On leaving his home in Springfield for Washington in 1861, he said: My friends, No one... can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century; here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. . . . A duty devolves upon me which is perhaps greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. . . . I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him, and ou the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support.383 An officer of the army said: The first week of my command, there were twenty-four deserters sentenced by court-martial to be shot; and the warrants for their execution were sent to the President to be signed. He refused. I went to Washington, and had an interview. I said: "Mr. President, unless these men are made an example of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many." He replied: "Mr. General, there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to the number, for I won't do it.": "384 At the dedication of a national burying-ground on the field of Gettysburg in 1863, Lincoln said: It is for us... to... here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.385 The closing words of his second inaugural address were: With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.386 On the last day of his life, while riding with Mrs. Lincoln, He spoke of his old Springfield home, and recollections of his early days, his little brown cottage, the law office, the court-room, the green bag for his briefs and law papers. "We have laid by," said he . . ., "some money, and during this term we will try and save up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois, and I will open a law-office at Springfield or Chicago, and practice law, at least do enough to help give us a livelihood.” 387 Judgments of Lincoln. Emerson wrote of Lincoln: ... A plain man of the people, . he grew according to the need. . . . If ever a man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, of slander, nor of ridicule. In four years-four years of battle-days-his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. Then by his courage, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the center of an heroic epoch.388 The Southern orator Grady thus spoke of him : From the union of these colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic Abraham Lincoln.389 STUDY ON 16. 1. Why should Lincoln's friends fear for his life during the war? 2. Why was the assassination of Lincoln a cowardly act? 3. Why should the South lament his death? 4. The North? 5. What was there noble about Abraham Lincoln? 6. What, lovable? 7. How had he obtained an education? 8. What in his life had helped to make him independent? 9. Why should men remember him above all other presidents save Washington? 10. What story shows the honesty of Lincoln? 11. His sympathy? 12. His religious nature? 13. His simplicity? 14. What was there in his history distinctively American? 15. In his character? 16. What resemblances between Washington and Lincoln? 17. What differences between them? Supplementary Reading. -F. B. Carpenter's Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. New York, 1867. J. G. Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln. Springfield, 1866. Henry J. Raymond's Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln. New York, 1865. 18. END OF THE WAR AND DISPERSION OF ARMIES. JOHNSON, President. Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! End of the War. LOWELL, in Commemoration Ode, July 21, 1865. With Lee's surrender, the war was felt by both sides to be at an end. In a few days after Lincoln's death, Johnston surrendered his own army to Sherman, and with the capture of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy fell, and the Union had been saved. Dispersion of Northern Army. Before the great army melted away into the greater body of citizens, the soldiers . . . were ordered to pass in review before General Grant and President Johnson, in front of the Executive Mansion. . . . For two whole days this formidable host, marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, . . . starting from the shadow ... of the dome of the Capitol . . . and, moving with the easy, yet rapid pace of veterans. It was not a mere holiday parade; it was an army of citizens on their way home after a long and terrible war. Their clothes were worn with toilsome marches and pierced with bullets; their banners had been torn with shot and shell and lashed in the winds of a thousand battles; the very drums and fifes that played . . . as each battalion passed the President, had called out the troops to numberless night alarms. . . . The whole country claimed these heroes as a part of themselves. . . . By the 7th of August, 641,000 troops had become citizens.390 The Dispersion of the Southern Army. Grady, in a famous speech, said: Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war? Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as . . . he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. . . . He surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, pulls the gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.. What does he find when he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless . . . his people without law.... Without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence . . . his liberated slaves. What does he do this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury, cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a gar ment, gave their hands to work.391 STUDY ON 18, AND GENERAL REVIEW OF WAR. 1. Why could not the Confederacy hold out any longer after the surreuder of Lee and Johnston? 2. How many years had it held out? 3. In what ways did the North have the advantage of the South? 4. What had the North found to admire in the South? 5. What had the South found to admire in the North? 6. What questions had the war settled? 7. What became of the armies? 19. LIST OF LEADING EVENTS IN PERIOD OF CIVIL CONFLICT, 1849-1865. A. 1849-1853. Administration of Zachary Taylor, candidate of the Millard Fillmore, Vice-President. Taylor dying in |