"We are to be married next week, Mr. President——"
"Is it so?" he said joyfully. "I wish I could be there, my children—but I'm afraid 'Old Grizzly' might bite me. So I'll say it now—God bless you!"
He took their hands in his and pressed them heartily. His eyes suddenly rested on a shining black face grinning behind John Vaughan.
"My, my, can this be Julius Cæsar Thornton?" he laughed.
"Yassah," the black man grinned. "Hit's me—ole reliable, sah, right here—I'se gwine ter cook fur 'em!"
From the moment of Abraham Lincoln's election the end of the war with a restored Union was a foregone conclusion.
In the fall of Atlanta the heart of the Confederacy was pierced, and it ceased to beat. Lee's army, cut off from their supplies, slowly but surely began to starve behind their impregnable breastworks. Sherman's march to the sea and through the Carolinas was merely a torchlight parade. The fighting was done.
When Lee's emaciated men, living on a handful of parched corn a day, staggered out of their trenches in the spring and tried to join Johnston's army they marched a few miles to Appomattox, dropping from exhaustion, and surrendered.
When the news of this tremendous event reached Washington, the Cabinet was in session. Led by the President, in silence and tears, they fell on their knees in a prayer of solemn thanks to Almighty God.