Chapter IX: Part 9

On April 7, 1865, General Grant had enveloped the enemy so that he could be assured that the rebel government, if it remained in Richmond as the "last ditch," would be trapped. He notified the President close by, at Petersburg, and asked what should be done in the event of the game being bagged. The plan was, it seems, to have slain the ex-President and his Cabinet officers in a rout, and the charge would have been described as massacre abroad. The arbiter on this point of anguish replied in his characteristic manner:

"I will tell you a story. There was once an Irishman, who signed the Father Mathew's temperance pledge. But a few days afterward he became terribly thirsty, and finally went into a familiar resort, where the barkeeper was, at first, startled to hear him call for a 'straight' soda. He related that he had taken the pledge, so he hinted, with an Irishman's broadness of hint, 'you might put in some spirits _unbeknownst_ to me!'"

(NOTE.--Another and later version--for the above was limitedly repeated at the time with gusto and appreciation of the sublety--makes the hero a temperance lecturer at Lincoln's father's house. This is stupid, for Lincoln, a fervent temperance advocate, would not have decried the apostles of the doctrine for which he was also a sufferer.)

In course of time doubt has been cast on this anecdote by reason that the President would not have jested at such a juncture. But abundant confirmation was forthcoming at the time. Besides, we have so grave a general as Sherman alluding to the "Unbeknownst" in an official document.

* * * * *

ONE CANNOT DIE TWICE.

In Lincoln's last interview with his rustic friends, Mrs. Armstrong repeated the fears many apprehended of evil being visited on the President-elect on his way to be inaugurated.

"Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death!" and laughed at her.

* * * * *

NO MORE INVIDIOUS NAME-CALLING.

On returning from a carriage-drive into Washington, Mrs. Lincoln--who was not the Southern sympathizer the scandalous hinted--glanced at the city, and said aloud with bitterness:

"That city is full of our enemies!"

Had she a premonition on the fatal eve?

Right before the Marquis of Chambrun, their companion, the President serenely said:

"Enemies, Mary! Never speak of that!"

No wonder, when the dastardly taking off was bruited through the beaten but ever gallant South, they knew that they had lost "their best friend!" as General Pickett styled Lincoln.--(By the Marquis of Chambrun.)

* * * * *

"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE TREASURY OF THE WORLD."

As Schuyler Colfax was going West, Lincoln, in bidding him the _last_ farewell, said foresightedly:

"I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. 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 the easier. Tell the miners from 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 the treasury of the world."

* * * * *

"HANG ON--NOT HANG!"

On April 11, 1865, Mr. Lincoln spoke out of his study window to an immense and joyous crowd. There were rockets, and portfire, and a huge bonfire, while the President was serenaded. The finish of the Rebellion delighted all persons. His offhand speech was full of compassion and brotherly love. Louisiana was already being "reconstructed." Mr. Harlan, who followed the chief, touched the major key: "What shall we do with the rebels?" To which the mob responded hoarsely:

"Hang them!"

Lincoln's little son, Tad, was in the room, playing with the quills on the table where his father made his notes. He looked at his father, and said, as one whose intimacy made him familiar with his inmost thoughts:

"No, papa; not hang them--but _hang on_ to them!"

The President triumphantly repeated:

"We must hang on to them! Tad's got it!"--(By Mrs. H. McCulloch, present.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S LAST WISH.

"Springfield! how happy four years hence will I be, to return there in peace and tranquillity!"--(To the Marquis of Chambrun, April, 1865.)

* * * * *

ASSASSINATION.

At Springfield, immediately upon the election for President, Lincoln began to receive letters with lethal menaces. His friends took them as serious, and two or more carried weapons, and escorted him closely that no one with a dagger might reach his side. Calling on his stepmother for the farewell, she reiterated the general, and rising, fears. At Philadelphia, detectives and others whispered of a plot matured at Baltimore, and in his speech at raising the flag over Independence Hall he said pointedly:

"If this country cannot be saved without giving up this principle--liberty to the world--I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."--(Speech, Philadelphia, February, 1861.)

* * * * *

A PRESIDENT, NOT AN EMPEROR.

The President said to Colonel Halpine as respected the life-guards, which he soon dispensed with around his person, often going out unawares so as to "dodge" the escort in waiting:

"It will never do for the President of a republic to have guards with drawn swords at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor."

* * * * *

THE PLOT TO WAYLAY THE PRESIDENT (1860).

The dispute as to whether there was a foundation to the supposed plot to waylay and sequester President-elect Lincoln between Philadelphia and Washington is notable. From the later light and the letter from Wilkes Booth to his brother-in-law, Sleeper Clarke, the comedian, no doubt is left that to kidnap him was a plot dated very early when the foresighted slave-holders were certain that he was a greater enemy from consistency than the louder-voiced and openly violent Abolitionists. While Colonel Lamon doubted, and wished he had not been beguiled into aiding in the ignominious flight in disguise and secretly by train, Secretary Seward and General Scott gave it credence. The foreboding had touched Lincoln before he left his Illinois home. At Springfield his farewell speech is tinged with shade. At Philadelphia and Harrisburg he spoke of blood-spilling, and used the word "assassination" at the former. He took up the matter like a reasoner. Already the detective brothers, Pinkerton, had an inkling of the doings of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or some such secret society, designing regicide. So, as the Concordance is held as a proof from the variance of the witnesses to scenes, he argued that the story was founded. Otherwise he would not have heard of the criminal attempt from all sides. That was what made him yield his dignity to the safety of a person whom he felt was chosen for the crisis. The next morning he had concluded to pass through Baltimore at another than the arranged hour to foil the plot.

* * * * *

"I DON'T BELIEVE THERE IS ANY DANGER!"

One night the President had been very late with the secretary of war at the latter's department. But, just the same, he insisted on his getting home by the short cut--a foot-path, lined and embowered by trees, then leading from the war office to the White House. But Stanton stopped him.

"You ought not to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"--it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around--"it is worse at night!"

"I do not believe there is _any_ danger there, night or day!" responded the President, with Malcolm's confidence that he stood "in the great hand of God."

"Well, Mr. President," continued Stanton, a stubborn man himself, "you shall not be killed returning from my department by that dark way while I am in it!"

And he forced him to enter his carriage to return by the well-lighted avenue.

Lincoln had previously consented to carry a cane. (By Schuyler Colfax.)

* * * * *

WORRY TILL YOU GET RID OF THINGS.

On Colonel Halpine trying to make the chief see that even indoors there was danger, he debated about the two menaces--violence of "cranks" and of a political fanatic. He thought too well of the sense of the "people at Richmond," some of whom had been colleagues of his in his first stay in Washington as congressman.

"Do you think that they would like to have Hannibal Hamlin--his first vice-president--here any better than myself?"

The story is repeated with his second Vice substituted for the first, with the more justification, as "Andy" Johnson was impeached for his incompetency. Detective Baker put it this way: "As to the crazy folks, I must take my chances. The most crazy people being, I fear, some of my own too zealous adherents."

(He had the same idea as in an ancient Chinese proverb: "You may steal the captain out of his castle, but you cannot steal the castle.")

"I am but a single individual, and it would not help their cause, or make the least difference in the progress of the war." [Footnote: He might have said, as truly as his predecessor, John Tyler, reproached also for going about unguarded: "My body-guard is the people who elected me."]--(Cited by F. B. Carpenter.)

* * * * *

THE FEARLESSNESS OF THE GOD-FEARING.

Lincoln said that by the death of his son Willie he was touched; by the victory of Gettysburg made a believer. It is plain that, after this, a fortitude replaced the despondency stamping him. It may be due to this conviction of being one of the chosen, like Cromwell and Gordon, soldiers of Christ, that he met all adjurations for him to take care of his precious life with fanatical unconcern. He communicated to the Cabinet, at the close of the conflict, how he had appointed to confer alone and without guards to terrify the emissary, a noted Confederate. They were to discuss peace--and by that word, Lincoln was drawn to any one. He answered the cautions with the simple saying:

"I am but an individual, and my removal will not in any way advance the other folks in their endeavors."

In fact, it was so--the misdeed was a double-edged blade which cut both ways. It will never be known, probably, how near a massacre followed the explosion of indignation at that maniac's murder of the Emancipator. Fortunately for the unsullied robe of Columbia, a hundred advocates of leaving retribution to Heaven echoed Garfield's appeasing address.

Lincoln met the intermediator, but the ultimate negotiation fell through, like the others all. He came home from City Point with sadness, but from his seed has outcome the Universal Peace Tribunal of The Hague. Professor Martens based his original plea of the czar's on the Lincolnian guide for the soldiers in our war.

* * * * *

THE POISONING PLOT.

A servant at the White House testifies that he was approached by emissaries who offered him a sum almost preposterously large to put a powder in the milk for the Lincoln family's table. The agents knew that they were temperance followers, milk being as common as wine at previous tenants' table. This was laughed at before the shadow of Booth's patricide was cast ahead. But the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher publicly declares--and he was in the state secrets as deeply as any layman--that President-General Harrison, "Tippecanoe," was poisoned that Tyler might fulfil the plan to annex Texas as a slave State. "With even stronger convictions is it affirmed that President-General Taylor was poisoned, that a less stern successor might give a suppler instrument to manage. Who doubts now that it was attempted Breckenridge in his room?"

* * * * *

NOTHING LIKE GETTING USED TO THINGS!

The more evident it grew that the President, at whom the stupid jeers persisted through incurable density of his enemies, was the vital motor of the Union cause, than threats of violently removing him were continually sent him. So many such letters accumulated that he grimly packeted them together and labeled the mass: "Assassination Papers." It was a Damoclesian dagger of which he spoke lightly, because fear of death never awed him. When a man walks in the manifest path traced out for him by Heaven, he does not tremble. But friends, more concerned by the strain in watching over his safety, expressing surprise at his indifference, he tried to reassure them:

"Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things!"

* * * * *

MOST AFRAID OF A FRIENDLY SHOT.

General Wadsworth, in his anxiety about the President's safety in Washington, swarming with insurgent agents, set a cavalry guard over the President's carriage. He went and complained to General Halleck, in charge of the capital, saying only partly facetiously:

"Why, Mrs. Lincoln and I cannot hear ourselves talk for the clatter of their sabers and spurs; and some of them appear to be new hands and very awkward, so that I am more afraid of being shot by the accidental discharge of a carbine or revolver than of any attempt upon my life by a roving squad of 'Jeb' Stuart's cavalry."

(Since Stuart came twenty miles within the Union lines, he was the criterion of rebel raiders' possibilities.)

* * * * *

THE ONE WORD HE HAD LEARNED.

A tale-bearer came to the President with a plot against him and the government, which was a cock-and-bull without any adherence, and all superficial. Lincoln heard him out, but then sharply returned:

"There is one thing that I have learned, and that you have not. It is only one word: 'Thorough!'" Then bringing his huge hand down on the table-desk, to emphasize his meaning, he repeated: "Thorough!"

* * * * *

NOT TO DISAPPOINT THE PEOPLE.

The strictly religious went so far as to call the Lincoln assassination a judgment(!), as it happened in a playhouse on a Good Friday! It appears that the President had compunctions, and at the last moment was disinclined to go, though a party had been made up to oblige a young espoused couple; but General Grant, who was to be a feature of the commanded performance, was called away--no doubt escaping the knife the murderer had in reserve to his pistol. The President said that he must go, not to disappoint the people on this gala night, as the rejoicing was wide over the dissolution of the Confederacy.

* * * * *

NOTHING LIKE PRAYER--BUT PRAISE.

In 1862, the President suffered "an affliction harder to bear than the war!" His son Willie (William, next to one that died in infancy) was carried off by typhoid fever, under the presidential roof; and another, "Tad," (Thomas, who actually lived to be twenty and passed away in Illinois) was given up by the physicians. At this crisis Miss Dix, daughter of the general famous for his order: "If any one offers to pull down the American flag, shoot him on the spot," recommended an army nurse, Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomeroy. She was a born succorer, pious and fortifying. She came reluctantly to the important errand, as she had to leave a wardful of wounded soldiers. She had lost many of her family, and was able to comfort from gaging the affectionate father's grief. She led him to pray in his double racking of bad war news and the domestic distress.

On next seeing him and that he was less grieved, for news of the Fort Donaldson surrender to General Grant arrived in the meantime, she hastened to say:

"There is nothing like prayer, Mr. President!"

"Yes, there is: Praise! Prayer and praise must go together!"

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Lincoln Story Book, by Henry L. Williams