April 24, 1865--- ~ THE NATION MOURNS ~

APRIL 24, 1865:       

“I cannot feel myself a beaten man” --- Jefferson Davis

  

I

Ulysses S. Grant met with William T. Sherman outside Goldsboro, North Carolina. 

It is a private meeting between the two men, for Grant came to deliver a tongue-lashing to his friend and subordinate. Given that “Grant stood by Sherman when he was crazy and Sherman stood by Grant when he was drunk” the exchange between the two men was probably relatively mild. Still, Grant had to deliver the bad news that Sherman’s peace terms as set forth in his “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” of April 18^th were thoroughly unacceptable to the Johnson Cabinet.

Sherman no doubt wondered out loud whether the U.S. Government really wanted peace.

Grant surely answered undoubtedly, but then reminded Sherman that the reasonable and compassionate voice of Abraham Lincoln had been stilled.

The two men condoled one another for certain, but then Grant explained the tenor and tone of the Cabinet meeting of the 21^st. Sherman grasped immediately how close he had come to ruin --- even death.  Grant grimly reminded him that this was not the same Administration that had set forth terms at City Point. It was a far angrier Government, bent on retribution, hoping the Confederacy would fight, hoping it would draw the last life’s-blood from the South. 

And then Grant mentioned the memorandum of March 3^rd, the Memorandum that limited battlefield generals to accepting only battlefield surrenders.

Sherman possibly looked puzzled when Grant produced President Lincoln’s memo.

If I had known about this, he said, I would never have negotiated those terms. 

A little acidly, Sherman added that he could not understand why every barkeep in the District of Columbia seemed to know more Military Intelligence than the Generals in the field.

Grant was taken aback. He realized that Sherman had been left out of the loop --- inadvertently --- and that the same problem might reoccur.

You must offer Johnston the selfsame terms that I granted Lee at Appomattox. No more. No less. That is what the Cabinet and the President all want. Just that.

Good friend that he was to Sherman, Grant fell on his sword upon his return to Washington, explaining that Sherman had negotiated with Johnston in good faith but with incomplete information. He took the blame for not forwarding President Lincoln’s March memorandum. Nobody really wanted to lambaste the Hero of Appomattox, so the matter was dropped. And Grant forwarded Lincoln’s terms --- the Appomattox terms --- to all his subcommanders. When the Civil War finally ended, everyone would have the same expectations.

Sherman was left with a conundrum. If Johnston did not accept the terms given to Lee, the war was set to resume on April 26^th.  And Sherman had no doubt it would.

II

Abraham Lincoln’s body left Philadelphia at 4:00 A.M., and reached Trenton, New Jersey at 6:00 A.M. for only a thirty minute stop. Crowds thronged the railroad station, hoping to get a glimpse of the fallen President in his coffin. Oddly enough, Trenton was the only State capital where Lincoln’s body did not lie in state --- in fact it was not even removed from the train, and people had to content themselves with gazing at the President through the windows of the hearse car. 

At 10:50 A.M. the Funeral Train reached Jersey City. Lincoln’s body (and Willie’s body) was ferried across the Hudson to New York City (there were no Hudson River crossings as there are today).

Once on the New York shore, a vast procession accompanied the President’s body to City Hall.  The building was draped with a huge banner reading THE NATION MOURNS.

At 1:00 P.M. the President’s body was placed in City Hall for viewing. At least 500,000 mourners passed by the casket.

New York’s leadership made an error in judgement. The President had never been especially popular in New York, with its Copperhead tendencies, and so they expected a relatively small turnout. To view the body, mourners were required to climb a set of stairs in City Hall, pass the coffin, and descend. This caused an unprecedented bottleneck, since only two lines of mourners could pass by at a time, and no one could linger. For every person that passed the casket, two never made it inside the building.

It was in New York that the only photographs were taken of Lincoln lying in state. Edwin Stanton was outraged by what he called “ghoulishness,” and Federal agents seized the glass negatives and smashed them. Only one, kept by Stanton as a keepsake, was known to have survived and it was published finally in 1952. 

III

After spending the night at the Lucas cabin, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold forced Charlie Lucas, the son of the owner of the cabin, to drive them south at gunpoint.  At the town of Port Conway, they asked to be ferried across the Rappahannock River. The ferryman, William Rollins agreed to take them across, but not until he set his fish traps.  While they waited, several Confederate soldiers released from Mosby’s Rangers arrived at the ferry landing. Herold engaged them in conversation.

Upon discovering that the men were from Mosby’s command, Herold asked them if they ever knew Lewis Powell (who was a former Ranger). Believing he was safe territory, he bragged to the three Confederate soldiers that Booth was the assassin of President Lincoln. Ultimately, this admission, made in the hearing of the ferryman, proved to be his and Booth’s undoing.   

After crossing the river, William Jett, one of the Rangers escorted Booth and Herold to the Peyton family house in Port Royal, Virginia, but the spinster sisters who lived there refused to give Booth and Herold shelter, insisting that it would be unseemly to have two single men alone with them in the house.  A frustrated Jett, at this point no doubt sorry he has involved himself with the two fugitives, led them to the Garrett farm near the crossroads of Bowling Green. A drained Booth, using the name of “Boyd,” rested at the Garrett farm while Herold and the Confederates traveled into Port Royal to get drunk. Later, much too intoxicated to return to the Garrett farm, Herold spent the night away from Booth, in Port Royal.     

On this same day, the 16^th New York Cavalry is dispatched into southern Maryland to find John Wilkes Booth. 

IV

Jefferson Davis writes to his wife Varina in Abbeville, South Carolina, advising her to move further south. He also tells her of Lincoln’s death. Varina later wrote:

“I burst into tears of sorrow . . . for the family of Mr. Lincoln and a thorough realization of the inevitable results for the Confederates.”

Varina is also convinced that the death of Lincoln will put a price on Davis’ head.

While Davis is writing to Varina he receives a copy of Sherman’s “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” from Johnston. Looking it over, he shakes his head, telling John C. Breckinridge that not even Lincoln would agree to such terms. He is certain that Johnson and Stanton will reject them out of hand.

Nevertheless, the gathered Confederate Cabinet urges Davis to sign off on the terms. Davis balks --- his signature will mean surrender. “I cannot feel myself a beaten man,” he tells his fellow Confederates.  Davis’ back is stiffened by General Wade Hampton C.S.A. who is present, and swearing a blue streak that he, for one, will never surrender to the Yankees. Hampton reminds Davis that 40,000 unfought troops still remain in the Trans-Mississippi. (In fact, Hampton has no real clue what is happening in that Military Department).

“We cannot reasonably hope for the achievement of independence,” retorts John H. Reagan, the Confederate Postmaster-General. Other voices agree.

Davis finally signs off on the Memorandum, deciding that the war will go on if Johnson and Stanton in the North reject Sherman’s terms. He tells his Cabinet that rejection of the terms is a certainty.

A bare hour after Johnston receives Davis’ signed copy, a messenger from Sherman advises him the deal is off.  The cease-fire clock begins to tick. On the afternoon of the 26^th, 48 hours from now, the killing will begin again. 

April 23, 1865---Booth flees South

APRIL 23, 1865:  

“Panic has seized the country” --- Jefferson Davis

I

The body of President Lincoln remained on view in Philadelphia. 

II

Captain Silas Soule of the First Colorado Cavalry, who testified against Colonel John Chivington at the Sand Creek Massacre Hearings, is murdered on the street in Denver, Colorado.

Stoneman’s Raid reaches Hendersonville, North Carolina, and has a major skirmish --- almost big enough to qualify as a “Last Battle of the Civil War” --- with local militia before despoiling the town.

A large “action” --- again, just not quite big enough to qualify as a “Last Battle of the Civil War” --- occurs at Munford’s Station, Alabama, between Confederate and Federal troops.

The Confederate “Florida Blues” enter into an armistice with Federal troops at St. Augustine. Armed resistance in north central Florida comes to an end. The “Blues” were a force made up of Minorcans, Spaniards, Sicilians, Italians, and Greeks, many the descendants of Sephardic Jews. Formed in 1860, even before Florida’s secession, units of the “Blues” fought at  Atlanta, Jonesboro and Bentonville, under General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A..

III

John Wilkes Booth and David Herold managed to cross the Potomac River this day. 

Once on “friendly” Virginia soil they both expected greater aid and comfort. However, after Herold slogged an hour across swampy land to reach the property of the Confederate underground agent Mrs. Elizabeth Quisenberry (whose “safe house” had been recommended by Thomas Jones) Mrs. Quisenberry refused to aid the two fugitives. She refused their offer of Jones’ boat in trade, refused payment for a horse, refused to shelter them, and sent Herold on his way back to Booth (who, with his broken leg had stayed near their landfall at Gambo Creek). At the last minute, perhaps looking with a motherly eye at the woebegone boyish Herold, she did provide them food.

She also contacted one Thomas Harbin. Harbin was another Confederate agent who happened to be an acquaintance of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Harbin and Booth had met before, in late 1864.  

Harbin was willing to help the President’s assassin. Harbin hired a horse, wagon and driver to take Booth and Herold to “Cleydahl,” the estate home of Dr. Richard Stuart. 

 

 

Doubtless, Booth expected some medical attention from Stuart, but other than feeding Booth and Herold, Stuart ordered them gone. There is no direct evidence that he knew who they were, but the doctor undoubtedly had read the papers and knew there was a Federal manhunt underway for a “lame man.”

Booth and Herold went off, at his direction, to the cabin of the Lucas family, free blacks.

Evicting William Lucas and his family from their own home at knifepoint and gunpoint, the two exhausted conspirators holed up for the remainder of that day and overnight. The Lucases, fearing that Booth would kill them as he’d threatened (unsurprisingly, he hated blacks, and hated the fact that he was in a black home), did not report the two men to passing Federal authorities. 

April 22, 1865---Requiem For A President: Abraham Lincoln's Philadelphia Funeral

APRIL 22, 1865:       

“I prefer peace to war” --- General William Tecumseh Sherman

I

In the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) Pro-Union “Free Riders” clash with Confederate bushwhackers under the command of William Quantrill.

In Kansas, bushwhackers fight jayhawkers at Fort Zarah.

In western North Carolina, Stoneman’s Raid reaches Howard’s Gap after the burning of Rutherfordtown on the 21^st.

In Alabama, the Union occupies Talladega.

Brigadier General James Dearing C.S.A. and Colonel Francis Washburn U.S.A. both die of the wounds they inflicted on each other at the Battle of High Bridge. They are the last senior Commissioned Officers to die in the Civil War.

Dearing (top) and Washburn

   

II

General William Tecumseh Sherman, once Provost (President-in-fact) of what would become Louisiana State University writes to an old friend, D.L. Swain, President of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI, IN THE FIELD, RALEIGH, N. C., April 22, 1865.

Hon. D. L. Swain, Chapel Hill, N. C.:

MY DEAR SIR:

Yours of April nineteenth was laid before me yesterday, and I am pleased that you recognize in General Atkins a fair representative of our army.

The moment war ceases, and I think that time is at hand, all seizures of horses and private property will cease on our part. And it may be that we will be able to spare some animals for the use of the farmers of your neighborhood. There now exists a species of truce, but we must stand prepared for action; but I believe that in a very few days a definitive and general peace will be arranged, when I will make orders that will be in accordance with the new state of affairs.

I do believe that I fairly represent the feelings of my countrymen—that we prefer peace to war; but if war is forced upon us, we must meet it; but if peace be possible, we will accept it, and be the friends of the farmers and working classes of North-Carolina, as well as actual patrons of churches, colleges, asylums, and all institutions of learning and charity. Accept the assurances of my respect and high esteem.

I am, truly yours, W. T. SHERMAN,

Major-General Commanding. 

III

President Lincoln’s funeral train leaves Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at 9:00 A.M. and arrives at Philadelphia at 4:50 P.M.  The President’s body is moved to Independence Hall, where he is laid out in the same room where the Declaration of Independence was signed. A two day public viewing commences. 300,000 mourners pass by the catafalque.

 

 

The stop is not without incident. A specially-arranged “private viewing” for Philadelphia’s civil leaders and Main Liners causes tremendous resentment among the crowds of ordinary people. Given the vastness of the throngs, people begin to fear that they will not get to see the President. Emotions run high, and street fights erupt. The Philadelphia papers are critical of the City Fathers, blaming them for the unrest, stating that Lincoln “the Champion of the People” would not have given preference to the rich and powerful; most likely, they are right. The lesson is learned. All subsequent “private viewings” are cancelled for the remainder of the journey.

April 21, 1865---“I feel incompetent . . ."

APRIL 21, 1865:       

“I feel incompetent to perform duties so important and responsible as those which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me." --- President Andrew Johnson*

I

After a brief final service at the Capitol Rotunda, Abraham Lincoln’s body is placed aboard a special train designated to return Lincoln to Springfield, Illinois for interment.

 

The coach carrying Lincoln in his casket is also carrying the body of Willie Lincoln, who had died of Typhoid in 1862 during his father’s Presidency.

  

The Funeral Train was comprised of a lead locomotive and tender that preceded the actual consist and made sure the track was clear for passage, plus a locomotive and tender (“Old Nashville”) painted and draped all in black pulling nine cars, including the hearse car, the family car, the honor guard car (made up of members of the Veterans’ Reserve Corps and several U.S. Major Generals), and a luggage car. All told, 300 passengers accompanied Lincoln’s body back to Illinois. Mary Lincoln was not among them. Today, in fact, was the first day since the assassination that Mary had even sat up in bed.

 

The train was scheduled to cover a route some 1,654 miles long through the States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The train was scheduled to pass through two hundred and eight towns and cities along the route, which approximated the same route Lincoln had taken from Springfield to Washington D.C. in 1860. 

At each stop, Lincoln’s coffin was taken off the train, placed on an elaborately decorated horse-drawn hearse and led by solemn processions to a public building for viewing. In cities as large as Columbus, Ohio, and as small as Herkimer, New York, thousands of mourners flocked to pay tribute to the slain president. In Philadelphia, Lincoln’s body lay in state on in the east wing of Independence Hall, the same site where the Declaration of Independence was signed. Newspapers reported that people had to wait more than five hours to pass by the president’s coffin in some cities.

In towns where the train did not stop crowds gathered at the local railroad station to pay homage to the train as it chugged slowly through. Along open stretches of track farm families and local residents stood along the right-of-way often dressed in black, often weeping, and almost always waving small American flags as the late President passed by.  

On this particular day, short stops were made at Annapolis Junction and Relay Station before the train arrived in Baltimore, 38 miles from Washington. Unlike Lincoln’s first, surreptitious passage through Baltimore in 1860 when an assassin was feared to be abroad, the assassinated President’s remains were welcomed with solemn honor into the city. It was 10:00 A.M. when Mr. Lincoln's coffin was borne to the Merchant's Exchange Building, where it was opened to the view of approximately 10,000 people for three hours. A memorial service was held for the slain President.

The train departed at 3:00 P.M., destined for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the 58 mile trip the Lincoln Funeral Train arrived in the Pennsylvania capital at 8:00 P.M. The coffin was then carried by hearse to the state House of Representatives, placed in a catafalque, and opened for public viewing at 9:30 P.M. A funeral service was held. 

  

 

II

While his victim moved slowly toward his last resting place John Wilkes Booth was going nowhere. Having made landfall on the Maryland side of the Potomac after his botched attempt at crossing the river into Virginia, Booth (and David Herold) holed up in a fisherman’s shack along silty Nanjemoy Creek that was owned by John J. Hughes. Hughes was (coincidentally or not) an acquaintance of Herold’s. Hughes gave the two men a meal, and studiously ignored their existence for the almost two days they remained hidden there. 

III

Having received his Orders from Robert E. Lee to “go home,” Colonel John S. Mosby called his Rangers together in the small town of Salem, Virginia. 

Rather than surrender to the local Federal authorities (who considered his men bushwhackers and undeserving of the parole terms offered by Grant to Lee), Mosby simply ordered his unit, formally the 43^rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, to disband peaceably. In a small, but moving ceremony, the usually stoic Mosby wept as he made sure to shake every soldier’s hand. He then delivered the following farewell address:

Soldiers:

I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished for a free and independent country has vanished and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. After an association of more than two eventful years I part from you with a just pride in the fame of your achievements and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final adieu accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard.

Farewell.

The “Gray Ghost” went on to have a rather remarkable post-war career. Trained as a lawyer, he returned to that practice for awhile, then wrote a fascinating and popular reminiscence of his partisan unit. He also --- almost blasphemously --- became a Republican after the war, campaigning actively in the South for Ulysses S. Grant’s Presidency. Threats to his life from fellow Southerners spurred President Grant to name him U.S. Envoy to Hong Kong. He later became a U.S. Prosecutor. Always an opponent of slavery (he had come from a poorer family) he overcame his learned prejudices and advocated for Civil Rights in the early 1900s. He was a friend of the Patton family, and played soldier with young Georgie Patton, who would become renowned during World War II.

Mosby died in Washington D.C. in 1916.  

IV

General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “Memorandum, or Basis For Agreement” of April 18^th, the document that lay out the terms of surrender for General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A., was a liberal document even by Confederate terms.

Far more expansive than the terms Grant offered Lee at Appomattox, the “Memorandum” even encroached upon the prerogatives of the Federal Government as outlined for Grant by President Lincoln in early March.

In that outline Lincoln had stated very explicitly that Generals were “not to decide, discuss or confer upon any political question.”

There was just one problem:  Sherman never got the memo. Literally. He was marching. And no one had thought to send him a copy before he met with Johnston. With the best of intentions, Sherman walked into a firestorm. His “Memorandum” contained, among others, the following provisions:

   

•        The Confederate armies now in existence to be disbanded and conducted to their several State capitals, there to deposit their arms and public property in the State Arsenal; and each officer and man to execute and file an agreement to cease from acts of war, and to abide by the action of the State and Federal authority. The number of arms and munitions of war to be reported to the Chief of Ordinance at Washington City, subject to the future action of the Congress of the United States, and, in the mean time, to be used solely to maintain peace and order within the borders of the States respectively.

In effect, Sherman meant to allow the Confederate armies to surrender “in place”; to retain their weapons, and to submit themselves to their own State, rather than Federal, authorities.

Whether by design or chance (and it should be remembered that John C. Breckinridge the Confederate Secretary of War was involved in working out these terms) the idea of the armies submitting to State authorities was essentially identical to an idea broached by General E. Porter Alexander C.S.A. to General Lee when the two men discussed the possibility of surrender just before Appomattox.

•        The recognition, by the Executive of the United States, of the several State governments, on their officers and legislatures taking the oaths prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, and, where conflicting State governments have resulted from the war, the legitimacy of all shall be submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States.

This provision too, had definite echoes in it of the “Virginia Plan” presented by Assistant Confederate Secretary of War John A. Campbell (Breckinridge’s immediate subordinate), to President Lincoln while Lincoln was in Richmond.  A vociferous rarely-united Cabinet had finally forced Lincoln to see the folly of recognizing the Confederate State governments even for limited purposes.  It is quite possible that this too was an intentional insertion on Breckinridge’s part.

and

•        The people and inhabitants of all the States to be guaranteed, so far as the Executive can, their political rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person and property, as defined by the Constitution of the United States and of the States respectively.

In its discussion of “property” Sherman’s “Memorandum” failed to address slavery at all, leaving the door wide open for destructive, even fatal, debates.

Was Sherman bamboozled by Breckinridge at their Bennett Place meeting? Or was this his own view of the Union restored? Either way, the “Memorandum, or Basis For Agreement” would have a very short life.

It is easy to imagine President Lincoln reading over Sherman’s “Memorandum” with bemusement (or even amusement), and then telling a homely story about a blind goatherd while delivering a written rap on the knuckles to his fire-haired general who was so clearly desirous of peace. 

There was only one problem. Lincoln was dead. And if his voice was still whispering in corners of the Cabinet Room, nobody was listening.

V

The Cabinet Room was in an uproar.

President Andrew Johnson was enraged at General Sherman for his effrontery in making political decisions. Quite ironically (for Johnson was a Unionist southerner) he reminded his Cabinet of Sherman’s long associations in the south, and how this rendered the man untrustworthy.

Other voices were raised, especially Edwin Stanton’s.

--- What if Sherman is planning a coup d’etat?

--- Perhaps he’s marching on Washington even now . . .

--- Maybe he has joined forces with Johnston!

--- You know he has a reputation as a madman.

Someone finally recommended conferring with General Grant. While Grant’s arrival was being awaited, Stanton wrote out Orders relieving Sherman of command and putting Grant in charge of the Army of The Tennessee. Sherman was to be arrested. That started another round of panicked shouting.

Attorney General James Speed asked, “What if Sherman arrests Grant?”

--- Send the Army of the Potomac to challenge the Army of The Tennessee!

--- Have Sherman tried for treason. 

By the time Ulysses S. Grant met with the Cabinet, the men around the table were in a deadly mood.

Grant paled as he read the Orders he was handed, and he shook inwardly as he listened to each of the Secretaries in turn, and to the President.

Grant, no less than anybody else, was emotionally exhausted and brimming with anger over the death of President Lincoln. But he realized that the men in the Cabinet room were not just exhausted and angry, they were also dangerously emotionally overwrought. Bill Sherman’s neck was being fitted for a noose by the men around the table, and Grant knew that unless he handled the next few minutes with extreme care, he would most likely be swinging alongside Sherman. The tact and diplomacy he exhibited in the Cabinet Room that day had no third-party witnesses, but it undoubtedly equaled --- perhaps surpassed --- anything Grant had accomplished at the McLean house on the ninth.

He quietly assured the angry Executive that Sherman was eminently trustworthy, that he was Grant’s own personal friend, and that he was not crazy.

--- I trust Sherman with my life. He is a stalwart Unionist.

President Johnson was still snarling --- So how do you explain this?  --- meaning the Memorandum.

--- I promise you I will get to the bottom of it.

Grant convinced them all that he would not need The Army of The Potomac to handle Sherman. Right now, he reminded everyone, we need men to find the President’s killer. I will go with my usual detail; and I will meet with Bill Sherman alone.

When Grant left the Cabinet Room to prepare for his trip to North Carolina, to his credit it was a far calmer place than when he had entered.

* “I feel incompetent to perform duties so important and responsible as those which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me" was a line from newly-inaugurated President Andrew Johnson's first public pronouncement upon becoming President. It is impossible to imagine today --- and it must have been nearly impossible even then --- to imagine a Chief Executive who came to the White House by way of his predecessor's assassination saying "I feel incompetent" in the midst of a national tragedy and a bloody Civil War. It certainly did not inspire confidence, promote calm, or soothe the battered emotions of anyone. Johnson was the first President to be impeached, and it is not difficult to see how he trod the path toward impeachment, especially given the high-strung public atmosphere of his time.