Lincoln (117 page)

Lincoln’s motive in going to Richmond was not just natural curiosity about the citadel of the Confederacy; it was a desire to help in the process of restoring peace. For this reason he took time while in the Confederate White House to meet with John A. Campbell, one of the Southern commissioners at Hampton Roads and the only high-ranking Confederate to remain in the capital. Urging the President to pursue a policy of “moderation, magnanimity
and kindness” toward the South, Campbell secured his ready agreement “not to exact oaths, interfere with churches, etc.” and, in general, to make “no requisitions on the inhabitants [of Richmond]... of any sort save as to police and preservation of order.” But these promises did little to solve the larger issues involved in bringing Virginia back into the Union, and for that purpose Campbell suggested that Lincoln confer with the influential moderate leaders of the state, like R. M. T. Hunter, who “were satisfied that submission was a duty and a necessity.”

The President invited Campbell to bring a delegation of such leaders aboard the
Malvern
the next morning. Campbell asked six or seven influential Virginians to accompany him, but only Gustavus A. Myers, a prominent Richmond attorney, agreed to do so. Lincoln had General Weitzel at his side. The President began by restating his indispensable terms for peace: “restoration of the national authority”; “no receding by the Executive of the United States on the slavery question”; and “no cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government.” If these were acceded to, he promised to consider other proposed conditions “in a spirit of sincere liberality.” For instance, he promised to return property seized under the Confiscation Acts to any state that withdrew its troops from the Confederate army. At the same time, he warned that “if the war be now further persisted in,” the costs would have to be paid from confiscated Confederate property.

Campbell responded by saying that slavery was now “defunct” and therefore no longer an issue between North and South. Virginia could be brought back into the Union if Lincoln offered a general amnesty. “To cover appearances,” there should also be “a military convention” to end the fighting, but there was no Confederate authority willing or able to sign such an agreement dismantling the Southern government. Jefferson Davis had avoided the decision, saying that only a convention of the Southern states could end the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress had refused to overrule its President. General Lee, as usual, stuck to his military duties and declined to act on political questions, such as the terms of peace.

The situation was exactly what Lincoln had most feared. The war was not yet over, and further fighting and more bloodshed lay ahead. Even if there were no more pitched battles, thousands of Southern soldiers, turned loose on the countryside, would probably resort to guerrilla warfare. Society would be broken up, and anarchy was likely.

To prevent these disasters, the President told Campbell and Myers, he had been thinking of a plan for the speedy restoration of Virginia to the Union. If he gave safe-conduct assurances to members of the state’s Confederate legislature, they could meet at Richmond and vote to withdraw the state from the Confederacy. It was not an idea that he had fully worked out, but it was not a completely novel one. Representative Ashley, a leading Radical, had advanced a similar proposal in the last session of Congress. To secure stable governments in the South, he argued, “the President may
lawfully and rightfully treat with [rebel officials] and recognize them as the existing government.” In his conversations with Grant and Sherman at City Point, Lincoln had probably discussed the possibility of dealing with Confederate state authorities, at least during a transitional period. But Lincoln recognized that this plan entailed risks. For one thing, it overturned the policy of nonrecognition of the Confederacy that he and his administration had resolutely adhered to for more than four years. For another, in the case of Virginia it raised problems about the legitimacy of the existing Unionist government, headed by Francis Pierpont. To be sure, this Pierpont regime had, as the President admitted, a “somewhat farcical” quality, since it governed only the areas of the state that were under Union guns, but both he and the Congress had repeatedly recognized it. These were weighty objections, to be balanced against the President’s desire to see “the very Legislature which had been sitting ‘up yonder’—pointing to the capitol—to come together and to vote to restore Virginia to the Union, and recall her soldiers from the Confederate army.”

Eagerly his listeners seized on his idea. As Weitzel later reported, Campbell and Myers “assured Mr. Lincoln that if he would allow the Virginia Legislature to meet, it would at once repeal the ordinance of secession, and that then General Robert E. Lee and every other Virginian would submit; that this would amount to the virtual destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia, and eventually to the surrender of all the other rebel armies, and would insure perfect peace in the shortest possible time.”

Possibly their enthusiasm made the President pause, for he announced that he would not make a decision until he returned to City Point. When he got back to army headquarters, he tried to make his plan more precise, directing Weitzel to allow “the gentlemen who have acted as the Legislature of Virginia, in support of the rebellion,” to assemble at Richmond in order to “take measures to withdraw the Virginia troops, and other support from resistance to the General government.” Reporting his decision to Grant, the President added, “I do not think it very probable that anything will come of this.” The Union army, he observed sardonically, was “pretty effectually withdrawing the Virginia troops from opposition to the government” without the assistance of Campbell or other Confederate intermediaries.

At City Point the President received two pieces of news. Telegrams from Washington reported that Mary Lincoln, determined to show she had recovered from her bout of paranoia, was returning to army headquarters with a party that included Charles Sumner, the Marquis de Chambrun, a young French nobleman, Senator Harlan (whose appointment as Secretary of the Interior did not take effect until May 15) and his wife, and Attorney General Speed. At the same time, Stanton wired that Secretary Seward had been badly injured in a carriage accident and that the President ought to return to the capital. Subsequent dispatches from Stanton indicated that the Secretary of State, though seriously hurt, was in no immediate danger, and Lincoln was able to stay on at army headquarters for a few more days.

Hoping to remain until the final Confederate surrender, Lincoln carefully studied the dispatches that Grant, Sheridan, and Meade forwarded to him. He rejoiced to read Sheridan’s report that he had routed the enemy at Burke’s Station, which ended: “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.” Promptly the President wired Grant, “Let the
thing
be pressed.”

But when surrender did not seem to be imminent, Lincoln and his party prepared to leave City Point on April 8. Before their departure he requested the military band on the
River Queen
to play the
Marseillaise
in honor of the Marquis de Chambrun, who, the President remarked, had to come all the way to America to hear the revolutionary song that was banned under the Second Empire. Then Lincoln asked the surprised band director to play
Dixie.
“That tune is now Federal property,” he announced, and it’s “good to show the rebels that, with us in power, they will be free to hear it again.”

On the slow river trip back to Washington, Lincoln was silent much of the time, absorbed in thought. He deflected any possibility of a political discussion with Sumner, who was always eager to press a Radical reconstruction program on the President, and did not mention his tentative plan to reconvene the Virginia legislature. Instead, he turned to literary subjects and for several hours read to his guests on the
River Queen
passages from Shakespeare. From
Macbeth
he chose the reflections of the king, who has murdered his predecessor, Duncan, only to be overtaken by horrible torments of mind:

Then, struck by the weird beauty of the lines, Lincoln paused, as Chambrun recalled, and “began to explain to us how true a description of the murderer that one was; when, the dark deed achieved, its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim; and he read over again the same scene.”

At about sundown on April 9, Lincoln returned to a capital still celebrating the capture of Richmond and eagerly anticipating the surrender of Robert E. Lee. His first visit was to his Secretary of State, who was confined to his bed by the accident in which he had broken both his arm and his jaw. To
keep Seward from trying to move his head, the President stretched out at full length across the bed and, resting on his elbow, brought his face near that of the injured man. “I think we are near the end at last,” he said, and he told of Grant’s victories and of his visit to Richmond. He proposed to issue a proclamation for a day of thanksgiving, but the Secretary whispered that he should wait until Sherman captured Joseph E. Johnston. As Seward drifted off to sleep, the President quietly left the room.

That night he learned that Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and he immediately told Mary. At daylight the next day the firing of five hundred cannon gave the news to the entire capital. “Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering,” recorded Gideon Welles; “all, all jubilant.” Throngs of people collected around the White House, filling the north portico, the carriageways, and the sidewalks. “The crowds around the house have been immense,” Mary wrote; “in the midst of the bands playing, they break forth into singing.” Repeatedly they called for the President, and when he failed to appear, the shouting grew even louder. A great cheer rose when Tad appeared at a second-story window, waving a Confederate flag. Finally Lincoln came out to say a few words. Anticipating that there would be a more formal demonstration the following night, he told the crowd, “I shall have nothing to say if you dribble it all out of me before.” But again he asked the band to play
Dixie,
“one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” and joked that he had a legal opinion from the Attorney General that the song was “a lawful prize,” since “we fairly captured it.”

It was a busy day for the President, because he had to catch up the accumulated work that had piled up during his two weeks with the army. A cabinet meeting dealt with only routine business, for Lincoln apparently did not tell his associates of his conversations with Campbell in Richmond or of his tentative agreement to allow the Virginia rebel legislature to reconvene. That subject was, however, much on his mind, and he summoned Governor Pierpont, the head of the Unionist government of Virginia, for a conference. Despite all distractions, he spent much of his time composing a speech for the next day.

On April 11 it seemed that the whole city turned out to celebrate. All the government buildings and many of the private houses were illuminated. Though the evening was misty, the illuminated dome of the Capitol could be seen for miles. Across the Potomac, Lee’s home, Arlington, was brightly lit, and thousands of freedmen gathered on the lawn to sing “The Year of Jubilee.” An immense throng of people, many carrying banners, poured into the semicircular driveway leading to the north portico of the White House. After repeated loud calls, the President appeared in a second-story window just under the portico, and “cheers upon cheers, wave after wave of applause, rolled up.” Lincoln began to read from his carefully prepared manuscript in order to avoid any misunderstanding or misinterpretation of his ideas, but the light was bad. After unsuccessfully trying to hold a candle in
one hand and the pages of his manuscript in the other, he beckoned to Noah Brooks, who took a place behind the draperies and held up the light while the President read. As he finished each page, he dropped it to the floor, where Tad scrambled about, collecting them and, growing restless, importuned his father for “another.”

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” the President began, and he expressed hope that the recent victories “give hope of a righteous and speedy peace.” Promising a day of national thanksgiving, he offered the nation’s gratitude to “Gen. Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men.” That much was to be expected—but the rest of the address was not at all what the crowd had anticipated. “The re-inauguration of the national authority” was his principal subject, and he warned that it was going to be “fraught with great difficulty,” the more so since “we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.”

The larger part of his address reviewed his relationship to the reconstructed government of Louisiana and offered a defense of that regime. It was not in every way satisfactory, he admitted, and it would be more credible if it was supported by twenty, thirty, or fifty thousand voters instead of the twelve thousand who participated in its election. But he raised the same question that he had asked Senator Trumbull during the recent session of Congress: “Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union
sooner
by
sustaining,
or by
discarding
her new State Government?” The answer, he thought, was obvious: “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.” And he reminded his listeners that if Louisiana was not readmitted, “we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national constitution.”