MARCH 15, 1865:
The Richmond
Daily Dispatch republished an article from the Union army newspaper of
Charlottesville, Virginia, Third Cavalry
Division Chronicle, which first appeared in early March. The Dispatch pointed out the mocking tone of
the Union sheet, including an “advertisement
offering ‘Two Dollars Reward, Confederate Currency for the whereabouts of Jube,
answering to the name of Early’.”
But with a complete failure to grasp
the unpleasant satire intended, and a shocking tone deafness as to its effect
on Southern morale (or perhaps the Editor of the Dispatch was a closet Unionist?), the paper also advised its
readership that
“A kind friend has
favored us with the following song, as sung by the Charlottesville Glee Club (a Virginia
newspaper!) ---
How do you like it as far as you've
got?
Jefferson D, Jefferson D,
Are you glad you began it, or do you
wish you had not?
Jefferson, Jefferson D.
People say, though of course I don't
know that it's so,
That your spirits are getting decidedly
low,
That you're sick and discouraged and
don't know what,
But say though — do you like it as far
as you've got.
Ho! Ho! Jefferson D,
Things look rather shaky now
'Twixt you and me.
You can't think how sorry I was when I
heard,
Jefferson D, Jefferson D,
That your visit to Washington had been
deferred,
Jefferson D, Jefferson D,
But I hope you will find it convenient
to come
When Abe and the rest of the boys are
at home
And I trust you won't mind it, they're
such a lot,
If they ask you how you like it as far
as you've got.
Ho! Ho! Jefferson D.
On
the same day, a North Carolinian Unionist newspaper, the Wilmington Herald of The Union publishes the following account of
General Sherman’s actions:
Couriers from General
Sherman reached this city this morning, bringing the gratifying tidings of the
perfect safety and success of the national army of that distinguished General.
The couriers left Gen. Sherman on Thursday morning, at the crossing of the Lumber
River, on the main road from Laurinburg to Fayetteville. He was then advancing, and would probably
enter Fayetteville on Friday evening. There was no enemy in his vicinity except
a company of scouts in his front, and Butler’s brigade of cavalry handing on
his rear. He had had no fighting of any account since leaving Columbia.
At Cheraw, on
Saturday last, he had a little brush with some rebel cavalry, but drove them
out of the town very easily, capturing seventeen pieces of artillery. Four more guns were captures next day on the
opposite side of the river, Sherman has sworn in and paroled about seven
hundred militiamen on his march. He also
has a number of regulars with him as prisoners. He has found an abundance of
all manner of provisions on his route, render it necessary to issue no rations
except of coffee and sugar.
The march of General
Sherman from Savannah to Fayetteville, has been a continued success throughout.
. .
Clearly,
passion in the South for the Confederate cause is rapidly waning.
Throughout
the course of the Civil War, President Lincoln has suffered from a strange
recurring dream in which he perceives himself standing at the bow of a great
ship traveling through inky black darkness toward a distant and invisible shore
at a tremendous rate of speed. This dream has repeated itself so many times
that Mary Lincoln has linked it to instances when the Union is about to fight
as major battle or when her husband is about to make a momentous decision.
As
the war has wound down the President’s health has deteriorated shockingly.
Since Christmas he has lost over 30 pounds, leaving his gangly frame and face
looking alarmingly lined and cadaverous. His hair, once black, is shot through
with gray. General Grant, when he sees the President, tells him that he has
“aged twenty years since I saw you last.” Lincoln admits ruefully that, “Some
weariness has bit at my bones.” Indeed, immediately after being sworn in as
President on March 4th, he took to his bed, making only token
appearances at the evening’s Inaugural Balls, and refusing to leave the
residence, He is conducting the war from his bedroom, even holding today’s
Cabinet meeting there while he lies abed, and has not gone to his office --- or
to his favorite haunt, the telegraph room in the War Department --- in almost
two weeks. Couriers are bringing him word of developments.
The
President is spending too many sleepless nights. Since his second term began,
Lincoln has been suffering from a fearful nightmare, different
from the one that has plagued him all along. In this disturbing dream, Lincoln
confides to several people, his dream-self is awakened by the sound of distant
sobbing. Moving through a heavy grasping darkness, his dream-self tries to find
the source of the sound. Lincoln awakes, sometimes, as his dream-self throws
back the covers to get out of bed, or sometimes as his dream-self wanders the
gloomy halls of the White House.
Sometimes, the President admits, he addresses a vaguely familiar but
faceless phantasm that tells him there has been a death in the White House.
Lincoln
excuses away the dream as a tortured recollection of Willie’s death in 1862 ---
indeed, there has been a death in his
White House, and if it comes to that, his Presidency has been defined by death.
But, try as he might, Lincoln cannot shake off the terrible sense of foreboding
that permeates the dream. Even in his retellings of it, his listeners are
chilled.
Even
as Lincoln recounts his nightmare to transfixed listeners, a meeting is called
at the Gautier Hotel bar. The famed actor, John Wilkes Booth has gathered a
cast of ne’er-do-wells --- among them Michael O'Laughlen, Samuel Arnold, Lewis
Powell, John Surratt, David Herold and George Atzerodt --- to discuss his plan
to kidnap Abraham Lincoln.
Booth
is a hardcore Secessionist. A member of one of the most famous acting dynasties
in American history, the strikingly handsome Booth is the son of Junius Booth
and Mary Ann Holmes Booth, both English-born. His older brother, Edwin, the
most famous of the family, is a devoted Unionist. The popularity of the Booth
family is such that both Lincoln and Davis issue them laissez-passer to enable them to cross the front lines at will in
order to perform in the cities of their choosing. Edwin often acts as a courier
of secret communications between the two governments.
Junius
Booth has a checkered past --- before coming to America, before taking up
acting, he had abandoned his first wife and children back in Britain. After
coming to America in 1821 with his then-mistress, Junius Booth developed an
irrational and baseless hatred for the American President, Andrew Jackson. He
had written to Jackson several times, threatening to kill the President. In
response, the irascible and fearless “Old Hickory” agreed to meet Junius with
pistols at twenty paces. Junius never replied to the President’s challenge.
Whether
John Wilkes, the ninth of ten children in the family, was raised knowing of his
father’s abortive plans to kill the President of the United States is not
known. Born on May 10, 1838, he early on showed a flair for the dramatic. His
first stage appearance took place in 1855, when he was 17.
The
Booths were Maryland slaveholders, and political. Early on, John joined the
American Party, also known as the “Know-Nothings,” which was anti-Catholic,
anti-Jewish, anti-black, anti-abolitionist, and anti-immigrant in its leanings.
The Booth family was emotionally split by the Civil War, though not physically
separated. John identified entirely with the South, and feared the rise of the
“Black” Republicans.
His
acting career truly blossomed during the Civil War. He played New York and
Washington D.C. and Richmond and a score of other, smaller cities regularly,
becoming most famed for his “Brutus” in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It is known that President Lincoln saw him on stage
several times, initially in The Marble
Heart. Observers later claimed that Booth glared at Lincoln from the stage
while soliloquizing about murder.
Lincoln may have met Booth at an after-party; no one is really sure.
The
obvious decline of the Confederacy is bringing out a madness in John Wilkes
Booth. He has already contemplated killing Mr. Lincoln. In the summer of 1864,
upon Booth’s checking out of his hotel, a charlady found an inscription left in
the room that read, "Abe Lincoln
departed his life August 13, 1864, by the effects of poison." Unfortunately,
no one connected it to Booth at the time.
Always hungry to play heroic roles, he has
concocted a well-thought-out if theatrical scheme to abduct the President and
carry him South to Richmond, ransoming him for the price of Confederate
independence. His co-conspirators agree
to move against the President.
Abraham
Lincoln has but one month left to live.
