Refreshed in body by his visit to City Point and greatly cheered
by the fall of Richmond, and unmistakable signs that the war was
over, Mr. Lincoln went back to Washington intent on the new task
opening before him--that of restoring the Union, and of bringing
about peace and good will again between the North and the South.
His whole heart was bent on the work of "binding up the nation's
wounds" and doing all which lay in his power to "achieve a just
and lasting peace." Especially did he desire to avoid the
shedding of blood, or anything like acts of deliberate
punishment. He talked to his cabinet in this strain on the
morning of April 14, the last day of his life. "No one need
expect that he would take any part in hanging or killing these
men, even the worst of them," he exclaimed. Enough lives had been
sacrificed already. Anger must be put aside. The great need now
was to begin to act in the interest of peace. With these words of
clemency and kindness in their ears they left him, never again to
come together under his wise chairmanship.

Though it was invariably held in check by his vigorous
common-sense, there was in Mr. Lincoln's nature a strong vein of
poetry and mysticism. That morning he told his cabinet a strange
story of a dream that he had had the night before--a dream which
he said came to him before great events. He had dreamed it before
the battles of Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
This time it must foretell a victory by Sherman over Johnston's
army, news of which was hourly expected, for he knew of no other
important event likely to occur. The members of the cabinet were
deeply impressed; but General Grant, who had come to Washington
that morning and was present, remarked with matter-of-fact
exactness that Murfreesboro was no victory and had no important
results. Not the wildest imagination of skeptic or mystic could
have pictured the events under which the day was to close.

It was Good Friday, a day observed by a portion of the people
with fasting and prayer, but even among the most devout the great
news of the week just ended changed this time of traditional
mourning into a season of general thanksgiving. For Mr. Lincoln
it was a day of unusual and quiet happiness. His son Robert had
returned from the field with General Grant, and the President
spent an hour with the young captain in delighted conversation
over the campaign. He denied himself generally to visitors,
admitting only a few friends. In the afternoon he went for a long
drive with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood, as it had been all day, was
singularly happy and tender. He talked much of the past and
future. After four years of trouble and tumult he looked forward
to four years of quiet and normal work; after that he expected to
go back again to Illinois and practice law. He was never more
simple or more gentle than on this day of triumph. His heart
overflowed with sentiments of gratitude to Heaven, which took the
shape, usual to generous natures, of love and kindness to all
men.

From the very beginning there had been threats to kill him. He
was constantly receiving letters of warning from zealous or
nervous friends. The War Department inquired into these when
there seemed to be ground for doing so, but always without
result. Warnings that appeared most definite proved on
examination too vague and confused for further attention. The
President knew that he was in some danger. Madmen frequently made
their way to the very door of the Executive Office; sometimes
into Mr. Lincoln's presence; but he himself had so sane a mind,
and a heart so kindly even to his enemies, that it was hard for
him to believe in political hatred deadly enough to lead to
murder. He summed up the matter by saying that since he must
receive both friends and strangers every day, his life was of
course within the reach of any one, sane or mad, who was ready to
murder and be hanged for it, and that he could not possibly guard
against all danger unless he shut himself up in an iron box,
where he could scarcely perform the duties of a President.

He therefore went in and out before the people, always unarmed,
generally unattended. He received hundreds of visitors in a day,
his breast bare to pistol or knife. He walked at midnight, with a
single Secretary or alone, from the Executive Mansion to the War
Department and back. In summer he rode through lonely roads from
the White House to the Soldiers' Home in the dusk of the evening,
and returned to his work in the morning before the town was
astir. He was greatly annoyed when it was decided that there must
be a guard at the Executive Mansion, and that a squad of cavalry
must accompany him on his daily drive; but he was always
reasonable, and yielded to the best judgment of others.

Four years of threats and boastings that were unfounded, and of
plots that came to nothing passed away, until precisely at the
time when the triumph of the nation seemed assured, and a
feeling of peace and security settled over the country, one of
the conspiracies, seemingly no more important than the others,
ripened in a sudden heat of hatred and despair.

A little band of desperate secessionists, of which John Wilkes
Booth, an actor of a family of famous players, was the head, had
their usual meeting-place at the house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt,
the mother of one of the number. Booth was a young man of
twenty-six, strikingly handsome, with an ease and grace of manner
which came to him of right from his theatrical ancestors. He was
a fanatical southerner, with a furious hatred against Lincoln and
the Union. After Lincoln's reelection he went to Canada, and
associated with the Confederate agents there; and whether or not
with their advice, made a plan to capture the President and take
him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and winter
pursuing this fantastic scheme, but the winter wore away, and
nothing was done. On March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a
disturbance by trying to force his way through the line of
policemen who guarded the passage through which the President
walked to the East front of the building to read his Second
Inaugural. His intentions at this time are not known. He
afterwards said he lost an excellent chance of killing the
President that day.

After the surrender of Lee, in a rage akin to madness, he called
his fellow-conspirators together and allotted to each his part in
the new crime which had risen in his mind. It was as simple as it
was horrible. One man was to kill Secretary Seward, another to
make way with Andrew Johnson, at the same time that he murdered
the President. The final preparations were made with feverish
haste. It was only about noon of the fourteenth that Booth
learned that Mr. Lincoln meant to go to Ford's Theatre that night
to see the play "Our American Cousin." The President enjoyed the
theatre. It was one of his few means of recreation, and as the
town was then thronged with soldiers and officers all eager to
see him, he could, by appearing in public, gratify many whom he
could not personally meet.

Mrs. Lincoln asked General and Mrs. Grant to accompany her. They
accepted, and the announcement that they would be present was
made in the evening papers, but they changed their plans and went
north by an afternoon train. Mrs. Lincoln then invited in their
stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter and stepson of
Senator Ira Harris. Being detained by visitors, the play had made
some progress when the President appeared.. The band struck up
"Hail to the Chief," the actors ceased playing, the audience rose
and cheered, the President bowed in acknowledgment, and the play
went on again.

From the moment he learned of the President's intention Booth's
actions were alert and energetic. He and his confederates were
seen in every part of the city. Booth was perfectly at home in
Ford's Theatre. He counted upon audacity to reach the small
passage behind the President's box. Once there, he guarded
against interference by arranging a wooden bar, to be fastened by
a simple mortice in the angle of the wall and the door by which
he entered, so that once shut, the door could not be opened from
the outside. He even provided for the chance of not gaining
entrance to the box by boring a hole in the door, through which
he might either observe the occupants, or take aim and shoot. He
hired at a livery stable a small fleet horse.

A few moments before ten o'clock, leaving his horse at the rear
of the theatre, in charge of a call-boy, he entered the building,
passing rapidly to the little hallway leading to the President's
box. Showing a card to the servant in attendance, he was allowed
to enter, closed the door noiselessly, and secured it with the
wooden bar he had made ready, without disturbing any of the
occupants of the box, between whom and himself yet remained the
partition and the door through which he had bored the hole.

No one, not even the actor who uttered them, could ever remember
the last words of the piece that were spoken that night--the last
that Abraham Lincoln heard upon earth; for the tragedy in the box
turned play and players alike to the most unsubstantial of
phantoms. For weeks hate and brandy had kept Booth's brain in a
morbid state. He seemed to himself to be taking part in a great
play. Holding a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, he
opened the box door, put the pistol to the President's head, and
fired. Major Rathbone sprang to grapple with him, and received a
savage knife wound in the arm. Then, rushing forward, Booth
placed his hand on the railing of the box and vaulted to the
stage. It was a high leap, but nothing to such a trained athlete.
He would have got safely away, had not his spur caught in the
flag that draped the front of the box. He fell, the torn flag
trailing on his spur; but though the fall had broken his leg, he
rose instantly brandishing his knife and shouting, "Sic Semper
Tyrannis!" fled rapidly across the stage and out of sight. Major
Rathbone shouted, "Stop him!" The cry, "He has shot the
President!" rang through the theatre, and from the audience,
stupid at first with surprise, and wild afterward with excitement
and horror, men jumped upon the stage in pursuit of the assassin.
But he ran through the familiar passages, leaped upon his horse,
rewarding with a kick and a curse the boy who held him, and
escaped into the night.

The President scarcely moved. His head drooped forward slightly,
his eyes closed. Major Rathbone, not regarding his own grievous
hurt, rushed to the door to summon aid. He found it barred, and
someone on the outside beating and clamoring to get in. It was at
once seen that the President's wound was mortal. He was carried
across the street to a house opposite, and laid upon a bed. Mrs.
Lincoln followed, tenderly cared for by Miss Harris. Rathbone,
exhausted by loss of blood, fainted, and was taken home.
Messengers were sent for the cabinet, for the Surgeon-General,
for Dr. Stone the President's family physician, and for others
whose official or private relations with Mr. Lincoln gave them
the right to be there. A crowd of people rushed instinctively to
the White House, and bursting through the doors shouted the
dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay who sat together in
an upper room.

The President had been shot a few minutes after ten o'clock. The
wound would have brought instant death to most men. He was
unconscious from the first moment, but he breathed throughout the
night, his gaunt face scarcely paler than those of the sorrowing
men around him. At twenty-two minutes past seven in the morning
he died. Secretary Stanton broke the silence by saying, "Now he
belongs to the ages."

Booth had done his work thoroughly. His principal accomplice had
acted with equal audacity and cruelty, but with less fatal
result. Under pretext of having a package of medicine to deliver,
he forced his way to the room of the Secretary of State, who lay
ill, and attacked him, inflicting three terrible knife wounds on
his neck and cheek, wounding also the Secretary's two sons, a
servant, and a soldier nurse who tried to overpower him. Finally
breaking away, he ran downstairs, reached the door unhurt, and
springing upon his horse rode off. It was feared that neither the
Secretary nor his eldest son would live, but both in time
recovered.

Although Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as he
stood before the footlights brandishing his dagger, his swift
horse soon carried him beyond any hap-hazard pursuit. He crossed
the Navy Yard bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined by one
of his fellow-conspirators. A surgeon named Mudd set Booth's leg
and sent him on his desolate way. For ten days the two men lived
the lives of hunted animals. On the night of April 25 they were
surrounded as they lay sleeping in a barn in Caroline County,
Virginia. Booth refused to surrender. The barn was fired, and
while it was burning he was shot by Boston Corbett, a sergeant of
cavalry. He lingered for about three hours in great pain, and
died at seven in the morning. The remaining conspirators were
tried by military commission. Four were hanged, including the
assailant of Secretary Seward, and the others were sentenced to
imprisonment for various lengths of time.

Upon the hearts of a people glowing with the joy of victory the
news of the President's death fell as a great shock. In the
unspeakable calamity the country lost sight of the great national
successes of the past week; and thus it came to pass that there
was never any organized celebration in the North over the
downfall of the rebellion. It was unquestionably best that it
should be so. Lincoln himself would not have had it otherwise,
for he hated the arrogance of triumph. As it was, the South could
take no offense at a grief so genuine; and the people of that
section even shared, to a certain extent, in the mourning for one
who, in their inmost hearts, they knew to have wished them well.

Within an hour after Mr. Lincoln's body was taken to the White
House the town was shrouded in black. Not only the public
buildings, the shops, and the better class of dwellings were
draped in funeral decorations; still more touching proof of
affection was shown in the poorest class of homes, where laboring
men of both colors found means in their poverty to afford some
scanty bit of mourning. The interest and veneration of the people
still centered at the White House, where, under a tall catafalque
in the East Room the late chief lay in the majesty of death,
rather than in the modest tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, where
the new President had his lodgings, and where the Chief Justice
administered the oath of office to him at eleven o'clock on the
morning of April 15.

It was determined that the funeral ceremonies in Washington
should be held on Wednesday, April 19, and all the churches
throughout the country were invited to join at the same time in
appropriate observances. The ceremonies in the East Room were
simple and brief, while all the pomp and circumstance that the
government could command were employed to give a fitting escort
from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol, where the body of the
President lay in state. The procession moved to the booming of
minute guns, and the tolling of all the bells in Washington,
Georgetown and Alexandria; while, to associate the pomp of the
day with the greatest work of Lincoln's life, a detachment of
colored troops marched at the head of the line.

When it was announced that he was to be buried at Springfield
every town and city on the way begged that the train might halt
within its limits, to give its people opportunity of showing
their grief and reverence. It was finally arranged that the
funeral cortege should follow substantially the same route over
which Lincoln had come in 1861 to take possession of the office
to which he added a new dignity and value for all time. On April
21, accompanied by a guard of honor, and in a train decked with
somber trappings, the journey was begun. At Baltimore, through
which, four years before, it was a question whether the
President-elect could pass with safety to his life, the coffin
was taken with reverent care to the great dome of the Exchange,
where, surrounded with evergreens and lilies, it lay for several
hours, the people passing by in mournful throngs. The same
demonstration was repeated, gaining constantly in depth of
feeling and solemn splendor of display in every city through
which the procession passed. In New York came General Scott, pale
and feeble, but resolute, to pay his tribute of respect to his
departed friend and commander.

Springfield was reached on the morning of May 3. The body lay in
state in the Capitol, which was richly draped from roof to
basement in black velvet and silver fringe, while within it was a
bower of bloom and fragrance. For twenty-four hours an unbroken
stream of people passed through, bidding their friend and
neighbor welcome home and farewell. At ten o'clock on the morning
of May 4 the coffin lid was closed, and vast procession moved out
to Oak Ridge, where the town had set apart a lovely spot for his
grave. Here the dead President was committed to the soil of the
State which had so loved and honored him. The ceremonies at the
grave were simple and touching. Bishop Simpson delivered a
pathetic oration, prayers were offered, and hymns were sung, but
the weightiest and most eloquent words uttered anywhere that day
were those of the Second Inaugural, which the Committee had
wisely ordained to be read over his grave, as centuries before,
the friends of the painter Raphael chose the incomparable canvas
of "The Transfiguration" to be the chief ornament of his funeral.


Though President Lincoln lived to see the real end of the war,
various bodies of Confederate troops continued to hold out for
some time longer. General Johnston faced Sherman's army in the
Carolinas until April 26, while General E. Kirby Smith, west of
the Mississippi River, did not surrender until May 26.

As rapidly as possible Union volunteer regiments were disbanded,
and soon the mighty host of 1,000,000 men was reduced to a peace
footing of only 25,000. Before the great army melted away into
the greater body of citizens its soldiers enjoyed one final
triumph--a march through the capital of the nation, undisturbed
by death or danger, under the eyes of their highest commanders
and the representatives of the people whose country they had
saved. Those who witnessed the solemn yet joyous pageant will
never forget it; and pray that their children may never see its
like. For two days this formidable host marched the long stretch
of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the shadow of the Capitol
and filling the wide street as far as Georgetown, its serried
ranks moving with the easy yet rapid pace of veterans in cadence
step. As a mere spectacle this march of the mightiest host the
continent has ever seen was grand and imposing, but it was not as
a spectacle alone that it affected the beholder. It was no
holiday parade. It was an army of citizens on their way home
after a long and terrible war. Their clothes were worn, and
pierced with bullets, their banners had been torn with shot and
shell, and lashed in the winds of many battles. The very drums
and fifes had called out the troops to night alarms, and sounded
the onset on historic fields. The whole country claimed these
heroes as part of themselves. They were not soldiers by
profession or from love of fighting; they had become soldiers
only to save their country's life. Now, done with war, they were
going joyously and peaceably back to their homes to take up the
tasks they had willingly laid down in the hour of their country's
need.

Friends loaded them with flowers as they swung down the Avenue--
both men and officers, until some were fairly hidden under their
fragrant burden. Grotesque figures were not absent, as Sherman's
legions passed with their "bummers" and their regimental pets.
But with all the shouting and the joy there was, in the minds of
all who saw it, one sad and ever-recurring thought--the memory of
the men who were absent, and who had, nevertheless, so richly
earned the right to be there. The soldiers in their shrunken
companies thought of the brave comrades who had fallen by the
way; and through the whole vast army there was passionate
unavailing regret for their wise, gentle and powerful friend
Abraham Lincoln, gone forever from the big white house by the
Avenue--who had called the great host into being, directed the
course of the nation during the four years that they had been
battling for its life, and to whom, more than to any other, this
crowning peaceful pageant would have been full of deep and happy
meaning.

Why was this man so loved that his death caused a whole nation to
forget its triumph, and turned its gladness into mourning? Why
has his fame grown with the passing years until now scarcely a
speech is made or a newspaper printed that does not have within
it somewhere a mention of his name or some phrase or sentence
that fell from his lips? Let us see if we can, what it was that
made Abraham Lincoln the man that he became.

A child born to an inheritance of want; a boy growing into a
narrow world of ignorance; a youth taking up the burden of coarse
and heavy labor; a man entering on the doubtful struggle of a
local backwoods career--these were the beginnings of Abraham
Lincoln if we look at them only in the hard practical spirit
which takes for its motto that "Nothing succeeds but success. If
we adopt a more generous as well as a truer view, then we see
that it was the brave hopeful spirit, the strong active mind, and
the great law of moral growth that accepts the good and rejects
the bad, which Nature gave this obscure child, that carried him
to the service of mankind and the admiration of the centuries as
certainly as the acorn grows to be the oak.

Even his privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest
trait of the pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and
was developed by the hardships of his lot to the mighty power
needed to guide our country through the struggle of the Civil
War.

The sense of equality was his also, for he grew from childhood to
manhood in a state of society where there were neither rich to
envy nor poor to despise, and where the gifts and hardships of
the forest were distributed without favor to each and all alike.
In the forest he learned charity, sympathy, helpfulness--in a
word neighborliness--for in that far-off frontier life all the
wealth of India, had a man possessed it, could not have bought
relief from danger or help in time of need, and neighborliness
became of prime importance. Constant opportunity was found there
to practice the virtue which Christ declared to be next to the
love of God--to love one's neighbor as oneself.

In such settlements, far removed from courts and jails, men were
brought face to face with questions of natural right. The
pioneers not only understood the American doctrine of
self-government--they lived it. It was this understanding, this
feeling, which taught Lincoln to write: "When the white man
governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs
himself and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government that is despotism;" and also to give utterance
to its twin truth: "He who would be no slave must consent to have
no slave."

Lincoln was born in the slave State of Kentucky. He lived there
only a short time, and we have reason to believe that wherever he
might have grown up, his very nature would have spurned the
doctrine and practice of human slavery. Yet, though he hated
slavery, he never hated the slave-holder. His feeling of pardon
and sympathy for Kentucky and the South played no unimportant
part in his dealings with grave problems of statesmanship. It is
true that he struck slavery its death blow with the hand of war,
but at the same time he offered the slaveowner golden payment
with the hand of peace.

Abraham Lincoln was not an ordinary man. He was, in truth, in the
language of the poet Lowell, a "new birth of our new soil." His
greatness did not consist in growing up on the frontier. An
ordinary man would have found on the frontier exactly what he
would have found elsewhere--a commonplace life, varying only with
the changing ideas and customs of time and place. But for the man
with extraordinary powers of mind and body--for one gifted by
Nature as Abraham Lincoln was gifted, the pioneer life with its
severe training in self-denial, patience and industry, developed
his character, and fitted him for the great duties of his after
life as no other training could have done.

His advancement in the astonishing career that carried him from
obscurity to world-wide fame--from postmaster of New Salem
village to President of the United States, from captain of a
backwoods volunteer company to Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy, was neither sudden nor accidental, nor easy. He was both
ambitious and successful, but his ambition was moderate, and his
success was slow. And, because his success was slow, it never
outgrew either his judgment or his powers. Between the day when
he left his father's cabin and launched his canoe on the
headwaters of the Sangamon River to begin life on his own
account, and the day of his first inauguration, lay full thirty
years of toil, self-denial, patience; often of effort baffled, of
hope deferred; sometimes of bitter disappointment. Even with the
natural gift of great genius it required an average lifetime and
faithful unrelaxing effort, to transform the raw country
stripling into a fit ruler for this great nation.

Almost every success was balanced--sometimes overbalanced, by a
seeming failure. He went into the Black Hawk war a captain, and
through no fault of his own, came out a private. He rode to the
hostile frontier on horseback, and trudged home on foot. His
store "winked out." His surveyor's compass and chain, with which
he was earning a scanty living, were sold for debt. He was
defeated in his first attempts to be nominated for the
legislature and for Congress; defeated in his application to be
appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office; defeated for
the Senate when he had forty-five votes to begin with. by a man
who had only five votes to begin with; defeated again after his
joint debates with Douglas; defeated in the nomination for
Vice-President, when a favorable nod from half a dozen
politicians would have brought him success.

Failures? Not so. Every seeming defeat was a slow success. His
was the growth of the oak, and not of Jonah's gourd. He could not
become a master workman until he had served a tedious
apprenticeship. It was the quarter of a century of reading,
thinking, speech-making and lawmaking which fitted him to be the
chosen champion of freedom in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates
of 1858. It was the great moral victory won in those debates
(although the senatorship went to Douglas) added to the title
"Honest Old Abe," won by truth and manhood among his neighbors
during a whole lifetime, that led the people of the United States
to trust him with the duties and powers of President.

And when, at last, after thirty years of endeavor, success had
beaten down defeat, when Lincoln had been nominated, elected and
inaugurated, came the crowning trial of his faith and constancy.
When the people, by free and lawful choice, had placed honor and
power in his hands, when his name could convene Congress, approve
laws, cause ships to sail and armies to move, there suddenly came
upon the government and the nation a fatal paralysis. Honor
seemed to dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then after all not
to be President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution only a
bit of waste paper? Was the Union gone?

The outlook was indeed grave. There was treason in Congress,
treason in the Supreme Court, treason in the army and navy.
Confusion and discord were everywhere. To use Mr. Lincoln's
forcible figure of speech, sinners were calling the righteous to
repentance. Finally the flag, insulted and fired upon, trailed in
surrender at Sumter; and then came the humiliation of the riot at
Baltimore, and the President for a few days practically a
prisoner in the capital of the nation.

But his apprenticeship had been served, and there was to be no
more failure. With faith and justice and generosity he conducted
for four long years a war whose frontiers stretched from the
Potomac to the Rio Grande; whose soldiers numbered a million men
on each side. The labor, the thought, the responsibility, the
strain of mind and anguish of soul that he gave to this great
task, who can measure? "Here was place for no holiday magistrate,
no fair weather sailor," as Emerson justly said of him. "The new
pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years-- four
years of battle days--his endurance, his fertility of resources,
his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting." "By
his courage, his justice, his even temper, his humanity, he stood
a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch."

What but a lifetime's schooling in disappointment, what but the
pioneer's self-reliance and freedom from prejudice, what but the
clear mind, quick to see natural right and unswerving in its
purpose to follow it; what but the steady self-control, the
unwarped sympathy, the unbounded charity of this man with spirit
so humble and soul so great, could have carried him through the
labors he wrought to the victory he attained?

With truth it could be written, "His heart was as great as the
world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a
wrong." So, "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right as God gave him to see the right" he lived
and died. We who have never seen him yet feel daily the influence
of his kindly life, and cherish among our most precious
possessions the heritage of his example.