Chapter XXIV: In Richmond

President Visits City Point--Lee’s Failure--Grant’s Movement--
Abraham Lincoln in Richmond--Lee’s Surrender--President’s
Impromptu Speech--Speech on Reconstruction--Proclamation Closing
Certain Ports--Proclamation Relative to Maritime Rights--
Supplementary Proclamation--Orders from the War Department--The
Traitor President.

On the afternoon of the 23d of March, 1865, the President, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln, his youngest son, and a few invited guests, left Washington for an excursion to City Point. The trip was taken under advice of his medical attendant, his health having become somewhat impaired by his unremitting attention to the pressing duties of his office.

A desperate attempt had been made by Lee to break through the lines surrounding him. Assaulting our right centre, he had been repulsed with a severe loss.

Shortly after, Grant determined that the moment had arrived for his advance. A movement was ordered along the entire line--Petersburg fell--Richmond was abandoned in hot haste--and Lee’s routed army “driven to the wall.”

During the progress of the movement, the President forwarded, from time to time, the particulars--pressed on to the evacuated Capital--entered it, conspicuous amid the sweeping mass of men, women, and children, black, white, and yellow, running, shouting, dancing, swinging their caps, bonnets, and handkerchiefs--passed on to the deserted mansion of the rebel chief, cheer upon cheer going up from the excited multitude--there held a levee--left the same evening for City Point--and soon afterward returned to Washington.

Lee, hemmed in on every side, soon after surrendered; the terms of capitulation, which were dictated by the magnanimous President, and dated Appomattox Court House, April ninth, 1865, being as follows:

“GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, ARMY C. S.:--In accordance with the
substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to
receive the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia on the
following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be
made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer designated
by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as
you may designate, the officers to give their individual paroles
not to take up arms against the Government of the United States
until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander
to sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms,
artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned
over to the officers appointed by me to receive them. This will not
embrace the side arms of the officers, nor their private horses or
baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return
to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so
long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they
may reside.

“Very respectfully,
“U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General.”

Johnston was next in order; and toward him Sherman was in motion.

The night following the President’s arrival in Washington, the workmen of the Navy-yard formed in procession, marched to the White House, in front of which thousands were assembled, bands playing, and the entire throng alive with excitement.

Repeated calls having been made for him, he appeared at the window, on the entrance door, calm amid the tumult, and was greeted with cheers and waving of hats.

Comparative silence having been secured, he said:

“MY FRIENDS:--I am very greatly rejoiced that an occasion has
occurred so pleasurable that the people can’t restrain themselves.
I suppose that arrangements are being made for some sort of formal
demonstration--perhaps this evening or to-morrow night. If there
should be such a demonstration, I, of course, will have to respond
to it; and I will have nothing to say if you dribble it out of me.

“I see you have a band. I propose now closing up by requesting you
to play a certain piece of music, or a tune--I thought ‘Dixie’ one
of the best tunes I ever heard.

“I had heard that our adversaries over the way had attempted to
appropriate it. I insisted yesterday we had fairly captured it! I
presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as
his opinion that it is our lawful prize. I ask the band to give us
a good turn upon it.”

The band accordingly played “Dixie,” with extraordinary vigor, when “three cheers and a tiger” were given, followed by the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” The President then proposed three rousing cheers for Grant and all under his command--and next, three cheers for the Navy and all its forces.

The President then retired, amid cheers, the tune of “Hail Columbia,” and the firing of cannon.

On the night of the eleventh of April, the Executive Departments, including the President’s House, as also many places of business and private residences, were illuminated, and adorned with transparencies and national flags; bon-fires blazed in various parts of the city; and rockets were fired.

In response to the unanimous call of the thousands of both sexes who surrounded the Executive Mansion, Mr. Lincoln appeared at an upper window, and when the cheering with which he was greeted had subsided, spoke as follows in his last public speech:

“FELLOW-CITIZENS:--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 cannot 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--and 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, or praise, or execution, is mine. To General Grant, his
skilful officers and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood
ready, but was not in reach to take an active part. By these recent
successes the reinauguration of the national authority, and the
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 the 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 amongst ourselves
as to the mode, manner, and measure 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 cannot
properly offer an answer; for, spite of this precaution, however,
it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured from some
supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State
Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no
more than the public knows. In the annual Message of December,
1863, and the accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of
reconstruction, 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 as 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 of 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, particularly 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 by 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
in seeking a reconstruction of a State Government for Louisiana.
When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached
New Orleans, and General Banks wrote me that he was confident
the people, with his military coöperation, 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
seceded 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
a question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon
it, as it 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 material could have no effect other than
the mischievous one of dividing our friends.

“As yet, whatever it may become hereafter, 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 practical 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 50,000, 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about
12,000, as it does.

“It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is
not given to the colored men. I would myself prefer that it were
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 beings and nearly all the things
the Nation wants--and they ask the Nation’s recognition and its
assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject and
spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We,
in fact, say to the white man, ‘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 your old masters there 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
way when, where, and how.’ If this course, by 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 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. [Laughter.]

“Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject our 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 severally to other States; 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 safely be prescribed. As to details and collaterals,
such an 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.”

On the 11th of April, also, appeared the following proclamation:

“WHEREAS, By my proclamation of the 19th and 27th days of April,
1861, the ports of the United States of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
and Texas were declared to be subject to blockade, but whereas the
said blockade has, in consequence of actual military occupation
by this Government, since then been conditionally set aside or
released in respect to the ports of Norfolk and Alexandria, in the
State of Virginia, Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina, Port
Royal, in the State of South Carolina, Pensacola and Fernandina, in
the State of Florida, and New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana;
and whereas, by the 4th section of the act of Congress approved on
the 13th of July, 1861, entitled ‘an act further to provide for
the collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes,’ the
President, for the reasons therein set forth, is authorized to
close certain ports of entry.

“Now, therefore, be it known that I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of
the United States, do hereby proclaim that the ports of Richmond,
Tappahannock, Cherry Stone, Yorktown, and Petersburg, in Virginia;
of Camden, Elizabeth City, Edenton, Plymouth, Washington, Newbern,
Ocracoke, and Wilmington, in North Carolina; of Charleston,
Georgetown, and Beaufort, in South Carolina; of Savannah, St.
Marys, Brunswick, and Darien, in Georgia; of Mobile, in Alabama; of
Pearl river, Shieldsboro’, Natchez, and Vicksburg, in Mississippi;
of St. Augustine, Key West, St. Marks, Port Leon, St. Johns,
Jacksonville, and Apalachicola, in Florida; of Teche and Franklin,
in Louisiana; of Galveston, La Salle, Brazos de Santiago, Point
Isabel, and Brownsville, in Texas, are hereby closed, and all
rights of importation, warehousing, and other privileges shall, in
respect to the ports aforesaid, cease until they shall again have
been opened by order of the President; and if, while said ports are
so closed, any ship or vessel from beyond the United States, or
having on board any articles subject to duties, shall attempt to
enter any such port, the same, together with its tackle, apparel,
furniture, and cargo, shall be forfeited to the United States.

“In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

“Done at the City of Washington this eleventh day of April, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of
the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-ninth.

“Abraham Lincoln.

“William H. Seward, Secretary of State.”

And on the same day the following:

“WHEREAS, for some time past vessels-of-war of the United
States have been refused in certain foreign ports privileges and
immunities to which they were entitled by treaty, public law,
or the comity of nations, at the same time that vessels-of-war
of the country wherein the said privileges and immunities have
been withheld have enjoyed them fully and uninterruptedly in
ports of the United States, which condition of things has not
always been forcibly resisted by the United States, although,
on the other hand, they have not at any time failed to protest
against and declare their dissatisfaction with the same. In the
view of the United States no condition any longer exists which
can be claimed to justify the denial to them by any one of said
nations of customary naval rights, such as has heretofore been so
unnecessarily persisted in--

“Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United
States, do hereby make known that if after a reasonable time
shall have elapsed for intelligence of this proclamation to have
reached any foreign country in whose ports the said privileges
and immunities shall have been refused as aforesaid, they shall
continue to be so refused, then and thenceforth the same privileges
and immunities shall be refused to the vessels-of-war of that
country in the ports of the United States; and this refusal shall
continue until war-vessels of the United States shall have been
placed upon an entire equality in the foreign ports aforesaid with
vessels of other countries. _The United States, whatever claim or
pretence may have existed heretofore, are now at least entitled to
claim and concede an entire and friendly equality of rights and
hospitalities with all maritime nations._

“In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

“Done at the city of Washington this eleventh day of April, in the
year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and
of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

“By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

“WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.”

And, on the twelfth April, the following supplementary proclamation:

“WHEREAS, By my proclamation of this date the port of Key West, in
the State of Florida, was inadvertently included among those which
are not open to commerce:

“Now, therefore, be it known that I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of
the United States, do hereby declare and make known that the said
port of Key West is and shall remain open to foreign and domestic
commerce, upon the same conditions by which that commerce has
hitherto been governed.

“In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

“Done at the City of Washington this eleventh day of April, in the
year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of
the Independence of the United States of America, the eighty-ninth.

“By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

“WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.”

The light in which the administration regarded the position of affairs can best be judged from the following official bulletin from the War Department, bearing date April thirteenth, 1865:

“This Department, after mature consideration and consultation with
the Lieutenant-General upon the results of the recent campaigns,
has come to the following determination, which will be carried into
effect by appropriate orders, to be immediately issued:

“_First._ To stop all drafting and recruiting in the loyal States.

“_Second._ To curtail purchases for arms, ammunition,
quartermaster’s and commissary supplies, and reduce the expenses of
the military establishment and its several branches.

“_Third._ To reduce the number of general and staff officers to the
actual necessities of the service.

“_Fourth._ To remove all military restrictions upon trade and
commerce, so far as may be consistent with the public safety.

“As soon as these measures can be put in operation, it will be made
known by public orders.

“EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.”

The Traitor President, who, on the fifth of April, had issued a proclamation to the effect that he should hold on to Virginia--where was he at this time?