Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States

by Charles Godfrey Leland

As the vast crowd, mad with grief, poured forth, weeping and lamenting, they met with another multitude bringing the news that Secretary Seward, lying on his sick-bed, had been nearly murdered. A few days before, he had fractured his arm and jaw by falling from a carriage. While in this condition, an accomplice of Booth’s, named John Payne Powell, tried to enter the room, but was repulsed by Mr. Seward’s son, who was at once knocked down with the butt of a pistol. Rushing into the room, Payne Powell stabbed Mr. Seward three times, and escaped, but not before he had wounded, while fighting desperately, five people in all.

During the night, there was fearful excitement in Washington. Rumours were abroad that the President was murdered—that all the members of the Cabinet had perished, or were wounded—that General Grant had barely escaped with his life—that the rebels had risen, and were seizing on Washington—and that all was confusion. The reality was enough to warrant any degree of doubt and terror. There had been, indeed, a conspiracy to murder all the leading members of Government. General Grant had escaped by going to Philadelphia. It is said that this most immovable of men, when he heard that President Lincoln was dead, gravely took the cigar from his mouth and quietly said, “Then I must go at once to Washington. I shall yet have time to take my family to Bordertown, and catch the eleven o’clock train.”

Efforts have been made by both parties to confine all the guilt of this murder to Booth alone, and to speak of him as a half-crazed lunatic actor. As the facts stand, the murder had long been threatened by the Southern press, and was apprehended by many people. Booth had so many accomplices, that they expected between them to kill the President, Vice-President, and all the Cabinet. And yet, with every evidence of a widespread conspiracy which had numbers of ready and shrewd agents in the theatre, on the road, and far and wide, even the most zealous Union writers have declared that all this plot had its beginning and end in the brain of a lunatic! It so happened that, just at this time, the North, weary of war and willing to pardon every enemy, had no desire to be vindictive. When Jefferson Davis was tried, Mr. Greeley eagerly stepped forward to be his bail, and there were many more looking to reconstruction and reconciliation—or to office—and averse to drive the foe to extremes. Perhaps they were right; for in great emergencies minor interests must be forgotten. It was the Union-men and the victors who were now nobly calling for peace at any price and forgiveness. But one thing is at least certain. From a letter found April 15th, 1865, in Booth’s trunk, it was shown that the murder was planned before the 4th of March, but fell through then because the accomplices refused to go further until Richmond could be heard from. So it appears that, though Booth was regarded as the beginning and end of the plot, and solely accountable, yet his tools actually refused to obey him until they had heard from Richmond, the seat of the Rebel Government. This was written by Secretary Stanton to General Dix on April 15th, in the interval between the attack on Lincoln and his death. The entire execution of the plot evidently depended upon news from Richmond, and not upon Booth’s orders.

Booth himself, escaping across the Potomac, “found, for some days, shelter and aid among the rebel sympathisers of Lower Maryland.” He was, of course, pursued, and, having taken refuge in a barn, was summoned to surrender. This he refused to do, and was then shot dead by a soldier named Boston Corbett, whom I have heard described as a fanatic of the old Puritan stamp. In the words of Arnold, Booth did not live to betray the men who set him on. And I can testify that there was nowhere much desire to push the inquiry too far. Booth had been shot, the leading Union politicians were busy at reconstruction, and the war was at an end. But, as Arnold declares, Booth and his accomplices were but the wretched tools of the real conspirators, and it remains uncertain whether the conspirators themselves will ever in this world be dragged to light.

The next day, April 15th, 1865, the whole nation knew the dreadful news, and there was such universal sadness as had never been known within the memory of man. All was gloom and mourning; men walked in the public places, and wept aloud as if they had been alone; women sat with children on the steps of houses, wailing and sobbing. Strangers stopped to converse and cry. I saw in that day more of the human heart than in all the rest of my life. I saw in Philadelphia a great mob surging idly here and there between madness and grief, not knowing what to do. Somebody suggested that the Copperheads were rejoicing over the murder—as they indeed were—and so the mob attacked their houses, but soon gave it over, out of very despondency. By common sympathy, every family began to dress their houses in mourning, and to hang black stuff in all the public places; “before night, the whole nation was shrouded in black.” That day I went from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. This latter town, owing to its factories and immense consumption of bituminous coal, seems at any time as if in mourning; but on that Sunday afternoon, completely swathed and hung in black, with all the world weeping in a drizzling rain, its dolefulness was beyond description. Among the soldiers, the grief was very great; but with the poor negroes, it was absolute—I may say that to them the murder was in reality a second crucifixion, since, in their religious enthusiasm, they literally believed the President to be a Saviour appointed by God to lead them forth to freedom. To this day there are negro huts, especially in Cuba, where Lincoln’s portrait is preserved as a hidden fetish, and as the picture of the Great Prophet who was not killed, but only taken away, and who will come again, like King Arthur, to lead his people to liberty. At Lincoln’s funeral, the weeping of the coloured folk was very touching.

It was proposed that President Lincoln should be buried in the vault originally constructed for Washington in the Capitol. This would have been most appropriate; but the representatives from Illinois were very urgent that his remains should be taken to his native state, and this was finally done. So, after funeral services in Washington, the body was borne with sad processions from city to city, through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At Philadelphia it lay in state in the hall where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. “A half-million of people were in the streets to do honour to all that was left of him who, in that same hall, had declared, four years before, that he would sooner be assassinated than give up the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He had been assassinated because he would not give them up.”

This death-journey, with its incidents, was very touching. It showed beyond all question that, during his Presidency, the Illinois backwoodsman had found his way to the hearts of the people as no man had ever done. He had been with them in their sorrows and their joys. Those who had wept in the family circle for a son or father lost in the war, now wept again the more because the great chief had also perished. The last victim of the war was its leader.

The final interment of the body of President Lincoln took place at Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Springfield, Illinois. Four years previously, Abraham Lincoln had left a little humble home in that place, and gone to be tried by the people in such a great national crisis as seldom falls to any man to meet. He had indeed “crossed Fox River” in such a turmoil of roaring waters as had never been dreamed of. And, having done all things wisely and well, he passed away with the war, dying with its last murmurs.

The Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Ill.