JANUARY
19, 1865:
Young
Robert Todd Lincoln insists, and he has insisted for months, to be allowed to
join the fighting as almost all other young men are doing. President Lincoln
fears for his life, and Mary Todd Lincoln is in daily hysterics over “Robbie’s”
plans, fearing she will lose a third child to combat or pestilence. Thus, to
date, at a cost of great friction between them, Lincoln has pressured and
bullied his son not to serve. But he can do so no longer. Too many other
families have empty chairs in their homes for the Lincolns to claim such
privilege. Today, the President takes pen in hand to make a request of his
leading general:
Lieut. General Grant:
Please read and answer this letter as though I
was not President, but only a friend. My
son, now in his twenty second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see
something of the war before it ends. I
do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which
those who have already served long, are better entitled, and better qualified
to hold. Could he, without embarrassment
to you, or detriment to the service, go into your Military family with some
nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation,
because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered
as you can be yourself.
Yours truly
A. LINCOLN
Robert Todd Lincoln serves honorably on General
Grant’s staff, and is present at Appomattox Court House.
Citizens
of the Confederacy are increasingly convinced that the war will end badly for
the South, and so all types of last-minute schemes for peace are being floated.
Jefferson Davis, who has just heard out Francis Preston Blair on the subject,
is approached by the Georgia Congressional delegation. They inform him that the
Confederate Congress is considering a “Convention of Sovereign States” to
broker peace. This idea relies on the Southern conception of each State as
“Sovereign and Independent” and it is unrealistic on many levels. Davis raises
his practical objections, and says in part:
. . . The objection to
separate State action which you present in your letter appears to be so
conclusive as to admit no reply. The immediate and inevitable tendency of such
distinct action by each State is to create discordant instead of united
counsels; to suggest to our enemies the possibility of a dissolution of the
Confederacy . . . the false idea that some of the States of the Confederacy are
disposed to abandon their sister States and make separate terms of peace for
themselves . . . once engendered among our own people . . . would be
destructive of that spirit of mutual confidence and support which forms our
chief reliance for success in the maintenance of our cause.
. . . If the Government
of the United States is willing to make peace, it will treat for peace
directly. If unwilling, it will refuse to consent to the convention of States .
. .
. . . [H]ow is the
difficulty resulting from the conflicting pretentious of the two belligerents
in regard to several of the States to be overcome? Is it supposed that Virginia
would enter into a convention with a delegation from what our enemies choose to
term the "State" of "West Virginia," and thus recognize an
insolent and violent dismemberment of her territory? Or would the United States
consent that "West Virginia" should be deprived of her pretensions to
equal rights, after having formally admitted her as a State, and allowed her to
vote at a Presidential election? Who would send a delegation from Louisiana,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri? The enemy claim to hold the governments of those
States, while we assert them to be members of the Confederacy . . . enough has
been said to justify my conclusion that the proposal of separate State action
is unwise, impracticable, and offers no prospect of good . . .
An
unnamed Union soldier of the 117th New York at Fort Fisher writes to
his father:
Dear Father:
Fort Fisher is ours and
I am all right and the 117th NY was the first to mount the parapet and ours was
the first flag that was planted on it . . . I will say that this, there never
was and never will be any harder fighting than was done here. Our boys held one
end of the parapet and the Rebs the other, and they threw grape, canister and
shell.
