“The assassination has stampeded the civil authorities,” “unnerved them,” was the conclusion he drew when he went to Washington when, just after the crime, the long roll had been beaten and the city put under martial law; public men were still in dread of assassination. At the grand review in Washington, Sherman, hero of the hour, shook hands with the President and other dignitaries on the stand, but pointedly failed to accept Mr. Stanton’s.
After Mr. Lincoln’s death, leniency to “rebels” was accounted worse than a weakness. The heavy hand was applauded. It was the fashion to say hard things of us. It was accounted piety and patriotism to condemn “traitors and rebels.” Cartoonists, poets, and orators, were in clover; here was a subject on which they could “let themselves out.”
THE CHAINING OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
CHAPTER IX
The Chaining of Jefferson Davis