Fifty Years of Public Service / Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom, Senior United States Senator from Illinois

by Shelby M. Cullom

"With deep gratitude to my countrymen for this mark of their confidence; with a distrust of my own ability to perform the duty required under the most favorable circumstances, and now rendered doubly difficult by existing national perils; yet with a firm reliance on the strength of our free Government, and the eventual loyalty of the people to the just principles upon which it is founded, and, above all, with an unshaken faith in the Supreme Ruler of Nations, I accept this trust. Be pleased to signify this to the respective Houses of Congress."

These utterances show more clearly than any one else can describe the state of mind in which the President received his re-election, and in which he was about to enter his second term as President of the Republic. Without any personal feeling of pride, he was certain in his own mind that his re-election was necessary in order to save the Union.

I attended the second inauguration, March 4, 1865. I have a particularly vivid recollection of the scene which took place in the Senate chamber when Mr. Johnson took the oath as Vice-President. The simple truth is, and it was plain to every one present in that chamber, Mr. Johnson was intoxicated. Johnson delivered a rambling, senseless address. I sat next to Senator Lane of Indiana, and I remarked that somebody should stop him. Lane sent up a note to the Secretary of the Senate, telling him to get Johnson to cease speaking and take the oath. We felt Johnson was making an exhibition of himself in the presence of the President, the Cabinet, the Foreign Representatives, and two Houses of Congress, and a gathering of the most distinguished men of the Nation. The Secretary wrote some lines and placed them before Mr. Johnson, who did not appear to notice them. Finally he was made to understand that he must take the oath, as the time had come when the President, according to usual custom, would have to go to the east front of the Capitol to take the oath as President of the United States. Johnson, with a sort of wild sweep of his arm said, "I will take the oath, but I regard my devotion to the Union as greater evidence of my loyalty than any oath I could take."

I was close to Mr. Lincoln at the solemn moment when Chief Justice Chase administered to him the oath of office. There was a vast crowd of people, great enthusiasm and rejoicing, and the war was practically over,—a far different scene from the one which took place just four years before, when Chief Justice Taney in the same place administered the same oath. At that time there was no noisy demonstration. There was a solemn hush, as every one realized that the country was about to be plunged into one of the mightiest civil wars of all history. Indeed many men believed that there was a concerted plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln at that time, and that he would never be permitted to enter upon the duties of his office.

I heard him deliver his second inaugural address,—one of his two greatest speeches.

The last time I saw Abraham Lincoln alive was about three weeks before his assassination, as I now recollect. He was at the White House. There had been constant rumors throughout his first term that he was in danger of some such outrage, but as the war drew to a close, with the natural bitter and resentful feeling in the South, these rumors seemed to increase. I told him what I had heard, and urged him to be careful. It did not seem to concern him much, and the substance of his reply was that he must take his chances; that he could not live in an iron box, as he expressed it, and do his duty as President of the United States.

It is difficult for one who did not live in those terrible days from 1861 to 1865 to realize the awful shock of horror that went through the whole Nation on the morning of April 15, 1865, when the message came, "Abraham Lincoln is dead." In his old home at Springfield, it seemed the whole population assembled in the public square, and the duty devolved upon me to announce to the assembled people that the great President had passed away. There was intense suppressed excitement. No one dared utter a word in disparagement of Abraham Lincoln. The crowd was in the humor for hanging to the limb of the first convenient tree any one who dared to make a slighting suggestion. It was not alone in Springfield, but it was throughout the entire North that this feeling prevailed. There was fear that the Government would go to pieces, almost that the end of the world was at hand.

Soon the news came from different sources that he was to be buried in Washington, or somewhere in the East. The people of Springfield became very much worked up. A committee was appointed to go to Washington to insist that the remains should be taken to Springfield. I was a member of this committee. We left immediately, but before we arrived at Harrisburg it had been determined that the only fitting final resting place of all that remained of the immortal Lincoln was at his old home in Springfield; and the funeral train had already left Washington. The committee waited at Harrisburg for its arrival. Through the courtesy of Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, we were permitted to board the train, and we accompanied the remains from there to Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, and finally to Springfield. At each place the remains lay in state and were viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.

In all, the entire journey consumed some twelve days from the time the party left Washington until it arrived in Springfield. It was determined that the funeral train should follow the same route and stop at practically the same places that Lincoln visited on his way to Washington to be inaugurated as the first Republican President of the United States. The country was so wrought up no one seemed certain what was to happen; no one knew but that there would be a second and bloodier revolution, in which the Government might fall into the hands of a dictator; and it was thought the funeral trip would serve to arouse the patriotism of the people, which it did.

I never witnessed anything like the universal demonstration of sorrow, not only at every city where the remains lay in state but all during the entire route, at every little village and hamlet; even at cross-roads thousands of people would be gathered to catch a glimpse of the funeral train as it passed by. In Philadelphia the casket rested in Independence Hall. In New York I suppose not less than half a million people passed by to view the body. General Scott came down with the procession to the station, and to him I introduced our Illinois friends. His response was given in a most dignified and ponderous style: "Gentlemen, you do me great honor."