were. With a black man as guide Lincoln went on to the headquarters of the commanding officer, the house from which Jefferson Davis had run away. And as Lincoln went on, the crowd of the liberated blacks gathered more and more thickly about him with shouts and blessings and prayers and tears, until the tears fell from Lincoln's eyes also. However much the whites, North and South, might abuse and vilify this wonderful man, the colored people never made a mistake about him; nothing shook their faith in him.

They were right. One of the few times when Lincoln's even temper was roused well-nigh to fury was when some one proposed to him to try to win over the belligerent masters and secure peace by abandoning the freedmen. "Why, it would be an astounding breach of faith!” cried Lincoln. "If I should do it, I ought to be damned in time and eternity!" He had forced the confederates to treat the colored troops captured as prisoners of war. At first they sold them back into slavery, or else shot them.

That fourth of April he held a short reception in the room lately used by Mr. Davis, took a drive about the city, and went back that evening to City Point.

A few days later the President with Mrs.

Lincoln and several senators and friends went to Richmond once more. Neither then did he go as its conqueror, but as its President and its friend.

XLII.

THE JOY OF THE NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE.

That was a strange scene at Appomattox in Virginia, the ninth of April, 1865, when General Lee had surrendered and the great civil war was virtually over. The two armies no longer faced each other in battle array, or fought, each with a bravery which made the other respect it and feel that enemies so valiant must make worthy friends. The time for friendship had come; it was here. For confederates and Union men, officers and soldiers, were all mixed up together shaking hands, congratulating one another, no doubt, on brilliant achievements each side had performed, and glad enough to be able to talk these over instead of more fighting. But this was not all; the confederate soldiers were starving; the Union soldiers made them their guests and shared their rations with them until the government stores should come up and furnish them more

bountifully. The confederates were half clad, sometimes not even that, and the Union soldiers shared their clothing with them. And even this was not all; the confederates had been given permission to return to their homes; but they had no money to go with; and the Union soldiers loaned them money for this. Their enemies had vanished; these men, brave, vanquished, suffering and needy were their fellowcountrymen, and as such the Union soldiers treated them. And as such they have remained through all the years that have gone by since those days. Complaint, suffering, poverty, bitterness have been in plenty. But, thanks to the spirit of peace and patriotism and Christian brotherhood which God put into Lincoln's heart to inaugurate, from the very first instant that reconciliation was possible, the peace which came, as he had longed and worked for it to come, was a peace "worth the keeping in all future time."

Nothing connected with the surrender of Lee could have touched Lincoln so deeply as that brotherly spirit of the soldiers of the two armies. "With malice toward none," he had said. And he was right. The soldiers who had fought; the parents and children, the wives and sweethearts who had given their dearest a sacrifice to their country-all these knew that the South

who had fought a brave fight for what many of them had been taught was liberty, or who were also mourning their dear ones, had already suffered more than their victors could inflict. For though revenge strides side by side with anger, it is not found in the hearts of those who sorrow deeply.

There had been no compromise; the war had been fought out. The South could not lift a hand again if she would. It was time to remember that we were countrymen, and that the terrible battlefields where Union and confederate lay buried side by side proved how truly we were brothers in the valor and endurance that all men prize. Thus at the end of the war the North and the South were much better acquainted than at its beginning; and when in the poverty that fell upon the South, it became necessary for their men to work as they had never done before, they had learned from the hard-fought battles with Northern soldiers that labor does not make cowards, as some had believed in the old days.

Then, the Union at the North after the war was much closer than it had ever been before. This was partly because any great cause unites the people who love it and work in it, and because those in one place who mourned for their soldiers slain were drawn in thought and inter