Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/156

 brought a message from General Johnston, asking for a suspension of hostilities and a meeting between him and General Sherman for the arrangement of terms of surrender. The meeting was fixed for April 17th, at a point intermediate between the two armies. Just as he was leaving Raleigh on that morning, Sherman received a telegraphic message from Secretary Stanton, containing the announcement of the assassination of President Lincoln. While Sherman was gone to confer with Johnston the terrible news was kept secret from our troops, to be revealed to them by a general order the next day. I well remember the effect the announcement had upon them. The camps, which for two days had been fairly resounding with jubilation over the advent of peace, suddenly fell into gloomy stillness. The soldiers admired their great generals, and often saluted some of them with enthusiastic declamations. But their President, their good “Father Abraham,” they loved. Him they carried in their hearts as their personal friend and the friend of their homes and families. When the foul deed, by which he had been taken off, was made known to them, they did not vent their feelings in loud tones of anger and vengeance, but they sat around their camp-fires either silent or communicating their wrathful grief to one another in grim murmurs. But as I went around among them, and here and there caught their utterances, it occurred to me that now it was the highest time that the war should cease. If it had continued, and if these men had once more been let loose upon “the enemy's country,” there would have been danger of vengeance taken for Abraham Lincoln's blood that might have made the century shudder.

The people of the South themselves felt keenly that the murder of Lincoln was the worst blow that could have fallen upon them. As General Sherman told us, Johnston and the