wilkes Booth!” Not before others had realized that the shot was that of a murderer, that the woman’s cry in the box came from Mrs. Lincoln, that the President in all the turmoil alone sat calm, his head unmoved on his breast. As these few grasped the awful meaning of the confused scene, it seemed to them that they could not rise nor cry out. They stretched out inarticulate arms, struggling to tear themselves from the nightmare which held them. When strength and voice did return, they plunged over the seats, forgetting their companions, bruising themselves, and clambered to the stage, crying aloud in rage and despair, “Hang him, hang him!” But Booth, though his leg was broken, was too quick. He struck with his dagger at one who caught him, plunged through a familiar back exit, and, leaping upon a horse standing ready for him, fled. When those who pursued reached the street, they heard only the rapidly receding clatter of a horse’s hoofs.
But while a few in the house pursued Booth, others had thought only of reaching the box. The stage was now full of actors in their paint and furbelows, musicians with their instruments, men in evening dress, officers in uniform—a motley, wild-eyed crowd which, as Miss Harris appeared at the edge of the box crying out, “Bring water. Has anyone stimulants?” demanded, “What is it? What is the matter?”
“The President is shot,” was her reply.
A surgeon was helped over the balustrade into the box. The star of the evening, whose triumph this was to have been, strove to calm the distracted throng; then she, too, sought the box. Major Rathbone, who first of all in the house had realized that a foul crime had been attempted, had turned from his unsuccessful attempt to stop the murderer to see that it was the President who had been shot. He had rushed to the door of the passage, where men were already beating in a furious effort to gain admission, and had found it barred. It was an instant before he could pull away the plank, explain the tragedy, demand surgeons, and press back the crowd.
The physicians admitted lifted the silent figure, still sitting calmly in the chair, stretched it on the floor, and began to tear away the clothing to find the wound, which they supposed was in the breast. It was a moment before it was discovered that the ball had entered the head back of the left ear and was imbedded in the brain. There seemed to be but one desire then: that was to get the wounded man from the scene of the murder. Two persons lifted him, and the stricken party passed from the box, through the dress circle, down the stair into the street, the blood dripping from the wound faster and faster as they went. No one seemed to know where they were going, for as they reached the street there was a helpless pause and an appeal from the bearers, “Where shall we take him?” Across the street, on the high front steps of a plain, three-storied brick house, stood a man, who but a moment before had left the theater, rather bored by the play. He had seen, as he stood there idly wondering if he should go in to bed or not, a violent commotion in the vestibule of the theater; had seen people rushing out, the street filling up, policemen and soldiers appearing. He did not know what it all meant. Then two men bearing a body came from the theater, behind them a woman in evening gown, flowers in her hair, jewels on her neck. She was wringing her hands and moaning. The man on the steps heard someone say, “The President is shot;” heard the bearers of the body asking, “Where shall we take him?” and quickly coming forward, he said, “Bring him here into my room.”
And so the President was carried up the high steps, through a narrow hall, and laid, still unconscious, still motionless, on the bed of a poor, little, commonplace room of a commonplace lodging-house, where surgeons and physicians gathered about in a desperate attempt to rescue him from death.
While the surgeons worked the news was spreading to the town. Every man and woman in the theater rushed forth to tell it. Some ran wildly down the streets, exclaiming to those they met, “The President is killed! The President is killed!” One rushed into a ball-room, and told it to the dancers; another bursting into a room where a party of eminent public men were playing cards, cried, “Lincoln is shot!” Another, running into the auditorium of Grover’s Theater, cried, “President Lincoln has been shot in his private box at Ford’s Theater.” Those who heard the cry thought the man insane or drunk, but a moment later they saw the actors in a combat called from the stage, the manager coming forward. His face was pale, his voice agonized, as he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I feel it my duty to say to you that the announcement made from the front of the theater just now is true. President Lincoln has been shot.” One ran to summon Secretary Stanton. A boy picked up at the door of the house where the President lay was sent to the White House for Robert Lincoln. The news spread by the very force of its own horror, and as it spread it met other news no less terrible. At the same hour that Booth had sent the ball into the President’s brain, a man had forced his way into the house of Secretary Seward, then lying in bed with a broken arm, and had stabbed both the Secretary and his son Frederick so seriously that it was feared they would die. In his entrance and exit he had wounded three other members of the household. Like Booth, he had escaped. Horror bred rumor, and Secretary Stanton, too, was reported wounded, while later it was said that Grant had been killed on his way North. Dread seized the town. “Rumors are so thick,” wrote the editor of the “National Intelligencer” at two o’clock in the morning, “the excitement of this hour is so intense, that we rely entirely upon our reporters to advise the public of the details and result of this night of horrors. Evidently conspirators are among us. To what extent does the conspiracy exist? This is a terrible question. When a spirit so horrible as this is abroad, what man is safe? We can only advise the utmost vigilance and the most prompt measures by the authorities. We can only pray God to shield us, His unworthy people, from further calamities like these.”
The civil and military authorities prepared for attack from within and without. Martial law was at once established. The long roll was beaten; every exit from the city was guarded; out-going trains were stopped; mounted police and cavalry clattered up and down the street; the forts were ordered on the alert; guns were manned. In the meantime there had gathered in the house on Tenth Street, where the President lay, his family physician and intimate friends, as well as many prominent officials. Before they reached him it was known there was no hope, that the wound was fatal. They grouped themselves about the bedside or in the adjoining rooms, trying to comfort the weeping wife, or listening awe-struck to the steady moaning and labored breathing of the unconscious man, which at times could be heard all over the house. Stanton alone seemed able to act methodically. No man felt the tragedy more than the great War Secretary, for no one in the cabinet was by greatness of heart and intellect so well able to comprehend the worth of the dying President; but no man in that distracted night acted with greater energy or calm. Summoning the Assistant Secretary, C. A. Dana, and a stenographer, he began dictating orders to the authorities on all sides, notifying them of the tragedy, directing them what precautions to take, what persons to arrest. Grant, now returning to Washington, he directed should be warned to keep close watch on all persons who came close to him in the cars and to see that an engine be sent in front of his train. He sent out, too, an official account of the assassination. To-day the best brief account of the night’s awful work remains the one which Secretary Stanton dictated within sound of the moaning of the dying President.
And so the hours passed without perceptible change in the President’s condition, and with only slight shifting of the scene around him. The testimony of those who had witnessed the murder began to be taken in an adjoining room. Occasionally the figures at the bedside changed. Mrs. Lincoln came in at intervals, sobbing out her grief, and then was led away. This man went, another took his place. It was not until daylight that there came a perceptible change. Then the breathing grew quieter, the face became more calm. The doctors at Lincoln’s side knew that dissolution was near. Their bulletin of six o’clock read, “Pulse failing;” that of half-past six, “Still failing;” that of seven, “Symptoms of immediate dissolution,” and then at twenty-two minutes past seven, in the presence of his son Robert, Secretaries Stanton, Welles, and Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Senator Sumner, Private Secretary Hay, Dr. Gurley, his pastor, and several physicians and friends, Abraham Lincoln died. There was a prayer, and then the solemn voice of Stanton broke the stillness, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
Two hours later the body of the President, wrapped in an American flag, was borne from the house in Tenth Street, and carried through the hushed streets, where already thousands of flags were at half-mast and the gay buntings and garlands had been replaced by black draperies, and where the men who for days had been cheering in excess of joy and relief now stood with uncovered heads and wet eyes. They carried him to an upper room in the private apartments of the White House, and there he lay until three days later a heartbroken people claimed their right to look for a last time on his face.
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