Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/504

 498 ABEAHAM LINCOLN was captured by a desperate assault. The house of representatives on Jan. 31 passed a resolution submitting to the legislatures a con- stitutional amendment abolishing slavery, which had been passed by the senate early in the pre- ceding term. In January Mr. Francis P. Blair went to Richmond on his own responsibility, and returned on the 16th bearing a letter ad- dressed to himself, wherein Jefferson Davis expressed his willingness to "renew the effort to enter into a conference with a view to secure peace between the two countries." The president at once authorized Mr. Blair to re- turn to Richmond, carrying a written assu- rance that Mr. Lincoln was " ready to receive any agent whom Mr. Davis, or any other in- fluential person now resisting the national au- thority, may informally send me, with a view of securing peace to the people of our common country." On Jan. 29 Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and J. A. Campbell applied for permission to enter the federal lines and negotiate for peace. On Feb. 3 President Lincoln and Secretary Seward held an informal conference with them of four hours' duration, on a gunboat in Hampton Roads. The presi- dent insisted that three things were indispen- sable to any formal settlement : 1, restoration of the national authority throughout all the states ; 2, no receding from the position of the national executive on the subject of slavery; 3, no cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war and the disbanding of the forces hostile to the government. The confederate commis- sioners broached the idea that if hostilities were suspended while the two governments united in driving the French out of Mexico and prac- tically upholding the Monroe doctrine, the re- sult would probably be a better feeling between the people of the two sections, and the restora- tion of the Union. This was rejected as too vague, and the conference had no practical re- sult except as it gave the people a renewed as- surance of Mr. Lincoln's firmness. The morn- ing of Lincoln's second inauguration was very stormy, but the sky cleared just before noon, and the sun shone brightly as he appeared before an immense throng in front of the cap- itol, took the oath, and delivered an address remarkable alike for its striking expressions and conciliatory spirit. He said : " On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. . . . Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. . . . Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. . . . 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 nre 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 a lasting peace among ourselves and with ah 1 nations." The only change in the cabinet was the ap- pointment of Hugh McCullough of Indiana as secretary of the treasury, in place of Mr. Fes- senden, who had been elected to the senate. The confederates having attempted on March 3 to open peace negotiations with Gen. Grant, the president instructed him to have no con- ference with Gen. Lee unless it should be for the capitulation of Lee's army, or on some other purely military matter, and forbidding him to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political question. President Lincoln visited the army before Petersburg on March 24, and remained with it until the fall of Richmond, which he entered on the day after it was occu- pied, accompanied only by his son and Admiral Porter and a few sailors. He walked to the headquarters of Gen. Weitzel (in the house oc- cupied two days before by Jefferson Davis), and on the way was rapidly surrounded by a throng of negroes shouting, crying, and calling down blessings on him. A few days later he revisited Richmond, but was suddenly recalled to Wash- ington by an accident to Secretary Seward, who had been severely injured by being thrown from his carriage. On April 11, two days after Lee's surrender, he delivered a public address in which he discussed the question of reconstruction, intimating that he was un- decided as to the best plan, but was anxious to have the seceded states restored to their proper relations with the general government as soon as possible, setting aside as immaterial any specific theory as to whether they had ever been out of the Union. Most of the blockaded ports were immediately opened by proclamation, all drafting, recruiting, and pur- chases of arms and supplies were stopped, and all military restrictions removed from trade. President Lincoln had been frequently warned of the danger of assassination, as well as threatened with it in anonymous letters, but had never taken any precautions against it, be- lieving on the one hand that it was not likely to be attempted, as the confederates could gain nothing by it, and on the other that if it were contemplated no precaution could protect one who must be so accessible to the people as the president of the United States. On the even- ing of Good Friday, April 14, he visited Ford's theatre, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and two or three personal friends. The play was " Our American Cousin." A few minutes past 10 o'clock an obscure actor, John Wilkes Booth, entered the box, having first barred the passage leading to it, approached the president from behind, placed a pistol close to his head, and fired. He then leaped from the front of the box upon the stage, brandishing a dagger, shouted " Sic semper tyrannis ! The south is avenged ! " disappeared behind the scenes, passed out at the stage door, and escaped. (See BOOTH.) The president's head fell slightly forward, his eyes closed, and consciousness never returned. He was removed to a private house on the opposite side of the street, where he died at 22 minutes past 7 o'clock the next