A Boy Trooper with Sheridan

by Stanton P. Allen

HE news of the assassination of Lincoln reached us at Burkesville Junction—the crossing of the Richmond and Danville and the Southside railroads—April 15, 1865. The terrible intelligence came over the military telegraph wire about midnight of the fourteenth, I think, but it was not promulgated to the troops until after reveille in the morning. Secretary Seward had been dangerously wounded by one of the assassins, and the Head of the Nation had been murdered by J. Wilkes Booth, who as he was escaping from the theater at Washington where the President was shot, brandished a dagger on the stage and shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and “the South is avenged!”

As the details of the dastardly plot were made known, the army was informed that the assassin intended to take the life of Gen. Grant. Battle-scarred and stern-faced veterans who had fought from the first Bull Run to Appomattox turned pale and set their teeth as the dispatches were read to the men drawn up in line. It was difficult to believe at first that Abraham Lincoln, the great and noble and tender-hearted President whom we had seen only a few days before near Petersburg, was dead. Yet the sad news was confirmed as later dispatches came to hand.

The Union soldiers again began to look after their cartridge boxes. They knew not what to expect next. This was a new phase of warfare. But in spite of the declaration of the assassin that the South was avenged, a majority of the rank and file of Grant's army as they recovered from the first shock of the dreadful calamity, were ready to exonerate the men who had laid down their arms at Appomattox from any complicity in the plot that struck down the noble Lincoln at the very moment that the glorious sun of peace was rising above the dark clouds that had hung like a pall over the nation for four long years.

Lincoln was murdered on the fourth anniversary of the capture of Fort Sumter by the rebels. The traitors who directed the firing on the flag waving over that fortress four years before, and who had set on foot and carried forward the wickedest rebellion ever inaugurated, were responsible for the death of the martyr Lincoln and the thousands who fell on both sides of that sanguinary conflict.

A few days after the assassination we continued our march to Richmond, camping for a day or two in Manchester on the opposite side of the James. The ruin and havoc made by the rebels when evacuating their capital, subjected the inhabitants to great hardships. A large portion of the city was burned.

I witnessed the return of a veteran in butternut to his home in Richmond. He came down the hill from the State House and turned into a street leading toward the river. His right arm was in a sling. He had been wounded early in the morning of the day that Lee surrendered. The disbanded Confederate was literally in rags and the uppers of his shoes had seceded from the soles. Yet his face was beaming with joyful anticipation, for he was nearing his home.

But as he reached what had been the corner of another street and turned to the right, his serviceable hand was raised and his knees trembled as he looked in vain for the dwelling he had left when last he bade his little family good-by and hastened away to help build the breastworks in front of Petersburg. The dwellings that had stood in that neighborhood were now a mass of blackened ruins. The poor fellow sank down in the street and a colored man hastened to his assistance.

“I declar, it's Massa John,” exclaimed the negro as he raised the head of the soldier. “Doan' you know me, Massa?”