 CHAPTER VII. THE WAR War began in Virginia. West Virginia was free, East Virginia slave-holding. The state was the natural meeting place for the two armies. On the 21st July they met at Bull Run. The engagement could hardly be called a battle. On neither side was there any order or discipline. More than once during the day the southern armies seemed to be beaten, but it rallied and the Federalists, as the Union soldiers were called, broke into a disgraceful retreat which became an awful panic. The fugitives poured into Washington, haggard and dust-stained. Everything seemed to be lost. Lincoln did not go to bed all night. He paced up and down in his room, expecting that the victorious Confederate army would march upon Washington and the war be at an end. It did not come. The opportunity was lost. A battle had been gained, that was all. The moral effect of the Battle of Bull Run was very great indeed. The south thought the war was over. The north saw that it had only begun. At first the Confederates seemed to have great advantages. The army was the one profession for a southern gentleman. Probably all their young men were trained at the Military Academy at West Point, and a great many of the officers of the United States army had been Southerners. These men now left the Union army and gave their services to the Confederates. Among them was General Robert Lee, who became General-in-Chief of the Confederate army. Lincoln's difficulties were greatly increased by the fact that so many officers and men went over to the Confederates. At the beginning the south had a larger and better trained army in the field, and at first there were plenty of volunteers. But after Bull Run, she thought the war was finished, and events proved that, in a long war, the north must win by reason of her greater staying-power. The south was as enthusiastic as the north, and at the beginning better prepared, but not equal in resources of any sort. The south was entirely dependent on agriculture. All the necessaries of life came from the north and from Europe. Whereas the south had to import all her ammunition, the north had powder magazines of her own and a people of mechanics. And the Confederacy was soon defined that men are useless without arms. Great sufferings were endured, wonderful inventions and patience was shown. On both sides there was great heroism. But in the end the resources of the north decided the day. Lincoln threw all his energy into the task of getting ready an army, and in a short time the northern soldier was as well trained and equipped as the southern. The battle of Bull Run roused the north. Quickened by shame the people were ready to fight to the bitter end. For the next two years, however, they were disheartened by continual disaster. Army after army was destroyed, position after position lost, gloom descended on the nation. In the dark times of defeat men turned upon Lincoln and blamed him. His position was difficult indeed. As head of the state he was also commander of the army, but he had to entrust the actual management of the campaigns to others. He followed and understood their tactics, but was too wise to try to direct their movements. Only occasionally did he offer advice, wise advice, which his generals were not always wise enough to accept. At first the generals were not men of great ability. McClellan, the commander, drilled his army in a wonderful way, but never used it to any effect. In the Virginian campaign of 1861 and 1862 he threw away numberless opportunities. His place was taken by Burnside at the end of 1862, but not until the rise of Ulysses S. Grant did Lincoln discover a really great commander. The generals quarreled with one another and all were ready to complain of the president. Lincoln's difficulties were increased by the fact that many people, when they found that the North was not going to conquer immediately, said that the war was a mistake. The South ought to be allowed to go if it wanted to. Lincoln did not think it right to let the South go, and because to keep it was proving difficult was never to him a reason for ceasing to do what he saw to be right. The newspapers abused Lincoln because the war, instead of being finished in three months, seemed likely to last for years. For long his own cabinet was hardly loyal to him. Each member thought he could manage affairs better himself. Seward, who was Chief Secretary, thought Lincoln stupid and was anxious to arrange everything, but as experience of his chief taught him he became Lincoln's devoted admirer. Chase, the treasurer, plotted against him. Stanton, the war secretary, openly declared that, quote, things would go all right but for the imbecile at the head, unquote. Stanton had no sense of humor and an ungovernable temper. He did not understand Lincoln at all for a long time. His jokes puzzled and annoyed him, and he used to jump up and down with rage. He did not see that to a man of a deep melancholy nature like Lincoln, a dreamer and something of a poet, some outlet, some way of escaping from himself was necessary. Lincoln was marvelously patient with Stanton and won his deep affection. The cabinet might criticize, but Lincoln's firm will dominated them all. The policy of the government was the President's policy. No quality is so hard to appreciate until it succeeds as patience, and for two years Lincoln was patient and few understood. England and France were inclined to recognize the Confederacy. The English point of view was not one which reflected any glory on the nation. Lord Palmerston said, We do not like slavery, but we want cotton. And a poem in punch expressed the general point of view against which only a few Englishmen protested. Though with the north we sympathize it must not be forgotten that with the south we've stronger ties which are composed of cotton, or of our imports mount unto a sum of many figures, and where would be our calico but for the toil of niggers? France agreed with England. Under such circumstances there was a great danger that, unless the north proved itself able to cope with the rebellion, England or France might set help to the Confederates. For two years the north did not prove this. For two years it seemed, except to the very far seeing, almost certain that the south would win. The northern plan of campaign was to attack and close round the Confederacy. To do this it was necessary to cross the Potomac River and clear away the southern armies that blockaded it. The Potomac was the center of operations, while fighting went on constantly in Virginia and Missouri. Everything went against the north. On the 9th of August a desperate encounter took place at Wilson's Creek at which the Union Army lost nearly two thousand men, including prisoners, and large supplies of arms and ammunition. In September the Confederates won a victory at Lexington, and in October the Federal troops were defeated at Ball's Bluff. Lincoln's plan was gradually to shut the south in, driving it behind its own boundaries by means of the armies invading from north and west and blockading the ports from the sea. So far the first half of the plan was not successful, but the Civil War was won to a very large extent by the northern navy. By blockading the southern ports it prevented the south from getting supplies from Europe, and since the south depended for supplies of every sort from abroad it was in a desperate position when cut off from the sea. More fortunate on sea than on land Lincoln found in David Ferrigate an admiral, almost as great as Nelson. Ferrigate was a southerner by birth, but he had served for fifty years in the United States Navy and refused to desert it now. Lincoln, to him, meant devotion not to the pride but to the best interests of his country, and he thought that north and south could only attain their best interests when united. In April the northern army suffered a severe defeat on land at the Battle of Shiloh, the most disastrous yet experienced, but the news was balanced by the tidings of Ferrigate's capture of New Orleans. The fighting in the harbor was tremendous. Don't flinch from that fire, boys, cried the admiral. There is a hotter fire for those who don't do their duty. Inspired by his example his men did not flinch, and the town was captured. The north needed all the encouragement such naval victory could give it, for things were going very badly. Stonewall Jackson, the southern commander, carried everything before him in Virginia. Washington was in danger. There was a panic in the capital. Jackson, however, did not want to attack Washington. His plan was to compel McClellan, who was slowly moving south to attack the Confederate capital at Richmond, to turn north again. There was fighting all through June. Jackson had been joined by Lee, the Confederate commander-in-chief. On the first of July a battle was fought at Malvern Hill. Lee and Jackson were defeated. McClellan ought now to have pushed on to Richmond, the Confederate capital, instead of which, with extraordinary stupidity, he continued to retreat. In August the second battle of Bull Run resulted in another victory for the south. Both sides lost an extraordinary number of men. The panic in Washington grew more acute when, early in September, Lee prepared to invade Maryland. McClellan again delayed when he ought to have forced an engagement. The people of Maryland received the southern army very coldly. On the seventeenth the armies met at Antietam. The battle was not really decisive. The losses of the north were as great as those of the south, but it put an end to their invasion. Lee recrossed the Potomac River to Virginia. McClellan again wasted time. He waited six weeks before pursuing Lee. In November McClellan was at last superseded. Events had gradually led Lincoln to see the necessity of taking one great step, the freeing of the slaves. The question of slavery was at the bottom of the war. It was the great division between north and south. Two reasons led Lincoln to take this step now. One was that he knew the Negroes when free would fight, for the most part for the north, and the north needed every help she could find. The other was the great difficulty of knowing what to do with the Negro slaves which fell into the hands of the conquerors of any part of southern territory. On the twenty-second of September, very soon after the news of the Battle of Antietam and Lee's retreat from Maryland had arrived, Lincoln called a meeting of his cabinet. None of them knew why he had summoned them. They found the president reading Artemis Ward. One story amused him so much that he read it aloud. They all laughed a great deal, except Stanton, who could never see a joke, and did not understand that Lincoln must have broken down altogether under the fearful strain of all he had to bear if he had not been able sometimes to forget himself. When he had finished reading the story, the president's face grew grave again. He drew from his pocket a large sheet of fool-scap, covered with his straight, regular writing, and reddit to the cabinet. It was the Emancipation Proclamation which declared that, after January 1st of the coming year, all slaves were to be free. That to government would pay some compensation to loyal owners. No one dared oppose Lincoln when his mind was made up. His reason for introducing Emancipation now was that he thought it would help the cause of union, and that cause was to him sacred beyond everything. As long as I am president, he said later, this war shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the union, but no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the Emancipation Policy. His first object in everything was to hold the American nation together as one whole, but at the same time he detested slavery as much as any man. Quote, if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. End of quote. An opportunity had now come when to strike a blow at slavery was to assist the union cause. By freeing the blacks, Lincoln provided the North with a new resource, at the time when the South had nowhere to turn for fresh resources. By declaring the abolition of slavery an unchangeable part of the union, which the South must accept before peace could be made, he won the sympathy of Europe for the North, and prevented it from sending help to the South at a time when such help would have changed the balance of affairs. Up till now both England and France had shown themselves ready to sympathize with the South. English newspapers abused Lincoln and the North in the most violent language. In the English stockyards vessels had been built and equipped which were used by the South as privateers to do great damage to the Northern Navy. One of these was the famous Alabama. But when the war was a war against slavery, English feeling was all on the side of the North. The United States was made a really free country. Slavery, which had made such a name a mockery, was wiped off the statute book. Lincoln showed rare judgment and courage in doing what he did at this time. At first a large section in the North was opposed to emancipation, but gradually all united in admiring the wisdom of Lincoln's action. The South knew that if they were conquered slavery was gone, and however black things might look, Lincoln and the North were not going to give in till they did conquer. They had set their teeth. They were going to fight to the bitter end. The Klellan had been dismissed, but his successes were not much more successful. In December Burnside threw away thousands of lives in an attempt to scale Mary's heights. Men were shot down in heaps by the enemy, and the army fell into a panic. A battle against overwhelming odds ended in a complete defeat. Lincoln's heart bled for the loss of so many splendid citizens. There was deep indignation in Washington. Much of it vented against the President. The darkest moment of the war came when, in May, the news of the Battle of Chancellorsville reached the government. Hooker met Jackson. Long and fearfully bloody battle followed. There were dreadful losses on both sides. Another valuable opportunity of pressing South was lost. In the battle Stonewall Jackson was killed, shot accidentally by his own men. A disastrous loss to the southern side, though the North was defeated. All hope seemed gone from the North. Up till now the North had lost more than the South. It had suffered most of all from a lack of really able commanders. Now, however, Lincoln discovered a really great general in Ulysses S. Grant, and from this time on the fortune of the war began to change. The North was richer. It had more men, money, and resources to draw on. In a long struggle the South was bound to be worn out. Grant saw this and planned accordingly. Grant had distinguished himself early in the war by the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Mississippi in February 1862. In the following April he had driven the Confederates back to Corinth after one of the most expensive battles of the war. Grant was a man of the most reckless personal courage. As a general his great fault was that he exposed his men needlessly. Complaints were early made of him to Lincoln, but Lincoln's wonderful eye discerned a great soldier in Grant. Quote, I can't spare that man. He fights. End of quote. Later he was told that Grant drank. Quote, Pray tell me what brand of whiskey he takes that I may send a barrel to each of my other generals. End of quote. Lincoln and Grant always understood each other. Each was a man of intense strength of character given to do things rather than talking of them. Grant had not Lincoln's tenderness of heart or the beauty of his pure and generous nature, but he had his power of concentrating his whole mind upon the task in hand. He knew Lincoln's secret. Work, work is the main thing. The battle of Chaslersville May 1863 was for the north the darkest moment of the war. Things were never so dark again. Only Lincoln's supreme faith and courage could have risen from such a series of defeats unshaken. The newspapers were full of abuse of the moment. Plots were on foot against him to prevent his re-election when the time came. In February he had lost his son Willie after a long and painful illness, but he never quailed. At his patience was at last to be rewarded. After Chaslersville his unflinching belief in the justice of his course, in spite of opposition and discontent, was to be rewarded. He was to look, if only for a moment, upon an America not only free, but united. Chapter 8 of the story of Abraham Lincoln. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Lieder. The story of Abraham Lincoln by Mary A. Hamilton. Chapter 8. Victory. After Chaslersville the South thought that all was won, and a movement was set on foot to attack Washington. Lee marched north with an army that, though only half-fed, was full of enthusiasm, and on July 1 took up his position at Gettysburg, where he was faced by the Federal Army under General Mead. The battle lasted three days, and the slaughter was terrific. In spite of the desperate determination of the Confederates the day ended in a victory for the Union. Lee was driven back and forced to retreat into Virginia. The invasion was in an end. The victory, though brilliant, was not followed up, perhaps because of the heavy losses of the Union Army. But it was the turning point of the war. Washington was never again in such danger. The Confederates had lost the one great opportunity to attack since Bull Run. Deep national thankfulness was felt at this, the first great victory for the North. The battlefield was only a few miles from the capital, and many of the citizens and the most prominent men of the town assembled to perform a service for the dead who had fallen there. Lincoln was called upon to speak. He had not prepared anything, but the short speech which he gave made a deep impression upon all who heard it, and puts into very noble words the thoughts that were always present to his mind. Four score and seven years ago. Our fathers brought forth a new nation upon this continent, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We meet to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place of those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or to tract. The world will take little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion for the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. In words like these Lincoln inspired the people of the North to see the greatness of the cause for which they were fighting. They were fighting for liberty, for a free government of free men, for a united America that might be to the world a pattern of such a free government. If the South one, if America were a house divided forever against itself, one half would have slavery. If the North one, and America were a whole again, slavery was gone. The Declaration of Independence proclaiming the equal rights of all men to life and liberty would be for the first time fully realized. And encouragement came at last. On the Fourth of July, on Independence Day, Grant telegraphed to Lincoln the news of the capture of Vicksburg. In the beginning of May Grant had defeated Pemberton, the Confederate general, and shut him up in the town with his great army. After an unsuccessful assault in the end of May he sat down patiently before the town, prepared to wear out its resistance. After great sufferings the famishing garrisons surrendered. Pemberton and thirty thousand men, whom the South could but ill spare, were prisoners of war. Hundreds of cannon and thousands of muskets fell into the victor's hands. Vicksburg was a position of importance, the key to the Mississippi. Lincoln could now say, The Father of Waters again goes unvext to the sea. The joy in the North over these two victories was intense. The drooping spirits began to rise again, and as things went better, men turned with new confidence to the patient man whose courage had never failed him. With renewed spirit the North set itself to the great task before it. Lincoln now had men who were able to carry out great designs. By the end of 1863 things looked hopeful. The army had a nucleus of veterans who had received the best possible training, and a set of generals whose positions had been won not by political influence, but by hard work. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan were men of ability, experience, and power. The plan of campaign for 1864, drawn up under Lincoln's advice by Grant and Sherman, was masterly. Carried out magnificently it led to the complete triumph of the North. It was the complete development of Lincoln's earlier plans. Grant, with the army of the West, was to face Lee in Virginia and drive him south, finally to capture Richmond, the Confederate headquarters, and force Lee to yield. Sherman, marching south and east, was to carry the war into the heart of the Confederacy, to follow General Johnson, push him to the sea, and capture him. We intend, said Sherman, to fight Joseph Johnson till he is satisfied. Then Sherman, marching north, was to cooperate with Grant by cutting off Lee's retreat. Meantime Sheridan was to deal with General Early in the Shenandoah Valley, west and south of Washington. By May 1864 Grant crossed the Potomac and entered the Wild District, full of hills and woods and undergrowth known as the Wilderness, where the Union armies had suffered so many defeats. Grant saw that the only thing was to wear the Southern army out by hard fighting, and he fought hard all summer. He lost some thirty thousand men in the Wilderness. His policy was to bear so continuously on the enemy that they, having fewer men and less possibility of recruiting, must be worn out. Slowly, with an immense loss of life on both sides, Grant forced Lee south. Sherman, meantime, was fighting his way to Georgia. His task was as difficult as Grant's. The country was wild and well adapted for concealing the enemy. It was impossible for him to communicate with the rest of the army. Through an expedition into Alabama, Sherman started his March to the Sea. Johnson disputed every inch of the way. There was incessant skirmishing, but Sherman advanced step by step. While Sherman and Grant were thus slowly wearing down the resistance of the enemy, the Unionists were once more encouraged by a brilliant naval success. In August Farragut came victorious out of a terrific fight in Mobile Bay. Entering the harbor in spite of the line of minds, he plucked victory out of the very jaws of defeat. Sherman was now besieging Atlanta, which he captured on September 1. About the same date Sheridan defeated early at Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley. These successes decided the presidential election. Lincoln had been unanimously nominated as the Republican candidate. Not, as he said, because they have decided I am the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is not wise to swab horses while crossing a river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swab. Against him, the Democratic Party, whose main principle was opposition to the war, supported ex-General McClellan, declaring the war is a failure. The Democrats found their main supporters among those, and they were fairly numerous, who disliked Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln made no efforts to secure his reelection. He had been before the nation as president for four years. His policy was tried, his opinions known. Even McClellan did not dare to propose to abandon the Union. On that point the North was now united, and that being so, the successes of September made Lincoln's reelection practically certain. Out of two hundred and thirty-three electoral votes, Lincoln received two hundred and twelve. He had a majority in every free state save one. The election was a complete triumph for the President. The noble words of the address which he delivered on taking up his duties for a second time marked the spirit in which he celebrated that triumph. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, that strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his wharfun, to do all that may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. On November sixteen Sherman marched on by Atlanta. By December he had reached Savannah and began to bombard the city. It surrendered on December twenty-one, and Sherman wrote to Lincoln, I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah. Leaving Savannah early in the New Year, eighteen sixty-five, the army marched ravaging through South Carolina. Columbia was burned and Charleston captured. By March Sherman was in North Carolina and in communication with Grant. The net was ready to be drawn round the Confederate Army. Grant, meantime, was bearing steadily on. The losses of the Union armies were enormous, and made the President's tender heart bleed. Grant began to be hampered by the inferior quality of his troops, and during the summer months matters seemed to be going ill with the North. In September, however, Sheridan inflicted a series of defeats upon early in the Shenandoah Valley, and on October eighteen vanquished him decisively at Cedar Creek. The remaining Confederate Army, under Hood, was defeated at Nashville in the West, and now Lees was the only army in the field. The Confederacy was surrounded by a band of fire. The sea was in the hands of the Union, the Mississippi shut off any help from the coast. Sherman had harried Georgia and Carolina destroying their supplies. Sheridan had raided Virginia. Grant was at the gates of Richmond. Through the whole summer of 1864 and the winter of 1865, Grant besieged Richmond. There were indecisive engagements, but the armies did no more than feel each other. With the spring, however, Grant took the offensive again. On March thirty-one, Sheridan gained a brilliant victory at Five Forks, and this enabled Grant to break Lees' lines. On April three, the stars and stripes floated over Richmond. On April nine, Lees and his army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. The war was at an end. Lincoln had been with Grant's army during the closing days of March. He entered Richmond on April three. There the Negroes saluted him as their liberator, kneeling on the ground before him and clasping his knees. May the Lord breast and keep you, Massa President Lincoln. CHAPTER IX OF THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCAN This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Leader. THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCAN By Mary A. Hamilton CHAPTER IX O Captain, my Captain. No one had suffered more deeply during the war than the President. His purpose never faltered. Even at the moment when success seemed farthest distant, his resolve stood firm. Cost what it might, the union must be preserved. When almost every other man despaired of the northern cause, Lincoln's invincible faith in the right and justice of their purpose sustained his country. To attain that purpose, thousands of lives had to be sacrificed. But the purpose was worth the loss of thousands of lives. Yet Lincoln's heart bled for every one of them. All day long he received visits from distracted relations, mothers and wives asking him to pardon their sons or husbands in prison as deserters or captured from the enemy, asking for tidings of their beloved ones at the front. His generals complained that he undermined the discipline of the army by pardoning what he called his leg cases—cases where men had run away before the enemy. If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away with him? said Lincoln. The story of William Scott is a case which shows the way in which Lincoln used to act. William Scott was a young boy from a northern farm who, after marching for forty-eight hours without sleep, offered to stand on guard duty for a sick comrade. Worn out he fell asleep and was condemned to be shot for being asleep on duty in the face of the enemy. Lincoln made it his custom to visit all the divisions of his army in turns and, as it happened, two days before the execution he was with the division in which Scott was and heard of the case. He went to see the boy and talk to him about him and his mother. As he was leaving the prison-tent he put hands on the lads' shoulders and said, "'My boy, you are not going to be shot to-morrow. I am going to trust you and send you back to your regiment. But I have been pushed to a great deal of trouble on your account. I have come here from Washington where I had a great deal to do. Now what I want to know is how are you going to pay my bill?' Willie did not know what to say. Perhaps he could get his friends to help him, he said at last. "'No,' said Lincoln, friends cannot pay it. Only one man in the world can pay it, and that is William Scott. If from this day on William Scott does his duty, my bill is paid.' William Scott never forgot these words. Just before his death in one of the later battles of the war he asked his comrades to tell President Lincoln that he had never forgotten what he had said. All the time people who did not know the President threw on his shoulders all the blame for the long continuance of the war. Until the last year of the war the newspapers abused him continually. The horrible loss of life in Grant's last campaign was laid to his charge. Only those who came to the President to ask his help in their own suffering understood what his suffering was. He suffered with each of them. He suffered with the South as well as the North. After antedom he had said, "'I shall not live to see the end. This war is killing me.'" The crushing burden he had borne so long and patiently had bent even his strong shoulders. But it had not been borne in vain. The time seemed at last to have come when all America would understand how much they owed to the patient endurance of the President. And there was work still to be done which needed all his wisdom. The South was conquered. It had to be made one with the North. The pride of the conquerors had to be curbed. The bitterness of the conquered softened. Lincoln returned from Richmond to Washington. In his heart the profound resolve to bind up the nation's wounds as he, at only he, could do it. April 14 was Good Friday, in a day of deep thankfulness in the North. In the morning Lincoln held a cabinet meeting at which General Grant was present. The question of reconstruction, of making one whole out of the divided halves was discussed. Some of the cabinet were anxious to wreak vengeance on the South, to execute the leaders of the rebellion. Such was not Lincoln's view. Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union. His noble patriotism could still say to the South, We are not enemies but friends. His life was now even more precious to the South than to the North. After the cabinet meeting Lincoln spent some time in talking with his son Robert, who had returned from the field with General Grant, under whom he had served as a captain. In the afternoon he went for a drive with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood was calm and happy. For the first time for four years he could look forward peacefully to the future and to the great tasks still before him. In the evening he went to the theatre with his wife and two young friends. The play was Our American Cousin. The President was fond of the theatre. It was one of his few recreations. His appearance on this night was something of a public ceremony. Therefore, although he was tired when evening came, he went because he knew that many people would be disappointed if he did not. The President had a box to the left of the stage. Suddenly, about the middle of the last act, a man appeared at the back of the box, a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other, put the pistol to the President's head and fired. Then wounding Major Rathbone, the only other man in the box, with his knife, he vaulted on to the stage. As he leapt, his spur caught the flag hanging from the box and he fell, breaking his leg. Nevertheless he rose instantly and brandishing his knife and crying, sick scalper tyrannous. The South is avenged, fled across the stage and out of sight. The horrified audience was thunderstruck. The President lay quite still. The bullet had passed right through his head. The wound was mortal. He was carried to a house across the street where he lay quite unconscious till the morning, surrounded by his friends, their faces as pale and haggard as his own. About seven, a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features. Stanton, the war secretary, rose from his knees by his side saying, Now he belongs to the ages. There was profound sorrow through the whole of America, sorrow that checked all rejoicings over the victory of the North. Thus, indirectly, Lincoln's death helped the reconciliation between North and South, though nothing could counterbalance the loss of his wise guidance. Washington was shrouded in black, even the poorest inhabitants showing their sorrow in their dress. The body was taken to Springfield, Illinois, to be buried, and all the towns on the way showed their deep mourning and respect. Now, and not till now, did Americans begin to understand what a man they had lost. He knew to bide his time, and can his fame abide still patient in his simple faith sublime to the wise years decide. Great captains with their guns and drums disturb our judgment for the hour, but at last silence comes. These are all gone, and, standing like a tower, our children shall behold his fame, the kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man, sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, new birth of our new soil, the first American. So James Russell Lowell wrote of Lincoln when the celebration of Independence Day in the year of his death revived the vivid sense of loss. The passage of years have only made clear how great he was. Perfectly simple, perfectly sincere, he thought out for himself an ideal, and spent the whole of his life and all his strength in pursuing it. He loved America, not because it was powerful and strong, but because it had been based on a great idea, the idea of liberty. His work for America was to realize that idea. He never thought of his own personal success. He wanted to be president because he saw a great work to be done, and believed that he could do it. He never became rich. His own tastes remained entirely simple. He was said to have worn the same top hat all his life. The first thing that struck anyone about Lincoln was his extraordinary appearance. He always dressed in black, with a big black tie very often untied or in the wrong place. His clothes looked as if they had been made to fit someone else, and had never been new. His feet were enormous, so were his hands, covered on state occasions with white kid gloves. In cold weather he used to wear a large gray shawl instead of an overcoat. One day, before he was made president, some friends were discussing Lincoln and Douglas and comparing their heights. When Lincoln came into the room someone asked him, how long ought a man's legs to be? Long enough to reach from his body to the ground, said Lincoln coolly. Lincoln might look uncouth or even grotesque, but he did not look weak. He was the most striking figure wherever he went. No one who saw him often, no one who went to him in trouble, or to ask his advice, thought long of his appearance. Those who had once felt the sympathy of his wonderful, sad eyes thought of that only. Those who really knew him, knew him to be the best man they had ever met. Lincoln was often profoundly sad, and then suddenly boisterously gay. He enjoyed a joke or a funny story immensely. He often used a shock thoughtless people by telling some comic story on what they thought an unsuitable occasion. But he told it so well that, however much they might disapprove, they were generally forced to laugh. As rather a dreamer, he was fond of poetry. He knew long passages of Shakespeare by heart, especially Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III. The Bible he had known from his childhood, of burns he was very fond. Lincoln's rise to power, as even so short an account as this will have shown you, was not due to any extraordinary good fortune or any advantages at start. He taught himself all that he knew. He made himself what he was. It was his character more than anything else that made him great. His early struggles had taught him that self-reliance which enabled him to persevere in a course which he thought right in spite of opposition, disloyalty, and abuse. They taught him the toleration which made him slow to judge others, generous to praise them, little apt to expect them to understand or praise him. He stood alone. Not till he had gone did his people realize how much he had given them, how much they had lost in him. He gave them indeed the most priceless gift a patriot can give his country, the example of sincere, devoted, and unselfish service. End of Chapter 9 and End of The Story of Abraham Lincoln by Mary A. Hamilton, Recording by John Leader Bloomington, Illinois