In connection with these chivalric deeds of introducing small-pox and burning hotels, must be mentioned other acts of the rebel agents, sent by their Government on “detached service.” On the 19th October, a party of these “agents” made a raid into St. Albans, Vermont, where they robbed the banks, and then retreated into Canada. These men were, however, discharged by the Canadian Government; the money which they had stolen was given up to them, as Raymond states, “under circumstances which cast great suspicion upon prominent members of the Canadian Government.” The indignation which this conduct excited in the United States is indescribable, and the Canadian Government, recognising their mistake, re-arrested such of the raiders as had not made their escape. But the American Government, finding that they had few friends beyond the frontier, properly established a strict system of passports for all immigrants from Canada.
The year 1864 closed under happy auspices. “The whole country had come to regard the strength of the rebellion as substantially broken.” There were constant rumours of peace and reconciliation. The rebels, in their exhaustion, were presenting the most pitiable spectre of a sham government. The whole North was crowded with thousands of rebel families which would have starved at home. They were not molested; but, as I remember, they seemed to work the harder for that to injure the Government and Northern people among whom and upon whom they lived, being in this like the teredo worms, which destroy the trunk which shelters and feeds them.
CHAPTER XII.
The President’s Reception of Negroes—The South opens Negotiations for Peace—Proposals—Lincoln’s Second Inauguration—The Last Battle—Davis Captured—End of the War—Death of Lincoln—Public Mourning.
The political year of 1865 began with the assemblage of Congress (December 5th, 1864). The following day, Mr. Lincoln sent in his Message. After setting forth the state of American relations with foreign Governments, he announced that the ports of Fernandina, Norfolk, and Pensacola had been opened. In 1863, a Spaniard named Arguelles, who had been guilty of stealing and selling slaves, had been handed over to the Cuban Government by President Lincoln, and for this the President had been subjected to very severe criticism. In the Message he vindicated himself, declaring that he had no doubt of the power and duty of the Executive under the law of nations to exclude enemies of the human race from an asylum in the United States. He showed an enormous increase in industry and revenue, a great expansion of population, and other indications of material progress; thus practically refuting General Fremont’s shameless declaration that Lincoln’s “administration had been, politically and financially, a failure.” On New Year’s Day, 1865, the President, as was usual, held a reception. The negroes—who waited round the door in crowds to see their great benefactor, whom they literally worshipped as a superior being, and to whom many attributed supernatural or divine power—had never yet been admitted into the White House, except as servants. But as the crowd of white visitors diminished, a few of the most confident ventured timidly to enter the hall of reception, and, to their extreme joy and astonishment, were made welcome by the President. Then many came in. An eye-witness wrote of this scene as follows—“For nearly two hours Mr. Lincoln had been shaking the hands of the white ‘sovereigns,’ and had become excessively weary—but here his nerves rallied at the unwonted sight, and he welcomed this motley crowd with a heartiness that made them wild with exceeding joy. They laughed and wept, and wept and laughed, exclaiming through their blinding tears, ‘God bless you!’ ‘God bless Abraham Lincoln!’ ‘God bress Massa Linkum!’”
It was usual with Louis the XI. to begin important State negotiations by means of vagabonds of no faith or credibility, that they might be easily disowned if unsuccessful; and this was precisely the course adopted by Davis and his Government when they employed Jewett and Saunders to sound Lincoln as to peace. A more reputable effort was made in February, 1865, towards the same object. On December 28th, 1864, Mr. Lincoln had furnished Secretary F. P. Blair with a pass to enter the Southern lines and return, stipulating, however, that he should in no way treat politically with the rebels. But Mr. Blair returned with a message from Jefferson Davis, in which the latter declared his willingness to enter into negotiations to secure peace to the two countries. To which Mr. Lincoln replied that he would be happy to receive any agent with a view to securing peace to our common country. On January 29th, the Federal Government received an application from A. H. Stephens, the Confederate Vice-President, R. M. T. Hunter, President of the rebel Senate, and A. J. Campbell, the rebel Secretary of War, to enter the lines as quasi-commissioners, to confer with the President. This was a great advance in dignity beyond Saunders and Jewett. Permission was given for the parties to hold a conference on the condition that they were not to land, which caused great annoyance to the rebel agents, who made no secret of their desire to visit Washington. They were received on board a steamboat off Fortress Monroe. By suggestion of General Grant, Mr. Lincoln was personally present at the interview. The President insisted that three conditions were indispensable—1. Restoration of the national authority in all the states; 2. Emancipation of the slaves; and 3. Disbanding of the forces hostile to Government. The Confederate Commissioners suggested that if hostilities could be suspended while the two Governments united in driving the French out of Mexico, or in a war with France, the result would be a better feeling between the South and North, and the restoration of the Union. This proposition—which, to say the least, indicated a lamentable want of gratitude to the French Emperor, who had been anxious from the beginning to recognise the South and destroy the Union, and who would have done so but for the English Government—was rejected by Mr. Lincoln as too vague. During this conference, Mr. Hunter insisted that a constitutional ruler could confer with rebels, and adduced as an instance the correspondence of Charles I. with his Parliament. To which Mr. Lincoln replied that he did not pretend to be versed in questions of history, but that he distinctly recollected that Charles I. lost his head. Nothing was agreed upon. But, as Mr. Stephens declared, Jefferson Davis coloured the report of this meeting so as to crush the great Southern peace-party. He began by stating that he had received a written notification which satisfied him that Mr. Lincoln wished to confer as to peace, when the truth was that Lincoln had forbidden Mr. Blair to open any such negotiation. And having, by an inflammatory report, stirred up many people to hold “blackflag” meetings and “fire the Southern heart,” he said of the Northern men in a public speech—“We will teach them that, when they talk to us, they talk to their masters.”[31] Or, as it was expressed by a leading Confederate journal—“A respectful attitude, cap in hand, is that which befits a Yankee when speaking to a Southerner.”
On January 31st, the House of Representatives passed a resolution submitting to the Legislatures of all the states a constitutional amendment entirely abolishing slavery, which had already passed the Senate (April 8th, 1864). On the 4th March, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated for a second time. Four years before, when the same ceremony was performed, he was the least known and the most hated man who had ever been made President. Since then a tremendous storm had darkened the land, and now the sky, growing blue again, let the sunlight fall on his head, and the world saw what manner of man he was. And such a day this 4th of March literally was, for it began with so great a tempest that it was supposed the address must be delivered in the Senate Chamber instead of the open air. But, as Raymond writes, “the people had gathered in immense numbers before the Capitol, in spite of the storm, and just before noon the rain ceased, the clouds broke away, and, as the President took the oath of office, the blue sky appeared, a small white cloud, like a hovering bird, seemed to hang above his head, and the sunlight broke through the clouds, and fell upon him with a glory afterwards felt to have been an emblem of the martyr’s crown which was so soon to rest upon his head.” Arnold and many others declare that, at this moment, a brilliant star made its appearance in broad daylight, and the incident was regarded by many as an omen of peace. As I have myself seen in America a star at noon-day for two days in succession, I do not doubt the occurrence, though I do not remember it on this 4th of March. The inaugural address was short, but remarkable for vigour and a very conciliatory spirit. He said—
“On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war.... Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish—and the war came. One-eighth of the population were slaves, who constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was the cause of the war. To strengthen and perpetuate this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed right to no more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it.... Both parties read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe unto the man by whom the offence cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be requited by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so it must still be said the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward no one, 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 him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
If there was ever a sincere utterance on earth expressive of deeply religious faith, in spirit and in truth, it was in this address. And at this time not only President Lincoln, but an extraordinary number of people were inspired by a deeply earnest faith and feelings which few can now realise. Men who had never known serious or elevated thoughts before, now became fanatical. The death of relatives in the war, the enormous outrages inflicted by the rebels on prisoners, the system of terrorism and cruelty which they advocated, had produced on the Northern mind feelings once foreign to it, and they were now resolved to go on, “in God’s name, and for this cause,” to the bitter end. With the feeling of duty to God and the Constitution and the Union, scores on scores of thousands of men laid down their lives on the battle-field. And it was characteristic of the South that, having from the beginning all the means at their command of cajoling, managing, and ruling the North, as easily as ever a shepherd managed sheep, they, with most exemplary arrogance, took precisely the course to provoke all its resistance. Soldiers who had not these earnest feelings generally turned into bounty-jumpers—men who took the premium for enlisting, and deserted to enlist again—or else into marauders or stragglers. But the great mass were animated by firm enthusiasm. I have been in several countries during wild times, and have seen in a French revolution courage amounting to delirium, but never have I seen anything like the zeal which burned in every Union heart during the last two years of the war of Emancipation.
On the 6th March, 1865, Mr. Fessenden, the Secretary of the Treasury, voluntarily resigned, and Mr. Hugh M‘Culloch was appointed in his place. This was the only change in the Cabinet. On the 11th March, the President issued a proclamation, pardoning all deserters from the army, on condition that they would at once return to duty. This had the effect of bringing in several thousands, who materially aided the draft for 300,000, which was begun on the 15th March, 1865.