CHAPTER XII
THE MARTYR PRESIDENT
In November, 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected President, carrying twenty-two out of the twenty-five states of the Union. He had grown ever dearer to the hearts of the American people, and the country had come to trust and love him.
LINCOLN
Chained by stern duty to the rock of state,
His spirit armed in mail of rugged mirth,
Ever above, though ever near to earth,
Yet felt his heart the cruel tongues that sate
Base appetites, and foul with slander, wait
Till the keen lightnings bring the awful hour
When wounds and suffering shall give them power.
Most was he like to Luther, gay and great,
Solemn and mirthful, strong of heart and limb.
Tender and simple too; he was so near
To all things human that he cast out fear,
And, ever simpler, like a little child,
Lived in unconscious nearness unto Him
Who always on earth's little ones hath smiled.
S. Weir Mitchell.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, the President attended a performance of "Our American Cousin," at Ford's Theatre, at Washington. The play was drawing to a close, when suddenly the audience was startled by a pistol shot, and an instant later saw a man leap from the President's box to the stage. The man was John Wilkes Booth, an actor. He had shot the President through the head, and the latter died next day without regaining consciousness.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
[April 14, 1865]
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman.
THE DEAD PRESIDENT
Were there no crowns on earth,
No evergreen to wreathe a hero's wreath,
That he must pass beyond the gates of death,
Our hero, our slain hero, to be crowned?
Could there on our unworthy earth be found
Naught to befit his worth?
The noblest soul of all!
When was there ever, since our Washington,
A man so pure, so wise, so patient—one
Who walked with this high goal alone in sight,
To speak, to do, to sanction only Right,
Though very heaven should fall!
Ah, not for him we weep;
What honor more could be in store for him?
Who would have had him linger in our dim
And troublesome world, when his great work was done—
Who would not leave that worn and weary one
Gladly to go to sleep?
For us the stroke was just;
We were not worthy of that patient heart;
We might have helped him more, not stood apart,
And coldly criticised his works and ways—
Too late now, all too late—our little praise
Sounds hollow o'er his dust.
Be merciful, O our God!
Forgive the meanness of our human hearts,
That never, till a noble soul departs,
See half the worth, or hear the angel's wings
Till they go rustling heavenward as he springs
Up from the mounded sod.
Yet what a deathless crown
Of Northern pine and Southern orange-flower,
For victory, and the land's new bridal-hour,
Would we have wreathed for that beloved brow!
Sadly upon his sleeping forehead now
We lay our cypress down.
O martyred one, farewell!
Thou hast not left thy people quite alone,
Out of thy beautiful life there comes a tone
Of power, of love, of trust, a prophecy,
Whose fair fulfilment all the earth shall be,
And all the Future tell.
Edward Rowland Sill.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ASSASSINATED GOOD FRIDAY, 1865
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do!"
He said, and so went shriven to his fate,—
Unknowing went, that generous heart and true.
Even while he spoke, the slayer lay in wait,
And when the morning opened Heaven's gate
There passed the whitest soul a nation knew.
Henceforth all thoughts of pardon are too late;
They, in whose cause that arm its weapon drew,
Have murdered Mercy. Now alone shall stand
Blind Justice, with the sword unsheathed she wore.
Hark, from the eastern to the western strand,
The swelling thunder of the people's roar:
What words they murmur,—Fetter not her hand!
So let it smite, such deeds shall be no more!
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
The assassin escaped into Maryland, where he found a temporary refuge, but the country was alarmed, pursuers were close upon his trail, and on April 25, 1865, he was brought to bay in a barn. He refused to surrender and was shot by a sergeant named Boston Corbett.
WILKES BOOTH—APRIL 26, 1865
Pains the sharp sentence the heart in whose wrath it was uttered,
Now thou art cold;
Vengeance, the headlong, and Justice, with purpose close muttered,
Loosen their hold.
Death brings atonement; he did that whereof ye accuse him,—
Murder accurst;
But from that crisis of crime in which Satan did lose him,
Suffered the worst.
Harshly the red dawn arose on a deed of his doing,
Never to mend;
But harsher days he wore out in the bitter pursuing
And the wild end.
So lift the pale flag of truce, wrap those mysteries round him,
In whose avail
Madness that moved, and the swift retribution that found him,
Falter and fail.
So the soft purples that quiet the heavens with mourning,
Willing to fall,
Lend him one fold, his illustrious victim adorning
With wider pall.
Back to the cross, where the Saviour uplifted in dying
Bade all souls live,
Turns the reft bosom of Nature, his mother, low sighing,
Greatest, forgive!
Julia Ward Howe.
On Wednesday, April 19, 1865, a simple funeral service was held over the body of Lincoln at the White House, and for two days thereafter the body lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol.
THE DEAR PRESIDENT
Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President,
Lay in the Round Hall at the Capitol,
And there the people came to look their last.
There came the widow, weeded for her mate;
There came the mother, sorrowing for her son;
There came the orphan, moaning for its sire.
There came the soldier, bearing home his wound;
There came the slave, who felt his broken chain;
There came the mourners of a blacken'd Land.
Through the dark April day, a ceaseless throng,
They pass'd the coffin, saw the sleeping face,
And, blessing it, in silence moved away.
And one, a poet, spoke within his heart:
"It harm'd him not to praise him when alive,
And me it cannot harm to praise him dead.
"Too oft the muse has blush'd to speak of men—
No muse shall blush to speak her best of him,
And still to speak her best of him is dumb.
"O lofty wisdom's low simplicity!
O awful tenderness of noted power!—
No man e'er held so much of power so meek.
"He was the husband of the husbandless,
He was the father of the fatherless:
Within his heart he weigh'd the common woe.
"His call was like a father's to his sons!
As to a father's voice, they, hearing, came—
Eager to offer, strive, and bear, and die.
"The mild bond-breaker, servant of his Lord,
He took the sword, but in the name of Peace,
And touched the fetter, and the bound was free.
"Oh, place him not among the historic kings,
Strong, barbarous chiefs and bloody conquerors,
But with the Great and pure Republicans:
"Those who have been unselfish, wise, and good,
Bringers of Light and Pilots in the dark,
Bearers of Crosses, Servants of the World.
"And always, in his Land of birth and death,
Be his fond name—warm'd in the people's hearts—
Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President."
John James Piatt.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust!
In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.
Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.
William Cullen Bryant.
Then the funeral train started for Lincoln's home at Springfield, Ill., stopping at Philadelphia, New York, and other towns along the route, great crowds everywhere gathering to honor the dead President.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN[12]
Not as when some great Captain falls,
In battle, where his Country calls,
Beyond the struggling lines
That push his dread designs
To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
Or, in the last charge, at the head
Of his determined men,
Who must be victors then.
Nor as when sink the civic great,
The safer pillars of the State,
Whose calm, mature, wise words
Suppress the need of swords.
With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our dead
Do we to-day deplore
The Man that is no more.
Our sorrow hath a wider scope,
Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,
A wonder, blind and dumb,
That waits—what is to come!
Not more astounded had we been
If Madness, that dark night, unseen,
Had in our chambers crept,
And murdered while we slept!
We woke to find a mourning earth,
Our Lares shivered on the hearth,
The roof-tree fallen, all
That could affright, appall!
Such thunderbolts, in other lands,
Have smitten the rod from royal hands,
But spared, with us, till now,
Each laurelled Cæsar's brow.
No Cæsar he whom we lament,
A Man without a precedent,
Sent, it would seem, to do
His work, and perish, too.
Not by the weary cares of State,
The endless tasks, which will not wait,
Which, often done in vain,
Must yet be done again:
Not in the dark, wild tide of war,
Which rose so high, and rolled so far,
Sweeping from sea to sea
In awful anarchy:
Four fateful years of mortal strife,
Which slowly drained the nation's life
(Yet for each drop that ran
There sprang an armèd man!).
Not then; but when, by measures meet
By victory, and by defeat,
By courage, patience, skill,
The people's fixed, "We will!"
Had pierced, had crushed Rebellion dead,
Without a hand, without a head,
At last, when all was well,
He fell, O how he fell!
The time, the place, the stealing shape,
The coward shot, the swift escape,
The wife, the widow's scream,—
It is a hideous Dream!
A dream? What means this pageant, then?
These multitudes of solemn men,
Who speak not when they meet,
But throng the silent street?
The flags half-mast that late so high
Flaunted at each new victory?
(The stars no brightness shed,
But bloody looks the red!)
The black festoons that stretch for miles,
And turn the streets to funeral aisles?
(No house too poor to show
The nation's badge of woe.)
The cannon's sudden, sullen boom,
The bells that toll of death and doom,
The rolling of the drums,
The dreadful car that comes?
Cursed be the hand that fired the shot,
The frenzied brain that hatched the plot,
Thy country's Father slain
By thee, thou worse than Cain!
Tyrants have fallen by such as thou,
And good hath followed—may it now!
(God lets bad instruments
Produce the best events.)
But he, the man we mourn to-day,
No tyrant was: so mild a sway
In one such weight who bore
Was never known before.
Cool should he be, of balanced powers,
The ruler of a race like ours,
Impatient, headstrong, wild,
The Man to guide the Child.
And this he was, who most unfit
(So hard the sense of God to hit)
Did seem to fill his place;
With such a homely face,
Such rustic manners, speech uncouth
(That somehow blundered out the truth),
Untried, untrained to bear
The more than kingly care.
Ah! And his genius put to scorn
The proudest in the purple born,
Whose wisdom never grew
To what, untaught, he knew,
The People, of whom he was one:
No gentleman, like Washington
(Whose bones, methinks, make room,
To have him in their tomb!).
A laboring man, with horny hands,
Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands,
Who shrank from nothing new,
But did as poor men do.
One of the People! born to be
Their curious epitome;
To share yet rise above
Their shifting hate and love.
Common his mind (it seemed so then),
His thoughts the thoughts of other men:
Plain were his words, and poor,
But now they will endure!
No hasty fool, of stubborn will,
But prudent, cautious, pliant still;
Who since his work was good
Would do it as he could.
Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt,
And, lacking prescience, went without:
Often appeared to halt,
And was, of course, at fault;
Heard all opinions, nothing loath,
And, loving both sides, angered both:
Was—not like Justice, blind,
But watchful, clement, kind.
No hero this of Roman mould,
Nor like our stately sires of old:
Perhaps he was not great,
But he preserved the State!
O honest face, which all men knew!
O tender heart, but known to few!
O wonder of the age,
Cut off by tragic rage!
Peace! Let the long procession come,
For hark, the mournful, muffled drum,
The trumpet's wail afar,
And see, the awful car!
Peace! Let the sad procession go,
While cannon boom and bells toll slow.
And go, thou sacred car,
Bearing our woe afar!
Go, darkly borne, from State to State,
Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait
To honor all they can
The dust of that good man.
Go, grandly borne, with such a train
As greatest kings might die to gain.
The just, the wise, the brave,
Attend thee to the grave.
And you, the soldiers of our wars,
Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars,
Salute him once again,
Your late commander—slain!
Yes, let your tears indignant fall,
But leave your muskets on the wall;
Your country needs you now
Beside the forge—the plough.
(When Justice shall unsheathe her brand,
If Mercy may not stay her hand,
Nor would we have it so,
She must direct the blow.)
And you, amid the master-race,
Who seem so strangely out of place,
Know ye who cometh? He
Who hath declared ye free.
Bow while the body passes—nay,
Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray!
Weep, weep—I would ye might—
Your poor black faces white!
And, children, you must come in bands,
With garlands in your little hands,
Of blue and white and red,
To strew before the dead.
So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes
The Fallen to his last repose.
Beneath no mighty dome,
But in his modest home;
The churchyard where his children rest,
The quiet spot that suits him best,
There shall his grave be made,
And there his bones be laid.
And there his countrymen shall come,
With memory proud, with pity dumb,
And strangers far and near,
For many and many a year.
For many a year and many an age,
While History on her ample page
The virtues shall enroll
Of that Paternal Soul.
Richard Henry Stoddard.
During those twenty days, the one thought uppermost in men's minds was the martyred President. The desire for vengeance alternated with grief. It was generally believed that the conspiracy had been concocted by the Confederate authorities, and magnanimity toward a beaten foe gave place to hatred.
PARRICIDE
ABRAHAM LINCOLN—APRIL 14, 1865
O'er the warrior gauntlet grim
Late the silken glove we drew,
Bade the watch-fires slacken dim
In the dawn's auspicious hue.
Stayed the armèd heel;
Stilled the clanging steel;
Joys unwonted thrilled the silence through.
Glad drew near the Easter tide;
And the thoughts of men anew
Turned to Him who spotless died
For the peace that none shall rue.
Out of mortal pain
This abiding strain
Issued: "Peace, my peace, I give to you."
Musing o'er the silent strings,
By their apathy opprest,
Waiting for the spirit wings,
To be touched and soul-possessed,
"I am dull," I said:
"[Treason is not dead];
Still in ambush lurks that shivering guest."
Then a woman's shriek of fear
Smote us in its arrowy flight;
And a wonder wild and drear
Did the hearts of men unite.
Has the seed of crime
Reached its flowering-time,
That it shoots to this audacious height?
Then, as frosts the landscape change,
Stiffening from the summer's glow,
Grew the jocund faces strange,
Lay the loftiest emblem low:
Kings are of the past,
Suffered still to last;
These twin crowns the present did bestow.
Fair assassin, murder white,
With thy serpent speed avoid
Each unsullied household light,
Every conscience unalloyed.
Neither heart nor home
Where good angels come
Suffer thee in nearness to abide.
Slanderer of the gracious brow,
The untiring blood of youth,
Servant of an evil now,
Of a crime that beggars ruth,
Treason was thy dam,
Wolfling, when the Lamb,
The Anointed, met thy venomed tooth.
With the righteous did he fall,
With the sainted doth he lie;
While the gibbet's vultures call
Thee, that, 'twixt the earth and sky,
Disavowed of both
In their Godward troth,
Thou mayst make thy poor amend, and die.
If it were my latest breath,
Doomed his bloody end to share,
I would brand thee with his death
As a deed beyond despair.
Since the Christ was lost
For a felon's cost,
None like thee of vengeance should beware.
Leave the murderer, noble song,
Helpless in the toils of fate:
To the just thy meeds belong,
To the martyr, to the state.
When the storm beats loud
Over sail and shroud,
Tunefully the seaman cheers his mate.
Never tempest lashed the wave
But to leave it fresher calm;
Never weapon scarred the brave
But their blood did purchase balm.
God hath writ on high
Such a victory
As uplifts the nation with its psalm.
Honor to the heart of love,
Honor to the peaceful will,
Slow to threaten, strong to move,
Swift to render good for ill!
Glory crowns his end,
And the captive's friend
From his ashes makes us freemen still.
Julia Ward Howe.
The feeling throughout the South was one of sorrow and indignation. In England, too, the act was condemned, and London Punch, which had delighted in caricaturing the President, published a full-page cartoon, depicting itself in the act of laying a wreath upon his bier—a cartoon which was followed by some spirited verses from Punch's editor, Tom Taylor, confessing that the English attitude toward Lincoln and the North had been a mistaken one.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,
You, who, with mocking pencil, wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complaisant British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,
His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,
His lack of all we prize as debonair,
Of power or will to shine, of art to please;
You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,
Judging each step as though the way were plain;
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain,—
Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?
Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of Princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.
My shallow judgment I had learned to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose,
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true,
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows;
How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be;
How, in good fortune and in ill, the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.
He went about his work—such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand—
As one who knows, where there's a task to do,
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command;
Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,
That God makes instruments to work His will,
If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.
So he went forth to battle, on the side
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,
As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights,—
The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe,
The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,
The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,—
Such were the needs that helped his youth to train:
Rough culture—but such trees large fruit may bear,
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.
So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it: four long-suffering years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,
The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood;
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,
A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest—
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest.
The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men.
The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame.
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high!
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came!
A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
If more of horror or disgrace they bore;
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out,
Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven,
And with the martyr's crown, crownest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven.
Tom Taylor.