Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/763

Rh Lincoln in a public address full of desperate de- fiance. Nevertheless, it was evident even to the most prejudiced observers that the war could not continue much longer. Sherman's march had demonstrated the essential weakness of the Confed- erate cause ; the soldiers of the Confederacy— who for four years, with the most stubborn gallantry, had maintained a losing fight— began to show signs of dangerous discouragement and insubordination ; recruiting had ceased some time before, and de- sertion was going on rapidly. The armv of Gen. Lee, which was the last bulwark of the Confeder- acy, still held its lines stoutly against the gradual- ly enveloping lines of Grant; but their valiant commander knew it was only a question of how many days he could hold his works, and repeatedly counselled the government at Richmond to evacu- ate that city, and allow the army to take up a more tenable position in the mountains. Gen. Grant's only anxiety each morning was lest he should find the army of Gen. Lee moving away from him. and late in March he determined to strike the final blow at the rebellion. Moving for the last time by the left flank, his forces under Sheridan fought and gained a brilliant victory over the Confederate left at Five Forks, and at' the same time Gens. Humphreys, Wright, and Parke moved against the Confederate works, breaking their lines and cap- turing many prisoners and guns. Petersburg was evacuated on 2 April. The Confederate govern- ment fled from Richmond the same afternoon and evening, and Grant, pursuing the broken and shat- tered remnant of Lee's army, received their sur- render at Appomattox Court-House on 9 April. About 28,000 Confederates signed the parole, and an equal number had been killed, captured, and dispersed in the operations immediately preceding the surrender. Gen. Sherman, a few days after- ward, received the surrender of Johnston, and the last Confederate army, under Gen. Kirbv Smith, west of the Mississippi, laid down its arms.

President Lincoln had himself accompanied the army in its last triumphant campaign, and had entered Richmond immediately after its surren- der, receiving the cheers and benedictions, not only of the negroes whom he had set free, but of a great number of white people, who were weary of the war, and welcomed the advent of peace. Re- turning to Washington with his mind filled with plans for the restoration of peace and orderly gov- ernment throughout the south, he seized the occa- sion of a serenade, on 11 April, to deliver to the people who gathered in front of the executive mansion his last speech on public affairs, in which he discussed with unusual dignity and force the problems of reconstruction, then crowding upon public consideration. As his second inaugural was the greatest of all his rhetorical compositions, so this brief political address, which closed his public career, is unsurpassed among his speeches for clear- ness and wisdom, and for a certain tone of gentle but unmistakable authority, which shows to what a mastery of statecraft he had attained. He con- gratulated the country upon the decisive victories of the last week; he expressly asserted that, al- though he had been present in the final opera- tions, " no part of the honor, for plan or execu- tion, was his " ; and then, with equal boldness and discretion, announced the principles in accord- ance with which he should deal wnh the restora- tion of the states. He refused to be provoked into controversy, which he held would be purely aca- demic, over the question whether the insurrection- ary states were in or out of the Union. " As ap- pears to me," he said, " that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and any dis- cussion of it, while it thus remains practically im- material, could have no effect other than the mis- chievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, what- ever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all— a merely pernicious abstraction. We afl agree that the seceded states, so-ealled,%re 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, f believe it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have ever been out of the Union than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts ne- cessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union, and each for- ever 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." In this temper he discussed the recent action of the Unionists of Louisiana, where 12,000 voters had sworn allegiance, giving his full approval to their course, but not committing himself to any similar method in other cases; "any exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entangle- ment. ... If we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white men, ' You are worth- less 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 unflefined when, where, and how.' ... If. on the contrary, we sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse is made true. Concede that it 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." These words were the last he uttered in pub- lic; on 14 April, at a cabinet meeting, he devel- oped these views in detail, and found no difference of opinion among his advisers. The same even- ing he attended a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's theatre, in Tenth street. He was accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and two friends — Miss Harris, a daughter of Senator Ira Har- ris, of New York, and Maj. Henry R. Rathbone. In the midst of the play a shot was heard, and a man was seen to leap from the president's box to the stage. Brandishing a dripping knife, with which, after shooting the president, he had stabbed Maj. Rathbone, and shouting. "Sic semper tyran- nis! — the south is avenged!" he rushed to the rear of the building, leaped upon a horse, which was held there in readiness for him, and made his escape. The president was carried to a small house on the opposite side of the street, where, surrounded by his family and the principal offi- cers of the government, he breathed his last at 7 o'clock on the morning of 15 April. The assas- sin was found by a squadron of troops twelve days afterward, and shot in a barn in which he had taken refuge. The illustration on page 722 rep- resents the house where Mr. Lincoln passed away.

The body of the president lay in state at the Capitol on 20 April and was viewed by a great concourse of people; the next day the funeral train set out for Springfield, HI. The cortege halted at all the principal cities on the way, and