Men of Our Times. Or, Leading Patriots of the Day

"Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:

Beat your plough-shares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.

Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord.

Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God."

The repeated defeats, disasters, and distresses that had come upon the Union cause stirred the conscience of all the religious portion of the community. They remembered the parallels in the Old Testament where the armies of Israel were turned back before the heathen, because they cherished within themselves some accursed thing – they began to ask whether the Achan who had stolen the wedge of gold and Babylonish vest in our midst was not in truth the cause why God would not go forth with our armies! and the pressure upon Lincoln to end the strife by declaring emancipation, became every day more stringent; at the same time the pressure of every opposing party became equally intense, and Lincoln by his peculiar nature and habits, must listen to all, and take time to ponder and weigh all. In consequence there was a time when he pleased nobody. Each party was incensed at the degree of attention he gave to the other. He might say, in the language of the old prophet, at this time, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me." He was, like the great Master whom he humbly followed, despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; we hid, as it were, our faces from him, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Like the poor, dumb, suffering, down-trodden classes for whom he stood, he had no prestige of personal advantages, or of that culture which comes from generations of wealth and ease. His method of thought and expression had not the stamp of any old aristocratic tradition. He was a sign upon the earth – the sign and the leader of a new order of events in which the power and the prestige should be in the hands of the plain, simple common people, and not in those of privileged orders. But the time had not yet come, and now was their hour of humiliation, and while in England the poor operatives of Manchester bravely and manfully bore starvation caused by want of cotton, rather than ask their government to break the blockade and get it for them; while the poor silk weavers of Lyons, and the poorer classes all over Europe trembled, and hoped, and sympathised with the struggling cause and its unfashionable leader – all the great, gay, successful, fashionable world went the other way. Punch had his jolly caricatures of Lincoln's long, thin face, and anxious perplexities, and the caricatures of Paris were none the less merry. Even in America there was a time when some of his most powerful friends doubted his fitness for his position, and criticisms filled the columns of every newspaper. In Washington, every fop and every fool felt at liberty to make a jest at the expense of his want of dignity, and his personal awkwardness. He was freely called an ape, a satyr, a stupid blockhead, for even the ass can kick safely and joyfully at a lion in a net. Even his cabinet and best friends said nothing for him, and kept an ominous and gloomy silence.

Lincoln knew all this, and turned it over in the calm recesses of his mind, with a quiet endurance, gilded at times by a gleam of the grim, solemn humor peculiar to himself. "I cannot make generals," he said once, "I would if I could." At another, to an important man who had been pressing some of his own particular wisdom upon him, "Perhaps you'd like to try to run the machine yourself." Somebody gave him a series of powerful criticisms which a distinguished writer had just poured forth on him. "I read them all through," he said quaintly, "and then I said to myself, Well, Abraham Lincoln, are you a man, or are you a dog?"

No man in the great agony suffered more or deeper, but it was with a dry, weary, patient pain, that many mistook for insensibility. "Whichever way it ends," he said to the writer, on one occasion, "I have the impression that I shan't last long after it's over."

After the dreadful repulse at Fredericksburg, he is reported to have said, "If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him." In those dark days, his heavy eyes and worn and weary air told how our reverses wore upon him, and yet there was a never failing fund of patience at bottom that sometimes rose to the surface in bubbles of quaint sayings or a story that forced a laugh even from himself. The humor of Lincoln was the oil that lubricated the otherwise dry and wiry machinery of his mind. The power of looking at men and things with reference to their humorous side, enabled him to bear without irritation many things in the political joltings and jarrings of his lot, which would have driven a more nervous man frantic. It is certainly a great advantage to be so made that one can laugh at times when crying will do no good, and Lincoln not only had his own laugh in the darkest days, but the wherewithal to bring a laugh from a weary neighbor. His jests and stories helped off many a sorry hour, and freshened the heart of his hearer for another pull in the galling harness.

He saw through other men who thought all the while they were instructing or enlightening him, with a sort of dry, amused patience. He allowed the most tedious talker to prose to him, the most shallow and inflated to advise him, reserving only to himself the right to a quiet chuckle far down in the depths of his private consciousness. Thus all sorts of men and all sorts of deputations saw him, had their talks, bestowed on him all their tediousness, and gave him the benefit of their opinions; not a creature was denied access, not a soul so lowly but might have their chance to bore the soul of this more lowly servant of the people. His own little, private, quiet, harmless laugh was his small comfort under all these inflictions. Sometimes the absolute confidence with which all contending sides urged their opinions and measures upon him, seemed to strike him with a solemn sense of the ludicrous. Thus when Dr. Cheever, at the head of a committee of clergymen, had been making a vigorous, authoritative appeal to him in Old Testament language, to end all difficulties by emancipation, Lincoln seemed to meditate gravely, and at last answered slowly, "Well, gentlemen, it is not very often that one is favored with a delegation direct from the Almighty!"

Washington, at this time, was one great hospital of wounded soldiers; the churches, the public buildings all filled with the maimed, the sick and suffering, and Lincoln's only diversion from the perplexity of state was the oversight of these miseries. "Where do you dine?" said one to him in our hearing. "Well, I don't dine, I just browse round a little, now and then." There was something irresistibly quaint and pathetic in the odd, rustic tone in which this was spoken.

Even the Emancipation Proclamation – that one flag stone in the wide morass of despondency on which the wearied man at last set firm foothold, did not at first seem to be a first step into the land of promise.

It was uttered too soon to please some parties, too late to please others. In England it was received in the face of much military ill success, with the scoffing epigram that the President had proclaimed liberty in the states where he had no power, and retained slavery in those where he had. It is true there was to this the sensible and just reply that he only gained the right to emancipate by this war power, and that of course this did not exist in states that were not at war; but when was ever a smart saying stopped in its course by the slow considerations and explanations of truth?

The battle of Gettysburg was the first argument that began to convince mankind that Mr. Lincoln was right. It has been well said, that in this world nothing succeeds but success. Bonaparte professed his belief that Providence always went with the strongest battalions, and therein he expressed about the average opinion of this world. Vicksburg and Gettysburg changed the whole face of the nation – they were the first stations outside of the valley of the shadow of death.

The nation took new courage – even the weary clamorers for peace at any price, began to shout on the right side, and to hope that peace might come through northern victory, and so it did come, they did not care how.

Whereas a few months before, Lincoln was universally depreciated, doubted, scoffed and scorned, now he found himself re-elected to the Presidential chair, by an overwhelming majority. It was in fact almost an election by acclamation. When the votes were being counted in New York late at night, and this victory became apparent, the vast surging assembly at the motion of one individual, uncovered their heads and sang a solemn Doxology – an affecting incident which goes far to show what sort of feelings lay at the bottom of this vast movement, and how profoundly the people felt that this re-election of Lincoln was a vital step in their onward progress.

At this hour the nation put the broad seal of its approbation on all his past course. At this moment she pledged herself to follow him and him alone to the end.

Perhaps never was man re-elected who used fewer of popular arts – made fewer direct efforts. He was indeed desirous to retain the place, for though he estimated himself quite humbly, still he was of opinion that on the whole his was as safe a hand as any, and he had watched the navigation so far as to come to love the hard helm, at which he had stood so painfully. In his usual quaint way he expressed his idea by a backwoods image. Alluding to the frequent fordings of turbulent streams that are the lot of the western traveller, he said, "It is'nt best to swap horses in the middle of a creek."

There was something almost preternatural in the calmness with which Lincoln accepted the news of his re-election. The first impulse seemed to be to disclaim all triumph over the opposing party, and to soberly gird up his loins to go on with his work to the end.

His last inaugural has been called by one of the London newspapers "the noblest political document known to history."

It was characterized by a solemn religious tone, so peculiarly free from earthly passion, that it seems to us now, who look back on it in the light of what has followed, as if his soul had already parted from earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to come. It was not the formal state-paper of the chief of a party in an hour of victory, so much as the solemn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course under a vast responsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments to the tribunal of Infinite Justice. It was a solemn clearing of his soul for the great sacrament of death:

"Fellow Countrymen– At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest, was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, and each invoke his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come: but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago; so, still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

The words of Lincoln seemed to grow more clear and more remarkable as they approached the end. Perhaps in no language, ancient or modern, are any number of words found more touching and eloquent than his speech of November 19, 1863, at the Gettysburg celebration. He wrote it in a few moments, while on the way to the celebration, on being told that he would be expected to make some remarks, and after Mr. Everett's oration he rose and read it. It was as follows:

"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The audience had admired Mr. Everett's long address. At Mr. Lincoln's few words, they cheered and sobbed and wept. When Mr. Lincoln had ended, he turned and congratulated Mr. Everett on having succeeded so well. Mr. Everett replied, with a truthful and real compliment, "Ah, Mr. Lincoln, how gladly I would exchange all my hundred pages, to have been the author of your twenty lines!"

Probably no ruler ever made a more profoundly and peculiarly Christian impression on the mind of the world than Lincoln. In his religious faith two leading ideas were prominent from first to last – man's helplessness, both as to strength and wisdom, and God's helpfulness in both. When he left Springfield to assume the Presidency, he said to his townsmen:

"A duty devolves on me which is perhaps greater than that which has devolved on any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded but for the aid of divine Providence, on which he at all times relied, and I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him. On the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support, and I hope that you, my friends, will pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain."

Abraham Lincoln's whole course showed that he possessed that faith without which, St. Paul says, it is impossible to please God, for "he that cometh to God must believe that He IS, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him."

And now our Christian pilgrim having passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and slain and vanquished giants and dragons, at last had a little taste, a few days sojourn, in the land of Beulah.

Cheer after cheer rose up and shook the land as by one great stroke after another the awful convulsions of the conflict terminated in full, perfect, final victory.

Never did mortal man on this earth have a triumph more dramatic and astounding than Lincoln's victorious entry into Richmond. Years before, when a humble lawyer in Illinois, a man without prestige of person or manners or education, he had espoused what the world called the losing side, and been content to take the up-hill, laborious road. He had seen his rival, adorned with every external advantage of person, manners, eloquence and oratory, sweeping all prizes away from him, and far distancing him in the race of political ambition.

In those days, while confessing that he had felt the promptings of ambition, and the disappointment of ill success, there was one manly and noble sentiment that ought to be printed in letters of gold, as the motto of every rising young man. Speaking of the distinction at which Douglas was aiming, he said:

"So reached as that the oppressed of my species might have equal reason to rejoice with me, I should value it more than the proudest crown that could deck the brow of a monarch."

At this moment of his life he could look back and see far behind him the grave of the once brilliant Douglas, who died worn out and worn down with disappointed ambition, while he, twice elected to the Presidency, was now standing the observed of all the world, in a triumph that has no like in history. And it was a triumph made memorable and peculiar by the ecstacies and hallelujahs of those very oppressed with whose care years before he had weighted and burdened his progress. It was one of those earthly scenes which grandly foreshadow that great final triumph predicted in prophecy, when the Lord God shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke of his people shall he utterly take away. A cotemporary witness has described Lincoln, calm and simple, leading his little boy by the hand, while the liberated blacks hailed him with hymns and prayers, mingling his name at each moment with ascriptions of praise and glory to Jesus the Great Liberator, whose day at last had come. Who can say of what ages of mournful praying and beseeching, what uplifting of poor, dumb hands that hour was the outcome? Years before, a clergyman of Virginia visiting the black insurrectionist, Nat Turner, in his cell before execution, gives the following wonderful picture of him: "In rags, in chains, covered with blood and bruises, he yet is inspired by such a force of enthusiasm, as he lifts his chained hands to heaven, as really filled my soul with awe. It is impossible to make him feel that he is guilty. He evidently believes that he was called of God to do the work he did. When I pointed out to him that it could not be, because he was taken, condemned, and about to be executed, he answered with enthusiasm, 'Was not Jesus Christ crucified? My cause will succeed yet!'"

Years passed, and the prophetic visions of Nat Turner were fulfilled on the soil of Virginia. It did indeed rain blood; the very leaves of the trees dripped blood; but the work was done, the yoke was broken, and the oppressed went free. An old negress who stood and saw the confederate prisoners being carried for safe keeping into the former slave pens, said grimly, "Well, de Lord am slow, but He am sure!"

As the final scenes of his life drew on, it seemed as if a heavenly influence overshadowed the great martyr, and wrought in him exactly the spirit that a man would wish to be found in when he is called to the eternal world. His last expressions and recorded political actions looked towards peace and forgiveness. On the day before his death he joyfully ordered the discontinuance of the draft. His very last official act was to give orders that two of the chief leaders of the rebellion, then expected in disguise at a sea port, on their flight to Europe, should not be arrested, but permitted to embark; so that he was thinking only of saving the lives of rebels, when they were thinking of taking his. If he had tried of set purpose to clear his soul for God's presence, and to put the rebels and their assassin champion in the wrong before that final tribunal, he could not have done better.

Mr. Lincoln seems to have had during his course a marked presentiment of the fate which had from the first been threatening him, and which the increasing pile of letters marked "Assassination," gave him constant reason to remember. In more than one instance he had in his public speeches professed a solemn willingness to die for his principles. The great tax which his labors and responsibilities made on his vitality, was perhaps one reason for his frequently saying that he felt that he should not live to go through with it. He observed to Mr. Lovejoy, during that gentleman's last illness, in February, 1864, "This war is eating my life out; I have a strong impression that I shall not live to see the end." In July following, he said to a correspondent of the Boston Journal, "I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done."

Concerning the last painful history, there have been a thousand conflicting stories. From the mass of evidence the following brief account has been prepared, which sufficiently outlines the circumstances:

Who were the persons concerned in the assassination of President Lincoln, has never been judicially proved. Perhaps it never will be. The indictment against the conspirators named the following parties. David E. Herold, George A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, Michael O'Laughlin, Edward Spangler, Samuel Arnold, Mary E. Surratt, Samuel A. Mudd, John H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, Jacob Thompson, William C. Cleary, Clement C. Clay, George Harper, and George Young; and it added, "and others unknown." The assassin was John Wilkes Booth. And whether or no Jefferson Davis and his fellows in the rebel government were actually aiding and abetting in this particular crime, it has not been unjust nor unnatural to suspect them of it. For Mr. Davis certainly accredited Thompson, Sanders, Clay, and Tucker, as his official agents in Canada. These men in their turn, and acting in harmony with their instructions and the purposes of their government, gave a commission to that John A. Kennedy who was detected in attempting to kindle an extensive fire in the city of New York, and consulted with him about his proposed plans. This was the substance of Kennedy's own confession, and he and his accomplices did kindle fires in four of the New York hotels. It is completely proved, again, that Davis paid sundry sums, in all $35,000 in gold, to incendiaries hired by his government to burn hospitals and steamboats at the West, and that Thompson paid money to a person engaged in Dr. Blackburn's attempt to spread yellow fever in our cities.

But more: when one Alston wrote to Davis, offering his services to try to "rid my country of some of her deadliest enemies, by striking at the very heart's blood of those who seek to enchain her in slavery" – adding the very significant remark, "I consider nothing dishonorable having such a tendency," Mr. Davis caused this proposition not to be refused, nor passed over in silence, nor indignantly exposed; but to be "respectfully referred, by direction of the President, to the honorable Secretary of War." Still more: it has been proved that in 1863, John Wilkes Booth declared that "Abraham Lincoln must be killed." The rebel agents in Canada, six months before the assassination, specifically made the same declaration. In the summer of 1864, Thompson said that he could at any time have the "tyrant Lincoln," or any of his advisers that he chose, "put out of the way," and that Thompson's agents would not consider doing this a crime, if done for the rebel cause; and Clay, when he heard of this, corroborated the sentiment, saying, "That is so; we are all devoted to our cause, and ready to go any length – to do anything under the sun." Many other such utterances by rebel leaders are proved and have become uncontradicted matter of history. Besides; when Mr. Davis, at Charlotte, North Carolina, while fleeing from Richmond, received the telegram announcing the fate of Mr. Lincoln, he calmly read it aloud to the people present, and without a word of disapproval, uttered a cold comment: "If it were to be done, it were better it were well done." And when Breckinridge said he regretted it, (not because it was wicked or dishonorable, but because it was unfortunate for the South just then,) Mr Davis replied in the same tone of cold indifference or of concealed satisfaction, and using the same words: "Well, General, I don't know; if it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the Beast (i. e. Gen. Butler), and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete." Those are not the words of an honorable man, nor of a disapprover. But they are exactly natural to an accessory before the fact, who does not confess his part in it, and prefers to dissemble his joy. It is not at all unreasonable to suspect that the men who are proved to have done thus and spoken thus, before and after the deed, and who have openly hired and approved the perpetration of such other deeds, were concerned in the planning and execution of this deed too.

Booth was an actor, and the son of a well known actor; and the son had inherited, apparently, much of the reckless and occasionally furious temper of his father. He was also a very violent and bitter rebel. During the fall of 1864, he had been in Canada, consulting with the rebel agents there, and mixed up with a number of other subordinate agents in the business of assassinating President Lincoln; and he was the most prominent candidate, so to speak, for the place of actual murderer. On November 11th, 1864, he was in New York, where, while riding with a companion in a street car, he dropped a letter which came into the possession of the government; it was a vigorous appeal to him to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. It said: "Abe must die, and now. You can choose your weapons, the cup, the knife, the bullet;" and again: "Strike for your home, strike for your country; bide your time, but strike sure." During the winter, Booth was engaging the assistance required for his scheme; and he had already fixed upon the scene of the murder; for, not later than January, he was urging one Chester to enter into the plan, and assuring him that all his part of it would be to stand at the back door of Ford's Theatre and open it. This was a safe calculation, for the President's enjoyment of dramatic performances was great, and enhanced by the difficulty of finding agreeable relaxations, and also by the awful pressure of his official duties and of the war, which intensified the need of relaxation.

The scheme as finally arranged, provided for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, by Booth; of Mr. Johnson, by Atzerodt; of Mr. Seward, by Payne, (alias Powell); and of Gen. Grant, by O'Laughlin. For the President, an elaborate death trap was constructed in Ford's Theatre. The catches of the locks to all three doors of the President's box (one outer and two inner ones), were loosened by loosening their screws, and left so that a slight push would enable the assassin to enter even though the doors should be locked. A small hole was made through one of the two inner ones, to enable him to see before entering exactly how his victim sat, so that the final moves within the box could be laid out before entering it; and a wooden brace was prepared to set against the outer door (which opened inward) with one end, and with the other to fit a mortice cut in the wall behind, so that after entering, the assassin could fasten the door behind him sufficiently to prevent any interruption until his work was done. Arrangements were made for securing horses for the murderers to flee with. The stage carpenter or assistant, Spangler, was employed to be on hand and open and shut the back door of the theatre when wanted. Some scenes and miscellaneous matter that frequently impeded more or less the passage from the front of the stage to this back door, were piled up or otherwise put out of the way. A supply of weapons for the conspirators was provided. And a route for flight from Washington within the rebel lines was determined on. This route led southward from the city, over Anacostia Bridge, ten miles to Mrs. Surratt's house at Surrattsville, then some fifteen miles more to Dr. Mudd's house, then about twenty miles to a point where arrangements were made for crossing the Potomac and proceeding towards Richmond.