During the five weeks which remained to Lincoln on earth, the army was his most obvious concern. He watched eagerly the closing of the enormous trap that had been slowly built up surrounding Lee. Toward the end of March he went to the front, and for two weeks had his quarters on a steamer at City Point. It was during Lincoln's visit that Sherman came up from North Carolina for his flying conference with Grant, in which the President took part. Lincoln was at City Point when Petersburg fell. Early on the morning of April third, he joined Grant who gives a strange glimpse in his Memoirs of their meeting in the deserted city which so recently had been the last bulwark of the Confederacy.(1) The same day, Richmond fell. Lincoln had returned to City Point, and on the following day when confusion reigned in the burning city, he walked through its streets attended only by a few sailors and by four friends. He visited Libby Prison; and when a member of his party said that Davis ought to be hanged, Lincoln replied, "Judge not that ye be not judged."(2) His deepest thoughts, however, were not with the army. The time was at hand when his statesmanship was to be put to its most severe test. He had not forgotten the anxious lesson of that success of the Vindictives in balking momentarily the recognition of Louisiana. It was war to the knife between him and them. Could he reconstruct the Union in a wise and merciful fashion despite their desperate opposition?
He had some strong cards in his hand. First of all, he had time. Congress was not in session. He had eight months in which to press forward his own plans. If, when Congress assembled the following December, it should be confronted by a group of reconciled Southern States, would it venture to refuse them recognition? No one could have any illusions as to what the Vindictives would try to do. They would continue the struggle they had begun over Louisiana; and if their power permitted, they would rouse the nation to join battle with the President on that old issue of the war powers, of the dictatorship.
But in Lincoln's hand there were four other cards, all of which Wade and Chandler would find it hard to match. He had the army. In the last election the army had voted for him enthusiastically. And the army was free from the spirit of revenge, the Spirit which Chandler built upon. They had the plain people, the great mass whom the machine politicians had failed to judge correctly in the August Conspiracy. Pretty generally, he had the Intellectuals. Lastly, he had—or with skilful generalship he could have—the Abolitionists.
The Thirteenth Amendment was not yet adopted. The question had been raised, did it require three-fourths of all the States for its adoption, or only three-fourths of those that were ranked as not in rebellion. Here was the issue by means of which the Abolitionists might all be brought into line. It was by no means certain that every Northern State would vote for the amendment. In the smaller group of States, there was a chance that the amendment might fail. But if it were submitted to the larger group; and if every Reconstructed State, before Congress met, should adopt the amendment; and if it was apparent that with these Southern adoptions the amendment must prevail, all the great power of the anti-slavery sentiment would be thrown on the side of the President in favor of recognizing the new State governments and against the Vindictives. Lincoln held a hand of trumps. Confidently, but not rashly, he looked forward to his peaceful war with the Vindictives.
They were enemies not to be despised. To begin with, they were experienced machine politicians; they had control of well-organized political rings. They were past masters of the art of working up popular animosities. And they were going to use this art in that dangerous moment of reaction which invariably follows the heroic tension of a great war. The alignment in the Senate revealed by the Louisiana battle had also a significance. The fact that Sumner, who was not quite one of them, became their general on that occasion, was something to remember. They had made or thought they had made other powerful allies. The Vice President, Andrew Johnson-the new president of the Senate-appeared at this time to be cheek by jowl with the fiercest Vindictives of them all. It would be interesting to know when the thought first occurred to them: "If anything should happen to Lincoln, his successor would be one of us!"
The ninth of April arrived and the news of Lee's surrender.
"The popular excitement over the victory was such that on Monday, the tenth, crowds gathered before the Executive Mansion several times during the day and called out the President for speeches. Twice he responded by coming to the window and saying a few words which, however, indicated that his mind was more occupied with work than with exuberant rejoicing. As briefly as he could he excused himself, but promised that on the following evening for which a formal demonstration was being arranged, he would be prepared to say something."(3)
The paper which he read to the crowd that thronged the grounds of the White House on the night of April eleventh, was his last public utterance. It was also one of his most remarkable ones. In a way, it was his declaration of war against the Vindictives.(4) It is the final statement of a policy toward helpless opponents—he refused to call them enemies—which among the conquerors of history is hardly, if at all, to be paralleled.(5)
"By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national authority—reconstruction—which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with-no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner and 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 can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State government of Louisiana."
He reviewed in full the history of the Louisiana experiment From that he passed to the theories put forth by some of his enemies with regard to the constitutional status of the Seceded States. His own theory that the States never had been out of the Union because constitutionally they could not go out, that their governmental functions had merely been temporarily interrupted; this theory had always been roundly derided by the Vindictives and even by a few who were not Vindictives. Sumner had preached the idea that the Southern States by attempting to secede had committed "State suicide" and should now be treated as Territories. Stevens and the Vindictives generally, while avoiding Sumner's subtlety, called them "conquered provinces." And all these wanted to take them from under the protection of the President and place them helpless at the feet of Congress. To prevent this is the purpose that shines between the lines in the latter part of Lincoln's valedictory:
"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 that 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 or 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 man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who served 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 12,000 persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the State—committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants—and they ask the 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 effect, 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 these, your old masters, hold to your lips we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of 12,000 to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
"Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment I do not commit myself against this further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question: Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and with also new and unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper."
There was an early spring on the Potomac in 1865. While April was still young, the Judas trees became spheres of purply, pinkish bloom. The Washington parks grew softly bright as the lilacs opened. Pendulous willows veiled with green laces afloat in air the changing brown that was winter's final shadow; in the Virginia woods the white blossoms of the dogwood seemed to float and flicker among the windy trees like enormous flocks of alighting butterflies. And over head such a glitter of turquoise blue! As lovely in a different way as on that fateful Sun-day morning when Russell drove through the same woods toward Bull Run so long, long ago. Such was the background of the last few days of Lincoln's life.
Though tranquil, his thoughts dwelt much on death. While at City Point, he drove one day with Mrs. Lincoln along the banks of the James. They passed a country graveyard. "It was a retired place," said Mrs. Lincoln long afterward, "shaded by trees, and early spring flowers were opening on nearly every grave. It was so quiet and attractive that we stopped the carriage and walked through it. Mr. Lincoln seemed thoughtful and impressed. He said: 'Mary, you are younger than I; you will survive me. When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this.'"(1)
His mood underwent a mysterious change. It was serene and yet charged with a peculiar grave loftiness not quite like any phase of him his friends had known hitherto. As always, his thoughts turned for their reflection to Shakespeare. Sumner who was one of the party at City Point, was deeply impressed by his reading aloud, a few days before his death, that passage in Macbeth which describes the ultimate security of Duncan where nothing evil "can touch him farther."(2)
There was something a little startling, as if it were not quite of this world, in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart. "His whole appearance, poise and bearing," says one of his observers, "had marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved."(3)
It was as if the seer in the trance had finally passed beyond his trance; and had faced smiling toward his earthly comrades, imagining he was to return to them; unaware that somehow his emergence was not in the ordinary course of nature; that in it was an accent of the inexplicable, something which the others caught and at which they trembled; though they knew not why. And he, so beautifully at peace, and yet thrilled as never before by the vision of the murdered Duncan at the end of life's fitful fever—what was his real feeling, his real vision of himself? Was it something of what the great modern poet strove so bravely to express—
"And yet Dauntless the slughorn to my lips I set,And blew: Childe Roland to the dark tower came."
Shortly before the end, he had a strange dream. Though he spoke of it almost with levity, it would not leave his thoughts. He dreamed he was wandering through the White House at night; all the rooms were brilliantly lighted; but they were empty. However, through that unreal solitude floated a sound of weeping. When he came to the East Room, it was explained; there was a catafalque, the pomp of a military funeral, crowds of people in tears; and a voice said to him, "The President has been assassinated."
He told this dream to Lamon and to Mrs. Lincoln. He added that after it had occurred, "the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the Old Book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts—supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc."
But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on precautions against assassination, Lincoln turned the matter into a joke. He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own death. He called Lamon's alarm "downright foolishness."(4)
Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation. He narrated it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth, which happened to be Good Friday. There was some anxiety with regard to Sherman's movements in North Carolina. Lincoln bade the Cabinet set their minds at rest. His dream of the night before was one that he had often had. It was a presage of great events. In this dream he saw himself "in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same... moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." This dream had preceded all the great events of the war. He believed it was a good omen.(5)
At this last Cabinet meeting, he talked freely of the one matter which in his mind overshadowed all others. He urged his Ministers to put aside all thoughts of hatred and revenge. "He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect him to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. 'Frighten them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them off,' said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union. There was too much desire on the part of our very good friends to be masters, to interfere and dictate to those States, to treat the people not as fellow citizens; there was too little respect for their rights. He didn't sympathize in these feelings."(6)
There was a touch of irony in his phase "our very good friends." Before the end of the next day, the men he had in mind, the inner group of the relentless Vindictives, were to meet in council, scarcely able to conceal their inspiring conviction that Providence had intervened, had judged between him and them.(7) And that allusion to the "rights" of the vanquished! How abominable it was in the ears of the grim Chandler, the inexorable Wade. Desperate these men and their followers were on the fourteenth of April, but defiant. To the full measure of their power they would fight the President to the last ditch. And always in their minds, the tormenting thought-if only positions could be reversed, if only Johnson, whom they believed to be one of them at heart, were in the first instead of the second place!
While these unsparing sons of thunder were growling among themselves, the lions that were being cheated of their prey, Lincoln was putting his merciful temper into a playful form. General Creswell applied to him for pardon for an old friend of his who had joined the Confederate Army.
"Creswell," said Lincoln, "you make me think of a lot of young folks who once started out Maying. To reach their destination, they had to cross a shallow stream and did so by means of an old flat boat when the time came to return, they found to their dismay that the old scow had disappeared. They were in sore trouble and thought over all manner of devices for getting over the water, but without avail. After a time, one of the boys proposed that each fellow should pick up the girl he liked best and wade over with her. The masterly proposition was carried out until all that were left upon the island was a little short chap and a great, long, gothic-built, elderly lady. Now, Creswell, you are trying to leave me in the same predicament. You fellows are all getting your own friends out of this scrape, and you will succeed in carrying off one after another until nobody but Jeff Davis and myself will be left on the island, and then I won't know what to do—How should I feel? How should I look lugging him over? I guess the way to avoid such an embarrassing situation is to let all out at once."(8)
The President refused, this day, to open his doors to the throng of visitors that sought admission. His eldest son, Robert, an officer in Grant's army, had returned from the front unharmed. Lincoln wished to reserve the day for his family and intimate friends. In the afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln asked him if he cared to have company on their usual drive. "No, Mary," said he, "I prefer that we ride by ourselves to-day."(9) They took a long drive. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy and tender.(10) He talked much of the past and the future. It seemed to Mrs. Lincoln that he never had appeared happier than during the drive. He referred to past sorrows, to the anxieties of the war, to Willie's death, and spoke of the necessity to be cheerful and happy in the days to come. As Mrs. Lincoln remembered his words: "We have had a hard time since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God's blessings, we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this time, we will save up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11)
They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which had been fixed for that night. The management of the Ford's Theatre, where Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance of Our American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that "the President and his lady" would attend. The President's box had been draped with flags. The rest is a twice told tale—a thousandth told tale.
An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament, with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated killing the President. A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination had made of Lincoln another Caesar. The occasion called for a Brutus. While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives, scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself, were unbalanced. They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet. The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden opportunity. He knew every passage of Ford's Theatre. He knew, also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded himself with guards. During the afternoon, he made his way unobserved into the theatre and bored a hole in the door of the presidential box, so that he might fire through it should there be any difficulty in getting the door open.
About ten o'clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd play; the President's party were as much amused as any. Suddenly, there was a pistol shot. A moment more and a woman's voice rang out in a sharp cry. An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to their feet. Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the President's box. One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished a knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" Then he vanished through the flies. It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had made his way without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln. At point-blank distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head. In the confusion which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the city; was pursued; and was himself shot and killed a few days later.
The bullet of the assassin had entered the brain, causing instant unconsciousness. The dying President was removed to a house on Tenth Street, No. 453, where he was laid on a bed in a small room at the rear of the hall on the ground floor.(12)
Swift panic took possession of the city. "A crowd of people rushed instinctively to the White House, and bursting through the doors, shouted the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay who sat gossiping in an upper room. . . . They ran down-stairs. Finding a carriage at the door, they entered it and drove to Tenth Street."(13)
To right and left eddied whirls of excited figures, men and women questioning, threatening, crying out for vengeance. Overhead amid driving clouds, the moon, through successive mantlings of darkness, broke periodically into sudden blazes of light; among the startled people below, raced a witches' dance of the rapidly changing shadows.(14)
Lincoln did not regain consciousness. About dawn his pulse began to fail. A little later, "a look of unspeakable peace came over his worn features"(15), and at twenty-two minutes after seven on the morning of the fifteenth of April, he died.
THE END
It is said that a complete bibliography of Lincoln would include at least five thousand titles. Therefore, any limited bibliography must appear more or less arbitrary. The following is but a minimum list in which, with a few exceptions such as the inescapable interpretative works of Mr. Rhodes and of Professor Dunning, practically everything has to some extent the character of a source.
Alexander. A Political History of the State of New York. By De Alva Stanwood Alexander. 3 vols. 1909.
Arnold. History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. By Isaac N. Arnold. 1866.
Baldwin. Interview between President Lincoln and Colonel John B. Baldwin. 1866.
Bancroft. Life of William H. Seward. By Frederick Bancroft. 2 vols. 1900.
Barnes. Memoir of Thurlow Weed. By Thurlow Weed Barnes. 1884.
Barton. The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazar Barton. 1920.
Bigelow. Retrospections of an Active Life. By John Bigelow. 2 vols. 1909.
Blaine. Twenty Years of Congress. By James G. Blaine. 2 vols. 1884.
Botts. The Great Rebellion. By John Minor Botts. 1866.
Boutwell. Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs. By George S. Boutwell 2 vols. 1902.
Bradford. Union Portraits. By Gamaliel Bradford. 1916.
Brooks. Washington in Lincoln's Time. By Noah Brooks, 1895.
Carpenter. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. By F. B. Carpenter. 1866.
Chandler. Life of Zachary Chandler. By the Detroit Post and Tribune. 1880.
Chapman. Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln. By Ervin Chapman. 1917. The Charleston Mercury.
Chase. Diary and Correspondence of Salmon Chase. Report, American Historical Association, 1902, Vol. II.
Chittenden. Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration. By L. Chittenden. 1891.
Coleman. Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his Correspondence and Speeches. By Ann Mary Coleman. 2 vols. 1871.
Conway. Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway. 2 vols. 1904.
Correspondence. The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb. Edited by U. B. Phillips. Report American Historical Association, 1913, Vol. II.
Crawford. The Genesis of the Civil War. By Samuel Wylie Crawford. 1887.
C. W. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. 1863.
Dabney. Memoir of a Narrative Received from Colonel John B. Baldwin, of Staunton, touching the Origin of the War. By Reverend R. L. Dabney, D. D., Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 1. 1876.
Davis. Rise and Fail of the Confederate Government. By Jefferson Davis. 2 vols. 1881.
Dunning. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics. By William A. Dunning. 1898.
Field. Life of David Dudley Field. By Henry M. Field. 1898.
Flower. Edwin McMasters Stanton. By Frank Abial Flower. 1902.
Fry. Military Miscellanies. By James B. Fry. 1889.
Galaxy. The History of Emancipation. By Gideon Welles. The Galaxy, XIV, 838-851.
Gilmore. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. By James R. Gilmore. 1899.
Gilmore, Atlantic. A Suppressed Chapter of History. By James R. Gilmore, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1887.
Globe. Congressional Globe, Containing the Debates and Proceedings. 1834-1873.
Godwin. Biography of William Cullen Bryant. By Parke Godwin.
1883. Gore. The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. By J. Rogers Gore. 1921.
Gorham. Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton. By George C. Gorham. 2 vols. 1899.
Grant. Personal Memoirs. By Ulysses S. Grant. 2 vols. 1886.
Greeley. The American Conflict. By Horace Greeley. 2 vols. 1864-1867.
Gurowski. Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862. By Adam Gurowski. 1862.
Hanks. Nancy Hanks. By Caroline Hanks Hitchcock. 1900.
Harris. Public Life of Zachary Chandler. By W. C. Harris, Michigan Historical Commission. 1917.
Hart. Salmon Portland Chase. By Albert Bushnell Hart. 1899.
Hay MS. Diary of John Hay. The war period is covered by three volumes of manuscript. Photostat copies in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, accessible only by special permission.
Hay, Century. Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln. By John Hay, Century Magazine, November, 1890.
The New York Herald.
Herndon. Herndon's Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life: The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By W. H. Herndon and J. W. Weik. 3 vols. (paged continuously). 1890.
Hill. Lincoln the Lawyer. By Frederick Trevers Hill 1906.
Hitchcock. Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. Edited by W. Croffut. 1909.
Johnson. Stephen A. Douglas. By Allen Johnson. 1908.
The Journal of the Virginia Convention. 1861.
Julian. Political Recollections 1840-1872. By George W. Julian. 1884.
Kelley. Lincoln and Stanton. By W. D. Kelley. 1885.
Lamon. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward H. Lamon. 1872.
Letters. Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln. Now first brought together by Gilbert A. Tracy. 1917.
Lieber. Life and Letters of Francis Lieber. Edited by Thomas S. Perry, 1882.
Lincoln. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 2 vols. New and enlarged edition. 12 volumes. 1905. (All references here are to the Colter edition.)
McCarthy. Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction. By Charles M. McCarthy, 1901.
McClure. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times. By A. K. McClure. 1892.
Merriam. Life and Times of Samuel Bowles. By G. S. Merriam. 2 vols. 1885.
Munford. Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession. By Beverley B. Munford. 1910.
Moore. A Digest of International Law. By John Bassett Moore. 8 vols. 1906.
Newton. Lincoln and Herndon. By Joseph Fort Newton. 1910.
Nicolay. A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln. By John G. Nicolay. 1902.
Nicolay, Cambridge. The Cambridge Modern History: Volume VII.
The United States. By various authors. 1903.
Miss Nicolay. Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln. By Helen Nicolay. 1912.
N. and H. Abraham Lincoln: A History. By John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 10 vols. 1890.
N. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. First series. 27 vols. 1895-1917.
O. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. 1880-1901.
Outbreak. The Outbreak of the Rebellion. By John G. Nicolay. 1881.
Own Story. McClellan's Own Story. By George B. McClellan. 1887.
Paternity. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazer Barton. 1920.
Pearson. Life of John A. Andrew. By Henry G. Pearson. 2 vols. 1904.
Pierce. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. By Edward Lillie Pierce. 4 vols. 1877-1893.
Porter. In Memory of General Charles P. Stone. By Fitz John Porter. 1887.
Public Man. Diary of a Public Man. Anonymous. North American Review. 1879.
Rankin. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Henry B. Rankin. 1916.
Raymond. Journal of Henry J. Raymond. Edited by Henry W. Raymond. Scribner's Magazine. 1879-1880.
Recollections. Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward Hill Lamon. 1911.
Reminiscences. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished
Men of his Time. Edited by Allen Thorndyke Rice. 1886.
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, first session, Thirty-Ninth Congress.
Rhodes. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. By James Ford Rhodes. 8 vols. 1893-1920.
Riddle. Recollections of War Times. By A. G. Riddle. 1895.
Schrugham. The Peaceful Americans of 1860. By Mary Schrugham. 1922.
Schure. Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schure. Selected and edited by Frederick Bancroft. 1913.
Scott. Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott, LL.D. Written by himself. 2 vols. 1864.
Seward. Works of William H. Seward. 5 vols. 1884.
Sherman. Memoirs of William T. Sherman. By himself. 2 vols. 1886. Sherman Letters.
Letters of John Sherman and W. T. Sherman. Edited by Rachel Sherman Thorndike. 1894.
Southern Historical Society Papers.
Stephens. Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. By Alexander H. Stephens. 2 vols. 1869-1870.
Stoddard. Inside the White House in War Times. By William O. Stoddard. 1890.
Stories. "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories. With introduction and anecdotes by Colonel Alexander McClure. 1901.
The New York Sun.
Swinton. Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. By William Swinton. 1866.
Tarbell. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ida M. Tarbell. New edition. 2 vols. 1917.
Thayer. The Life and Letters of John Hay. By William Roscoe Thayer. 2 vols. 1915.
The New York Times.
The New York Tribune.
Tyler. Letters and Times of the Tylers. By Lyon G. Tyler. 3 vols. 1884-1896.
Van Santvoord. A Reception by President Lincoln. By C. J. Van Santvoord. Century Magazine, Feb., 1883.
Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard. 2 vols. 1902.
Wade. Life of Benjamin F. Wade. By A. G. Riddle. 1886.
Warden. Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase. By R. B. Warden. 1874.
Welles. Diary of Gideon Welles. Edited by J. T. Morse, Jr. 3 vols. 1911.
White. Life of Lyman Trumbull. By Horace White. 1913.
Woodburn. The Life of Thaddeus Stevens. By James Albert Woodburn. 1913.
1. Herndon, 1-7, 11-14; 1, anon, 13; N. and H., 1, 23-27. This is the version of his origin accepted by Lincoln. He believed that his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia planter and traced to that doubtful source "all the qualities that distinguished him from other members" of his immediate family. Herndon, 3. His secretaries are silent upon the subject. Recently the story has been challenged. Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, who identifies the Hanks family of Kentucky with a lost branch of a New England family, has collected evidence which tends to show that Nancy was the legitimate daughter of a certain Joseph H. Hanks, who was father of Joseph the carpenter, and that Nancy was not the niece but the younger sister of the "uncle" who figures in the older version, the man with whom Thomas Lincoln worked. Nancy and Thomas appear to have been cousins through their mothers. Mrs. Hitchcock argues the case with care and ability in a little book entitled Nancy Hanks. However, she is not altogether sustained by W. E. Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.
Scandal has busied itself with the parents of Lincoln in another way. It has been widely asserted that he was himself illegitimate. A variety of shameful paternities have been assigned to him, some palpably absurd. The chief argument of the lovers of this scandal was once the lack of a known record of the marriage of his parents. Around this fact grew up the story of a marriage of concealment with Thomas Lincoln as the easy-going accomplice. The discovery of the marriage record fixing the date and demonstrating that Abraham must have been the second child gave this scandal its quietus. N. and H., 1, 23-24; Hanks, 59-67; Herndon, 5-6; Lincoln and Herndon, 321. The last important book on the subject is Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.
2. N. and H., 1-13.
3. Lamon, 13; N. and H., 1, 25.
4. N. and H., 1, 25.
5. Gore, 221-225.
6. Herndon, 15.
7. Gore, 66, 70-74, 79, 83-84, 116, 151-154, 204, 226-230, for all this group of anecdotes.
The evidence with regard to all the early part of Lincoln's life is peculiar in this, that it is reminiscence not written down until the subject had become famous. Dogmatic certainty with regard to the details is scarcely possible. The best one can do in weighing any of the versions of his early days is to inquire closely as to whether all its parts bang naturally together, whether they really cohere. There is a body of anecdotes told by an old mountaineer, Austin Gollaher, who knew Lincoln as a boy, and these have been collected and recently put into print. Of course, they are not "documented" evidence. Some students are for brushing them aside. But there is one important argument in their favor. They are coherent; the boy they describe is a real person and his personality is sustained. If he is a fiction and not a memory, the old mountaineer was a literary artist—far more the artist than one finds it easy to believe.
8. Gore, 84-95; Lamon, 16; Herndon, 16.
9. Gore, 181-182, 296, 303-316; Lamon, 19-20; N. and H., I, 28-29.
II. THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH.
1. N. and H., I, 32-34.
2. Lamon, 33-38, 51-52, 61-63; N. and H., 1, 34-36.
3. N. and H., 1, 40.
4. Lamon, 38, 40, 55.
5. Reminiscences, 54, 428.
III. A VILLAGE LEADER.
1. N. and H., 1, 45-46, 70-72; Herndon, 67, 69, 72.
2. Lamon, 81-82; Herndon, 75-76.
3. Lincoln, 1, 1-9.
4. Lamon, 125-126; Herndon, 104.
5. Herndon, 117-118.
6. N. and H., 1, 109.
7. Stories, 94.
8. Herndon, 118-123.
9. Lamon, 159-164; Herndon, 128-138; Rankin, 61-95.
10. Lamon, 164.
11. Lamon, 164-165; Rankin, 95.
IV. REVELATIONS.
1. Riddle, 337.
2. Herndon, 436.
3. N. and H., I, 138.
4. Lincoln, I, 51-52.
5. McClure, 65.
6. Herndon, 184.185.
7. Anon, 172-183; Herndon, 143-150, 161; Lincoln, 1, 87-92.
8. Gossip has preserved a melodramatic tale with regard to Lincoln's marriage. It describes the bride to be, waiting, arrayed, in tense expectation deepening into alarm; the guests assembled, wondering, while the hour appointed passes by and the ceremony does not begin; the failure of the prospective bridegroom to appear; the scattering of the company, amazed, their tongues wagging. The explanation offered is an attack of insanity. Herndon, 215; I,anon, 239-242. As might be expected Lincoln's secretaries who see him always in a halo give no hint of such an event. It has become a controversial scandal. Is it a fact or a myth? Miss Tarbell made herself the champion of the mythical explanation and collected a great deal of evidence that makes it hard to accept the story as a fact Tarbell, I, Chap. XI. Still later a very sane memoirist, Henry B. Rankin, who knew Lincoln, and is not at all an apologist, takes the same view. His most effective argument is that such an event could not have occurred in the little country town of Springfield without becoming at the time the common property of all the gossips. The evidence is bewildering. I find myself unable to accept the disappointed wedding guests as established facts, even though the latest student of Herndon has no doubts. Lincoln and Herndon, 321-322. But whether the broken marriage story is true or false there is no doubt that Lincoln passed through a desolating inward experience about "the fatal first of January"; that it was related to the breaking of his engagement; and that for a time his sufferings were intense. The letters to Speed are the sufficient evidence. Lincoln, I, 175; 182-189; 210-219; 240; 261; 267-269. The prompt explanation of insanity may be cast aside, one of those foolish delusions of shallow people to whom all abnormal conditions are of the same nature as all others. Lincoln wrote to a noted Western physician, Doctor Drake of Cincinnati, with regard to his "case"—that is, his nervous breakdown—and Doctor Drake replied but refused to prescribe without an interview. Lamon, 244.
V. PROSPERITY.
1. Carpenter, 304-305.
2. Lamon, 243, 252-269; Herndon, 226-243, 248-251; N. and H., 201, 203-12.
3. A great many recollections of Lincoln attempt to describe him. Except in a large and general way most of them show that lack of definite visualization which characterizes the memories of the careless observer. His height, his bony figure, his awkwardness, the rudely chiseled features, the mystery in his eyes, the kindliness of his expression, these are the elements of the popular portrait. Now and then a closer observer has added a detail. Witness the masterly comment of Walt Whitman. Herndon's account of Lincoln speaking has the earmarks of accuracy. The attempt by the portrait painter, Carpenter, to render him in words is quoted later in this volume. Carpenter, 217-218. Unfortunately he was never painted by an artist of great originality, by one who was equal to his opportunity. My authority for the texture of his skin is a lady of unusual closeness of observation, the late Mrs. M. T. W. Curwen of Cincinnati, who saw him in 1861 in the private car of the president of the Indianapolis and Cincinnati railroad. An exhaustive study of the portraits of Lincoln is in preparation by Mr. Winfred Porter Truesdell, who has a valuable paper on the subject in The Print Connoisseur, for March, 1921.
4. Herndon, 264.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 515.
7. A vital question to the biographer of Lincoln is the credibility of Herndon. He has been accused of capitalizing his relation with Lincoln and producing a sensational image for commercial purposes. Though his Life did not appear until 1890 when the official work of Nicolay and Hay was in print, he had been lecturing and corresponding upon Lincoln for nearly twenty-five years. The "sensational" first edition of his Life produced a storm of protest. The book was promptly recalled, worked over, toned down, and reissued "expurgated" in 1892.
Such biographers as Miss Tarbell appear to regard Herndon as a mere romancer. The well poised Lincoln and Herndon recently published by Joseph Fort Newton holds what I feel compelled to regard as a sounder view; namely, that while Herndon was at times reckless and at times biased, nevertheless he is in the main to be relied upon.
Three things are to be borne in mind: Herndon was a literary man by nature; but he was not by training a developed artist; he was a romantic of the full flood of American romanticism and there are traceable in him the methods of romantic portraiture. Had he been an Elizabethan one can imagine him laboring hard with great pride over an inferior "Tamburlane the Great"—and perhaps not knowing that it was inferior. Furthermore, he had not, before the storm broke on him, any realization of the existence in America of another school of portraiture, the heroic—conventual, that could not understand the romantic. If Herndon strengthened as much as possible the contrasts of his subject—such as the contrast between the sordidness of Lincoln's origin and the loftiness of his thought—he felt that by so doing he was merely rendering his subject in its most brilliant aspect, giving to it the largest degree of significance. A third consideration is Herndon's enthusiasm for the agnostic deism that was rampant in America in his day. Perhaps this causes his romanticism to slip a cog, to run at times on a side-track, to become the servant of his religious partisanship. In three words the faults of Herndon are exaggeration, literalness and exploitiveness.
But all these are faults of degree which the careful student can allow for. By "checking up" all the parts of Herndon that it is possible to check up one can arrive at a pretty confident belief that one knows how to divest the image he creates of its occasional unrealities. When one does so, the strongest argument for relying cautiously, watchfully, upon Herndon appears. The Lincoln thus revealed, though only a character sketch, is coherent. And it stands the test of comparison in detail with the Lincolns of other, less romantic, observers. That is to say, with all his faults, Herndon has the inner something that will enable the diverse impressions of Lincoln, always threatening to become irreconcilable, to hang together and out of their very incongruity to invoke a person that is not incongruous. And herein, in this touchstone so to speak is Herndon's value.
8. Herndon, 265.
9. Lamon, 51.
10. Lincoln, I, 35-SO.
11. The reader who would know the argument against Herndon (436-446) and Lamon (486-502) on the subject of Lincoln's early religion is referred to The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleazer Barton. It is to be observed that the present study is never dogmatic about Lincoln's religion in its early phases. And when Herndon and Lamon generalize about his religious life, it must be remembered that they are thinking of him as they knew him in Illinois. Herndon had no familiarity with him after he went to Washington. Lamon could not have seen very much of him—no one but his secretaries and his wife did. And his taciturnity must be borne in mind. Nicolay has recorded that he did not know what Lincoln believed. Lamon, 492. That Lincoln was vaguely a deist in the 'forties—so far as he had any theology at all—may be true. But it is a rash leap to a conclusion to assume that his state of mind even then was the same thing as the impression it made on so practical, bard-headed, unpoetical a character as Lamon; or on so combatively imaginative but wholly unmystical a mind as Herndon's. Neither of them seems to have any understanding of those agonies of spirit through which Lincoln subsequently passed which will appear in the account of the year 1862. See also Miss Nicolay, 384-386. There is a multitude of pronouncements on Lincoln's religion, most of them superficial.
12. Lincoln, I, 206.
13. Nicolay, 73-74; N. and H., 1, 242; Lamon, 275-277.
14. Lamon, 277-278; Herndon, 272-273; N. and H., 1, 245-249.
VI. UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION.
1. N. and H., I, 28, 28&
2. Tarbell, 1, 211.
3. Ibid., 210-211.
4. Herndon, 114.
5. Lincoln, II, 28-48.
6. Herndon, 306-308, 319; Newton, 4(141).
7. Tarbell, I, 209-210.
8. Herndon, 306.
9. Lamon, 334; Herndon, 306; N. and H., I, 297.
VII. THE SECOND START.
1. Herndon, 307, 319.
2. Herndon, 319-321.
3. Herndon, 314-317.
4. Herndon, 332-333.
5. Herndon, 311-312.
6. Herndon, 319.
7. Lamon, 165.
8. Herndon, 309.
9. Herndon, 113-114; Stories, 18~
10. Herndon, 338.
11. Lamon, 324.
12. Lincoln, 11, 142.
13. Herndon, 347.
14. Herndon, 363.
15. Herndon, 362.
16. Lincoln, II, 172.
17. Lincoln, II, 207.
18. Lincoln, II, 173.
19. Lincoln, II, 165.
VIII. A RETURN TO POLITICS.
1. Johnson, 234.
2. I have permission to print the following letter from the Honorable John H. Marshall, Judge Fifth Judicial Circuit, Charleston, Illinois:
"Your letter of the 24th inst. at hand referring to slave trial in which Lincoln was interested, referred to by Professor Henry Johnson. Twenty-five years ago, while I was secretary of the Coles County Bar Association, a paper was read to the Association by the oldest member concerning the trial referred to, and his paper was filed with rue. Some years ago I spoke of the matter to Professor Johnson, and at the time was unable to find the old manuscript, and decided that the same had been inadvertently destroyed. However, quite recently I found this paper crumpled up under some old book records. The author of this article is a reputable member of the bar of this country of very advanced age, and at that time quoted as his authority well-known and very substantial men of the county, who had taken an active interest in the litigation. His paper referred to incidents occurring in 1847, and there is now no living person with any knowledge of it. The story in brief is as follows:
"In 1845, General Robert Matson, of Kentucky, being hard pressed financially, in order to keep them from being sold in payment of his debts, brought Jane Bryant, with her four small children to this county. Her husband, Anthony Bryant, was a free negro, and a licensed exhorter in the Methodist Church of Kentucky. But his wife and children were slaves of Matson. In 1847, Matson, determined to take the Bryants back to Kentucky as his slaves, caused to be issued by a justice of the peace of the county a writ directed to Jane Bryant and her children to appear before him forthwith and answer the claim of Robert Matson that their service was due to him, etc. This action produced great excitement in this county. Practically the entire community divided, largely on the lines of pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Usher F. Linder, the most eloquent lawyer in this vicinity, appeared for Matson, and Orlando B. Ficklin, twice a member of Congress, appeared for the negroes. Under the practice the defendant obtained a hearing from three justices instead of one, and a trial ensued lasting several days, and attended by great excitement. Armed men made demonstrations and bloodshed was narrowly averted. Two of the justices were pro-slavery, and one anti-slavery. The trial was held in Charleston. The decision of the justice was discreet. It was held that the court had no jurisdiction to determine the right of property, but that Jane and her children were of African descent and found in the state of Illinois without a certificate of freedom, and that they be committed to the county jail to be advertised and sold to pay the jail fees.
"At the next term of the circuit court, Ficklin obtained an order staying proceedings until the further order of the court. Finally when the case was heard in the circuit court Linder and Abraham Lincoln appeared for Matson, who was insisting upon the execution of the judgment of the three justices of the peace so that he could buy them at the proposed sale, and Ficklin and Charles Constable, afterward a circuit judge of this circuit, appeared for the negroes. The judgment was in favor of the negroes and they were discharged.
"The above is a much abbreviated account of this occurrence, stripped of its local coloring, giving however its salient points, and I have no doubt of its substantial accuracy."
3. Lincoln, II, 185.
4. Lincoln, II, 186.
5. Lamon, 347.
6. Lincoln, II, 232-233.
7. Lincoln, II, 190-262.
8. Lincoln, 274-277.
IX. THE LITERARY STATESMAN.
1. Herndon, 371-372.
2. Lincoln, II, 329-330.
3. Lincoln, III, 1-2.
4. Herndon, 405-408.
5. Lincoln. II, 279.
6. Lamon, 416.
X. THE DARK HORSE.
1. Lincoln, V, 127.
2. Tarbell, I, 335.
3. Lincoln, V, 127,138, 257-258.
4. Lincoln, V, 290-291. He never entirely shook off his erratic use of negatives. See, also, Lamon, 424; Tarbell, I, 338.
5. Lincoln, V, 293-32&6. McClure, 23-29; Field, 126,137-138; Tarbell, I, 342-357.
XII. THE CRISIS
1. Letters, 172.
2. Lincoln, VI, 77, 78, 79, 93.
3. Bancroft, 11,10; Letters, 111.
XIII. ECLIPSE.
1. Bancroft, II, 10; Letters, 172.
2. Bancroft, II, 9-10.
3. Herndon, 484.
4. McClure, 140-145; Lincoln, VI, 91, 97.
5. Recollections, 111.
6. Recollections, 121.
7. Recollections, 112-113; Tarbell, I, 404-415.
8. Tarbell, 1, 406.
9. Tarbell, I, 406.
10. Lincoln, VI, 91.
11. Tarbell, 1, 406.
12. Herndon, 483-484
13. Lamon, 505; see also, Herndon, 485.
14. Lincoln, VI, 110.
XIV. THE STRANGE NEW MAN.
1. Lincoln, VI, 130.
2. Merriam, I, 318.
3. Public Man, 140.
4. Van Santvoord.
5. N. and H., I, 36; McClure, 179.
6. Herndon, 492.
7. Recollections, 39-41.
8. Lincoln, VI, 162-164.
9. Bancroft, II, 38-45.
10. Public Man, 383.
11. Chittenden, 89-90.
12. Public Man, 387.
XV. PRESIDENT AND PREMIER.
1. Hay MS, I, 64.
2. Tyler, II, 565-566.
3. Bradford, 208; Seward, IV, 416.
4. Nicolay, 213.
5. Chase offered to procure a commission for Henry Villard, "by way of compliment to the Cincinnati Commercial" Villard, 1,177.
6. N. and H., III, 333, note 12.
7. Outbreak, 52.
8. Hay MS, I, 91; Tyler, II, 633; Coleman, 1, 338.
9. Hay MS, I, 91; Riddle, 5; Public Man, 487.
10. Correspondence, 548-549.
11. See Miss Schrugham's monograph for much important data with regard to this moment. Valuable as her contribution is, I can not feel that the conclusions invalidate the assumption of the text.
12. Lincoln, VI, 192-220.
13. Sherman, I, 195-1%.
14. Lincoln, VI, 175-176.
15. 127 0. R., 161.
16. Munford, 274; Journal of the Virginia Convention, 1861.
17. Lincoln, VI, 227-230.
18. N. R., first series, IV, 227.
19. Hay MS, I, 143.
20. The great authority of Mr. Frederick Bancroft is still on the side of the older interpretation of Seward's Thoughts, Bancroft, II, Chap. XXIX. It must be remembered that following the war there was a reaction against Seward. When Nicolay and Hay published the Thoughts they appeared to give him the coup de grace. Of late years it has almost been the fashion to treat him contemptuously. Even Mr. Bancroft has been very cautious in his defense. This is not the place to discuss his genius or his political morals. But on one thing I insist, Whatever else he was-unscrupulous or what you will-he was not a fool. However reckless, at times, his spread-eagleism there was shrewdness behind it. The idea that he proposed a ridiculous foreign policy at a moment when all his other actions reveal coolness and calculation; the idea that he proposed it merely as a spectacular stroke in party management; this is too much to believe. A motive must be found better than mere chicanery.
Furthermore, if there was one fixed purpose in Seward, during March and early April, it was to avoid a domestic conflict; and the only way he could see to accomplish that was to side-track Montgomery's expansive all-Southern policy. Is it not fair, with so astute a politician as Seward, to demand in explanation of any of his moves 'he uncovering of some definite political force he was playing up to? The old interpretation of the Thoughts offers no force to which they form a response. Especially it is impossible to find in them any scheme to get around Montgomery. But the old view looked upon the Virginia compromise with blind eyes. That was no part of the mental prospect. In accounting for Seward's purposes it did not exist. But the moment one's eyes are opened to its significance, especially to the menace it had for the Montgomery program, is not the entire scene transformed? Is not, under these new conditions, the purpose intimated in the text, the purpose to open a new field of exploitation to the Southern expansionists in order to reconcile them to the Virginia scheme, is not this at least plausible? And it escapes making Seward a fool.
21. Lincoln, VI, 23~237.
22. Welles, 1,17.
23. There is still lacking a complete unriddling of the three-cornered game of diplomacy played in America in March and April, 1861. Of the three participants Richmond is the most fully revealed. It was playing desperately for a compromise, any sort of compromise, that would save the one principle of state sovereignty. For that, slavery would be sacrificed, or at least allowed to be put in jeopardy. Munford, Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession; Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers; Journal of the Virginia Convention of 1861. However, practically no Virginian would put himself in the position of forcing any Southern State to abandon slavery against its will. Hence the Virginia compromise dealt only with the expansion of slavery, would go no further than to give the North a veto on that expansion. And its compensating requirement plainly would be a virtual demand for the acknowledgment of state sovereignty.
Precisely what passed between Richmond and Washington is still something of a mystery. John Hay quotes Lincoln as saying that he twice offered to evacuate Sumter, once before and once after his inauguration, if the Virginians "would break up their convention without any row or nonsense." Hay MS, I, 91; Thayer, I, 118-119. From other sources we have knowledge of at least two conferences subsequent to the inauguration and probably three. One of the conferences mentioned by Lincoln seems pretty well identified. Coleman II, 337-338. It was informal and may be set aside as having little if any historic significance. When and to whom Lincoln's second offer was made is not fully established. Riddle in his Recollections says that he was present at an informal interview "with loyal delegates of the Virginia State Convention," who were wholly satisfied with Lincoln's position. Riddle, 25. Possibly, this was the second conference mentioned by Lincoln. It has scarcely a feature in common with the conference of April 4, which has become the subject of acrimonious debate. N. and H., III, 422-428; Boutwell, II, 62-67; Bancroft, II, 102-104; Munford, 270; Southern Historical Papers, 1, 449; Botts, 195- 201; Crawford, 311; Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, first session, Thirty-Ninth Congress; Atlantic, April, 1875. The date of this conference is variously given as the fourth, fifth and sixth of April. Curiously enough Nicolay and Hay seem to have only an external knowledge of It; their account is made up from documents and lacks entirely the authoritative note. They do not refer to the passage in the Hay MS, already quoted.
There are three versions of the interview between Lincoln and Baldwin. One was given by Baldwin himself before the Committee on Reconstruction some five years after; one comprises the recollections of Colonel Dabney, to whom Baldwin narrated the incident in the latter part of the war; a third is in the recollections of John Minor Botts of a conversation with Lincoln April 7, 1862. No two of the versions entirely agree. Baldwin insists that Lincoln made no offer of any sort; while' Botts in his testimony before the Committee on Reconstruction says that Lincoln told him that he had told Baldwin that he was so anxious "for the preservation of the peace of this country and to save Virginia and the other Border States from going out that (he would) take the responsibility of evacuating Fort Sumter, and take the chances of negotiating with the Cotton States." Baldwin's language before the committee is a little curious and has been thought disingenuous. Boutwell, I, 66. However, practically no one in this connection has considered the passage in the Hay MS or the statement in Riddle. Putting these together and remembering the general situation of the first week of April there arises a very plausible argument for accepting the main fact in Baldwin's version of his conference and concluding that Botts either misunderstood Lincoln (as Baldwin says he did) or got the matter twisted in memory. A further bit of plausibility is the guess that Lincoln talked with Botts not only of the interview with Baldwin but also of the earlier interview mentioned by Riddle and that the two became confused in recollection.