Abraham Lincoln, Volume II

by Jr. John T. Morse

so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and, in looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass; but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler—say five shades—than the other. I got up and the thing melted away; and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it,—nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home, I told my wife about it; and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term."

From this time forth anonymous threats and friendly warnings came thick and fast up to the

fatal day when the real event befell. Some of these he kept, and after his death they were found in his desk, labeled "Assassination Letters." Before he left Springfield for his journey to Washington, many ingenious fears were suggested to him; but, except for his change of route toward the close of his journey, none of these presagings visibly influenced him, and his change of purpose concerning the passage through Baltimore was never afterward recalled by him without vexation. From that time forth he resolutely ignored all danger of this kind. During most of the time that he was in office any one could easily call upon him, unguarded, at the White House; he moved through the streets of Washington like any private citizen; and he drove about the environs, and habitually in the warm season took the long drive to and from the Soldiers' Home, with substantially no protection. When, at last, a guard at the White House and an escort upon his drives were fairly forced upon him by Mr. Stanton (who was declared by the gossip of the unfriendly to be somewhat troubled with physical timidity), he rebelled against these incumbrances upon his freedom, and submitted, when he had to do so, with an ill grace. To those who remonstrated with him upon his carelessness he made various replies. Sometimes, half jocosely, he said that it was hardly likely that any intelligent Southerner would care to get rid of him in order to set either Vice-President Hamlin or, later, Vice-President Johnson,

in his place. At other times he said: "What is the use of setting up the gap, when the fence is down all round?" or, "I do not see that I can make myself secure except by shutting myself up in an iron box, and in that condition I think I could hardly satisfactorily transact the business of the presidency." Again he said: "If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again." This was an obvious reflection, easy enough of suggestion for any one who was not within the danger line; but to live every day in accordance with it, when the danger was never absent, called for a singular tranquillity of temperament, and a kind of courage in which brave men are notoriously apt to be deficient.

On April 9 the President was coming up the Potomac in a steamer from City Point; the Comte de Chambrun was of the party and relates that, as they were nearing Washington, Mrs. Lincoln, who had been silently gazing toward the town, said: "That city is filled with our enemies;" whereupon Mr. Lincoln "somewhat impatiently retorted: 'Enemies! we must never speak of that!'" For he was resolutely cherishing the impossible idea that Northerners and Southerners were to be enemies no longer, but that a pacification of the spirit was coming throughout the warring land contemporaneously with the cessation of hostilities,—a dream romantic and hopelessly incapable of realization, but humane and beautiful.

Since he did not live to endeavor to transform it into a fact, and thereby perhaps to have his efforts cause even seriously injurious results, it is open to us to forget the impracticability of the fancy and to revere the nature which in such an hour could give birth to such a purpose.

The fourteenth day of April was Friday,—Good Friday. Many religious persons afterward ventured to say that if the President had not been at the theatre upon that sacred day, the awful tragedy might never have occurred at all. Others, however, not less religiously disposed, were impressed by the coincidence that the fatal shot was fired upon that day which the Christian world had agreed to adopt as the anniversary of the crucifixion of the Saviour of mankind. General Grant and his wife were in Washington on that day and the President invited them to go with him to see the play at Ford's theatre in the evening, but personal engagements called them northward. In the afternoon the President drove out with his wife, and again the superstitious element comes in; for he appeared in such good spirits, as he chatted cheerfully of the past and the future, that she uneasily remarked to him: "I have seen you thus only once before; it was just before our dear Willie died." Such a frame of mind, however, under the circumstances at that time must be regarded as entirely natural rather than as ominous.

About nine o'clock in the evening the President entered his box at the theatre; with him were his

wife, Major Rathbone, and a lady; the box had been decorated with an American flag, of which the folds swept down to the stage. Unfortunately it had also been tampered with, in preparation for the plans of the conspirators. Between it and the corridor was a small vestibule; and a stout stick of wood had been so arranged that it could in an instant be made to fasten securely, on the inside, the door which opened from the corridor into this vestibule. Also in the door which led from the vestibule into the box itself a hole had been cut, through which the situation of the different persons in the box could be clearly seen. Soon after the party had entered, when the cheering had subsided and the play was going forward, just after ten o'clock, a man approached through the corridor, pushed his visiting card into the hands of the attendant who sat there, hastily entered the vestibule, and closed and fastened the door behind him. A moment later the noise of a pistol shot astounded every one, and instantly a man was seen at the front of the President's box; Major Rathbone sprang to grapple with him, but was severely slashed in the arm and failed to retard his progress; he vaulted over the rail to the stage, but caught his spur in the folds of the flag, so that he did not alight fairly upon his feet; but he instantly recovered himself, and with a visible limp in his gait hastened across the stage; as he went, he turned towards the audience, brandished the bloody dagger with which he had just struck Rathbone,

and cried "Sic semper tyrannis!" Some one recognized John Wilkes Booth, an actor of melodramatic characters. The door at the back of the theatre was held open for him by Edward Spangler, an employee, and in the alley hard by a boy, also employed about the theatre, was holding the assassin's horse, saddled and bridled. Booth kicked the boy aside, with a curse, climbed into the saddle with difficulty,—for the small bone of his leg between the knee and ankle had been broken in his fall upon the stage,—and rode rapidly away into the night. Amid the confusion, no efficient pursuit was made.