Mr. George C. Read, of Chicago, at the time of President Lincoln’s assassination, was a foot orderly under Generals Griffin and Ayers. He was in Washington on the fateful April 14, 1865, and was an eyewitness to the tragedy. He tells of it as follows:
“Some time in the latter part of March, 1865, I was sent to Washington on account of the loss of my voice. I remained there most of the time in barracks on east Capitol Hill. On the afternoon of the fated April 14, 1865, I happened in the saloon next door to Ford’s Theater to see the barkeeper, one Jim Peck. While standing near a stove about the center of the room three men came into the place laughing and talking loudly. They all went to the end of the bar nearest the door and ordered a drink. One was a tall, handsome fellow, dressed in the latest fashionable clothes, if I remember rightly, and the others appeared like workmen of some kind. Both were carelessly dressed, and I think one was in his shirt sleeves. They had their drink, and then the fine-looking man turned toward where I was standing and said, ‘Come up, soldier, and have a drink.’ I declined, for the reason that I had not at that time become addicted to the habit of social drinking. He then approached me and took me by the arm and said, ‘Have something; take a cigar.’ This I did not refuse, and he put his hand in his vest pocket and, pulling out a cigar, handed it to me without any further remarks. He then returned to his companions at the bar. They remained, if I remember correctly, about five minutes after, and then, all laughing at something that Peck said, left the place. As soon as they were gone I asked Peck who the big man was, and he said that he was an actor—one of the Booth family—John Wilkes Booth. I had heard of him before, but paid no further attention to it except to remark that he seemed to be in a happy frame of mind, when Peck stated that he was on a ‘drunk,’ and associated with the stage mechanics in the theater all the time.
“As I was about to depart, little thinking what history would develop in a few short hours, Peck asked me to accept a couple of tickets to the theater for that night. I was glad to get them, having no money to purchase the same, and knowing that the President would be at the play. Later I found a young man, like myself, broke, and invited him to accompany me to the play. We were on hand early, and, having good reserved seats about the center of the house, were elated over our good luck.
“Suffice it to say that the curtain went up and ‘Our American Cousin’ was introduced. I was intently interested and cannot remember positively what act it was that was on, except what is told in history, when I heard a shot, and immediately a man appeared at the front of the President’s box and, without waiting, jumped to the stage beneath. I, as well as all others in the theater, was astonished. He ran to about the center of the stage and raised his left hand and said something I did not catch, and then disappeared behind the wings. As soon as I saw him I recognized the handsome man I had seen in the saloon that afternoon, and turned to my comrade and said: ‘That’s Wilkes Booth, the actor, and I think he is on a drunk.’ Before I had finished even this a cry went up that the President had been shot, ‘Stop that man!’ and many other exclamations I have forgotten. It was all done so quickly that one had hardly time to think. Immediately the audience rose as one person and cries were heard all over the house, ‘Stop that man!’ ‘The President has been assassinated!’ and many others. The people began to crush each other and try to get out of the theater, but they were quieted to a certain extent and the provost guard on duty there fought to make them keep their places. Soon there was a movement on the side aisle running from the President’s box, and from where I was standing on my seat I could see what appeared to be a party of men carrying some one. Later the rest of the party were conducted out of the theater, and when I managed to get outside I saw a crowd looking up at a house opposite. On asking what it meant, I was told that the President had been carried there and was dying. I lost my comrade in the crowd and have never met him since.
“It is unnecessary to go into any more details of what occurred that night. I was excited, as well as every one else in the city, and got little rest. But that is my experience, told as briefly as possible, without any stretch of imagination. If I had to do with the same again I think it would have been better if I had told the officials what I saw that afternoon, but, as it was, all came out right, and the really guilty ones suffered the penalty of their crime. I met Peck the next year in New York City, but have never heard of or seen him since.”
An interesting and valuable relic, which brings vividly to the mind the historic scene in Ford’s Theater, Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865, is owned by Colonel James S. Case, at one time a resident of Philadelphia, but whose home is now in Brooklyn.
It is only a play bill, but upon it is a discoloration made by a tiny drop of President Lincoln’s blood. It was picked up just after the tragedy by John T. Ford, the manager of the theater. He found it on the floor of the box where it had fallen from the President’s hand when the bullet of Assassin Booth pierced his head. It lay beneath the chair in which the citizen-hero received his death wound. There was a tiny spot of blood, still red as it came from the great heart of Lincoln, on the edge.
Mr. Ford carried the precious paper home, and only parted with it at the request of the late A. K. Browne of Washington, who was a warm personal friend of the manager. It came into Mr. Browne’s possession while the nation was still mourning for its idol, and soon after his assassin had met justly merited fate at the hands of Sergeant Boston Corbett.
The play bill is somewhat yellow from age, but otherwise in an excellent state of preservation. The bloodstain is now a dark brown. The program was of “Our American Cousin,” which was being given for the benefit of Laura Keene. The bloodstain is nearly half way down the program, opposite the names of John Dyott, and Harry Hawk, Miss Keene’s leading support.
When President Lincoln was assassinated on the night of April 14, 1865, while witnessing a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, he was removed to the Peterson house, which was directly opposite the theater.
The late John T. Ford related that he had occasion to visit John Wilkes Booth at the Peterson house once. The Davenport-Wallack combination was playing “Julius Cæsar” at Ford’s theater. Booth had been cast to play Marc Antony and was late in coming to rehearsal. Ford went over to the house to ask him to hurry up. He found Booth lying in bed studying his lines. He little dreamed then that Lincoln would so shortly die in the same house, the same room and on that identical bed, or that Booth would turn out to be his assassin.
When Lincoln went to Washington he had a sale of the furniture of the Eighth street home at Springfield. Most of the articles were bought by a well-to-do family named Tilton, who admired the President in such a way as to make what had belonged to him things to be treasured. When the troops passed through Springfield to the front they visited the house “where Uncle Abe had lived,” and the Tiltons used to confer great favor by permitting the boys in blue to sit down in the dining room and have a glass of milk off the table from which Mr. Lincoln had eaten many times. But the Tiltons moved away to Chicago. They carried with them the furniture which had been in the Lincoln house, prizing it more than ever after his death. In 1871 came the Chicago fire, and with it went not only the Lincoln furniture, but the original document, which, if it were in existence now, would be preserved with the zeal that guards the Declaration of Independence—the Proclamation of Emancipation. The draft of the proclamation had been sent to Chicago to be exhibited for some purpose and was burned in that fire.
“No other public man has been subjected to such scrutiny from the time he was born until the end of his tragic career as was Lincoln,” said Mr. Griffiths in a lecture. “He obtained his early education from ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and a copy of the Indiana statutes. This was before some of our later legislatures had made their records or his education might have been marred instead of made.
“When he was elected President,” Mr. Griffiths continued, “he was a plodding country lawyer whose library consisted of twenty-two volumes. Through his public addresses he blazed his way to the Presidency. He believed the position of a stump speaker to be one of sacred trust. He had none of the platform graces. His figure was ungainly; his voice was rasping. He always made the most careful preparation and gave his best thought to the smallest audiences. He had marvelous gift of expression and he knew more about the Bible than Webster. He was not learned in the law and he despised the legal routine. On a lawsuit he always dealt in the unexpected, which greatly discomfited the opposing lawyer. He liked stories, but he always told them to illustrate a point. He was a deeply religious man.”
“Into the story of the republic from 1861 to 1865 the patriot does well to enter, there to find for instruction and example the manliest of Americans, the highest type of Americanism, the central figure of the century, Abraham Lincoln. The fierce partisanship which assailed him during his short period of leadership became silent at his death, and each succeeding year but serves to exalt his work and character.
“The judgment of time has already shown to be colossal him who was called common—the honor that we offer to his memory is only the spontaneous tribute of contemporary history—our enthusiasm is but the sum of the world’s calmest thinking. For years in all lands gifted speech has proclaimed his deeds and the pens of poets have sketched his life. Thus does he receive his tribute from the people.
“In his mentality Lincoln shone in justice, common sense, consistency, persistence, and knowledge of men. In his words he was candid and frank, but accurate and concise, speaking strong Anglo-Saxon unadorned—powerful in its simplicity. In his sentiments he was kind, patriotic, and brave. No leader ever combined more completely the graces of gentleness with rugged determination. In his morals truth was his star, honesty the vital essence of his life.
“In his religion he was faithful as a saint. Providence was his stay and he walked with God. As President his life and deeds were a constant sermon. Love of men and faith in God were the fundamental elements of his character. Poverty had schooled him to pity and taught him the equality of all mankind.”—Luther Laflin Mills.
Lincoln’s forefathers were independent owners of the land they trod on, barons, not serfs. You will say, perhaps, that Lincoln had little education. We are apt to say that of our great men. Lincoln knew how to speak, read and write. What more do we teach our boys to-day? He knew the Bible, which cannot be said of everybody in Boston. He read Burns, and this with the Bible gave him his inspiration and sentiment. Æsop and “Pilgrim’s Progress” taught him aptness and pregnant illustration.
The incidents of his life were few but notable. He was a resident of three states before he was 21, and made a river trip to New Orleans, longer than Thomas Jefferson had taken at his age. At New Orleans he saw for the first time the auction and whipping of slaves, which made so deep an impression on him that it may be said to be the birth of his anti-slavery sentiment.
The choice of Mr. Lincoln for President was not a strained one. He was the logical selection. Lincoln’s qualities, that sympathy with the common people, that homely sincerity, have given him a place in the people’s hearts a little closer, a little dearer, than is held by any other public man. He had faults, but they were small compared with his virtues. He had not Washington’s grandeur, the mental alertness of Hamilton, or the intellectual force of Webster. His greatness was made up of natural qualities, as of a hillside towering o’er a plain, yet a part of it. Lincoln was surpassed in certain qualities by other of our historically great men, but there are none, we feel sure, who would have filled the place he filled as well as he.—Secretary of War Long.
One often thinks of his life as cut off, but no great man since Cæsar has seen his life work ended as did Lincoln. Napoleon died upon a desert rock, but not until Austerlitz and Wagram had become memories, and the dust of the empire even as all dust. Cromwell knew that England had not at heart materially altered. Washington did not know that he had created one of the great, perhaps the greatest, empires to be known to man. But Lincoln had a specific task to do—to save his country and to make it free—and on that fateful 14th of April he knew that he had accomplished both things.
There are those who would say that chance put this man where he was to do this work. To the thoughtful mind it was not chance, however, but design, and that the design of which all greatness is a part. War is indeed the crucible of the nations. It is the student of a century hence who shall properly place the civil war in American history. But, whatever that place be, there can be no doubt of the position in it of the war President. Like William the Silent, his domination of all about him was a matter not of personal desire, but of absolute and constant growth. There are few more interesting characters in history than Lincoln. There is none who in quite the same manner fits himself so absolutely into his circumstances. It is the highest form of genius that so produces as to make production seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the average man would have done in his place.
The discussion on the question of whether or not Abraham Lincoln suggested at the conference with the southern commissioners at the so-called Fortress Monroe meeting, that he was prepared to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves in the Southern States provided peace with union could be obtained, is hardly likely to lead to any definite conclusion, for the reason that the few who should have known definitely about it are distinctly divided in their opinions. We are inclined to believe that, if the proposition was made, Mr. Lincoln, notwithstanding the immense influence that he then possessed, would have found it exceedingly difficult to convince Congress and a majority of the people of the North of the wisdom of the suggestion. As a business proposition, entirely apart from sentiment, it might have been, even at that late day, a wise plan to adopt. But the war had then been going on for years, and the hard feelings engendered would apparently have made the scheme a less tenable one then than at an earlier day. It will, we imagine, appear to future historians that, in spite of the example which had been set by England in the West Indies, those representing both the North and the South showed themselves, just prior to the war, wanting in the true elements of statesmanship in not realizing that it was better to peaceably adjust their differences than have recourse to physical force. It is now well understood, and might have been well understood at the time, that the main issue was the slave issue, and that once out of the way, all other sources of division were insignificant. We could have well afforded to vote, if need be, several thousands of millions of dollars to purchase the freedom of the slaves if by that means the civil war with all of its wastes and sufferings could have been avoided; and if not now, a generation or two hence, we feel convinced that the people, both of the North and the South, will be of the opinion that such an outcome of the contention would have been possible if we had had on both sides of the quarrel, statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Quincy Adams and other eminent Americans who have made their mark in our national history.
Senator John M. Thurston said in part at a banquet of the Baptist Social Union, New York, on Lincoln’s birthday, in 1897:
“This is an entirely different gathering than that to which I have been recently accustomed. I come from a forty days’ session of a moot court, in which the question of silver has been discussed and passed upon without any hope of legislation. There I have been used to having my audiences rise and leave as soon as I began to speak.
“Mr. President, if I have any purpose to-night, it is to strengthen the belief in a Divine Providence; and if I have any further purpose in this time of wars and rumors of wars, it is to show that God Almighty has made nations for higher purposes than mere money making. I am to speak to-night of Abraham Lincoln, the simplest, serenest, sublimist character of the age. Seventy millions of people join in commemorating his greatness. It is not my purpose to review his life; that is too much a part of history. That history should be taught in every American public school and preached from every Christian pulpit. The story of Abraham Lincoln, citizen, President, liberator and martyr, should be in the heart of every American child. I prefer to speak of only one event in his history. Yet that event was the harbinger of a new civilization.
“Not long since, as I sat in a crowded court room, engaged in the trial of a case involving the title to a valuable tract of real estate, there came to the witness stand a venerable, white-haired negro. Written all over his old black face was the history of three-quarters of a century of such an existence as few persons have ever known. Born a slave, he had stood upon the auction block and been sold to the highest bidder; he had seen his wife and children dragged from his side by those who mocked his breaking heart; he bore upon his back the scars and ridges of a master’s lash. Now he came into a court of justice to settle, by the testimony of his black lips, a controversy between white men. When asked his age he drew himself proudly up and said: ‘For fifty years I was a chattel. On the first day of January, 1863, old Uncle Abe made me a man.’
“The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory of Lincoln’s life, for by it he not only saved his country, but emancipated a race. When Abraham Lincoln took his pen to sign the Emancipation Proclamation he knew that the supreme moment had come. He had known it years before, when he said: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot exist permanently, half slave and half free, but I do not expect this house to fall, this government to be dissolved.’
“God has always raised up a great leader for a great crisis. Moses, initiated into the sublime mysteries of the house of Pharaoh, himself a ruler and almost a king, led the children of Israel through the parted waters of the Red Seas into the wilderness in the strange hope of a deliverance. A shepherdess on the hills of France felt herself stirred at the sore trials of her race. Joan d’Arc, the savior of her country, was the instrument of God.
“Who can doubt that Providence put the preposterous notion of a round world into the head of the Genoese sailor? Who can doubt that Providence designed Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant each for his own mission? The Declaration of Independence was the Genesis of American liberty, but the gospel of its New Testament was the Emancipation Proclamation. Until the Emancipation Proclamation the tide of success set strongly against the Union shore. But afterward the soldiers of the Union marched steadily from Chattanooga to Atlanta and from Atlanta to the sea. From the time the flag of liberty became the flag of freedom and the Stars and Stripes no longer floated over slaves, the Union never wavered in its onward march.
“Almost a third of a century has passed away. Blue and gray they lie together beneath the sod. Heroes all, they fell face to face, brother against brother. But through the mingled tears that fall alike upon the dead of both sections, the eyes of all turn toward a new future under the old flag. To the North and South, to the white and the black, Abraham Lincoln was God’s special providence. What is the heritage to us? In his own words, ‘A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’
“I wish that my voice could reach from one end of the land to the other while I tell what true Americanism is. I come from a State that has as great local necessities, perhaps, as any other. The State of Nebraska put one star into the flag. The great State of New York put another. But when they set them there, they ceased to shine for themselves, but for the whole Union.
“What we need in this country is the Emancipation Proclamation and the Stars and Stripes at every polling place. We need a revival of the American flag. Let it float over every American battlefield, be taught in every public school. Set the Stars of the Union in the hearts of our children and the glory of the Republic will remain forever. It does not matter whether the American cradle is rocked to the music of ‘Yankee Doodle’ or the lullaby of ‘Dixie’ if the flag of the nation is displayed above it, and the American baby can be safely trusted to pull about the floor the rusty scabbard and the battered canteen, whether the inheritance be from blue or gray, if from the breast of a true mother and the lips of a brave father, its little soul is filled with the glory of the American constellation.
“The memory of Lincoln cannot perish. On freedom’s roll of honor the name of Lincoln is written first. His colossal statue stands on a pedestal of the people’s love, and in its protecting shadow, liberty and equality are the heritage of every American citizen.”
There is something in Washington or in Lincoln or Grant, that defies analysis. It is a moral elevation, a magnanimity, a nobleness and profoundness of mind. It is force of character and ability by which man is able to meet great emergencies. This is true greatness.
Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.
Judged by this standard Abraham Lincoln stands out one of the purest, grandest and noblest characters of all time. Greatness was never more unconscious of itself than it was in him. It consisted in the fact that he made mistakes but rose above them.
Lincoln was a man of marvelous growth. The statesman or the military hero born and reared in a log cabin is a familiar figure in American history; but we may search in vain among our men of honor and fame for one whose origin and early life equaled Abraham Lincoln’s in obscurity and lack of education.
He sprang from the poorest class in the border south. Hard work his early lot; his education a minus factor. In the year of his majority his father moved to Illinois. Here Lincoln began for himself the hard battle of life. He became an ambitious young man. Unquestionably in some mysterious way, he arrived at the conclusion that this world had something far higher for him than neighborhood joker, champion wrestler or prize wood chopper.
A lawyer lent him a copy of Blackstone and he commenced the study of law; was admitted to the bar in 1836; rose rapidly in his profession and became an eminent lawyer. Being more adapted to the part of a jurist than an advocate, owing to the striking uprightness of his character, he applied himself to this branch of his profession, and it may truly be said that his vivid sense of truth and justice had much to do with his effectiveness as a jurist. When he felt himself to be the protector of innocence, the defender of justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he frequently disclosed such unexpected resources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to such fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his hearers, and make his appeal irresistible.
He continued to “ride the circuit,” read books, tell funny stories to his fellow lawyers in the tavern, chat familiarly with his neighbors and become more and more widely known, trusted and beloved among the people of his State for his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the integrity of his character and the ever-flowing spring of sympathetic kindness in his heart. His main ambition was that of political distinction, yet no one, at that time, would have suspected that he was the man destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the century.
Nevertheless, he was growing, indeed, this is one prominent fact in Lincoln’s life—he never ceased growing. As captain in the Black Hawk war, as candidate for the legislature, as storekeeper, postmaster, surveyor and law student, he was always growing.
In 1846 he was elected to congress where he distinguished himself as a humorous speaker and rapidly advanced to the front as a statesman.
Lincoln was a statesman in the truest and grandest sense of the word. He was a type of honesty and moral integrity. He had a conscience “void of offense toward God, and toward men.” A lover of the truth and men learned to trust him. He was just and for that reason would not put upon others that which he would not put upon himself. He studied the questions of the day and founded his opinions on truth and justice.
It was not until 1854 when the slavery question had been thrust into politics as the paramount issue, that Lincoln’s powers were aroused to their fullest capacity. He plunged into arduous study of the question, in its legal, historical and moral aspects, until his mind became a complete arsenal of argument.
Now he was able to cope with any political antagonist. The time had come when the Republican party required a man to put forward as their standard bearer one who would be equal for the coming election.
They found in Lincoln all the antecedents of his life to be such as to produce in him the rarest qualifications for the Presidency, to which he was now called by his party. It was during this canvass that he first revealed, in his great debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the full scope of his originality and genius. Subsequent to this combat of giants, he was duly elected President.
No President, before or since, ever took his seat under such difficulties. The situation which confronted him was appalling; secession of the Southern States was fully organized, and less than a month before his inauguration seven of them had already seceded.
During his inaugural address he declared his fixed purpose to uphold the Constitution and preserve the integrity of the Union. It was his policy to ignore the action of the seceded States as a thing in itself null, void and of no effect.
Lincoln was the man whom Providence placed at the head of the nation in the supreme hour of its destiny. When he assumed the reins of government he was surrounded by traitors. The government was without army, without navy, without credit. He spoke, and two millions of men sprang, as from the ground. He breathed, and the bosom of the ocean was covered with ships of war. He placed his hand upon Wall street and the credit of the government was secured. He surrounded himself with the best and truest counselors of the time.
He signed his name and the shackles fell from the limbs of four million of slaves. His was a greatness for the time. He was the Moses of a new dispensation—called of God to lead the hosts of captives out of the bondage house of their oppression. Like his great prototype he was not permitted to see the land of promise. He led the people safely through, but he was not allowed to guide them across the Jordan.
On the morning of April 15, 1865, God called Abraham Lincoln away from mortal sight.
Measured by what he did as a statesman and leader, he stands head and shoulders above all rulers of men in the annals of the six thousand years of Human History.
While a “solitary stripe remains in our banner,” while a “single star is blazoned on its field of blue,” so long will the deeds, the heroism and the loyalty of Abraham Lincoln be told to generations yet unborn.
George Washington was a communicant of the Episcopal Church.
Thomas Jefferson was a member of no church. He was a deist.
John Adams was a Unitarian.
James Madison was an Episcopalian.
James Monroe was an Episcopalian.
John Quincy Adams was a Unitarian.
Andrew Jackson became a member of the Presbyterian Church after the death of his wife.
Martin Van Buren regularly attended the Dutch Reformed Church at Kinderhook, N. Y., but was not a member.
William Henry Harrison was a communicant in the Episcopal Church. His pew in Christ Church, Cleveland, Ohio, bore his silver plate for years after his death.
John Tyler was a member of the Episcopal Church.
James K. Polk never united with any denomination. While he was President he attended the Presbyterian Church out of deference to his wife’s wishes. On his death-bed he was baptized by a Methodist preacher, an old friend and neighbor.
Zachary Taylor was an attendant of the Episcopal Church, and is said to have been a member.
Millard Fillmore was a Unitarian.
Franklin Pierce was a Trinitarian Congregationalist.
James Buchanan was a Presbyterian.
Andrew Johnson was not a member, but attended the Presbyterian Church.
Abraham Lincoln belonged to no church, but usually attended the Presbyterian services.
Ulysses S. Grant attended the Methodist Church, but was not a member.
Rutherford B. Hayes was a Methodist.
James A. Garfield was a member of the Church of the Disciples.
Chester A. Arthur was an Episcopalian.
Grover Cleveland joined the Presbyterian Church after his marriage.
Benjamin Harrison is a member of the Presbyterian Church.
William McKinley is a member of the Methodist Church.
On page 53 the line “men then in vogue he remarked how much” was omitted completely from the original printing; it has been restored by comparison with another edition.
On page 114 the line “emancipated a race. When Abraham Lin-” was printed, in the original, in the middle of an unrelated paragraph several pages earlier; it has been moved to where it belongs.
In the Table of Contents an entry has been added for the story “A Clergyman Who Talked But Little”, omitted in the original.
A few other minor printing errors, of punctuation, spelling, page numbering, etc., have been corrected without note.