For the first time in dreary months the sun had burst for a moment through the clouds that had hung in endless gloom over the White House. The sorrowful eyes were shining with new hope. The President felt sure that General Lee could never succeed in leading his shattered army back into Virginia. He had lost twenty thousand men out of his sixty-two thousand—while Meade was still in command of a grand army of eighty-two thousand soldiers flushed with victory. The Potomac River was in flood and the Confederate army was on its banks unable to recross.
It was a moral certainty that the heroic Commander who had saved the Capital at Gettysburg could, with his eighty-two thousand men, capture or crush Lee's remaining force, caught in this trap by the swollen river, and end the war.
The men who crowded into the Executive office the day after the news of Vicksburg, found the Chief Magistrate in high spirits. Among the cases of deserters, court-martialed and ordered to be shot, he was surprised to find a negro soldier bearing the remarkable name of Julius Cæsar Thornton. John Vaughan had telegraphed the President asking his interference with the execution of this cruel edict.
The President was deeply interested. It was the beginning of the use of negro troops. He had consented to their employment with reluctance, but they were proving their worth to the army, both in battle and in the work of garrisons.
Julius was brought from prison for an interview with the Chief Magistrate.
Stanton had sternly demanded the enforcement of the strictest military discipline as the only way to make these black troops of any real service to the Government. He asked that an example be made of Julius by sending him back to the army to be publicly shot before the assembled men of his race. He was convicted of two capital offenses. He had been caught in Washington shamelessly flaunting the uniform he had disgraced.
Julius faced the President with an humble salute and a broad grin. The black man liked the looks of his judge and he threw off all embarrassment his situation had produced with the first glance at the kindly eyes gazing at him over the rims of those spectacles.
"Well, Julius Cæsar Thornton, this is a serious charge they have lodged against you?"
"Yassah, dat's what dey say."
"You went forth like a man to fight for your country, didn't you?"