APRIL 11, 1865:
“I’ll put him through!” --- John Wilkes Booth
I
The
Battle of Mount Pleasant, Alabama: In a
hot skirmish near the town of Mount Pleasant, five Union cavalrymen are wounded
and killed.
On
this same day, Mobile, Alabama is abandoned to its fate by Confederate forces.
In
central Alabama, General James H. Wilson U.S.A.’s cavalry moves on from Selma
after “completing the destruction of the
immense workshops, arsenals, and foundries, and waiting for Croxton to rejoin
from his expedition to Tuscaloosa, it having been ascertained, through the
enemy, that he captured Tuscaloosa and was moving to Selma via Eutaw. [ ]
General Wilson crossed the Alabama River and moved toward Montgomery . . .”
In
Pikeville, North Carolina, a group of unarmed Union medical orderlies are bushwhacked
by Confederate irregulars. Some manage to flee. Others are captured or killed.
General
George Stoneman U.S.A.’s cavalry burns Jonesville, North Carolina, and turns
toward the town of Salisbury.
II
Jefferson
Davis and his Cabinet leave Danville, Virginia. The overall mood, glum and
depressed, is not helped at all when a courier rides up just as the Government
train is pulling away and delivers Robert E. Lee’s correspondence counseling an
end to hostilities. The train makes its
way toward Goldsboro, N.C., where Davis is expecting to confer with Generals
Johnston and Beauregard.
The
trip is interminable. The train, in its need to avoid Yankee patrols, is
herky-jerky backing and switching, and stopping and going forward all day long.
The Yankees have already taken the towns of Winston and Salem, but nevertheless
Davis is forced to detour through Greensboro, only 30 miles away. He uses loose
specie to pay Confederate troops in the town (about $40,000.00) and pays his
Presidential Bodyguard as well (about $39,000.00). Having received payment in
gold, many of the troops simply melt away.
Unlike
his Richmond-to-Danville trip only ten days before, no cheering crowds greet
him, and the rolling Cabinet revisits the idea of escaping to Havana or
traveling to the Trans-Mississippi, where, Davis has convinced himself, 40,000
troops are available to hold the western half of the Confederacy.
III
Davis
is deluded about conditions west of the Mississippi River. The mood in the
Trans-Mississippi is, in fact, wildly varied. General Kirby Smith C.S.A., the
Departmental Commander has 40,000 men in an area stretching from Shreveport,
Louisiana to El Paso, Texas and from Brownsville, Texas in the south to the border
of the Union’s Nebraska Territory in the north --- or at least he has them on paper.
In
reality, he has only a few thousand effectives under arms in and around his
Shreveport headquarters, and he entertains no illusions that the Union Army
will not crush him like a bug when Grant has time to turn his attention west.
The
Trans-Mississippi, long cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, and ignored
by the North, is a chaotic mélange of men with guns and personal agendas, a
vaster sun-baked Missouri-in-the-making.
Most
of the Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi are local Texans who are ignoring
the few Federals in the region and are concentrating on fighting the Comanches,
the Kiowas and the other hostile Indian tribes who occupy the western third of
that vast State.
In
the Indian Territory to the north of Texas are ill-equipped and isolated bands
of displaced Cherokees who allied themselves with the South in the early days
of the war and have now found themselves both abandoned and forgotten by the
white men in Virginia.
There
are a handful of Hispanic home guards wearing gray in southern Texas. They are
men who are dedicated to keeping the French Mexican Empire from reaching the
north bank of the Rio Grande. Although they fight under the Cross-and-Stars
they have little real interest in the brothers’ war between the Anglos. When
they do fight Unionists, their enemies are usually Hispanics in blue. Sometimes
they side with each other against the Mexican Imperial Army.
There
are some Cajun Louisianans and swamp folk of indeterminate origins fighting for
the sake of fighting, and a bare handful of planters’ sons in Confederate-held
areas of Arkansas, closer to the big river.
And
there are uncounted leaderless men who claim to support The Cause but are
robbing banks and stagecoaches, burning homes, killing men and raping women
with impunity.
Although
they are all supposedly fighting against the Union under the Blood Stained Banner,
they are a heterogeneous group with divergent and often conflicting goals. Frequently they fight each other. Less
frequently, they will ally themselves with Union horse soldiers when it serves
their immediate purposes.
The
Texas Hill Country is the haunt of Unionists.
The
Governor in Austin wants to withdraw his State’s troops from the Confederate
armies in the east ostensibly to encourage “recruitment” in the west. In fact,
he needs the trained troops to restore order in Texas.
The
citizenry of Shreveport, is, however, bellicosely Confederate, and news of
Lee’s surrender is answered by a mass rally and the burning of Lee in effigy.
IV
Abraham
Lincoln has been awake since the middle watch of the night. Unable to sleep, he
wanders the halls of the White House until finally dawn finds him working
behind his desk. He has a busy day ahead. Aside from his scheduled
appointments, he is constantly interrupted by well-wishers as the day goes on,
who seem intent on congratulating him on the end of the war and shaking his
hand. Minor Government clerks, Undersecretaries of various Departments, and
even members of the general public find their way into the White House.
Lincoln
is glad of the constant interruptions when he is visited by a group of Radical
Republican Congressmen who spend their time with Lincoln berating him about his
tolerant approach to the South. “There
will be blood!” one tells him. “The people want hangings!” says another. “That
is not the Reconstruction I want.” Lincoln says tiredly. He is glad when they
go.
He
is even more glad when Ulysses S. Grant comes into the office. The stream of
visitors doesn’t slacken, and most seem amazed to find the President and the
General-in-Chief together. To everyone who congratulates Grant on the surrender
of The Army of Northern Virginia, Grant replies, “The war is not over yet.”
When
they manage to speak without interruptions, President Lincoln asks Grant what
he thinks will happen next on the battlefield. Grant assures Lincoln that he
believes that Johnston will give up easily, and that the other Confederate
armies will fall in line. However, Grant cannot guess how long the process will
take, whether one month or one year. Grant is also concerned about those
Confederates who will refuse to follow Lee’s lead. Names like Nathan Bedford
Forrest and John Mosby come to his lips. It may take months to run the holdouts
to ground, Grant admits, though he says he believes that the number of holdouts
will be far smaller than he at first believed.
Lincoln
sits enthralled as Grant describes in detail the surrender scene at Appomattox.
Lincoln repeats what he has said before, that Lee is a good and noble man.
As
Grant gets up to take his leave of the President, Lincoln has a personal
request to make: Would the General and
Mrs. Grant care to join the President and the First Lady on Friday evening for
a show at Ford’s Theatre, and dinner afterward?
Lincoln explains that Our American
Cousin, a comedy starring Laura Keene, will be having its 1000th
performance that evening. The President admits to Grant that he can use a good
laugh.
Grant
agrees to the plan. He takes his leave of Lincoln, gravely concerned. The
President, to his mind, looks quite sickly. All the ground Lincoln seemed to
have regained at City Point seems to have evaporated after only 48 hours in
Washington.
After
Grant leaves, Lincoln is convinced by Alexander Gardner to sit for a portrait
photograph. Gardner tells Lincoln that he wants a photograph of “our victorious
President.”
Lincoln’s
tie is askew in the photograph, his jacket is rumpled, and his hair is messily
uncombed and thick with gray along the sides of his head. His face is deeply
graven with care. What is most arresting in Gardner’s photograph are the
President’s sunken eyes, which burn with the fevered light of a man driven by overexertion
to the point of collapse. He looks like a man on the verge of death --- which
is, ironically, what he is, though the manner and time of his end are going to
be completely unexpected.
After
the sitting, Lincoln changes for dinner. A group of well-wishers are coming to
the White House to celebrate the Union’s victory.
Lincoln
is unaccountably subdued at dinner, telling not one of the funny stories his table-talk
audiences have come to expect.
During
the dinner, Lincoln begins to tell of a dream he had:
I could not have been
long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream.
There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs,
as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered
downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the
mourners were invisible. . . . Determined to find the cause of a state of
things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East
Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a
catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it
were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of
people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others
weeping pitifully. “Who
is dead in the White House?” I demanded
of one of the soldiers. “The President,”
was his answer; “he was killed by an assassin!” Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my
dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have
been strangely annoyed by it ever since.
Lincoln
has had this dream before, though not with such detail. He has always
previously awakened before his dream-self has entered the East Room.
The
table falls silent at the words President
and assassin. He finds his guests
looking at him with fearful eyes.
“How
horrid! What a terrible dream!” Mary
cries out. “Oh, how I wish you hadn’t told me that!”
Realizing
that he has frightened his wife badly, and his guests, and not least of all
himself, Lincoln tries to make a weak joke of it. “It’s all right, Molly. Why, I
sure do feel sorry for that other feller,” he says.
“What
other fellow?” someone asks in a whisper.
“Why,
the other President. It can’t be me that’s dead, you see, because how
could they tell me that I was dead? It must be the next President. Poor feller. I wouldn’t want to be him.” Lincoln
forces a hollow crack of laughter to show that it’s all a joke, but for once in
his life, his sense of humor fails him. Finally, muttering, “There is nothing
to be done for it anyway,” he turns back to his plate.
V
The tidings were spread
over the country during the night, and the nation seems delirious with joy.
Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering;
all, all are jubilant. This surrender of the great Rebel captain and the most
formidable and reliable army of the Secessionists virtually terminates the
Rebellion. There may be some marauding, and robbing and murder by desperadoes,
but no great battle, no conflict of armies, after the news of yesterday reaches
the different sections. Possibly there may be some stand in Texas or at remote
points beyond the Mississippi.
So
wrote Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles as word of Lee’s surrender reached
into every home in every major town and city in the United States. Throughout
the nation cannon salutes were offered, and Edwin Stanton ordered every light
in Washington D.C. lit.
The
Mayors of other northern cities followed suit. Brass bands played, and
spontaneous parades and demonstrations were held throughout the land.
VI
After
dinner, President Lincoln retires to his room to work on the victory speech he
is planning to give to commemorate the end of the war --- or at least Lee’s
surrender at Appomattox. He is hoping to give the speech to Congress (and to
the newspapers) on April 12th, that is, tomorrow, the fourth
anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter. There is a poetic justice in this,
Lincoln thinks, the hand of Providence.
But
the tired President is having trouble concentrating. Adding to his distraction
is all the joyful noise pouring in from outside, as people cheer, brass
instruments crump, and firecrackers
sizzle and pop. He finally puts his
scribblings aside when a persistent call goes up right outside his second story
window in the White House ---
“Speech! Speech!
Speech!”
The
President puts his head out the window and is surprised to see a large crowd,
complete with a small brass band, directly below him. Although most people are
yelling, “Speech! Speech!” the
bandleader asks Lincoln if they can serenade him with a favorite song.
Lincoln
smiles. “I’ve always thought Dixie was
a corking tune!”
The
band launches into Dixie, and the
crowd sings along:
I wish I was in the land
of cotton,
Old times there are not
forgotten;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie’s Land where I
was born in,
Early on one frosty
mornin’,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie’s Land I’ll
take my stand
to live and die in
Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Old Missus marry “Will
the weaver,”
Willium was a gay
deceiver;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
And when he put his arm
around ‘er,
He smiled as fierce as a
forty-pounder,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie’s Land I’ll
take my stand
to live and die in
Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
His face was sharp as a
butcher’s cleaver
But that did not seem to
grieve ‘er
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Ole Missus acted the
foolish part
She died for a man that
broke her heart
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie’s Land I’ll
take my stand
to live and die in
Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Now here’s to the health
to the next ole Missus
An’ all the gals that
want to kiss us;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land
And if you want to drive
away sorrow
Come and hear our song
tomorrow
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie’s Land I’ll
take my stand
to live and die in
Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Dar’s buckwheat cakes an
Injun batter,
Makes your fat a little
fatter;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Then hoe it down and
scratch your gravel,
To Dixie’s Land I’m
bound to travel.
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie’s Land I’ll
take my stand
to live and die in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
Away, away, away down
south in Dixie.
“And
may that be all we claim by right of conquest from the South!”* Lincoln tells
the laughing crowd. “And now, I wish you a good night.”
*Dixie or Dixie’s Land was actually written and first performed in 1859 by a
New York City-based minstrel show in which the actors appeared in blackface.
Given New York City’s close ties to the cotton economy, the song traveled south
along with the commodities factors, eventually becoming the unofficial anthem
of the Confederacy. God Save The South was
the official National Anthem of the C.S.A.
VII
But
the crowd outside the President’s window kept shouting, “Speech! Speech!” and so Lincoln said a few words, most of which he
had planned to say in his “victory” speech.
The tone of Lincoln’s words to the crowd that night was not lighthearted
and gay. His thoughts of that moment were utterly not in keeping with the mood
of his audience. His utterances were somber and serious, and reflected his
preoccupation with the looming task of Reconstruction. Lincoln said:
We meet this evening,
not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and
Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a
righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In
the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be
forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be
duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of
rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I
myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of
the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine.
To Gen. Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant
Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.
By these recent
successes the re-inauguration of the national authority -- reconstruction --
which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more
closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case
of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to
treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other
man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant
elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people,
differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.
As a general rule, I
abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be
provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this
precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some
supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State government
of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public
knows. In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I
presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if
adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive
government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan
which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the
Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted
to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to
the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them
suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation
Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that
I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I
should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of
members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan
which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new
constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State,
practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does
not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not
well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it
applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The
message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan,
written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed
emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington
that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From
about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be
interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When
the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, Gen.
Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military
co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and
some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known. Such only has
been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my
promise is out, as before stated. But, as bad promises are better broken than
kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be
convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest. But I have not yet
been so convinced.
I have been shown a
letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer
expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the
question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it.
It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I
have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have
purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that
question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any
discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no
effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever
it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy,
and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction.
We all agree that the
seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relation with the Union; and
that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those
States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it
is not only possible, but in fact, easier to do this, without deciding, or even
considering, whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with
it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether
they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to
restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union;
and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing
the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them
proper assistance, they never having been out of it.
The amount of
constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would
be more satisfactory to all, if it contained fifty, thirty, or even twenty
thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand, as it does. It is also
unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored
man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent,
and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still the question is not whether
the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The
question is, "Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve
it; or to reject, and disperse it?" "Can Louisiana be brought into
proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining, or by discarding
her new State government?"
Some twelve thousand
voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the
Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections,
organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the
benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the
Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their
Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently
passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve
thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual
freedom in the state--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things
the nation wants--and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to
make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost
to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You
are worthless, or worse--we will neither help you, nor be helped by you."
To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters,
hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of
gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when,
where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white
and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations
with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the
contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the
converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms
of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte
for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete
success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with
vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the
elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced
steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new
government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl,
we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again,
if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed
amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been
argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted
secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself
against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be
questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by
three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.
I repeat the question,
"Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union
sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government?
What has been said of
Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities
pertain to each state, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same
state; and withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive,
and inflexible plan can be safely prescribed as to details and colatterals
[sic]. Such exclusive, and inflexible plan, would surely become a new
entanglement. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
In the present
"situation" as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new
announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail
to act, when satisfied that action will be proper.
And
with that the crowd dispersed, with some deep in thought and some disappointed
with the President’s dark tone. At least one was fulminating with
barely-checked rage at the President for even mentioning African-American suffrage ---
John
Wilkes Booth stalked away from the White House even while telling a friend that
“This means nigger citizenship. That is
the last speech he will ever make. By God, I’ll put him through!”
Lincoln,
for his part, lowered the window and sighing, got ready for bed. He slept
poorly again that night and for only a few hours . . .
.
. . for once again in his sleep he visited the East Room, to stand and wonder
at the identity of the faceless man on the catafalque.
