It is not easy even yet, although the victors have returned and are disbanded, fully to comprehend that the war is over and the country saved. But it is so, and the living and the dead are joined in a glorious remembrance. How many an eye must have grown dim, swimming in tears as it gazed on the splendid pageant because of the brave and beautiful who had shared the peril and the long, long doubt and struggle, but not the triumph of victory and return. The victory is won; the country is saved; but at what inestimable cost! Four years ago Theodore Winthrop fell at Great Bethel, on a summer morning, and those that loved him learned that the war had begun. Three years ago, on a winter evening, Joseph Curtis sank dead from his horse at Fredericksburg, and Theodore Parkman perished at Princeton on an autumn day. Two years ago, on a soft midsummer night, Robert Shaw fell upon the ramparts of Wagner, and was "buried with his niggers." Eight months ago, in the Shenandoah Valley, Charles Lowell died at Cedar Creek, in the very shock of victory. They were five only, all young, and they gave gladly for us all that makes life glad and beautiful. Yet how many as young and brave and beloved as they have died like them, and, like them, are remembered and mourned! They, too, let us believe, smile still above us, and bend over us with serene joy at this happy time. Let their sweet memory hallow our jubilee! Let us take care that our lives are worthy their glorious death.
APRIL, 1865
MOST genial and friendly letter to the Easy Chair, dated simply "Home," and speaking tenderly of the late President, reminds us that our loss is a blow to every home in the country. This peculiar personal affection for Mr. Lincoln was so evident that every orator spoke of it, and with an emotion that attends a private sorrow. No tribute could be so pathetic and so suggestive of the character of the man who had more deeply endeared himself to the heart and fixed himself in the confidence of the American people than any man in our history. Among the inscriptions that were displayed during the days of mourning in the city there was one hung upon a shop that was touching in its very baldness: "Alas! alas! our father Abraham is dead." That was the feeling in all true hearts and homes. It was a feeling which no Cæsar, no Charlemagne, no Napoleon ever inspired. The Netherlands wept with a sorrow as sore for the Prince of Orange, France bewailed with romantic grief the death of Henry IV. But the people of England and France were comparatively few, and the relation between the victims and the mourners was that of prince and subjects. Our leader was one of the poorest of the people. He was great in their greatness. They felt with him and for him as one of themselves, and in his fall, more truly than Rome in that of Cæsar, we all fell down.
The month of April, 1865, was curiously eventful in the annals of this country. General Grant moved upon the enemy's works, and Petersburg and Richmond fell. He pursued and fought the retreating army, and the rebel commander-in-chief surrendered. In the very jubilee of a national joy the President was murdered. While yet his body was borne across the country by the reverent hands of a nation, his murderer was tracked, brought to bay, shot, and buried in a nameless spot to protect his corpse from wild popular fury. In the midst of the tragical days General Sherman, whom, only last month, the Easy Chair was celebrating as so skilful and resistless a soldier, instead of summoning Johnston to a surrender upon the terms granted to Lee, allowed himself to sign recognition of the rebel government and to open a future political discord, while he was yet able to prescribe the simple surrender of an army. The shock of disappointment and regret was universal. The authorities unanimously disapproved his convention. The Lieutenant-General went immediately to the front, and the month that had opened with President Lincoln trusted and beloved, with Davis defended by Lee and his army in the rebel capital, and Sherman confronted by Johnston, and Mobile holding out, closed with the rebel capital in possession of the government, Lee a paroled prisoner, his army disbanded, Davis a skulking fugitive, Johnston and his army paroled prisoners, Mobile captured, President Lincoln dead, President Johnson at the head of the government, and the assassin dead and buried.
Through such a succession of great events this country had never as rapidly passed. It swept the scale of emotion. From the height of joy triumphant it sank to the very depths of sorrow, from confidence and pride in a military leader it passed to humiliating amazement, yet not for a moment paused in its work or shook in its purpose, and was never so calm, so strong, so grand, as in that tumult of emotion.
Every man who has been proud of his country hitherto has now profounder cause for pride. Our system has been tried in every way; it rises purified from the fire. No one man is essential to her, however deeply beloved, however generously trusted. The history of the war from May, 1861, to May, 1865, proves that she cannot be hopelessly bereaved. The sceptics who have sneered, the timid who have feared, the shrewd who have doubted, must now see that the principles of popular government have been amply vindicated. We have only clearly to understand and fearlessly to trust these principles, and the future, like the past, is secure.
In the earlier days of the war a sagacious foreign observer, resident in the country, said that he feared we were making a mistake perilous to the American principle. The suspension of the habeas corpus he thought a very dangerous political, however necessary a military, experiment it might be. But he was answered by another European, who had been a political pupil of Cavour's, that, unlike such an act in other countries, it was here done by the people themselves, and they must be trusted in it, or else the whole American experiment failed. Such power must be used, he said; the crucial test is the way in which it is used. If the people cannot use it in a way which shall be permanently harmless, then they are not capable of self-government. Oh, wise young judge! In the whole world no heart will be more sincerely glad, no face more bright with joy, or sadder with sorrow, at the strange April news from America than yours!
What a May day! Stricken as all hearts are, what a May day! Budding and blooming on every hand, on every hill-side and meadow and wood, flushing and glittering with the lavish beauty of the spring softly gliding over grieving hearts, and with her royal touch healing our varied sorrow, came the Queen of May, for whom the people sighed and the land yearned, came the well-beloved, the long-desired, palms in her hand and doves flying before her; and the name of that May-day Queen was Peace.