Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

The “Old Capitol”

brothers developed a talent as a versifier and began writing songs adapted to their interpretation, breathing an earnest spirit of patriotism and pleading for human freedom. From giving concerts in their native town and neighborhood, they gradually essayed more and more ambitious ventures, and with Greeley’s aid came under the favorable notice of the administration. Lincoln, realizing the appeal their homely entertainments would make to the Union volunteers, gave them a roving commission to visit the camps of the Army of the Potomac and encouraged them to take in the recruiting stations wherever they happened to be. They mixed fun with their seriousness in such proportions as they believed would please all classes in their audiences; and in their way they did as much to keep the soldiers cheerful as Tom Paine had done fourscore years before.

So accustomed is the public mind to associating Lincoln and Grant as coworkers for the Union cause that few persons suspect that the two men never met till the Civil War was three-fourths over. Then, Congress having revived the grade of Lieutenant-general of the Army, Grant was ordered to Washington to receive his promotion. Arriving early in March, 1864, he went at once to the White House, where the President happened to be holding a reception in the east room. He held back till most of the people had passed, when Lincoln, recognizing him from his portraits, turned to him with hand outstretched, saying: “This is General Grant, is it not?”

“It is, Mr. President,” answered Grant. And with this self-introduction, fittingly simple, the two great figures of the war faced each other for the first time.

CHAPTER VIII
NEW FACES IN OLD PLACES

ALTHOUGH constantly urged to take precautions for his own safety, Lincoln never did. He used to walk about the streets as freely as any ordinary citizen; and night after night, during the darkest period of the war, he would stroll across to Secretary Stanton’s office to talk over the latest news from the front. Stanton’s remonstrances he would dismiss with a weary smile, protesting that, as far as he was aware, he had not an enemy in the world, but if he had, anybody who wished to kill him had a hundred chances every day—so, why be uneasy? His second inaugural address was shorter than the first; he wrote it about midnight of the third of March, seated in an armchair where he was resting after a hard day’s work, and holding the cardboard sheets in his lap. Its concluding words were as memorable as those of four years before: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us go forward with the work we have to do: to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who has borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, and to do all things which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Early on the fourth, he went to the Capitol quietly and devoted the remaining hours of the morning to reading and signing bills. The procession which had been arranged to escort him was formed at the White House, with the President’s carriage at its head, occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and Senators Harlan and Anthony. A platoon of marshals pioneered it, and a detachment of the Union Light Guard surrounded it. The crowd, recognizing the White House coachman on its box, but not seeing distinctly who sat behind, cheered it all along the line under the supposition that it held the President. Two companies of colored troops and a lodge of colored Odd Fellows were among the marchers, this being the first time that negroes ever took part in an inaugural pageant except in some servile capacity.

We have already seen how Washington received the news of the final triumph of the Federal arms, and how Lincoln fell in the midst of the general rejoicing. Many readers of his inaugural address of that year have since professed to discern between its written lines a veiled foreboding of the end. Certain it is that he was an habitual dreamer, and that one dream, which came to him on the night before Fort Sumter was bombarded, was repeated on the eve of the first battle of Bull Run, and just before other important engagements. As he described it, he seemed to be on the water in an unfamiliar boat, “moving rapidly toward a dark, indefinite shore.” The last recurrence of the dream was in the early morning hours of April 14, 1865. We shall never know, now, whether it was this or some other portent that caused him to say to a trusted companion, not long before his death: “I don’t think I shall live to see the end of my term. I try to shake off the vision, but it still keeps haunting me.” He had received several threatening letters, which he kept in a separate file labeled: “Letters on Assassination.” After his death there was found among these a note about the very plot in which Booth was the chief actor.

Fate plays strange tricks. For a few hours that spring, one friend in Washington unconsciously held Lincoln’s life in his hand. Harriet Riddle, since better known as Mrs. Davis, the novelist, was a pupil at a local convent school. Shortly before the tragedy at Ford’s Theater, a teacher who had been on a brief visit to a Southern town returned, apparently laboring under some terrible excitement which she was trying to suppress. At the session of her class immediately preceding their separation for Good Friday, she suddenly fell upon her knees, bade them all join her in prayer, and poured forth, in a voice and manner so agonizing that the children were thrilled with a nameless horror, an hysterical appeal for divine mercy on the souls who were soon to be called before their Maker without warning.

Harriet, who was an impressionable child, could hardly contain herself till she reached home and sought her father, to whom she attempted to relate the afternoon’s occurrence. He was the District-attorney, and an intimate of the President’s, and was so immersed in the cares of office that he put her off till he should have more leisure. When she was awakened on Good Friday night by the noise of citizens and soldiers hurrying through the streets and calling out the news of the assassination, she uttered an exclamation which caught her father’s attention, and then he listened to the tale which he had once waved aside. “Why did you not tell me this before?” he demanded. It was then too late to do more than collect such evidence as he might from the pupils to aid the detectives; but the teacher who had uttered that awful prayer had fled and could never be traced. No one could longer doubt her guilty knowledge of the plot, probably acquired during her visit in the South.