Seward's reply was accepted as fully satisfactory. The English concurred, the Americans concurred, and the danger was over. There was then something of a revulsion of feeling. The feeling between our government and that of England was more cordial than before, and the same is true of the feeling between the two peoples. The South and their sympathizers were bitterly disappointed. The wise management of our President had turned one of the greatest dangers into a most valuable success. There was never again a likelihood that England would form an alliance with the Southern Confederacy.
The result was most fortunate for us and unfortunate for the southern emissaries. They were no longer heroes, they were "gentlemen of eminence," but not public functionaries. They were like other travelers, nothing more. They were not received at either court. They could only "linger around the back doors" of the courts where they expected to be received in triumph, and bear as best they could the studied neglect with which they were treated. The affair, so ominous at one time, became most useful in its practical results to our cause. Lord Palmerston, the British premier, got the four prisoners, but Lincoln won the game.
This is a convenient place to speak of the personal griefs of the President. From his earliest years on, he was wonderfully affected by the presence of death. Very few people have had this peculiar feeling of heart-break with such overwhelming power. The death of his infant brother in Kentucky, the death of his mother in Indiana, impressed him and clouded his mind in a degree entirely unusual. We have seen that in Springfield the death of Ann Rutledge well-nigh unseated his reason. From these he never recovered.
The horror of war was that it meant death, death, death! He, whose heart was tender to a fault, was literally surrounded by death. The first victim of the war, Colonel Ellsworth, was a personal friend, and his murder was a personal affliction. There were others that came near to him. Colonel E. D. Baker, an old friend and neighbor of Lincoln, the man who had introduced him at his inaugural, was killed at Ball's Bluff Oct. 21, 1861. Baker's personal courage made him conspicuous and marked him out as a special target for the enemy's aim. While gallantly leading a charge, he fell, pierced almost simultaneously by four bullets. It fell upon Lincoln like the death of a brother. He was consumed with grief.
The following February his two boys, Willie and Tad, were taken ill. Lincoln's fondness for children was well known. This general love of children was a passion in regard to his own sons. In this sickness he not only shared the duties of night-watching with the nurse, but at frequent intervals he would slip away from callers, and even from cabinet meetings, to visit briefly the little sufferers. Willie died on February 20th, and for several days before his death he was delirious. His father was with him almost constantly.
This is one of the few instances when he could be said to neglect public business. For a few days before, and for a longer period after, Willie's death, he was completely dejected. Though he was a devout Christian, in spirit and temper, his ideas of personal immortality were not at that time sufficiently clear to give him the sustaining help which he needed under his affliction.
J. G. Holland records a pathetic scene. This was communicated to him by a lady whose name is not given. She had gone to Washington to persuade the President to have hospitals for our soldiers located in the North. He was skeptical of the plan and was slow to approve it. His hesitation was the occasion of much anxiety to her. When he finally granted the petition, she thanked him with great earnestness and said she was sure he would be happy that he had done it. He sat with his face in his hands and groaned: "Happy? I shall never be happy again!"
Below all his play of wit and humor, there was an undercurrent of agony. So great were his kindness, gentleness, tenderness of heart, that he could not live in this cruel world, especially in the period when the times were so much out of joint, without being a man of sorrows. The present writer never saw Lincoln's face but twice, once in life and once in death. Both times it seemed to him, and as he remembers it after the lapse of more than a third of a century, it still seems to him, the saddest face his eyes have ever looked upon.