Bloody Times (5 page)

A colonel from Davis’s staff invited the president to share his family’s room, which he had rented for them after he had removed them from Richmond. But the owners of the house insisted that Davis must leave. They were terrified of what might happen to them if the Union armies learned that Jefferson Davis had stayed there. That fear was felt by most of the people of Greensboro. “It was rarely that anybody asked one of us to his house,” Burton Harrison complained, “and but few of them even had the grace even to explain their fear that, if they entertained us, their houses would be burned by the enemy, when his
cavalry
should get there.”

At last Davis and his officials were settled in what Stephen Mallory described as a “dilapidated, leaky” railroad passenger car. “Here they ate, slept, and lived during their stay in Greensboro,” he wrote, “a negro boy cooking their rations in the open air near by.” Just as they had made the best of their two train rides from Richmond and from Danville, the members of the Confederate government endured everything with good humor. The car became, said Mallory, “a very agreeable resort” during the “dreary days” in the unfriendly town. “The navy store supplied bread and bacon . . . biscuits, eggs, and coffee were added; and with a few tin cups, spoons, and pocket knives, and a liberal use of fingers and capital appetites, they managed to get enough to eat, and they slept as best they could.” The highest officials of the Confederacy ate like common soldiers.

Mallory went on to describe how the Confederate officials managed their “curious life” in the train car. “Here was the astute ‘Minister of Justice’ . . . with a piece of half-broiled ‘middling’ in one hand and a hoe-cake in the other, his face bearing unmistakable evidence of the condition of the bacon. There was the clever Secretary of State busily dividing his attention between a bucket of stewed dried apples and a
haversack
of hard-boiled eggs. Here was the Postmaster-General sternly and energetically running his bowie knife through a ham as if it were the chief business of life, and there was the Secretary of the Navy courteously swallowing his coffee scalding hot that he might not keep the
venerable
Adjutant-General waiting too long for the
coveted
tin cup!”

A few days later Jefferson Davis would give a brief speech—no more than twelve or fifteen minutes long—in Greensboro. He boasted to his audience “how vast our resources still were, and that we would in a few weeks have a larger army than we ever had.” Davis explained how such an army was to be raised. “Three fourths of the men are at home, absent without leave. Now we will collect them, and then there are a great many
conscripts
on the rolls who have never been caught—we will get them—and with the 100,000 men from Gen. Lee’s army and the 85,000 men from Gen. Johnston’s, we will have such an army as we have never had before.”

But these remarks rested on wishful thinking. Lee’s and Johnston’s armies were much smaller than Davis imagined. Thousands of men had deserted and gone home, and Davis had no way to round them up and force them to fight. And even if, by some miracle, Jefferson Davis was able to assemble a force of 185,000 men or more, how would he arm them, feed them, and supply them with ammunition? And even if he could overcome these obstacles, the Union armies would still outnumber them.

*  *  *

On the afternoon of April 11, Abraham Lincoln sat in his office and wrote out a draft of an important speech he planned to deliver from the second-floor window of the White House that night. He did not know that he was preparing his last speech. He would honor the men who had won the war and then speak about giving blacks the right to vote.

On April 12 General Lee wrote to tell Davis what he already knew. This was Lee’s official announcement to the president that he had surrendered.

Near Appomattox Court House, Virginia
April 12, 1865

Mr. President:

It is with pain that I announce to Your Excellency the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. . . . The enemy was more than five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one day longer it would have been at a great sacrifice of life; at its end, I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. We had no
subsistence
for man or horse . . . the supplies could not reach us, and the men deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and exhausted.

With great respect, yr obdt svt [obedient servant]
R. E. Lee
Genl [General]

The arrival of General Lee’s letter jolted President Davis into reality. Lee’s son was there in Greensboro when Davis received it. “After reading it,” the young man remembered, “he handed it without comment to us; then, turning away, he silently wept bitter tears.”

At least the president’s family was safe. Varina wrote to Jefferson on April 13, telling him she had crossed the North Carolina state line and was now in Chester, South Carolina. She kept traveling, hoping to avoid Union soldiers: “I am going somewhere, perhaps to Washington Ga—perhaps only to Abbeville just as the children seem to bear the journey I will decide. . . . I feel wordless, helpless—the children are well. . . . Would to God I could know the truth of the horrible rumors I hear of you. . . . May God have mercy upon me, and preserve you safe your devoted wife.”

In Washington on April 13, Abraham Lincoln was busy. The war was not over. And when it was, he must plan the
reconstruction
of the South. He visited the telegraph office early in the morning and then had meetings with his generals and officials. At night the president, like all of Washington, enjoyed a grand
illumination
of the city to celebrate Lee’s surrender.

The buildings of Washington glowed with candles, lamps, and decorations. One observer described what he saw: “The Capitol made a magnificent display—as did the whole city. After lighting up my own house and seeing the Capitol lighted, I rode up to the upper end of the City and saw the whole display. It was indeed glorious . . .
all of Washington
was in the streets. I never saw such a crowd out-of-doors in my life.”

Not everyone in Washington enjoyed the illumination. In his room at the National Hotel at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, the twenty-six-year-old actor John Wilkes Booth wrote a letter to his mother. “Everything was bright and splendid,” he said. But, he lamented, “more so in my eyes if it had been a display in a nobler cause.”

On April 14, Jefferson Davis sent a hurried note to Varina.

Greensboro N.C.
14 April 65

Dear Winnie

I will come to you if I can. Every thing is dark.—you should prepare for the worst by dividing your baggage so as to move in wagons. If you can go to Abbeville it seems best as I am now advised—If you can send every thing there do so—I have lingered on the road and labored to little purpose—My love to the children and Maggie—God bless and preserve you ever prays your most affectionate

Banny —

I sent you a telegram but fear it was stopped on the road. Genl. Bonham bears this and will [tell] you more than I can write as his horse is at the door and he waits for me to write this again and ever your’s—

Then he spent a quiet night wondering what events the coming days might bring. His journey, although difficult, had not been a complete failure. Yes, he had fled Richmond, lost Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, and abandoned the state of Virginia to the enemy. But the situation was not all bad. During his twelve days on the run, he had escaped capture, kept his government together, and protected his family. And he had kept his dignity. He had not fled Richmond like a thief in the night, but as a head of state.

Abraham Lincoln began another busy day on April 14 with breakfast with his son Robert, an army officer on Grant’s staff and just back from Lee’s surrender. The president spent the day in meetings and writing letters. He agreed to go with his wife to Ford’s Theatre that night to see the comedy
Our American Cousin.
In the afternoon Abraham and Mary Lincoln went on a carriage ride to the Navy Yard. He told her that today he considered the war to be over. Abraham Lincoln wanted to laugh tonight.

Around 8:30
P.M.
the President and Mrs. Lincoln, along with their companions, Major Henry Rathbone, an army officer, and his fiancée, Clara Harris, daughter of a United States senator, got out of their carriage, walked several yards to the front door of Ford’s Theatre, and disappeared inside.

Abraham Lincoln loved the theater, and during the Civil War he had gone to many plays. Tonight, while his parents attended
Our
American Cousin
, twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln enjoyed
Aladdin
at Grover’s Theatre, a few blocks away. Lincoln’s other son, twenty-one-year-old Robert, chose to stay at the White House to read.

At the Star Saloon, the brick building just south of Ford’s, customers gulped their whiskeys and brandies and tossed their coins on the bar in payment. One of them—a handsome, pale-skinned, black-eyed, raven-haired young man with a mustache—swallowed his drink and left the bar without speaking a word. If anyone had been watching the front door of the Star Saloon between 9:30 and 10:00
P.M.
, he might have recognized John Wilkes Booth, one of the most famous stage stars in America, as he left wearing a black frock coat, black pants, thigh-high black leather riding boots, and a black hat.

Booth turned north up Tenth Street, saw the president’s carriage parked several yards in front of him, and then turned right, toward the theater, passing through Ford’s main door, the same one through which the president had entered about an hour earlier. If he intended to see the play, John Wilkes Booth was impossibly late.

It was ten o’clock. By eleven, quiet Tenth Street would be filled with a screaming mob of thousands of people.

It began between 10:15 and 10:30
P.M.
At one moment the street was quiet. At the next dozens of playgoers rushed out the doors from Ford’s Theatre onto Tenth Street. People pushed one another aside and knocked one another down to squeeze through the exits.

Some of the first men to escape the theater headed toward E and F Streets, shouting as they ran. Within seconds they turned the corners and vanished from sight. Then hundreds of men, women, and children fled Ford’s and gathered in the street. Many screamed. Others wept. Soon their voices combined into a loud and fearful roar. They shouted strange words which pierced the din: “Murder.” “Assassin.” “President.” “Dead.”

Then random words formed into sentences: “Don’t let him escape.” “Catch him.” “It was John Wilkes Booth!” “Burn the theater!” “The president has been shot.” “President Lincoln is dead.” “No, he’s alive.”

In the Petersen house, a boardinghouse across the street from Ford’s Theatre, Henry Safford, who shared a second-floor rented room, heard the noise outside. He had not gone to bed and was still awake, reading a book. From his window he saw the crowd. Something was wrong. He raced downstairs, unlocked the door, and hurried into the street. He pushed through the crowd. Halfway across, the mob blocked his progress. He could not take another step. There were too many people. He saw that this crowd was angry, perhaps dangerous. But why?

Safford decided to return to the safety of the Petersen house. “Finding it impossible to go further, as everyone acted crazy or mad, I retreated to the steps of my house,” he wrote later. Before he got out of the mob, he heard its news: Abraham Lincoln had just been assassinated in Ford’s Theatre. He had been shot, the murderer had escaped, and the president was still inside.

Other boarders at Petersen’s heard the noise outside. George Francis and his wife, Huldah, lived on the first floor, and their two big front parlor windows faced the theater. “We were about getting into bed,” Francis recalled. “Huldah had got into bed. I had changed my clothes and shut off the gas, when we heard such a terrible scream that we ran to the front window to see what it could mean.” Looking out into the street, they saw “a great commotion—in the Theatre—some running in, others hurrying out, and we could hear hundreds of voices mingled in the greatest confusion. Presently we heard some one say ‘the President is shot,’ when I hurried on my clothes and ran out, across the street, as they brought him out of the Theatre—Poor man! I could see as the gas light fell upon his face, that it was deathly pale, and that his eyes were closed.”

While George Francis stayed in the street, Henry Safford had returned to the Petersen house. From the first-floor porch, he noticed a commotion at one of the theater doors, and then watched a small knot of people push their way into the street. An army officer waved his sword in the air, bellowing at people to step back and clear the way. Someone else ran from Ford’s across the street and pounded on the door of the house next to the Petersen house. No one answered.

In command of that little group was Dr. Charles A. Leale, a U.S. army surgeon who had been watching the play and who was the first doctor to see Lincoln after the shooting. “When we arrived to the street,” he remembered, “I was asked to place him in a carriage and remove him to the White House. This I refused to do fearing that he would die as soon as he would be placed in an upright position. I said that I wished to take him to the nearest house, and, place him comfortably in bed. We slowly crossed the street.”