Still our city was not a unit in political thought and sentiment. While Grant’s victory caused the great multitude to rejoice, it was wormwood and gall to the few, who, in spite of disaster to the Confederacy, were still faithful to it. While their neighbors were exultant, they bitterly mourned. The city put on its gala dress. Public buildings and private dwellings were lavishly decorated with red, white and blue. National flags of all sizes were flung to the breeze. But here and there a house was flagless. Within sat sad and sombre secessionists sighing over their shattered hopes. They refused to be comforted. At night once more the bells rang, bands played, bonfires blazed, cannon boomed, and the windows of most buildings, public and private, were illuminated; while in public halls the people gathered to listen to patriotic speeches and to sing the most popular and stirring war songs. “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Rally Round the Flag, Boys,” and “The Soul of Old John Brown,” had a large place in our festivity, while “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” was sung as the crowning and parting hymn.
But sorrow and tears trod on the heels of joy. April 15th, five days after our exultant celebration of Lee’s surrender, came the astounding news that our great President had been shot the night before at Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, and that he had died in the morning. For an hour or two we were dazed by this sudden and overwhelming calamity. No one thought of doing business. Those who gathered on the Board of Trade did nothing but talk over the crushing national sorrow. Men as if in a dream moved along the streets; few said anything; they dumbly shook hands and passed sadly on; as the most stalwart met, tears started; the city was silent and a pall of gloom rested upon all. Men at last began slowly to drift together in companies upon the streets. They conversed in low but earnest tones. Beneath that calm exterior fierce passion burned.
On Fourth Street a great, excited crowd had instinctively gathered; they, like all others, were talking over the appalling national loss. A stranger passed by. They thought that he expressed himself as pleased with the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. In a moment the pent up fires within them flashed forth. They seized the stranger, beat him, dragged him roughly along the pavement, he all the time pleading to be heard. At last they listened to his statement and were convinced that they had quite misunderstood what they believed to have been a grossly offensive utterance. They were deeply ashamed of what they had passionately done, and humbly apologized for it. But the incident showed that the life of any one in our city, who, on that day, should have openly approved of the murder of the President, would have been indignantly snuffed out.
Throughout the city all flags were at half-mast. On public buildings, churches and private dwellings, the emblems of rejoicing gave place to those of mourning. Public sentiment was such that no one living in the better part of the residential districts dared to withhold the ordinary tokens of the general sorrow. Houses that five days before were conspicuously dark amid the almost universal illumination were now draped in black; some it may be in self-defence, but probably in most cases as the expression of genuine sorrow. Though the Confederacy for which the secessionists of our city had worked and prayed was irretrievably lost, they had at least come to respect Mr. Lincoln, not only for his unswerving fidelity to what he believed to be the right, but also for his broad charity, and not a few of them, while still differing from him politically, admired him as a man. They recognized in him a great and generous friend of the South, and so joined with us, on that day of tears, in eulogizing the martyr and denouncing his assassin. The same lips that four years before had scornfully called him clown, the Illinois ape, baboon and gorilla, now praised him. He had not only subdued the rebellion by force of arms, but also by his clearness of conception, fairness in administration, unflinching advocacy of the rights of all, patience and persistence in duty, and large-heartedness, had conquered their inveterate prejudices.
In the afternoon of that day of sorrow, the churches were thrown open, and large congregations met to pray. They poured out their hearts in thanksgiving to God for the unsullied life of the martyred President; for his courage and wisdom in proclaiming liberty to the captive, and freedom to the oppressed. They prayed for his constitutional successor in office, and for God’s blessing on the people both North and South. Nor did they forget the assassin whose wanton act had bowed a nation in grief. In all their utterances they were calm and sane, as men always are when, in submission to the will of God, they commune with Him. At last the curtain of darkness fell on that terrible day, and men with throbbing brows and aching hearts lay down to rest; but to many, if sleep came at all, it came but fitfully. We seemed to be living in a new world. One era of our national life had ended, another had begun. And with ever new experiences our mourning was prolonged as from day to day with the whole Republic we followed in thought the dust of the immortal martyr to its last resting-place at Springfield, Illinois. It was most fitting that it should lie near the home of his early manhood, and in the State that he, in larger measure than any other, had made illustrious.
Thirty days after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the Baptist Missionary Societies of the North held, by urgent invitation, their May Meetings in our city. This had been made possible by the war. The churches of this great denomination had long been divided by slavery; but now the delegates from the churches of the North came to hold out the olive branch to their brethren of the South on what had been slave soil. They came by hundreds. The city gave them a royal welcome. Christians of all denominations threw open their doors to them and lavished upon them their hospitality. It was an era of good feeling. Denominationalism and the irritating questions of the war decidedly fell into the background.
But there was another side to the picture. Southern Baptists, except from the national capital, did not come to us. The olive branch seemed to be held out in vain. The brotherly act was even misconstrued. The coming of these Northern missionary societies to our city was regarded as an unwarrantable invasion of Southern soil. Forty years had to pass away, a generation had to die in the wilderness, before, in St. Louis, during the progress of the May Meetings of the same societies, Northern and Southern Baptists, standing face to face, truly fraternized with each other and sang heartily:
“Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love.”
There was one unique incident at the meetings in 1865, that deserves special notice. The name of the martyred President was on all lips. Men were just beginning to understand and appreciate something of his greatness, both of mind and heart. It was whispered in the ears of our guests that an artist of our city, A. J. Conant, had painted, from sittings, a portrait of Mr. Lincoln. He was invited to unveil this portrait before the assembled delegates. He did so. A great and distinguished company greeted it with enthusiasm and cheers; and were specially delighted to hear the artist’s account of what the great President did and said while he kindly sat for his portrait,—what quaint and suggestive stories he told. The portrait was painted before Mr. Lincoln’s first inauguration. His face was then smooth shaven. He had not yet covered up with scraggly whiskers the rugged outlines of his lower jaw, which, from a side view, as some one has said, was shaped like the keel of a three-masted schooner.[[114]] It is doubtful if any one has produced a better portrait of that strong face with its undertone of sadness.