Chapter III: Part 3

In the March “Ladies’ Home Journal” Stephen Fiske graphically recalls the excitement and apprehension and the condition of the country “When Lincoln Was First Inaugurated.” He tells the incidents of the memorable journey to the capitol, of Mr. Lincoln’s reception, and gives a rather grewsome picture of the inaugural ceremonies. “As I walked up to the capitol the wide, dusty streets were already crowded,” he writes; “regular troops were posted at intervals along Pennsylvania avenue. Sharpshooters were climbing over the roofs of the houses. A mounted officer at every corner was ready to report to General Scott the passage of the procession. Detectives in plain clothes squirmed through the masses of people. The policemen had been instructed to arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ any person who called Mr. Lincoln an opprobrious name or uttered a disloyal sentiment. There was much suppressed excitement, and the prophetic word ‘assassination’ was in every mind.

“President Buchanan, whose term expired at noon, was engaged until half an hour later in signing the bills that had been hurriedly passed, but the congressional clock had been put back to legalize the transaction. At last he drove down to Willard’s, and the procession was formed. The President and President-elect rode in an open barouche; but this confidence in the people was more apparent than real. On the front seat were Senators Baker and Pearce; a guard of honor of the regular cavalry surrounded the carriage; beyond were mounted marshals four files deep. From the sidewalks no one could accurately distinguish Mr. Lincoln. Close behind marched regiments of regulars and marines, fully armed. It seemed more like escorting a prisoner to his doom than a President to his inauguration. Little cheering and no enthusiasm greeted the procession. Every now and then an arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ was quickly and quietly made in the crowd. The sunshine was bright, but the whole affair was as gloomy as if Mr. Lincoln were riding through an enemy’s country--as, indeed, he was.”

JOHN SHERMAN’S FIRST MEETING WITH LINCOLN.

Secretary Sherman says he never will forget his first meeting with a President. It was shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration, and he attended a public reception, fell into line, and awaited an hour or two for a chance to shake hands with the Great Emancipator.

“During this time,” says Mr. Sherman, “I was wondering what I should say and what Lincoln would do when we met. At last it came my turn to be presented. Lincoln looked at me a moment, extended his hand, and said: ‘You’re a pretty tall fellow, aren’t you? Stand up here with me, back to back, and let’s see which is the taller.’

“In another moment I was standing back to back with the greatest man of his age. Naturally I was quite abashed by this unexpected evidence of democracy.

“‘You’re from the West, aren’t you,’ inquired Lincoln.

“‘My home is in Ohio,’ I replied.

“‘I thought so,’ he said; ‘that’s the kind of men they raise out there.’”

LINCOLN AND THE SENTINEL.

A slight variation of the traditional sentry story is related by C. C. Buel, in the current Century. It was a cold, blusterous winter night. Says Mr. Buel:

“Mr. Lincoln emerged from the front door, his lank figure bent over as he drew tightly about his shoulders the shawl which he employed for such protection; for he was on his way to the War Department, at the west corner of the grounds, where in times of battle he was wont to get the midnight despatches from the field. As the blast struck him he thought of the numbness of the pacing sentry, and turning to him, said: ‘Young man, you’ve got a cold job to-night; step inside, and stand guard there.’

“‘My orders keep me out here,’ the soldier replied.

“‘Yes,’ said the President, in his argumentative tone; ‘but your duty can be performed just as well inside as out here, and you’ll oblige me by going in.’

“‘I have been stationed outside,’ the soldier answered, and resumed his beat.

“‘Hold on there!’ said Mr. Lincoln, as he turned back again; ‘it occurs to me that I am commander-in-chief of the army, and I order you to go inside.’”

ORIGIN OF “WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE, ETC.”

It was during Lincoln’s second inauguration as President of the United States that he gave voice to these famous and oft-quoted words:

“With malice toward none,
With charity for all.”

The above occur in the last paragraph in his second inaugural speech, delivered at Washington, D. C., March 4, 1865.

HIS GOOD MEMORY OF NAMES.

The following story illustrates the power of Mr. Lincoln’s memory of names and faces. When he was a comparatively young man and a candidate for the Illinois Legislature, he made a personal canvass of the district. While “swinging around the circle” he stopped one day and took dinner with a farmer in Sangamon county.

Years afterward, when Mr. Lincoln had become President, a soldier came to call on him at the White House. At the first glance the Chief Executive said: “Yes, I remember; you used to live on the Danville road. I took dinner with you when I was running for the Legislature. I recollect that we stood talking out at the barnyard gate, while I sharpened my jackknife.”

“Y-a-a-s,” drawled the soldier; “you did. But say, wherever did you put that whetstone? I looked for it a dozen times, but I never could find it after the day you used it. We allowed as how mabby you took it ’long with you.”

“No,” said Lincoln, looking serious and pushing away a lot of documents of state from the desk in front of him. “No, I put it on top of that gatepost--that high one.”

“Well!” exclaimed the visitor, “mabby you did. Couldn’t anybody else have put it there, and none of us ever thought of looking there for it.”

The soldier was then on his way home, and when he got there the first thing he did was to look for the whetstone. And sure enough, there it was, just where Lincoln had laid it fifteen years before. The honest fellow wrote a letter to the Chief Magistrate, telling him that the whetstone had been found, and would never be lost again.

LINCOLN’S GRIEF OVER THE DEFEAT OF THE UNION ARMY.

We had been talking of the war, and the late Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, broke out suddenly and said:

“It was just after the battle of Fredericksburg. I had been down there and came up to Washington by the night boat. I arrived at the foot of Seventh street a little after midnight. Just as I landed a messenger met me, saying that the President wanted to see me at once at the White House. I took a carriage and went directly there. I sent in my card, and word came back that the President had retired, but that he requested me to come up to his bedroom. I found him in bed, and as I entered the room he reached out his hand, shook hands, and said:

“‘Well, Governor; so you have been down to the battle-field?’

“‘Battle-field? Slaughter-pen! It was a terrible slaughter, Mr. Lincoln.’ I was sorry in a moment, that I had said it, for he groaned, and began to wring his hands and took on with terrible agony of spirits. He sat up on the edge of the bed, and moaned and groaned in anguish. He walked the floor of the room, and uttered exclamations of grief, one after another, and I remember his saying over and over again: ‘What has God put me in this place for?’ I tried to comfort him, and could hardly forgive myself for not being more careful and considerate of his feelings.”

THREE STORIES OF LINCOLN BY SENATOR PALMER.

“Speaking of Lincoln’s birthday,” said Senator Palmer yesterday, “reminds me that the very last case Lincoln ever tried was one in which I, too, was engaged. It was in Springfield, in June, 1860, after Mr. Lincoln had received the Presidential nomination. Old David Baker, who had been a Senator in the early days, had sued the trustees of Shurtleff College, my alma mater, for expelling his grandson, a lad named Will Gilbert. Mr. Lincoln appeared for the prosecution. I was the college attorney. Mr. Lincoln came into court and the Judge said to him: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I’ll argue this case for you. You have too much on your hands already. You haven’t any case.’ And he explained the law and application.

“‘Well,’ said Mr. Lincoln, with a smile, ‘don’t you want to hear a speech from me?’

“‘No,’ said the Judge, and the last case Mr. Lincoln tried he--well, he didn’t try it at all.”

“The first time I met Mr. Lincoln was in 1839, when I went to Springfield to be admitted to the bar. He was already recognized as a Whig leader. He wore, I remember, a suit of linsey woolsey, that could not have been worth more than $8 even in those days. The last time I saw him was in February of 1865. I had come to Washington at the request of the Governor, to complain that Illinois had been credited with 18,000 too few troops. I saw Mr. Lincoln one afternoon, and he asked me to come again in the morning.

“Next morning I sat in the ante-room while several officers were relieved. At length I was told to enter the President’s room. Mr. Lincoln was in the hands of the barber.

“‘Come in, Palmer,’ he called out, ‘come in. You’re home folks. I can shave before you. I couldn’t before those others, and I have to do it some time.’

“We chatted about various matters, and at length I said:

“‘Well, Mr. Lincoln, if anybody had told me that in a great crisis like this the people were going out to a little one-horse town and pick out a one-horse lawyer for President I wouldn’t have believed it.’

“Mr. Lincoln whirled about in his chair, his face white with lather, a towel under his chin. At first I thought he was angry. Sweeping the barber away he leaned forward, and placing one hand on my knee said:

“‘Neither would I. But it was a time when a man with a policy would have been fatal to the country. I have never had a policy. I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.’

“Lincoln was not an eloquent man. He was a strong lawyer, and an ingenious one. His stronghold was his ability to reason logically and clearly. He was a very self-contained man, and not easily excited. I remember the night when the news of his election was received at Springfield. The patriotic ladies of the town were serving a lunch in an upper room opposite the capitol. Mr. Lincoln was there, and read the returns as they were brought to him. The returns from New York decided the day. Mr. Lincoln stood up and read the telegram. He was the calmest man in the room. When he had finished he said, simply, ‘Well I must go and tell my wife.’”

HIS FAMOUS SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Lincoln was an orator as well as a statesman and many of his speeches will go down in history through all time. In his second inaugural address he made use of the following striking expressions:

“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of another has been answered fully. With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all Nations.”

Eloquent, is it not? Beautiful, is it not? And yet there is not a word in it that a child could not understand. Lincoln’s English was like himself, simple, forcible, direct, natural, eloquent, full of heart-throbs. As his unadorned language still stirs the heart of every American like the roll of a drum, and as beside it the tinsels, and flowers, and gewgaws of polished speech are but as pulseless marble, so the rugged nature of America’s greatest man looms above all lesser public men, the spotless, genius-crowned Shasta of our National history.

LINCOLN SAID EVEN A REBEL COULD BE SAVED.

This story well illustrates Lincoln’s humanity of character which found expression in his famous words of “charity for all, and malice toward none.” It appears that Mr. Shrigley, of Philadelphia, a Universalist, had been nominated for hospital chaplain. A protesting delegation went to Washington to see President Lincoln on the subject. The following was the interview:

“We have called, Mr. President, to confer with you in regard to the appointment of Mr. Shrigley, of Philadelphia, as hospital chaplain.”

The President responded: “Oh, yes, gentlemen. I have sent his name to the Senate, and he will no doubt be confirmed at an early date.”

One of the young men replied: “We have not come to ask for the appointment, but to solicit you to withdraw the nomination.”

“Ah!” said Lincoln, “that alters the case; but on what grounds do you wish the nomination withdrawn?”

The answer was: “Mr. Shrigley is not sound in his theological opinions.”

The President inquired: “On what question is the gentleman unsound?”

Response: “He does not believe in endless punishment; not only so, sir, but he believes that even the rebels themselves will be finally saved.”

“Is that so?” inquired the President.

The members of the committee responded, “Yes, yes.”

“Well, gentlemen, if that be so, and there is any way under Heaven whereby the rebels can be saved, then, for God’s sake and their sakes, let the man be appointed.”

It is almost needless to add that Mr. Shrigley was appointed, and served until the close of the war.

WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN COMPARED.

At a banquet given in his honor on Washington’s birthday, in New York, February 22, 1897, the eloquent and gifted Chauncey M. Depew made the following comparison between America’s two greatest heroes:

“This February, for the first time, both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays have been made legal holidays. Never since the creation of man were two human beings so unlike, so nearly the extremes of opposition to each other, as Washington and Lincoln. The one an aristocrat by birth, by breeding, and association, the other in every sense and by every surrounding a democrat. As the richest man in America, a large slave-holder, the possessor of an enormous landed estate, and the leader and representative of the property, the culture, and the colleges of the colonial period, Washington stood for the conservation and preservation of law and order.

“And yet millionaire, slaveholder and aristocrat, in its best sense, that he was, as he lived, so at any time he would have died for the immortal principle put by the Puritans in their charter, adopted in the cabin of the Mayflower, reënacted in the Declaration of Independence, of the equality of all men before the law and of the equal opportunity for all to rise. Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a cabin, among that class known as poor whites in slaveholding times, who held no position and whose condition was so helpless as to paralyze ambition and effort. His situation so far as his surroundings were concerned had considerable mental but little moral improvement by the removal to Indiana and subsequently to Illinois.

“Anywhere in the Old World a man born amidst such environments and teachings, and possessed of unconquerable energy and ambition and the greatest powers of eloquence and constructive statesmanship, would have been a Socialist and the leader of a social revolt. He might have been an Anarchist. His one ambition would have been to break the crust above him and shatter it to pieces. He would see otherwise no opportunity for himself and his fellows in social or political or professional life. But Lincoln attained from the log cabin of the poor white in the wilderness the same position which Washington reached from his palatial mansion and baronial estate on the Potomac; he made the same fight unselfishly, patriotically, and grandly for the preservation of the republic that Washington had done for its creation and foundation. Widely as they are separated, these two heroes of the two great crises of our national life stand together in representing the solvent powers, the inspiring processes, and the hopeful opportunities of American liberty.”

LINCOLN REMEMBERED HIM.

A stair-carpenter happened to see a picture of the martyred President. Instantly the tones of his voice softened, his eyes grew moist with tears, and the whole expression of his face changed.

Then he told us his “story of Lincoln.” He had been shot through the lungs when on picket in ’63, and was in the hospital at Fortress Monroe.

For weeks he had been lying there, till he had grown dreadfully homesick, and felt as if the only thing that could cure him was to get home to Maryland.

One morning Lincoln visited the hospital, and as he was passing around, pausing before each cot to speak a word of cheer to each wounded soldier, this one made up his mind that if he gave him a chance, he would make known his wants.

At last his turn came.

“You seem very comfortable, my friend,” Lincoln said.

“Not so comfortable as I should be if I could get home to Maryland,” was the reply.

“What is your name?”

“S. Stover, Co. H, 2d Maryland Volunteers,” was promptly answered, and Lincoln passed on.

In just three days came an order from the President to transfer Private Stover, Co. H, 2d Md. Vols., by water to the hospital at Annapolis.

“I was surprised myself,” he said; “for I had watched him as long as he was in sight, and when I saw him go through the door without writing down my name and company, I gave up all hope of seeing my Maryland again.

“And it has always been a mystery to me that a man with so much to think of should keep in mind the name, regiment and company of a private soldier.”

As he turned away to conceal the tears he could not keep back, it was plain how large a place the thoughtful kindness of that great man had won in the heart of the poor, homesick, wounded soldier.

WHY LINCOLN PARDONED THEM.

It was President Lincoln’s intense love for his fellow men that led him to disapprove of the findings of court-martial, whenever there was a possible excuse, particularly in the cases of soldiers charged with desertion, with having fallen asleep at a post of duty, or with other offenses.

Secretary Stanton always insisted upon the strictest discipline in the army and frequently urged that derelict soldiers receive the severest punishment of military law and custom, but Lincoln rarely took any advice on such matters. He had meditated deeply on that subject and consulted his own judgment in disposing of cases of that kind that came before him.

The late Joseph Holt, who recently died at Washington, was judge advocate general of the army during the whole period of the war and it became his duty to report many cases of alleged cowardice of soldiers as well as other offenses. President Lincoln carefully read every line of the charges against such men, and as soon as he saw the slightest chance to excuse the poor fellow, a gleam of satisfaction would pass over his serious face. Then folding the papers together he placed them in a pigeon hole of his desk, and with his big eyes looking into those of the judge advocate standing before him, he would say:

“Holt, we will let those soldiers go. Order them set free.”

It was after the battle of Chancellorsville that charges were brought against several men for failing to march with their regiments into the fight at a time when they were most needed. The charge of desertion was made.

When Secretary Stanton heard of these cases he commanded Judge Holt to present the charges against the men to the President in the strongest possible terms.

“We need stronger discipline in the army,” said the stern secretary of war to the judge advocate. “The time has come when the President must yield to our opinion.”

Judge Holt was himself one of the ablest lawyers of his day, and had won fame as a forensic orator long before the war.

“In presenting these cases,” said he to the writer a few months before his death, “in obedience to the wish of the secretary of war, I used all the legal acumen at my command. One morning, with my papers all ready (and I was deeply in earnest in the matter), I proceeded to the White House; and, as I entered his private office, the President looked up with his long, sad face, saying:

“‘Ah! Holt, what have you there?’

“‘I have some important cases for your careful consideration, Mr. President, with documentary evidence sufficient to condemn every man.’

“He took the papers and read them carefully, stopping at times to reflect, then read on until he finished. There was no change in his countenance this time, unless that it grew more sad and his expression more serious. I had covered the cases in question with strong and convincing argument and evidence. He finally raised his eyes from the last paper and gazed intently through the window at some object across the Potomac. Then, rising from his chair, with the papers all folded together, he placed them in a pigeon hole already filled with similar documents. With his tall, gaunt form facing me, he spoke, in deep, sad tones, that would have touched the heart of the sternest officer of the army:

“‘Holt (it was his custom to mention only the last name), you acknowledge those men have a previous record for bravery. It is not the first time they have faced danger; and they shall not be shot for this one offense.’

“I then thought it was my duty as the head of my department of military justice to make further argument. For I knew Stanton would nearly explode with rage when he heard of the President’s decision. I began to speak and Lincoln sat down again, giving me his closest attention. Then, rising from his chair and riveting his eyes upon me, he said:

“‘Holt, were you ever in battle?’

“‘I have never been.’

“‘Did Stanton ever march in the first line, to be shot at by an enemy like those men did?’

“‘I think not, Mr. President.’

“‘Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk war, and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the knees when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I would sink to the ground. The men against whom those charges have been made probably were not able to march into battle. Who knows that they were able? I am opposed to having soldiers shot for not facing danger when it is not known that their legs would carry them into danger. Send this dispatch ordering them to be set free.’ And they were set free that day.”

THE LINCOLN PORTRAITS.

The Lincoln apotheosis is much more satisfactory than the Napoleon apotheosis. Lincoln is not only our own, but a greater, purer, sweeter, really stronger man than Napoleon. It is a good thing to bring out the little-known portraits of Lincoln. What a marvelous face! It is full of strength--with just enough of the big child in it to kindle love and sympathy. Has anyone ever noticed the way in which Lincoln’s face is cast on the lines of the North American Indian? We have never heard that Lincoln had Indian blood in him; but take any of his good, beardless portraits, with front or nearly front view; add to it a shock of straight hair parted in the middle and falling down, either straight or in two braids, on the shoulders; add a feather to it; clothe the body in a blanket and let it take an Indian stoop; and no one would question that the man was an aborigine. The face has the gravity of the Indian countenance, but not the impassiveness that we read about; but Indian faces, after all, are seldom impassive. The face of Lincoln, who was not an Indian, has more of the aborigine in it than of that other great President, Benito Juarez, who was an Indian.

LINCOLN’S FAITH IN PROVIDENCE.

The raid made by the Confederate general, J. E. B. Stuart, in June, 1862, around the Union army commanded by General McClellan, caused great anxiety in Washington. One of its results was the interruption of communication between the capital and the army of the Potomac. What this portended no one could affirm. That it suggested the gravest possibilities was felt by all.

While this feeling was dominating all circles, several gentlemen, myself among them, called on President Lincoln in order to be definitely advised about the condition of affairs as understood by him.

To our question: “Mr. President, have you any news from the army?” he sadly replied: “Not one word; we can get no communication with it. I do not know that we have an army; it may have been destroyed or captured, though I cannot so believe, for it was a splendid army. But the most I can do now is to hope that serious disaster has not befallen it.”

This led to a somewhat protracted conversation relative to the general condition of our affairs. It was useless to talk about the Army of the Potomac; for we knew nothing concerning its condition or position at that moment. The conversation therefore took a wide range and touched upon the subject of slavery, about which much was said.

The President did not participate in this conversation. He was an attentive listener, but gave no sign of approval or disapproval of the views which were expressed. At length one of the active participants remarked:

“Slavery must be stricken down wherever it exists in this country. It is right that it should be. It is a crime against justice and humanity. We have tolerated it too long. It brought war upon us. I believe that Providence is not unmindful of the struggle in which this nation is engaged. If we do not do right I believe God will let us go our own way to our ruin. But, if we do right, I believe He will lead us safely out of this wilderness, crown our arms with victory, and restore our now dissevered Union.”

I observed President Lincoln closely while this earnest opinion and expression of religious faith was being uttered. I saw that it affected him deeply, and anticipated, from the play of his features and the sparkle of his eyes, that he would not let the occasion pass without making some definite response to it. I was not mistaken. Mr. Lincoln had been sitting in his chair, in a kind of weary and despondent attitude while the conversation progressed. At the conclusion of the remarks I have quoted, he at once arose and stood at his extreme height. Pausing a moment, his right arm outstretched towards the gentleman who had just ceased speaking, his face aglow like the face of a prophet, Mr. Lincoln gave deliberate and emphatic utterance to the religious faith which sustained him in the great trial to which he and the country were subjected. He said: “My faith is greater than yours. I not only believe that Providence is not unmindful of the struggle in which this nation is engaged; that if we do not do right God will let us go our own way to our ruin; and that if we do right He will lead us safely out of this wilderness, crown our arms with victory, and restore our dissevered union, as you have expressed your belief; but I also believe that He will compel us to do right in order that He may do these things, not so much because we desire them as that they accord with His plans of dealing with this nation, in the midst of which He means to establish justice. I think He means that we shall do more than we have yet done in furtherance of His plans, and He will open the way for our doing it. I have felt His hand upon me in great trials and submitted to His guidance, and I trust that as He shall further open the way I will be ready to walk therein, relying on His help and trusting in His goodness and wisdom.”--From “Some Memories of Lincoln,” by ex-Senator James F. Wilson, in North American Review.

LINCOLN’S LAST WORDS.

The very last words Lincoln delivered on the afternoon before the assassination--last of those great utterances that for six or seven years electrified and enlightened half the world--were a message of suggestion and encouragement to the miners of the Rockies. Schuyler Colfax was going thither and was paying his final call at the White House. Lincoln said to him:

“Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from me to the miners whom you visit. I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. I believe it is practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country, from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced. During the war, when we were adding a couple of million dollars every day to our national debt, I did not care about encouraging the increase in the volume of our precious metals; we had the country to save first. But now that the rebellion is overthrown, and we know pretty nearly the amount of our national debt, the more gold and silver we mine, we make the payment of that debt so much easier. Now, I am going to encourage that in every possible way. We shall have hundreds of thousands of disbanded soldiers, and many have feared that their return home in such great numbers might paralyze industry by furnishing suddenly a greater supply of labor than there will be a demand for. I am going to try to attract them to the hidden wealth of our mountain ranges, where there is room enough for all. Immigration, which even the war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundreds of thousands more from over-crowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that wait for them in the West. Tell the miners for me, that I shall promote their interests to the best of my ability, because their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation; and we shall prove in a few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.”

A CHICAGOAN WHO SAW LINCOLN SHOT.

Mr. George C. Read, of Chicago, at the time of President Lincoln’s assassination, was a foot orderly under Generals Griffin and Ayers. He was in Washington on the fateful April 14, 1865, and was an eyewitness to the tragedy. He tells of it as follows:

“Some time in the latter part of March, 1865, I was sent to Washington on account of the loss of my voice. I remained there most of the time in barracks on east Capitol Hill. On the afternoon of the fated April 14, 1865, I happened in the saloon next door to Ford’s Theater to see the barkeeper, one Jim Peck. While standing near a stove about the center of the room three men came into the place laughing and talking loudly. They all went to the end of the bar nearest the door and ordered a drink. One was a tall, handsome fellow, dressed in the latest fashionable clothes, if I remember rightly, and the others appeared like workmen of some kind. Both were carelessly dressed, and I think one was in his shirt sleeves. They had their drink, and then the fine-looking man turned toward where I was standing and said, ‘Come up, soldier, and have a drink.’ I declined, for the reason that I had not at that time become addicted to the habit of social drinking. He then approached me and took me by the arm and said, ‘Have something; take a cigar.’ This I did not refuse, and he put his hand in his vest pocket and, pulling out a cigar, handed it to me without any further remarks. He then returned to his companions at the bar. They remained, if I remember correctly, about five minutes after, and then, all laughing at something that Peck said, left the place. As soon as they were gone I asked Peck who the big man was, and he said that he was an actor--one of the Booth family--John Wilkes Booth. I had heard of him before, but paid no further attention to it except to remark that he seemed to be in a happy frame of mind, when Peck stated that he was on a ‘drunk,’ and associated with the stage mechanics in the theater all the time.

“As I was about to depart, little thinking what history would develop in a few short hours, Peck asked me to accept a couple of tickets to the theater for that night. I was glad to get them, having no money to purchase the same, and knowing that the President would be at the play. Later I found a young man, like myself, broke, and invited him to accompany me to the play. We were on hand early, and, having good reserved seats about the center of the house, were elated over our good luck.

“Suffice it to say that the curtain went up and ‘Our American Cousin’ was introduced. I was intently interested and cannot remember positively what act it was that was on, except what is told in history, when I heard a shot, and immediately a man appeared at the front of the President’s box and, without waiting, jumped to the stage beneath. I, as well as all others in the theater, was astonished. He ran to about the center of the stage and raised his left hand and said something I did not catch, and then disappeared behind the wings. As soon as I saw him I recognized the handsome man I had seen in the saloon that afternoon, and turned to my comrade and said: ‘That’s Wilkes Booth, the actor, and I think he is on a drunk.’ Before I had finished even this a cry went up that the President had been shot, ‘Stop that man!’ and many other exclamations I have forgotten. It was all done so quickly that one had hardly time to think. Immediately the audience rose as one person and cries were heard all over the house, ‘Stop that man!’ ‘The President has been assassinated!’ and many others. The people began to crush each other and try to get out of the theater, but they were quieted to a certain extent and the provost guard on duty there fought to make them keep their places. Soon there was a movement on the side aisle running from the President’s box, and from where I was standing on my seat I could see what appeared to be a party of men carrying some one. Later the rest of the party were conducted out of the theater, and when I managed to get outside I saw a crowd looking up at a house opposite. On asking what it meant, I was told that the President had been carried there and was dying. I lost my comrade in the crowd and have never met him since.

“It is unnecessary to go into any more details of what occurred that night. I was excited, as well as every one else in the city, and got little rest. But that is my experience, told as briefly as possible, without any stretch of imagination. If I had to do with the same again I think it would have been better if I had told the officials what I saw that afternoon, but, as it was, all came out right, and the really guilty ones suffered the penalty of their crime. I met Peck the next year in New York City, but have never heard of or seen him since.”

MARTYRED LINCOLN’S BLOOD.

An interesting and valuable relic, which brings vividly to the mind the historic scene in Ford’s Theater, Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865, is owned by Colonel James S. Case, at one time a resident of Philadelphia, but whose home is now in Brooklyn.

It is only a play bill, but upon it is a discoloration made by a tiny drop of President Lincoln’s blood. It was picked up just after the tragedy by John T. Ford, the manager of the theater. He found it on the floor of the box where it had fallen from the President’s hand when the bullet of Assassin Booth pierced his head. It lay beneath the chair in which the citizen-hero received his death wound. There was a tiny spot of blood, still red as it came from the great heart of Lincoln, on the edge.

Mr. Ford carried the precious paper home, and only parted with it at the request of the late A. K. Browne of Washington, who was a warm personal friend of the manager. It came into Mr. Browne’s possession while the nation was still mourning for its idol, and soon after his assassin had met justly merited fate at the hands of Sergeant Boston Corbett.

The play bill is somewhat yellow from age, but otherwise in an excellent state of preservation. The bloodstain is now a dark brown. The program was of “Our American Cousin,” which was being given for the benefit of Laura Keene. The bloodstain is nearly half way down the program, opposite the names of John Dyott, and Harry Hawk, Miss Keene’s leading support.

A STRANGE COINCIDENCE IN THE LIVES OF LINCOLN AND HIS SLAYER.

When President Lincoln was assassinated on the night of April 14, 1865, while witnessing a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, he was removed to the Peterson house, which was directly opposite the theater.

The late John T. Ford related that he had occasion to visit John Wilkes Booth at the Peterson house once. The Davenport-Wallack combination was playing “Julius Cæsar” at Ford’s theater. Booth had been cast to play Marc Antony and was late in coming to rehearsal. Ford went over to the house to ask him to hurry up. He found Booth lying in bed studying his lines. He little dreamed then that Lincoln would so shortly die in the same house, the same room and on that identical bed, or that Booth would turn out to be his assassin.

WHERE IS THE ORIGINAL EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION?

When Lincoln went to Washington he had a sale of the furniture of the Eighth street home at Springfield. Most of the articles were bought by a well-to-do family named Tilton, who admired the President in such a way as to make what had belonged to him things to be treasured. When the troops passed through Springfield to the front they visited the house “where Uncle Abe had lived,” and the Tiltons used to confer great favor by permitting the boys in blue to sit down in the dining room and have a glass of milk off the table from which Mr. Lincoln had eaten many times. But the Tiltons moved away to Chicago. They carried with them the furniture which had been in the Lincoln house, prizing it more than ever after his death. In 1871 came the Chicago fire, and with it went not only the Lincoln furniture, but the original document, which, if it were in existence now, would be preserved with the zeal that guards the Declaration of Independence--the Proclamation of Emancipation. The draft of the proclamation had been sent to Chicago to be exhibited for some purpose and was burned in that fire.

MR. GRIFFITHS ON LINCOLN.

“No other public man has been subjected to such scrutiny from the time he was born until the end of his tragic career as was Lincoln,” said Mr. Griffiths in a lecture. “He obtained his early education from ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and a copy of the Indiana statutes. This was before some of our later legislatures had made their records or his education might have been marred instead of made.

“When he was elected President,” Mr. Griffiths continued, “he was a plodding country lawyer whose library consisted of twenty-two volumes. Through his public addresses he blazed his way to the Presidency. He believed the position of a stump speaker to be one of sacred trust. He had none of the platform graces. His figure was ungainly; his voice was rasping. He always made the most careful preparation and gave his best thought to the smallest audiences. He had marvelous gift of expression and he knew more about the Bible than Webster. He was not learned in the law and he despised the legal routine. On a lawsuit he always dealt in the unexpected, which greatly discomfited the opposing lawyer. He liked stories, but he always told them to illustrate a point. He was a deeply religious man.”

A FAMOUS CHICAGO LAWYER’S VIEWS.

“Into the story of the republic from 1861 to 1865 the patriot does well to enter, there to find for instruction and example the manliest of Americans, the highest type of Americanism, the central figure of the century, Abraham Lincoln. The fierce partisanship which assailed him during his short period of leadership became silent at his death, and each succeeding year but serves to exalt his work and character.

“The judgment of time has already shown to be colossal him who was called common--the honor that we offer to his memory is only the spontaneous tribute of contemporary history--our enthusiasm is but the sum of the world’s calmest thinking. For years in all lands gifted speech has proclaimed his deeds and the pens of poets have sketched his life. Thus does he receive his tribute from the people.

“In his mentality Lincoln shone in justice, common sense, consistency, persistence, and knowledge of men. In his words he was candid and frank, but accurate and concise, speaking strong Anglo-Saxon unadorned--powerful in its simplicity. In his sentiments he was kind, patriotic, and brave. No leader ever combined more completely the graces of gentleness with rugged determination. In his morals truth was his star, honesty the vital essence of his life.

“In his religion he was faithful as a saint. Providence was his stay and he walked with God. As President his life and deeds were a constant sermon. Love of men and faith in God were the fundamental elements of his character. Poverty had schooled him to pity and taught him the equality of all mankind.”--Luther Laflin Mills.

LINCOLN WAS PLAIN BUT GREAT.

Lincoln’s forefathers were independent owners of the land they trod on, barons, not serfs. You will say, perhaps, that Lincoln had little education. We are apt to say that of our great men. Lincoln knew how to speak, read and write. What more do we teach our boys to-day? He knew the Bible, which cannot be said of everybody in Boston. He read Burns, and this with the Bible gave him his inspiration and sentiment. Æsop and “Pilgrim’s Progress” taught him aptness and pregnant illustration.

The incidents of his life were few but notable. He was a resident of three states before he was 21, and made a river trip to New Orleans, longer than Thomas Jefferson had taken at his age. At New Orleans he saw for the first time the auction and whipping of slaves, which made so deep an impression on him that it may be said to be the birth of his anti-slavery sentiment.

The choice of Mr. Lincoln for President was not a strained one. He was the logical selection. Lincoln’s qualities, that sympathy with the common people, that homely sincerity, have given him a place in the people’s hearts a little closer, a little dearer, than is held by any other public man. He had faults, but they were small compared with his virtues. He had not Washington’s grandeur, the mental alertness of Hamilton, or the intellectual force of Webster. His greatness was made up of natural qualities, as of a hillside towering o’er a plain, yet a part of it. Lincoln was surpassed in certain qualities by other of our historically great men, but there are none, we feel sure, who would have filled the place he filled as well as he.--Secretary of War Long.

LINCOLN’S SPECIFIC LIFE WORK.

One often thinks of his life as cut off, but no great man since Cæsar has seen his life work ended as did Lincoln. Napoleon died upon a desert rock, but not until Austerlitz and Wagram had become memories, and the dust of the empire even as all dust. Cromwell knew that England had not at heart materially altered. Washington did not know that he had created one of the great, perhaps the greatest, empires to be known to man. But Lincoln had a specific task to do--to save his country and to make it free--and on that fateful 14th of April he knew that he had accomplished both things.

There are those who would say that chance put this man where he was to do this work. To the thoughtful mind it was not chance, however, but design, and that the design of which all greatness is a part. War is indeed the crucible of the nations. It is the student of a century hence who shall properly place the civil war in American history. But, whatever that place be, there can be no doubt of the position in it of the war President. Like William the Silent, his domination of all about him was a matter not of personal desire, but of absolute and constant growth. There are few more interesting characters in history than Lincoln. There is none who in quite the same manner fits himself so absolutely into his circumstances. It is the highest form of genius that so produces as to make production seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the average man would have done in his place.

THE PROPOSED PURCHASE OF THE SLAVES.

The discussion on the question of whether or not Abraham Lincoln suggested at the conference with the southern commissioners at the so-called Fortress Monroe meeting, that he was prepared to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves in the Southern States provided peace with union could be obtained, is hardly likely to lead to any definite conclusion, for the reason that the few who should have known definitely about it are distinctly divided in their opinions. We are inclined to believe that, if the proposition was made, Mr. Lincoln, notwithstanding the immense influence that he then possessed, would have found it exceedingly difficult to convince Congress and a majority of the people of the North of the wisdom of the suggestion. As a business proposition, entirely apart from sentiment, it might have been, even at that late day, a wise plan to adopt. But the war had then been going on for years, and the hard feelings engendered would apparently have made the scheme a less tenable one then than at an earlier day. It will, we imagine, appear to future historians that, in spite of the example which had been set by England in the West Indies, those representing both the North and the South showed themselves, just prior to the war, wanting in the true elements of statesmanship in not realizing that it was better to peaceably adjust their differences than have recourse to physical force. It is now well understood, and might have been well understood at the time, that the main issue was the slave issue, and that once out of the way, all other sources of division were insignificant. We could have well afforded to vote, if need be, several thousands of millions of dollars to purchase the freedom of the slaves if by that means the civil war with all of its wastes and sufferings could have been avoided; and if not now, a generation or two hence, we feel convinced that the people, both of the North and the South, will be of the opinion that such an outcome of the contention would have been possible if we had had on both sides of the quarrel, statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Quincy Adams and other eminent Americans who have made their mark in our national history.

SENATOR THURSTON’S SPEECH.

Senator John M. Thurston said in part at a banquet of the Baptist Social Union, New York, on Lincoln’s birthday, in 1897:

“This is an entirely different gathering than that to which I have been recently accustomed. I come from a forty days’ session of a moot court, in which the question of silver has been discussed and passed upon without any hope of legislation. There I have been used to having my audiences rise and leave as soon as I began to speak.

“Mr. President, if I have any purpose to-night, it is to strengthen the belief in a Divine Providence; and if I have any further purpose in this time of wars and rumors of wars, it is to show that God Almighty has made nations for higher purposes than mere money making. I am to speak to-night of Abraham Lincoln, the simplest, serenest, sublimist character of the age. Seventy millions of people join in commemorating his greatness. It is not my purpose to review his life; that is too much a part of history. That history should be taught in every American public school and preached from every Christian pulpit. The story of Abraham Lincoln, citizen, President, liberator and martyr, should be in the heart of every American child. I prefer to speak of only one event in his history. Yet that event was the harbinger of a new civilization.

“Not long since, as I sat in a crowded court room, engaged in the trial of a case involving the title to a valuable tract of real estate, there came to the witness stand a venerable, white-haired negro. Written all over his old black face was the history of three-quarters of a century of such an existence as few persons have ever known. Born a slave, he had stood upon the auction block and been sold to the highest bidder; he had seen his wife and children dragged from his side by those who mocked his breaking heart; he bore upon his back the scars and ridges of a master’s lash. Now he came into a court of justice to settle, by the testimony of his black lips, a controversy between white men. When asked his age he drew himself proudly up and said: ‘For fifty years I was a chattel. On the first day of January, 1863, old Uncle Abe made me a man.’

“The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory of Lincoln’s life, for by it he not only saved his country, but emancipated a race. When Abraham Lincoln took his pen to sign the Emancipation Proclamation he knew that the supreme moment had come. He had known it years before, when he said: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot exist permanently, half slave and half free, but I do not expect this house to fall, this government to be dissolved.’

“God has always raised up a great leader for a great crisis. Moses, initiated into the sublime mysteries of the house of Pharaoh, himself a ruler and almost a king, led the children of Israel through the parted waters of the Red Seas into the wilderness in the strange hope of a deliverance. A shepherdess on the hills of France felt herself stirred at the sore trials of her race. Joan d’Arc, the savior of her country, was the instrument of God.