While Lincoln took a mild interest in politics, he was not a candidate for office, except as a presidential elector, from the time of leaving Congress until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This repeal Legislation was the work of Lincoln’s political antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, and aroused Mr. Lincoln to action as the lion is roused by some foe worthy of his great strength and courage.
Mr. Douglas argued that the true intent and meaning of the act was not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way.
“Douglas’ argument amounts to this,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that if any one man chooses to enslave another no third man shall be allowed to object.”
After the adjournment of Congress Mr. Douglas returned to Illinois and began to defend his action in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. His most important speech was made at Springfield, and Mr. Lincoln was selected to answer it. That speech alone was sufficient to make Mr. Lincoln the leader of anti-Slavery sentiment in the West, and some of the men who heard it declared that it was the greatest speech he ever made.
With the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the Whig party began to break up, the majority of its members who were pronounced Abolitionists began to form the nucleus of the Republican party. Before this party was formed, however, Mr. Lincoln was induced to follow Douglas around the State and reply to him, but after one meeting at Peoria, where they both spoke, they entered into an agreement to return to their homes and make no more speeches during the campaign.
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Mr. Lincoln made no secret at this time of his ambition to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. Against his protest he was nominated and elected to the Legislature, but resigned his seat. His old rival, James Shields, with whom he was once near to a duel, was then senator, and his term was to expire the following year.
A letter, written by Mr. Lincoln to a friend in Paris, Illinois, at this time is interesting and significant. He wrote:
“I have a suspicion that a Whig has been elected to the Legislature from Eagar. If this is not so, why, then, ‘nix cum arous;’ but if it is so, then could you not make a mark with him for me for United States senator? I really have some chance.”
Another candidate besides Mr. Lincoln was seeking the seat in the United States Senate, soon to be vacated by Mr. Shields. This was Lyman Trumbull, an anti-slavery Democrat. When the Legislature met it was found that Mr. Lincoln lacked five votes of an election, while Mr. Trumbull had but five supporters. After several ballots Mr. Lincoln feared that Trumbull’s votes would be given to a Democratic candidate and he determined to sacrifice himself for the principle at stake. Accordingly he instructed his friends in the Legislature to vote for Judge Trumbull, which they did, resulting in Trumbull’s election.
The Abolitionists in the West had become very radical in their views, and did not hesitate to talk of opposing the extension of slavery by the use of force if necessary. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, was conservative and counseled moderation. In the meantime many outrages, growing out of the extension of slavery, were being perpetrated on the borders of Kansas and Missouri, and they no doubt influenced Mr. Lincoln to take a more radical stand against the slavery question.
An incident occurred at this time which had great effect in this direction. The negro son of a colored woman in Springfield had gone South to work. He was born free, but did not have his free papers with him. He was arrested and would have been sold into slavery to pay his prison expenses, had not Mr. Lincoln and some friends purchased his liberty. Previous to this Mr. Lincoln had tried to secure the boy’s release through the Governor of Illinois, but the Governor informed him that nothing could be done.
Then it was that Mr. Lincoln rose to his full height and exclaimed:
“Governor, I’ll make the ground in this country too hot for the foot of a slave, whether you have the legal power to secure the release of this boy or not.”
The year after Mr. Trumbull’s election to the Senate the Republican party was formally organized. A state convention of that party was called to meet at Bloomington May 29, 1856. The call for this convention was signed by many Springfield Whigs, and among the names was that of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln’s name had been signed to the call by his law partner, but when he was informed of this action he endorsed it fully. Among the famous men who took part in this convention were Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Leonard Swett, Richard Yates, Norman, B. Judd and Owen Lovejoy, the Alton editor, whose life, like Lincoln’s, finally paid the penalty for his Abolition views. The party nominated for Governor, Wm. H. Bissell, a veteran of the Mexican War, and adopted a platform ringing with anti-slavery sentiment.
Mr. Lincoln was the greatest power in the campaign that followed. He was one of the Fremont Presidential electors, and he went to work with all his might to spread the new party gospel and make votes for the old “Path-Finder of the Rocky Mountains.”
An amusing incident followed close after the Bloomington convention. A meeting was called at Springfield to ratify the action at Bloomington. Only three persons attended—Mr. Lincoln, his law partner and a man named John Paine. Mr. Lincoln made a speech to his colleagues, in which, among other things, he said: “While all seems dead, the age itself is not. It liveth as sure as our Maker liveth.”
In this campaign Mr. Lincoln was in general demand not only in his own state, but in Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin as well.
The result of that Presidential campaign was the election of Buchanan as President, Bissell as Governor, leaving Mr. Lincoln the undisputed leader of the new party. Hence it was that two years later he was the inevitable man to oppose Judge Douglas in the campaign for United States Senator.
No record of Abraham Lincoln’s career would be complete without the story of the memorable joint debates between the “Rail-Splitter of the Sangamon Valley” and the “Little Giant.” The opening lines in Mr. Lincoln’s speech to the Republican Convention were not only prophetic of the coming rebellion, but they clearly made the issue between the Republican and Democratic parties for two Presidential campaigns to follow. The memorable sentences were as follows:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it becomes alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
It is universally conceded that this speech contained the most important utterances of Mr. Lincoln’s life.
Previous to its delivery, the Democratic convention had endorsed Mr. Douglas for re-election to the Senate, and the Republican convention had resolved that “Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States Senator, to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas’ term of office.”
Before Judge Douglas had made many speeches in this Senatorial campaign, Mr. Lincoln challenged him to a joint debate, which was accepted, and seven memorable meetings between these two great leaders followed. The places and dates were: Ottawa, August 21st; Freeport, August 27th; Jonesboro, September 15th; Charleston, September 18th; Galesburg, October 7th; Quincy, October 13th; and Alton, October 15th.
The debates not only attracted the attention of the people in the state of Illinois, but aroused an interest throughout the whole country equal to that of a Presidential election.
All the meetings of the joint debate were attended by immense crowds of people. They came in all sorts of vehicles, on horseback, and many walked weary miles on foot to hear these two great leaders discuss the issues of the campaign. There had never been political meetings held under such unusual conditions as these, and there probably never will be again. At every place the speakers were met by great crowds of their friends and escorted to the platforms in the open air where the debates were held. The processions that escorted the speakers were most unique. They carried flags and banners and were preceded by bands of music. The people discharged cannons when they had them, and, when they did not, blacksmiths’ anvils were made to take their places.
Oftentimes a part of the escort would be mounted, and in most of the processions were chariots containing young ladies representing the different states of the Union designated by banners they carried. Besides the bands, there was usually vocal music. Patriotic songs were the order of the day, the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Hail Columbia” being great favorites.
So far as the crowds were concerned, these joint debates took on the appearance of a circus day, and this comparison was strengthened by the sale of lemonade, fruit, melons and confectionery on the outskirts of the gatherings.
At Ottawa, after his speech, Mr. Lincoln was carried around on the shoulders of his enthusiastic supporters, who did not put him down until they reached the place where he was to spend the night.
In the joint debates, each of the candidates asked the other a series of questions. Judge Douglas’ replies to Mr. Lincoln’s shrewd questions helped Douglas to win the Senatorial election, but they lost him the support of the South in the campaign for President two years thereafter. Mr. Lincoln was told when he framed his questions that if Douglas answered them in the way it was believed he would that the answers would make him Senator.
“That may be,” said Mr. Lincoln, “but if he takes that shoot he never can be President.”
The prophecy was correct. Mr. Douglas was elected Senator, but two years later only carried one state—Missouri—for President.
After the close of this canvass, Mr. Lincoln again devoted himself to the practice of his profession, but he was destined to remain but a short time in retirement. In the fall of 1859 Mr. Douglas went to Ohio to stump the state for his friend, Mr. Pugh, the Democratic candidate for Governor. The Ohio Republicans at once asked Mr. Lincoln to come to the state and reply to the “Little Giant.” He accepted the invitation and made two masterly speeches in the campaign. In one of them, delivered at Cincinnati, he prophesied the outcome of the rebellion if the Southern people attempted to divide the Union by force.
Addressing himself particularly to the Kentuckians in the audience, he said:
“I have told you what we mean to do. I want to know, now, when that thing takes place, what do you mean to do? I often hear it intimated that you mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican, or anything like it, is elected President of the United States. [A Voice—“That is so.”] ‘That is so,’ one of them says; I wonder if he is a Kentuckian? [A Voice—“He is a Douglas man.”] Well, then, I want to know what you are going to do with your half of it?
“Are you going to split the Ohio down through, and push your half off a piece? Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous fellows? Or are you going to build up a wall some way between your country, and ours, by which that movable property of yours can’t come over here any more, to the danger of your losing it? Do you think you can better yourselves on that subject by leaving us here under no obligation whatever to return those specimens of your movable property that come hither?
“You have divided the Union because we would not do right with you, as you think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligations to do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be? Will you make war upon us and kill us all? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions; but, man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us.
“You will never make much of a hand at whipping us. If we were fewer in numbers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal, it would likely be a drawn battle; but, being inferior in numbers, you will make nothing by attempting to master us.
“But perhaps I have addressed myself as long, or longer, to the Kentuckians than I ought to have done, inasmuch as I have said that, whatever course you take, we intend in the end to beat you.”
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Later in the year Mr. Lincoln also spoke in Kansas, where he was received with great enthusiasm, and in February of the following year he made his great speech in Cooper Union, New York, to an immense gathering, presided over by William Cullen Bryant, the poet, who was then editor of the New York Evening Post. There was great curiosity to see the Western rail-splitter who had so lately met the famous “Little Giant” of the West in debate, and Mr. Lincoln’s speech was listened to by many of the ablest men in the East.
This speech won for him many supporters in the Presidential campaign that followed, for his hearers at once recognized his wonderful ability to deal with the questions then uppermost in the public mind.
The Republican National Convention of 1860 met in Chicago, May 16, in an immense building called the “Wigwam.” The leading candidates for President were William H. Seward of New York and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Among others spoken of were Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania.
On the first ballot for President, Mr. Seward received one hundred and seventy-three and one-half votes; Mr. Lincoln, one hundred and two votes, the others scattering. On the first ballot, Vermont had divided her vote, but on the second the chairman of the Vermont delegation announced: “Vermont casts her ten votes for the young giant of the West—Abraham Lincoln.”
This was the turning point in the convention toward Mr. Lincoln’s nomination. The second ballot resulted: Seward, one hundred and eighty-four and one-half; Lincoln, one hundred and eighty-one. On the third ballot, Mr. Lincoln received two hundred and thirty votes. One and one-half votes more would nominate him. Before the ballot was announced, Ohio made a change of four votes in favor of Mr. Lincoln, making him the nominee for President.
Other states tried to follow Ohio’s example, but it was a long time before any of the delegates could make themselves heard. Cannons planted on top of the wigwam were roaring and booming; the large crowd in the wigwam and the immense throng outside were cheering at the top of their lungs, while bands were playing victorious airs.
When order had been restored, it was announced that on the third ballot Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had received three hundred and fifty-four votes and was nominated by the Republican party to the office of President of the United States.
Mr. Lincoln heard the news of his nomination while sitting in a newspaper office in Springfield, and hurried home to tell his wife.
As Mr. Lincoln had predicted, Judge Douglas’ position on slavery in the territories lost him the support of the South, and when the Democratic convention met at Charleston, the slave-holding states forced the nomination of John C. Breckinridge. A considerable number of people who did not agree with either party nominated John Bell of Tennessee.
In the election which followed, Mr. Lincoln carried all of the free states, except New Jersey, which was divided between himself and Douglas; Breckinridge carried all the slave states, except Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, which went for Bell, and Missouri gave its vote to Douglas.
The election was scarcely over before it was evident that the Southern States did not intend to abide by the result, and that a conspiracy was on foot to divide the Union. Before the Presidential election even, the Secretary of War in President Buchanan’s Cabinet had removed one hundred and fifty thousand muskets from Government armories in the North and sent them to Government armories in the South.
Before Mr. Lincoln had prepared his inaugural address, South Carolina, which took the lead in the secession movement, had declared through her Legislature her separation from the Union. Before Mr. Lincoln took his seat, other Southern States had followed the example of South Carolina, and a convention had been held at Montgomery, Alabama, which had elected Jefferson Davis President of the new Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stevens, of Georgia, Vice-President.
Southern men in the Cabinet, Senate and House had resigned their seats and gone home, and Southern States were demanding that Southern forts and Government property in their section should be turned over to them.
Between his election and inauguration, Mr. Lincoln remained silent, reserving his opinions and a declaration of his policy for his inaugural address.
Before Mr. Lincoln’s departure from Springfield for Washington, threats had been freely made that he would never reach the capital alive, and, in fact, a conspiracy was then on foot to take his life in the city of Baltimore.
Mr. Lincoln left Springfield on February 11th, in company with his wife and three sons, his brother-in-law, Dr. W. S. Wallace; David Davis, Norman B. Judd, Elmer E. Elsworth, Ward H. Lamon, Colonel E. V. Sunder of the United States Army, and the President’s two secretaries.
Early in February, before leaving for Washington, Mr. Lincoln slipped away from Springfield and paid a visit to his aged step-mother in Coles county. He also paid a visit to the unmarked grave of his father and ordered a suitable stone to mark the spot.
Before leaving Springfield, he made an address to his fellow-townsmen, in which he displayed sincere sorrow at parting from them.
“Friends,” he said, “no one who has never been placed in a like position can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here all my children were born, and here one of them lies buried.
“To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail—I shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.
“To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask that with equal sincerity and faith you will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me. With these words I must leave you, for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.”
The journey from Springfield to Philadelphia was a continuous ovation for Mr. Lincoln. Crowds assembled to meet him at the various places along the way, and he made them short speeches, full of humor and good feeling. At Harrisburg, Pa., the party was met by Allan Pinkerton, who knew of the plot in Baltimore to take the life of Mr. Lincoln.
Throughout his entire life, Abraham Lincoln’s physical courage was as great and superb as his moral courage. When Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Judd urged the President-elect to leave for Washington that night, he positively refused to do it. He said he had made an engagement to assist at a flag raising in the forenoon of the next day and to show himself to the people of Harrisburg in the afternoon, and that he intended to keep both engagements.
At Philadelphia the Presidential party was met by Mr. Seward’s son, Frederick, who had been sent to warn Mr. Lincoln of the plot against his life. Mr. Judd, Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Lamon figured out a plan to take Mr. Lincoln through Baltimore between midnight and daybreak, when the would-be assassins would not be expecting him, and this plan was carried out so thoroughly that even the conductor on the train did not know the President-elect was on board.
Mr. Lincoln was put into his berth and the curtains drawn. He was supposed to be a sick man. When the conductor came around, Mr. Pinkerton handed him the “sick man’s” ticket and he passed on without question.
When the train reached Baltimore, at half-past three o’clock in the morning, it was met by one of Mr. Pinkerton’s detectives, who reported that everything was “all right,” and in a short time the party was speeding on to the national capital, where rooms had been engaged for Mr. Lincoln and his guard at Willard’s Hotel.
Mr. Lincoln always regretted this “secret passage” to Washington, for it was repugnant to a man of his high courage. He had agreed to the plan simply because all of his friends urged it as the best thing to do.
Now that all the facts are known, it is assured that his friends were right, and that there never was a moment from the day he crossed the Maryland line until his assassination that his life was not in danger, and was only saved as long as it was by the constant vigilance of those who were guarding him.
The wonderful eloquence of Abraham Lincoln—clear, sincere, natural—found grand expression in his first inaugural address, in which he not only outlined his policy toward the States in rebellion, but made that beautiful and eloquent plea for conciliation. The closing sentences of Mr. Lincoln’s first inaugural address deservedly take rank with his Gettysburg speech:
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen,” he said, “and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you.
“You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
“The mystic cord of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
In selecting his Cabinet, Mr. Lincoln, consciously or unconsciously, followed a precedent established by Washington, of selecting men of almost opposite opinions. His Cabinet was composed of William H. Seward of New York, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War; Gideon E. Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. Smith of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair of Maryland, Postmaster-General; Edward Bates of Missouri, Attorney-General.
Mr. Chase, although an anti-slavery leader, was a States-Rights Federal Republican, while Mr. Seward was a Whig, without having connected himself with the anti-slavery movement.
Mr. Chase and Mr. Seward, the leading men of Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet, were as widely apart and antagonistic in their views as were Jefferson, the Democrat, and Hamilton, the Federalist, the two leaders in Washington’s Cabinet. But in bringing together these two strong men as his chief advisers, both of whom had been rival candidates for the Presidency, Mr. Lincoln gave another example of his own greatness and self-reliance, and put them both in a position to render greater service to the Government than they could have done, probably, as President.
Mr. Lincoln had been in office little more than five weeks when the War of the Rebellion began by the firing on Fort Sumter.
The War of the Rebellion revealed to the people—in fact, to the whole world—the many sides of Abraham Lincoln’s character. It showed him as a real ruler of men—not a ruler by the mere power of might, but by the power of a great brain. In his Cabinet were the ablest men in the country, yet they all knew that Lincoln was abler than any of them.
Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, was a man famed in statesmanship and diplomacy. During the early stages of the Civil War, when France and England were seeking an excuse to interfere and help the Southern Confederacy, Mr. Seward wrote a letter to our minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, instructing him concerning the attitude of the Federal government on the question of interference, which would undoubtedly have brought about a war with England if Abraham Lincoln had not corrected and amended the letter. He did this, too, without yielding a point or sacrificing in any way his own dignity or that of the country.
Throughout the four years of war, Mr. Lincoln spent a great deal of time in the War Department, receiving news from the front and conferring with Secretary of War Stanton concerning military affairs.
Mr. Lincoln’s War Secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, who had succeeded Simon Cameron, was a man of wonderful personality and iron will. It is generally conceded that no other man could have managed the great War Secretary so well as Lincoln. Stanton had his way in most matters, but when there was an important difference of opinion he always found Lincoln was the master.
Although Mr. Lincoln’s communications to the generals in the field were oftener in the nature of suggestions than positive orders, every military leader recognized Mr. Lincoln’s ability in military operations. In the early stages of the war, Mr. Lincoln followed closely every plan and movement of McClellan, and the correspondence between them proves Mr. Lincoln to have been far the abler general of the two. He kept close watch of Burnside, too, and when he gave the command of the Army of the Potomac to “Fighting Joe” Hooker he also gave that general some fatherly counsel and advice which was of great benefit to him as a commander.
It was not until General Grant had been made Commander-in-Chief that President Lincoln felt he had at last found a general who did not need much advice. He was the first to recognize that Grant was a great military leader, and when he once felt sure of this fact nothing could shake his confidence in that general. Delegation after delegation called at the White House and asked for Grant’s removal from the head of the army. They accused him of being a butcher, a drunkard, a man without sense or feeling.
President Lincoln listened to all of these attacks, but he always had an apt answer to silence Grant’s enemies. Grant was doing what Lincoln wanted done from the first—he was fighting and winning victories, and victories are the only things that count in war.
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The crowning act of Lincoln’s career as President was the emancipation of the slaves. All of his life he had believed in gradual emancipation, but all of his plans contemplated payment to the slaveholders. While he had always been opposed to slavery, he did not take any steps to use it as a war measure until about the middle of 1862. His chief object was to preserve the Union.
He wrote to Horace Greeley that if he could save the Union without freeing any of the slaves he would do it; that if he could save it by freeing some and leaving the others in slavery he would do that; that if it became necessary to free all the slaves in order to save the Union he would take that course.
The anti-slavery men were continually urging Mr. Lincoln to set the slaves free, but he paid no attention to their petitions and demands until he felt that emancipation would help him to preserve the Union of the States.
The outlook for the Union cause grew darker and darker in 1862, and Mr. Lincoln began to think, as he expressed it, that he must “change his tactics or lose the game.” Accordingly he decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as soon as the Union army won a substantial victory. The battle of Antietam, on September 17, gave him the opportunity he sought. He told Secretary Chase that he had made a solemn vow before God that if General Lee should be driven back from Pennsylvania he would crown the result by a declaration of freedom to the slaves.
On the twenty-second of that month he issued a proclamation stating that at the end of one hundred days he would issue another proclamation declaring all slaves within any State or Territory to be forever free, which was done in the form of the famous Emancipation Proclamation.
In the conduct of the war and in his purpose to maintain the Union, Abraham Lincoln exhibited a will of iron and determination that could not be shaken, but in his daily contact with the mothers, wives and daughters begging for the life of some soldier who had been condemned to death for desertion or sleeping on duty he was as gentle and weak as a woman.
It was a difficult matter for him to refuse a pardon if the slightest excuse could be found for granting it.
Secretary Stanton and the commanding generals were loud in declaring that Mr. Lincoln would destroy the discipline of the army by his wholesale pardoning of condemned soldiers, but when we come to examine the individual cases we find that Lincoln was nearly always right, and when he erred it was always on the side of humanity.
During the four years of the long struggle for the preservation of the Union, Mr. Lincoln kept “open shop,” as he expressed it, where the general public could always see him and make known their wants and complaints. Even the private soldier was not denied admittance to the President’s private office, and no request or complaint was too small or trivial to enlist his sympathy and interest.
It was once said of Shakespeare that the great mind that conceived the tragedies of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” etc., would have lost its reason if it had not found vent in the sparkling humor of such comedies as “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “The Comedy of Errors.”
The great strain on the mind of Abraham Lincoln produced by four years of civil war might likewise have overcome his reason had it not found vent in the yarns and stories he constantly told. No more fun-loving or humor-loving man than Abraham Lincoln ever lived. He enjoyed a joke even when it was on himself, and probably, while he got his greatest enjoyment from telling stories, he had a keen appreciation of the humor in those that were told him.
His favorite humorous writer was David R. Locke, better known as “Petroleum V. Nasby,” whose political satires were quite famous in their day. Nearly every prominent man who has written his recollections of Lincoln has told how the President, in the middle of a conversation on some serious subject, would suddenly stop and ask his hearer if he ever read the Nasby letters.
Then he would take from his desk a pamphlet containing the letters and proceed to read them, laughing heartily at all the good points they contained. There is probably no better evidence of Mr. Lincoln’s love of humor and appreciation of it than his letter to Nasby, in which he said: “For the ability to write these things I would gladly trade places with you.”
Mr. Lincoln was re-elected President in 1864. His opponent on the Democratic ticket was General George B. McClellan, whose command of the Army of the Potomac had been so unsatisfactory at the beginning of the war. Mr. Lincoln’s election was almost unanimous, as McClellan carried but three States—Delaware, Kentucky and New Jersey.
General Grant, in a telegram of congratulation, said that it was “a victory worth more to the country than a battle won.”
The war was fast drawing to a close. The black war clouds were breaking and rolling away. Sherman had made his famous march to the sea. Through swamp and ravine, Grant was rapidly tightening the lines around Richmond. Thomas had won his title of the “Rock of Chickamauga.” Sheridan had won his spurs as the great modern cavalry commander, and had cleaned out the Shenandoah Valley. Sherman was coming back from his famous march to join Grant at Richmond.
The Confederacy was without a navy. The Kearsarge had sunk the Alabama, and Farragut had fought and won the famous victory in Mobile Bay. It was certain that Lee would soon have to evacuate Richmond only to fall into the hands of Grant.
Lincoln saw the dawn of peace. When he came to deliver his second inaugural address, it contained no note of victory, no exultation over a fallen foe. On the contrary, it breathed the spirit of brotherly love and of prayer for an early peace: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Not long thereafter, General Lee evacuated Richmond with about half of his original army, closely pursued by Grant. The boys in blue overtook their brothers in gray at Appomattox Court House, and there, beneath the warm rays of an April sun, the great Confederate general made his final surrender. The war was over, the American flag was floated over all the territory of the United States, and peace was now a reality. Mr. Lincoln visited Richmond and the final scenes of the war and then returned to Washington to carry out his announced plan of “binding up the nation’s wounds.”
He had now reached the climax of his career and touched the highest point of his greatness. His great task was over, and the heavy burden that had so long worn upon his heart was lifted.
While the whole nation was rejoicing over the return of peace, the Saviour of the Union was stricken down by the hand of an assassin.
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From early youth, Mr. Lincoln had presentiments that he would die a violent death, or, rather, that his final days would be marked by some great tragic event. From the time of his first election to the Presidency, his closest friends had tried to make him understand that he was in constant danger of assassination, but, notwithstanding his presentiments, he had such splendid courage that he only laughed at their fears.
During the summer months he lived at the Soldiers’ Home, some miles from Washington, and frequently made the trip between the White House and the Home without a guard or escort. Secretary of War Stanton and Ward Lamon, Marshal of the District, were almost constantly alarmed over Mr. Lincoln’s carelessness in exposing himself to the danger of assassination.
They warned him time and again, and provided suitable body-guards to attend him. But Mr. Lincoln would often give the guards the slip, and, mounting his favorite riding horse, “Old Abe,” would set out alone after dark from the White House for the Soldiers’ Home.
While riding to the Home one night, he was fired upon by some one in ambush, the bullet passing through his high hat. Mr. Lincoln would not admit that the man who fired the shot had tried to kill him. He always attributed it to an accident, and begged his friends to say nothing about it.
Now that all the circumstances of the assassination are known, it is plain that there was a deep-laid and well-conceived plot to kill Mr. Lincoln long before the crime was actually committed. When Mr. Lincoln was delivering his second inaugural address on the steps of the Capitol, an excited individual tried to force his way through the guards in the building to get on the platform with Mr. Lincoln.
It was afterward learned that this man was John Wilkes Booth, who afterwards assassinated Mr. Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, on the night of the 14th of April.