No carriage was to be had, so the President, leading his son, walked to General Weitzel's head-quarters,—Jeff Davis's mansion. Six sailors, wearing their round blue caps and short jackets and baggy pants, with navy carbines, formed the guard. Next came the President and Admiral Porter, flanked by the officers accompanying him, and the writer, then six more sailors with carbines,—twenty of us in all.
The walk was long, and the President halted a moment to rest. "May de good Lord bless you, President Linkum!" said an old negro, removing his hat and bowing, with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The President removed his own hat and bowed in silence: it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries of slavery. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste. Recognize a nigger! Disgusting. A woman in an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the scene with unspeakable contempt. There were men in the surging mass who looked daggers from their eyes, and felt murder in their hearts, if they did not breathe it from their lips. But the hour of sacrifice had not yet come; the chosen assassin was not there; the crowning work of treason and traitors yet remained to be performed. Not the capital of the defunct slave Confederacy, but of the restored nation, was to be the scene of the last brutal act in the tragedy of horrors perpetrated in the name of Christianity. The great-hearted, noble-minded, wise-headed man, whom Providence had placed in the Executive chair to carry successfully through the bloody war of freedom against slavery to its glorious consummation, passed on to the mansion from whence the usurping President had fled.
When the soldiers saw him amid the noisy crowd they cheered lustily. It was an unexpected ovation. Such a welcome, such homage, true, heartfelt, deep, impassioned, no prince or prelate ever received.
President Lincoln in Richmond.
The streets becoming impassable on account of the increasing multitude, soldiers were summoned to clear the way. How strange the event! The President of the United States—he who had been hated, despised, maligned above all other men living by the people of Richmond—was walking its streets, receiving every evidence of love and honor! How bitter the reflections of that moment to some who beheld him, who remembered, perhaps, that day in May, 1861, when Jefferson Davis entered the city,—the pageant of that hour, his speech, his promise to smite the smiter, to drench the fields of Virginia with richer blood than that shed at Buena Vista! How that part of the promise had been kept; how their sons, brothers, and friends had fallen; how all else predicted had failed; how the land had been filled with mourning; how the State had become a desolation; how their property, wealth, had disappeared! They had been invited to a gorgeous banquet; the fruit was fair to the eye, golden and beautiful, but it had turned to ashes. They had been promised a high place among the nations. Cotton was the king of kings; and England, France, and the whole civilized world would bow in humble submission to his majesty. That was the promise; but now their king was dethroned, their government overthrown, their President and his cabinet vagrants. They had been promised affluence, Richmond was to be the metropolis of the Confederacy, and Virginia the all-powerful State of the new nation. How terrible the cheat! Their thousand-dollar bonds were not worth a penny. A million dollars would not purchase a dinner. Their money was valueless, their slaves were freemen, the heart of their city was in ashes. They had been deluded in everything. Those whom they had most trusted had most abused their confidence; and at last, in the most unfeeling and inhuman manner, had fired their dwellings, destroying property they could no longer use or levy upon, thus adding arson and robbery to the already long list of their crimes.
The people of Richmond were in despair, having no means for present subsistence, or to rebuild or commence business again. All their heroism, hardship, suffering, expenditure of treasure, and sacrifice of blood had availed them nothing. There could be no comfort in their mourning, no alleviation to their sorrow. All had been lost in an unrighteous cause, which God had not prospered, and no satisfaction could be derived from their participation in it. For try to deceive themselves as they might into a belief that the conflict was unavoidable by the encroachments of the North upon the South, they could but remember the security and peace they enjoyed in the Union, little of which they had felt or dared hope for in their Utopian scheme of slavery.
At length we reached the house from which Jeff Davis had so recently departed, where General Weitzel had established his head-quarters. The President entered and sat wearily down in an arm-chair which stood in the fugitive President's reception-room. General Weitzel introduced the officers present. Judge Campbell entered. At the beginning of the war he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, afterwards espoused Secession, and was appointed assistant Secretary of War under Seddon. He was tall, and looked pale, care-worn, agitated, and bowed very low to the President, who received him with dignity, and yet cordially.
President Lincoln, accompanied by Admiral Porter, General Weitzel, and General Shepley, rode through the city, escorted by a squadron of cavalry, followed by thousands of colored people, shouting "Glory to God!" They had seen great hardship and suffering. A few were well dressed. Some wore pants of Union blue and coats of Confederate gray. Others were in rags. The President was much affected as they crowded around the carriage to touch his hands, and pour out their thanks. "They that walked in darkness had seen a great light." Their great deliverer was among them. He came not as a conqueror, not as the head of a mighty nation,—