Five days after the surrender of General Lee, Mr. Lincoln went to Ford's Theatre, because it would rest him and please the people to see him. He used to say, "The tired part of me is inside and out of reach.... I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done."
While Mr. Lincoln was enjoying the play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor, came into the box behind him and fired a bullet into his brain; then sprang upon the stage, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!" The President scarcely moved in his chair, and, unconscious, was taken to a house near by, where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven, April 15, 1865. Booth was caught twelve days later, and shot in a burning barn.
The nation seemed as though struck dumb; and then, from the Old World as well as the New, came an agonizing wail of sorrow. Death only showed to their view how sublime was the character of him who had carried them through the war. While the body, embalmed, lay in state in the east room of the White House tens of thousands crowded about it. And then, accompanied by the casket of little Willie, the body of Abraham Lincoln took its long journey of fifteen hundred miles, to the home of his early life, for burial. Nothing in this country like that funeral pageant has ever been witnessed. In New York, in Philadelphia, and in every other city along the way, houses were trimmed with mourning, bells tolled, funeral marches were played, and the rooms where the body rested were filled with flowers. Hundreds of thousands looked upon the tired, noble face of the martyred President.
In Oak Ridge Cemetery, at Springfield, Illinois, in the midst of a dense multitude, a choir of two hundred and fifty singing by the open grave of him who dearly loved music,
"Children of the Heavenly King,"
Abraham Lincoln was buried, Bishop Simpson, now dead, spoke eloquently, quoting Mr. Lincoln's words, "Before high Heaven and in the face of the world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love."
Charles Sumner said, "There are no accidents in the Providence of God." Such lives as that of Abraham Lincoln are not accidents in American history. They are rather the great books from whose pages we catch inspiration, and in which we read God's purposes for the progress of the human race.
BOOKS BY SARAH K. BOLTON.
"Mrs. Bolton never fails to interest and instruct her readers."—Chicago Inter-ocean.