CHAPTER XXV THE WORLD IN MOURNING O Captain! My Captain! O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. Memories of President Lincoln, Walt Whitman 1865. Leaves of Grass, page 262. IMPORTANT. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN "Don't Cry So, Mamma-You Will Break My Heart!" Returning to Mrs. Lincoln's room I found her in a new paroxysm of grief. Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and little Tad was crouched at the foot of the bed with a world of agony in his young face. I shall never forget the scene the wails of a broken heart, The President Shot at the Theatre the unearthly shrieks, the terrible Last Evening. convulsions, the wild tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul. I bathed Mrs. Lincoln's head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could. Tad's grief at his father's death was as great as the grief of his mother, but her terrible outburst awed the boy into silence. Sometimes he would throw his arms around her neck and exclaim, between his sobs: "Don't cry so, Mamma, don't cry, or you will make me cry too! You will break my heart!" Mrs. Lincoln could not bear to hear Tad cry, and when he would plead with her not to break his heart she would calm herself with a great effort and clasp her child in her arms. Behind the Scenes, Elizabeth Keckley, page 191. How Greeley Was Saved from a Brutal Attack on the Dying President I have never seen in print this story of that fearful night when Lincoln was killed. But one hears it freely repeated in conversation and I see no reason why it should not be printed now. With the news of the murder of Lincoln, there came to New York every other terrible message. The office of the (New York) Tribune, of course, received echoes showed the alarm at Washington. of this man, there were suspicions of the loyalty of that man. one knew what the morrow might bring. from all the dispatches which There were orders for the arrest No In the midst of the anxieties of such hours, to Mr. [Sydney Howard] Gay, the acting editor of that paper, there entered the foreman of the typesetting room. He brought with him the proof of Mr. Greeley's leading article, as he had left it before leaving the city for the day. It was a brutal, bitter, sarcastic, personal attack on President Lincoln, the man who, when Gay read the article, was dying in Washington. Gay read the article, and asked the foreman if he had any private place where he could lock up the type, to which no one but himself had access. The foreman said he had. Gay bade him tie up the type, lock the galley with this article in his cupboard, and tell no one what he had told him. Of course no such article appeared in the Tribune the next morning. But when Gay arrived on the next day at the office, he was met with the news that "the old man" wanted him, with the intimation that "the old man" was very angry. Gay waited upon Greeley. "Are you there, Mr. Gay? I have been looking for you. They tell me that you ordered my leader out of this morning's paper. Is it your paper or mine? I should like to know if I cannot print what I choose in my own newspaper." This in great rage. HORACE GREELEY "The paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article is in type upstairs, and you can use it when you choose. Only this, Mr. Greeley: I know New York, and I hope and believe, before God, that there is so much virtue in New York that if I had let that article go into this morning's paper, there would not be one brick left upon another in the Tribune office now. Certainly I should be sorry if there were. Mr. Greeley was cowed. He said not a word, nor ever alluded to the subject again. James Russell Lowell and His Friends, Edward Everett Hale, page 178. Richmond Receives News of the Assassination During this period of waiting came the news of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps I ought to chronicle that the announcement was received with demonstrations of sorrow. If I did, I should be lying for sentiment's sake. Among the higher officers and the most intelligent and conservative men, the assassination caused a shudder of horror at the heinousness of the act, and at the thought of its possible consequences; but among the thoughtless, the desperate and the ignorant, it was hailed as a sort of retributive justice. In maturer years I have been ashamed of what I felt and said when I heard of that awful calamity. However, men ought to be judged for their feelings and their speech by the circumstances of their surroundings. For four years we had been fighting. In that struggle, all we loved had been lost. Lincoln incarnated to us the idea of oppression and conquest. We had seen his face over the coffins of our brothers and relatives and friends, in the flames of Richmond, in the disaster at Appomattox. In blood and flame and torture the temples of our lives were tumbling about our heads. We were desperate and vindictive, and whosoever denies it forgets or is false. We greeted his death in a spirit of reckless nate, and hailed it as bringing agony and bitterness to those who were the cause of our own agony and bitterness. To us, Lincoln was an inhuman monster, Grant a butcher, and Sherman a fiend. Time taught us that Lincoln was a man of marvelous humanity, Appomattox and what followed revealed Grant in his matchless magnanimity, and the bitterness toward Sherman was softened in subsequent years. But, with our feelings then, if the news had come that all three of these had been engulfed in a common disaster with ourselves, we should have felt satisfaction in the fact, and should not have questioned too closely how it had been brought about. We were poor, starved, conquered, despairing; and to expect men to have no malice and no vindictiveness at such a time is to look for angels in human form. Thank God, such feelings do not last long, at least in their fiercest intensity. The End of an Era, John S. Wise, page 454. "He Never Was Happy after He Came Here" Little Tad's frantic grief after his father had been shot was alluded to in the Washington correspondence of the time. For twenty-four hours the little fellow was absolutely inconsolable. Sunday morning, however, the sun rose in unclouded splendor, and in his simplicity he looked upon this as a token that his father was happy. "Do you think my father has gone to heaven?" he asked of a gentleman who had called upon Mrs. Lincoln. "I have not a doubt of it," was the reply. "Then," he exclaimed in his broken way, "I am glad he has gone there, for he never was happy after he came here. This was not a good place for him!" Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 293. I Thought It Strange the Stars Could Shine The War was over! My father and mother talked of it across the table, and the men talked of it at the store, and earth, sky and water called to each other in glad relief, "The War is over!" But there came a morning when my father walked up from the railroad station very fast, and looking very serious. He pushed right past me as I sat in the door-way. I followed him into the kitchen where my mother was washing dishes, and heard him say: "They have killed Lincoln!" and then he burst into tears. I had never seen my father shed tears-in fact, I had never seen a man cry. There is something terrible in the grief of a man. Soon the church-bell across the road began to toll. It tolled all that day. Three men-I can give you their names-rang the bell all day long, tolling, slowly tolling, tolling, tolling until night came and the stars came out. I thought it a little curious that the stars should come out, for Lincoln was dead; but they did, for I saw them as I trotted by my father's side down to the post-office. Little Journeys to the Homes of American Statesmen, Elbert Hubbard, page 428. |