The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln : Chapter 13 - The Fourthteenth of April

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter thirteen of the Boy's Life of Abraham Lincoln by
Helen Nicolay. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks dot Com. Chapter thirteen,
the fourteenth of April. Refreshed in body by his visit
to City Point, and greatly cheered by the fall of

(00:23):
Richmond and unmistakable signs that the war was over, mister
Lincoln went back to Washington intent of 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

(00:45):
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 of the morning
of aprilport Ie Team, 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.

(01:07):
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

(01:27):
it was invariably held in check by his vigorous common sense,
there was in mister Lincoln's nature a strong veane 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

(01:48):
of Antietam, Murfreysborough, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. This time it must
foretell a victory by Sherman over Johnston's army, news of
which was hourly expected. 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

(02:09):
that morning and was present, remarked with matter of fact exactness,
that Murphysboro 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

(02:31):
the most devout, the great news of the week just
ended changed his time of juditional mourning into a season
of general thanksgiving. For mister Lincoln, it was a day
of unusual and quiet happiness. His son Robert had returned
from the field with General Grant and the President's friend.
An hour with the young captain in delighted conversation over

(02:52):
the campaign. He denied himself generally to visitors, admitting only
a few friends. In the after noon, he went for
a long drive with Missus 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

(03:12):
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

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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

(03:57):
further attention. Incident knew that he was in some danger.
Madmen frequently made their way to the very door of
the Executive Office, sometimes into mister 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

(04:19):
to murder. He summed up the matter by saying that,
since he must receive both friend and strangers every day,
his life was of course within the reach of anyone
saying 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

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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 device apartment and back.

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In summer, he rode through lonely roads from the White
House to the soldier's 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

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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 important than the others, rippled in

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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 home of missus Mary E. Surat,
the mother of one of the booth was a young
man of twenty six, strikingly handsome, with an ease and

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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

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a great part of the Ottoman winter pursuing this fantastic scheme,
but the winter wore away and nothing was done. On
March four, 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.

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He afterwards said he lost an excellent chance of killing
the President that day, after the surrender of the League,
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

(07:11):
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 on the fourteenth that Booth learned that mister
Lincoln meant to go to Fort's theater that night to
see the play our American cousin. The President enjoyed the theater.

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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. Missus Lincoln
asked General and Missus 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

(07:56):
went north by an afternoon train. Missus Lyne and then
invited in their stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter
and stepstone 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

(08:19):
in acknowledgment, and the play went on again. From the
moment he learned of the President's intention, Boose's actions were
alerted energetic. He and his confederates were seen in every
part of the city. Booth was perfectly at home in
Ford's theater. He counted upon audacity to reach the small
passage behind the President's box. Once there, he guarded against

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interference by arranging a wooden bar to be fastened by
a simple mortise 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 which he might either observe the occupants or take

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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 theater 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

(09:23):
to enter, close 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 board 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

(09:44):
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 Boose'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

(10:06):
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

(10:28):
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 sick semper Tyrannus fled rapidly across the
stage and out of sight. Major Rathbone shouted stop him.

(10:49):
The cry he had shot the president rang through the
theater and from the audience, stupid at first with surprise,
and wild afterward with excitement. In horror, men jumped upon
the stage age 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

(11:14):
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

(11:36):
upon a bed. Missus Lincoln followed tenderly cared for by
Miss Harris Rathbone. Exhausted by loss of blood, fainted and
was taken home. Messengers was sent for the cabinet, for
the surgeon General, for Doctor Stone, the president's family physician,
and for others whose official or private relations with mister
Lincoln gave them the right to be there. A crowd

(11:58):
of people rushed instant actively to the White House, and,
bursting through the doors, shout at 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,

(12:19):
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

(12:39):
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

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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 peoples as he stood before the footlights brandishing

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his dagger, his swift horse soon carried him beyond any
haphazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy Yard bridge and rode
into Maryland, being joined by one of his fellow conspirators.
A surgeon named Mud set Booth's leg and sent him
on his desolate way. For ten days, the two men
lived the lies upon it animals. On the night of

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April twenty fifth, they were surrounded as they lay sleeping
in a barn in Caroline County, Virginia Booth refused the surrender,
the barn was fired, and while it was burning, he
was shot by Boston Corbett, a secretary of Cavalry. He
lingered for about three hours in great pain, and died
at seven in the morning. The remaining conspirators were tried

(14:05):
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,

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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 mess that
it should be so. Lincoln himself would not have had
it otherwise, for he hated the arrogance of triumph. As

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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 mister Lincoln's body was taken to
the White House, the town was shrouded in black. Not

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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,

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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 fifteen, it was determined that the
funeral ceremonies in Washington should be held on Wednesday, April nineteen,

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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 Capital, where the body of the President lay
in state. The procession moved to the booming of minute

(16:16):
guns and the tolling of all the bells in Washington, Georgetown,
and Alexandria, while to associate to 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

(16:38):
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 eighteen
sixty one to take possession of the office to which
he added a new dignity and value for all time.
On April twenty one, accompanied by a guard of honor

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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 the
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

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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

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and commander. Springfield was reached. On the morning of May three.
The body lay in state in the capital, 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

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and farewell. At ten o'clock on the morning of May fourth,
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

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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

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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 twenty sixth, while General E. Kirby Smith

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west of the Mississippi River did not surrender until May
twenty sixth. As rapidly as possible, Union volunteer regiments were disbanded,
and soon the mighty host of one million men was
reduced to a peace footing of only twenty five thousand,
before the great army melted away into the greater body
of citizens. Its soldiers enjoyed one final triumph, a march

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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 this solemn yet joyous pageant will never forget it,
and prayed that their children may never see its light.
For two days, this formidable host marched the long stretch

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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 Caden's deep. As a mere spectacle, this march
of the mightiest host the continent has ever seen was
grand and imposing, But it was not a spectacle alone

(20:17):
that 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 feis had called out the troops

(20:39):
to night alarms and sounded the onset on historic fields.
The 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

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back to their homes to take up the task they
had willingly laid down in the hour of their country's knee.
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

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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

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through the whole vast army there was passionate, unavailing regret
for their wise and gentle and powerful friend, Abraham Lincoln,
gone forever from the big white house by the avenue,
who had called the great host into being direct at
the course of the nation during the four years that
they had been battling for its life, And to whom,

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more than any other, this crowning, peaceful pageant would have
been full of deep and happy meeting. Why was this
man so loved that his death caused the 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

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that does not have within it somewhere a mention of
his name, or some phraser 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

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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

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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

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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

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of society where they were neither rich to envy nor
poor to despise, and were the gifts and hardship ships
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

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could not have brought 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 these settlements, far removed

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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 in. It
was this understanding, this feeling, which taught Lincoln to write,
when the white man governs himself, that is self government.

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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

(25:19):
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

(25:40):
problems of statemanship. It is true that he struck slavery
its death blow with the hand of war, but at
the same time he offered the slave owner 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.

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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,

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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 worldwide fame, from postmaster of

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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

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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,

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of hope, deferred, sometimes of bitter disappointment. Even with a
natural gift a 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 his seeming failure. He

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went into the Blackhawk War a captain, and through no
fall 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, was sold for debt.
He was defeated in his first attempts to be nominated

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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

(28:39):
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

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of a century of reading, thinking, speech making, and law
making which fitted him to be the chosen champion of
freedom in the great Lincoln Douglas Debates of eighteen fifty eight.
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 in manhood among his

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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

(29:45):
lawful choice, had placed honor and power in his hands.
When his name could convene, congress approved laws caused ships
to sail, in armies to move. There suddenly came upon
the government and the nation of faithful paralysis. Honour seemed
to dwindle, and power to vanish. Was he then, after all,
not to be president? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution

(30:10):
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 mister Lincoln's forcible
figure OF's speech. Sinners were calling the righteous to repentance. Finally,

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the flag insulted and fired upon, trailed, and 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.

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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 a soul that he

(31:15):
gave to this great task. Who can measure here was
placed 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,

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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 center of a heroic epoch.
What but a lifetime schooling and disappointment. What but the
pioneer's self reliance and freedom from prejudice, What but the

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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
spirits 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

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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

(32:42):
cherish among our most precious possessions the heritage of his example.
This is the end of the Boy's Life of Abraham
Lincoln by Helen Nicolay, recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks
dot Com.