The mad act of crazy Wilkes Booth set the whole country crazy. The South was aghast, natural recoil intensified by apprehension. The North, convulsed with anguish, was newly inflamed, and even when the cooler moment came and we were acquitted of any responsibility for Booth’s crazy act, the angry humour of a still sore heart was against us. We, of both sections, who suffered so lately as one people in the death of President McKinley, can comprehend the woe and unreason of the moment.
Indignation and memorial meetings simply flayed the South alive. At one in the New York Custom House, when the grieving, exasperated people did not know whether to weep or to curse the more, or to end it by simply hanging us all, Mr. Chittenden rose and said: “Peace, be still!” And declared the death of Lincoln providential, God removing the man of mercy that due punishment might be meted out to rebels. Before the pacific orator finished, people were yelling: “Hang Lee!” and “The rebels deserve damnation!” Pulpits fulminated. Easter sermons demanded the halter, exile, confiscation of property, for “rebels and traitors”; yet some voices rose benignly, as Edward Everett Hale’s, Dr. Huntington’s, and Rufus Ellis’, in words fitting the day. Beecher urged moderation.
The new President, Andrew Johnson, was breathing out threatenings and slaughter before Lincoln’s death. Thousands had heard him shout from the southern portico of the Patent Office, “Jeff Davis ought to be hung twenty times as high as Haman!”
In Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, the following paragraph follows comment upon unanimity in Southern and Northern sentiment: “There was one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed over in silence. Among the extreme Radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln’s determined clemency and liberality towards the Southern people had made an impression so unfavourable that, though they were shocked at his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal their gratification that he was no longer in the way. In a political caucus held a few hours after the President’s death, ‘the thought was nearly universal,’ to quote the language of one of their most representative members, ‘that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsend to the country.’”
The only people who could profit by Lincoln’s death were in the Radical wing of the Republican party. These extremists thought Johnson their man. Senator Wade, heading a committee that waited on him, cried: “Johnson, we have faith in you! By the gods, it will be no trouble now running the Government!”
“Treason,” said the new President, “is the highest crime in the calendar, and the full penalty for its commission should be visited upon the leaders of the Rebellion. Treason should be made odious.” It is told as true “inside history” that the arrest and execution of General Lee had been determined upon; General Grant heard of it and went in the night to see President Johnson and Secretary Stanton and said to them: “If General Lee or any of the officers paroled by me are arrested while keeping the terms of their parole, I will resign my commission in the United States Army.”
But on April 15, even General Grant was of a divided mind, for he wired General Ord: “Arrest J. A. Campbell, Mayor Mayo, and members of the old Council who have not yet taken the oath of allegiance, and confine them in Libby Prison ... arrest all paroled officers and surgeons until they can be sent beyond our lines unless they have taken the oath of allegiance. Extreme rigour will have to be observed whilst assassination is the order of the day with rebels.”
General Ord replied: “The two citizens we have seen. They are old, nearly helpless, and, I think, incapable of harm. Lee and staff are in town among the paroled prisoners. Should I arrest them under the circumstances, I think the rebellion here would be reopened. I will risk my life that present paroles will be kept, if you will allow me to so trust the people here, who are ignorant of the assassination, done, I think, by some insane Brutus with but few accomplices. Judge Campbell and Mr. Hunter pressed me earnestly yesterday to send them to Washington to see the President. Would they have done so if guilty?”
General Grant answered: “I leave my dispatch of this date in the light of a suggestion to be executed only as far as you may judge the good of the service demands.” But the venerable peace-maker and his associates were not to escape vengeance.
General Halleck, from Richmond, to General Grant, May 5: “Hunter is staying quietly at home, advises all who visit him to support the Union cause. His hostility to Davis did much to make Davis unpopular in Virginia. Considering this, and the fact that President Lincoln advised against arresting Hunter, I would much prefer not to arrest him unless specially ordered to do so. All classes are taking the Amnesty Oath; it would be unfortunate to shake by unnecessary arrests this desire for general amnesty. Lee’s officers are taking the oath; even Lee himself is considering the propriety of doing so and petitioning President Johnson for pardon.”