“His Wit And Rich Humor Had Free Play”

Posted on May 31, 2016

Mr. Lincoln spent most of his evenings in his office, though occasionally he remained in the drawing-room after dinner, conversing with visitors or listening to music, for which he had an especial liking, though he was not versed in the science, and preferred simple ballads to more elaborate compositions. In his office he was not often suffered to be alone; he frequently passed the evening there with a few friends in frank and free conversation. If the company was all of one sort he was at his best; his wit and rich humor had free play; he was once more the Lincoln of the Eighth Circuit, the cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest of story tellers ; but if a stranger came in he put on in an instant his whole armor of dignity and reserve. He had a singular discernment of men ; he would talk of the most important political and military concerns with a freedom which often amazed his intimates, but we do not recall an instance in which this confidence was misplaced.

Quoted in “Life in the White House in the time of Lincoln” by John Hay

John Hay-Life-35 

“He was Fond of Reading Aloud.”

Posted on May 31, 2016 Updated on May 8, 2018

Where only one or two were present he was fond of reading aloud. He passed many of the summer evenings in this way when occupying his cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. He would there read Shakspere for hours with a single secretary for audience. The plays he most affected were “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and the series of Histories ; among these he never tired of “ Richard the Second.” The terrible outburst of grief and despair into which Richard falls in the third act had a peculiar fascination for him. I have heard him read it at Springfield, at the White House, and at the Soldiers’ Home.

Far heaven’s sake, let us sit upon the ground,

And tell sad stories of the death of kings : –

How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed;
All murdered : – For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court ; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp, –
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, –

As if this flesh, which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable, – and humored thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle walls and – farewell, King!

He read Shakspere more than all other writers together. He made no attempt to keep pace with the ordinary literature of the day. Sometimes he read a scientific work with keen appreciation, but he pursued no systematic course. He owed less to reading than most men.

He delighted in Burns ; he said one day after reading those exquisite lines to Glencairn, beginning, “ The bridegroom may forget the bride,” that “ Burns never touched a sentiment without carrying it to its ultimate expression and leaving nothing further to be said.”

Of Thomas Hood he was also excessively fond. He often read aloud “ The Haunted House.” He would go to bed with a volume of Hood in his hands, and would sometimes rise at midnight and traversing the long halls of the Executive Mansion in his night clothes would come to his secretary’s room and read aloud something that especially pleased him. He wanted to share his enjoyment of the writer ; it was dull pleasure to him to laugh alone. He read Bryant and Whittier with appreciation ; there were many poems of Holmes’s that he read with intense relish. “ The Last Leaf” was one of his favorites ; he knew it by heart, and used often to repeat with deep feeling:

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb;

Quoted in “Life in the White House in the time of Lincoln” by John Hay 

By John Hay

Posted on May 31, 2016 Updated on May 31, 2016

Full text of “Life in the White House in the time of Lincoln”

HE daily life of the White House during the momentous years of Lincoln’s presidency had a character of its own, different from that of any previous or subsequent time. In the first days after the inauguration there was the unprecedented rush of office-seekers, inspired by a strange mixture of enthusiasm and greed, pushed by motives which were perhaps at bottom selfish, but which had nevertheless a curious touch of that deep emotion which had stirred the heart of the nation in the late election. They were not all ignoble; among that dense crowd that swarmed in the staircases and the corridors there were many well-to-do men who were seeking opce to their own evident damage, simply because they wished to be a part, however humble, of a government which they had aided to put in power and to which they were sincerely devoted. Many of the visitors who presented so piteous a figure in those early days of 1861 afterwards marched, with the independent dignity of a private soldier, in the ranks of the Union Army, or rode at the head of their regiments like men born to command.
There were few who had not a story worth listening to, if there were time and opportunity. But the numbers were so great, the competition was so keen, that they ceased for the moment to be regarded as individuals, drowned as they were in the general sea of solicitation.

Few of them received office; when, after weeks of waiting, one of them got access to the President, he was received with kindness by a tall, melancholy-looking man sitting at a desk with his back to a window which opened upon a fair view of the Potomac, who heard his story with a gentle patience, took his papers and referred them to one of the Departments, and that was all ; the fatal pigeon-holes devoured them. As time wore on and the offices were filled the throng of eager aspirants diminished and faded away. When the war burst out an immediate transformation took place. ?The house was again invaded and overrun by a different class of visitors — youths who wanted commissions in the regulars ; men who wished to raise irregular regiments or battalions without regard to their State authorities ; men who wanted to furnish stores to the army ; inventors full of great ideas and in despair at the apathy of the world ; later, an endless stream of officers in search of promotion or desirable assignments. And from first to last there were the politicians and statesmen in Congress and out, each of whom felt that he had the right by virtue of his representative capacity to as much of the President’s time as he chose, and who never considered that he and his kind were many and that the President was but one.

It would be hard to imagine a state of things less conducive to serious and effective work, yet in one way or another the work was done. In the midst of a crowd of visitors who began to arrive early in the morning and who were put out, grumbling, by the servants who closed the doors at midnight, the President pursued those labors which will carry his name to distant ages. There was little order or system about it; those ground him strove from beginning to end to erect barriers to defend him against constant interruption, but the President himself was always the first to break them down. He disliked anything that kept people from him who wanted to see him, and although the continual contact with importunity which he could not satisfy, and with distress which he could not always relieve, wore terribly upon him and made him an old man before his time, he would never take the necessary measures to defend himself. He continued to the end receiving these swarms of visitors, every one of whom, even the most welcome, took something from him in the way of wasted nervous force. Henry Wilson once remonstrated with him about it: “You will wear yourself out.” He replied, with one of those smiles in which there was so much of sadness, “They don’t want much; they get but little, and I must see them.” In most cases he could do them no good, and it afflicted him to see he could not make them understand the impossibility of granting their requests. One hot afternoon a private soldier who had somehow got access to him persisted, after repeated explanations that his case was one to be settled by his immediate superiors, in begging that the President would give it his personal attention. Lincoln at last burst out: “Now, my man, go away! I cannot attend to all these details. I could as easily bail out the Potomac with a spoon.”

33
34 LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN THE TIME OF LINCOLN

Of course it was not all pure waste; Mr. Lincoln gained much of information, something of cheer and encouragement, from these visits. He particularly enjoyed conversing with officers of the army and navy, newly arrived from the field or from sea. He listened with the eagerness of a child over a fairy tale to Garfield’s graphic account of the battle of Chickamauga ; he was always delighted with the wise and witty sailor talk of John A. Dahlgren, Gustavus V. Fox, and Commander Henry A. Wise. Sometimes a word fitly spoken had its results. When R. B. Ayres called on him in company with Senator Harris, and was introduced as a captain of artillery who had taken part in a recent unsuccessful engagement, he asked, “ How many guns did you take in ? ” Six,” Ayres answered. “ How many did you bring out ? ” the President asked, maliciously. “ Eight.” This unexpected reply did much to gain Ayres his merited promotion.

The President rose early, as his sleep was light and capricious. In the summer, when he lived at the Soldiers’ Home, he would take his frugal breakfast and ride into town in time to be at his desk at eight o’clock. He began to receive visits nominally at ten o’clock,, but long before that hour struck the doors were besieged by anxious crowds, through whom the people of importance, senators and members of congress, elbowed their way after the fashion which still survives. On days when the Cabinet met, Tuesdays and Fridays, the hour of noon closed the interviews of the morning. On other days it was the President’s custom, at about that hour, to order the doors to be opened and all who were waiting to be admitted. The crowd would rush in, thronging the narrow room, and one by one would make their wants known. Some came merely to shake hands, to wish him God-speed; their errand was soon done. Others came asking help or mercy ; they usually pressed forward, careless, in their pain, as to what ears should overhear their prayer. But there were many who lingered in the rear and leaned against the wall, hoping each to be the last, that they might in tete-a-tete unfold their schemes for their own advantage or their neighbors’ hurt. These were often disconcerted by the President’s ‘loud and hearty, “ Well, friend, what can I do for you ? ” which compelled them to speak, or retire and wait for a more convenient season.

The inventors were more a source of amusement than annoyance. They were usually men of some originality of character, not infrequently carried to eccentricity. Lincoln had a quick comprehension of mechanical principles, and often detected a flaw in an invention which the contriver had overlooked. He would sometimes go out into the waste fields that then lay south of the Executive Mansion to test an experimental gun or torpedo. He used to quote with much merriment the solemn dictum of one rural inventor that “a gun ought not to rekyle.; if it rekyled at all, it ought to rekyle a little forrid.” He was particularly interested in the first rude attempts at the afterwards famous mitrailleuses ; on one occasion he worked one with his own hands at the Arsenal, and sent forth peals of Homeric laughter as the balls, which had not power to penetrate the target set up at a little distance, came bounding back among the shins of the bystanders. He accompanied Colonel Hiram Berdan one day to the camp of his sharpshooters and there practised in the trenches his long-disused skill with the rifle. A few fortunate shots from his own gun and his pleasure at the still better marksmanship of Berdan led to the arming of that admirable regiment with breech-loaders.

At luncheon time he had literally to run the gantlet through the crowds who filled the corridors between his office and the rooms at the west end of the house occupied by the family. The afternoon wore away in much the same manner as the morning ; late in the day he usually drove out for an hour’s airing ; at six o’clock he dined. He was one of the most abstemious of men; the pleasures of the table had few attractions for him. His breakfast was an egg and a cup of coffee ; at luncheon he rarely took more than a biscuit and a glass of milk, a plate of fruit in its season ; at dinner he ate sparingly of one or two courses. He drank little or no wine; not that he remained always on principle a total abstainer, as he was during a part of his early life in the fervor of the “ Washingtonian ” reform ; but he never cared for wine or liquors of any sort, and never used tobacco.

35

There was little gaiety in the Executive house during his time. It was an epoch, if not of gloom, at least of a seriousness too intense to leave room for much mirth. There were the usual formal entertainments, the traditional state dinners and receptions, conducted very much as they have been ever since. The great public receptions, with their vast rushing multitudes pouring past him to shake hands, he rather enjoyed ; they were not a disagreeable task to him, and he seemed surprised when people commiserated him upon them. He would shake hands with thousands of people, seemingly unconscious of what he was doing, murmuring some monotonous salutation as they went by, his eye dim, his thoughts far withdrawn ; then suddenly he would see some familiar face, — his memory for faces was very good, — and his eye would brighten and his whole form grow attentive; he would greet the visitor with a hearty grasp and a ringing word and dismiss him with a cheery laugh that filled the Blue Room with infectious good nature. Many people armed themselves with an appropriate speech to be delivered on these occasions, but unless it was compressed into the smallest possible space it never got utterance; the crowd would jostle the peroration out of shape. If it were brief enough and hit the President’s fancy, it generally received a swift answer. One night an elderly gentleman from Buffalo said, “Up our way, we believe in God and Abraham Lincoln,” to which the President replied, shoving him along the line, “ My friend, you are more than half right.” During the first year of the administration the house was made lively by the games and pranks of Mr. Lincoln’s two younger children, William and Thomas : Robert, the eldest, was away at Harvard, only coming home for short vacations. The two little boys, aged eight and ten, with their Western independence and enterprise, kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor wild with their good-natured disobedience ; they organized a minstrel show in the attic ; they made acquaintance with the office-seekers and became the hot champions of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish frolic, a child of great promise, capable of close application and study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle, studious child sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was profoundly moved by his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble, but kept about his work the same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards to pour out its fullness on his youngest child. “ Tad ” was a merry, warmlooded, kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and inventions, the “ chartered libertine ” of the Executive Mansion. He ran continually in and out of his father’s cabinet, interrupting his gravest labors and conversations with his bright, rapid, and very imperfect speech — for he had an impediment which made his articulation almost unintelligible until he was nearly grown. He would perch upon his father’s knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up and carry him tenderly to bed.

Mr. Lincoln’s life was almost devoid of recreation. He sometimes went to the theater, and was particularly fond of a play of Shakspere well acted. He was so delighted with Hackett in Falstaff that he wrote him a letter of warm congratulation which pleased the veteran actor so much that he gave it to the “ New York Herald,” which printed it with abusive comments. Hackett was greatly mortified and made suitable apologies; upon which the President wrote to him again in the kindliest manner, saying :

Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject. . . . I certainly did not expect to see my note in print ; yet I have not been much shocked by the comments upon it. They are a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. 1 have endured a great deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

This incident had the usual sequel : the veteran comedian asked for an office, which the President was not able to give him, and the pleasant acquaintance ceased. A hundred times this experience was repeated : a man whose disposition and talk were agreeable would be introduced to the President ; he took pleasure in his conversation for two or three interviews, and then this congenial person would ask some favor impossible to grant, and go away in bitterness of spirit. It is a cross that every President must bear.

Mr. Lincoln spent most of his evenings in his office, though occasionally he remained in the drawing-room after dinner, conversing with visitors or listening to music, for which he had an especial liking, though he was not versed in the science, and preferred simple ballads to more elaborate compositions. In his office he was not often suffered to be alone; he frequently passed the evening there with a few friends in frank and free conversation. If the company was all of one sort he was at his best; his wit and rich humor had free play; he was once more the Lincoln of the Eighth Circuit, the cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest of story tellers ; but if a stranger came in he put on in an instant his whole armor of dignity and reserve. He had a singular discernment of men ; he would talk of the most important political and military concerns with a freedom which often amazed his intimates, but we do not recall an instance in which this confidence was misplaced.

36 LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN THE TIME OF LINCOLN

Where only one or two were present he was fond of reading aloud. He passed many of the summer evenings in this way when occupying his cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. He would there read Shakspere for hours with a single secretary for audience. The plays he most affected were “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and the series of Histories ; among these he never tired of “ Richard the Second.” The terrible outburst of grief and despair into which Richard falls in the third act had a peculiar fascination for him. I have heard him read it at Springfield, at the White House, and at the Soldiers’ Home.

Far heaven’s sake, let us sit upon the ground,

And tell sad stories of the death of kings : —

How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed ;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed ;
All murdered : — For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court ; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp, —
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks ;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, —

As if this flesh, which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable, — and humored thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle walls and — farewell, King!

He read Shakspere more than all other writers together. He made no attempt to keep pace with the ordinary literature of the day. Sometimes he read a scientific work with keen appreciation, but he pursued no systematic course. He owed less to reading than most men.

He delighted in Burns ; he said one day after reading those exquisite lines to Glencairn, beginning, “ The bridegroom may forget the bride,” that “ Burns never touched a sentiment without carrying it to its ultimate expression and leaving nothing further to be said.”

Of Thomas Hood he was also excessively fond. He often read aloud “ The Haunted House.” He would go to bed with a volume of Hood in his hands, and would sometimes rise at midnight and traversing the long halls of the Executive Mansion in his night clothes would come to his secretary’s room and read aloud something that especially pleased him. He wanted to share his enjoyment of the writer ; it was dull pleasure to him to laugh alone. He read Bryant and Whittier with appreciation ; there were many poems of Holmes’s that he read with intense relish. “ The Last Leaf” was one of his favorites ; he knew it by heart, and used often to repeat with deep feeling :

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb;

giving the marked Southwestern pronunciation of the words “ hear ” and “ year.” A poem by William Knox, “ Oh, why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud ? ” he learned by heart in his youth, and used to repeat all his life. Upon all but two classes the President made the impression of unusual power as well as of unusual goodness. He failed only in the case of those who judged men by a purely conventional standard of breeding, and upon those so poisoned by political hostility that the testimony of their own eyes and ears became untrustworthy. He excited no emotion but one of contempt in the finely tempered mind of Hawthorne ; several English tourists have given the most distorted pictures of his speech and his manners. Some Southern writers who met him in the first days of 1861 spoke of him as a drunken, brawling boor, whose mouth dripped with oaths and tobacco, when in truth whisky and tobacco were as alien to his lips as profanity. There is a story current in England, as on the authority of the late Lord Lyons, of the coarse jocularity with which he once received a formal diplomatic communication; but as Lord Lyons told the story there was nothing objectionable about it. The British Minister called at the White House to announce the marriage of the Prince of Wales. He made the formal speech appropriate to the occasion ; the President replied in the usual conventional manner. The requisite formalities having thus been executed, the President took the bachelor diplomatist by the hand, saying, “ And now, Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise.”

The evidence of all the men admitted to his intimacy is that he maintained, without the least effort or assumption, a singular dignity and reserve in the midst of his easiest conversation. Charles A. Dana says, “ Even in his freest moments one always felt the presence of a will and an intellectual power which maintained the ascendency of the President.” In his relations to his Cabinet “ it was always plain that he was the master and they were the subordinates. They constantly had to yield to his will, and if he ever yielded to them it was because they convinced him that the course they advised was judicious and appropriate.” While men of the highest culture and position thus recognized his intellectual primacy there was no man so humble as to feel abashed before him. Frederick Douglass beautifully expressed the sentiment of the plain people in his company : “ I felt as though I was in the presence of a big brother and that there was safety in his atmosphere.”

37

As time wore on and the war held its terrible course, upon no one of all those who lived through it was its effect more apparent than upon the President. He bore the sorrows of the nation in his own heart ; he suffered deeply not only from disappointments, from treachery, from hope deferred, from the open assaults of enemies, and from the sincere anger of discontented friends, but also from the world-wide distress and affliction which flowed from the great conflict in which he was engaged and which he could not evade. One of the most tender and compassionate of men, he was forced to give orders which cost thousands of lives ; by nature a man of order and thrift, he saw the daily spectacle of unutterable waste and destruction which he could not prevent.

The cry of the widow and the orphan was always in his ears ; the awful responsibility resting upon him as the protector of an imperiled republic kept him true to his duty, but could not make him unmindful of the intimate details of that vast sum of human misery involved in a civil war.

Under this frightful ordeal his demeanor and disposition changed — so gradually that it would be impossible to say when the change began ; but he was in mind, body, and nerves a very different man at the second inauguration from the one who had taken the oath in 1861. He continued always the same kindly, genial, and cordial spirit he had been at first ; but the boisterous laughter became less frequent year by year; the eye grew veiled by constant meditation on momentous subjects ; the air of reserve and detachment from his surroundings increased. He aged with great rapidity.

This change is shown with startling distinctness by two life-masks — the one made by Leonard W. Volk in Chicago, April, 1860, the other by Clark Mills in Washington, in the spring of 1865. The first is of a man of fifty one, and young for his years. The face has a clean, firm outline ; it is free from fat, but the muscles are hard and full; the large mobile mouth is ready to speak, to shout, or laugh ; the bold, curved nose is broad and substantial, with spreading nostrils ; it is a face full of life, of energy, of vivid aspiration. The other is so sad and peaceful in its infinite repose that the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens insisted, when he first saw it, that it was a death-mask. The lines are set, as if the living face, like the copy, had been in bronze ; the nose is thin, and lengthened by the emaciation of the cheeks ; the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst without victory is on all the features; the whole expression is of unspeakable sadness and allsufficing strength. Yet the peace is not the dreadful peace of death ; it is the peace that passeth ‘ understanding.

John Hay.

“He’s the Best Man I ever Knew or Ever Expect to Know.”

Posted on May 28, 2016 Updated on May 15, 2018

After the surrender of General Lee, the President, being satisfied that everything would be settled according to his wishes, determined to go to Washington, and I was only too glad to have him go. I had a strong feeling that something would happen to him if he remained longer at City Point. I was so anxious about him that I obtained his permission to send an officer up with him, who was never to leave his side. For this purpose I detailed Lieutenant-Commander John Barnes (the commander of the Bat) to go on board the River Queen, and never to leave the President’s side, even at meals. If I remember rightly, I also sent two ensigns, who were to keep watch over his state-room at night. Directions were given to have the River Queen thoroughly searched before she started, to see if there were any strange men on board, and to arrest and confine any strangers who might be found on the vessel during the passage up. In fact, no precaution was omitted that would insure the President against violence.

The Bat, as already stated, was a very fast vessel. I directed Lieutenant-Commander Barnes to have her run close alongside the River Queen all the way up to Washington, and to have her ready to render assistance in case of necessity. I had not forgotten how the Greyhound had burned up, and how near we had all come to being badly burned, or having to swim for it.

Barnes was further ordered to be armed at all times, night and day, and to hold his position of guard to the President until he landed him safe in the White House.

This duty was performed most effectually and agreeably to the President, who felt very much pleased to have Barnes about him, and made him sit near him at all his meals.

As soon as the President had arrived safely at the White House, Barnes returned to me. I still felt uneasy, and determined to go to Washington myself and see that Mr. Lincoln did not expose himself to the attacks of assassins.

I jumped on board the Tristram Shandy, and directed her commander to put on all steam and land me in Baltimore, thinking I could get to Washington sooner by that route. We arrived early in the morning, and I sent a mate on shore at once to get me a conveyance to the depot. The mate returned in about twenty minutes. His ghastly face told an awful tale ; he could not speak when he came into the cabin, but fell upon the sofa and shook like an aspen-leaf.

“What is the matter with you ?”  I asked, “Be a man and tell me; is the President dead?” My prophetic soul told me that must be so. It was some time before the man could speak. At length he stammered out, “Assassinated!” and then I knew I had come too late. I might, perhaps, have saved his life with my persistent precautions, which he did not at all object to. I should have been about him until all excitement was over, and would have impressed the Cabinet with the necessity of guarding his person. I am not now, and never have been, given to great emotions ; but when I heard of Mr. Lincoln’s cruel death I was completely unmanned.
I went immediately to Washington and saw him as he lay in his grave-clothes ; the same benevolent face was there, but the kindly smile had departed from his lips, and the soft, gentle eyes were closed for ever.

“There,” I said to a friend, “He’s the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know ; he was just to all men, and his heart was full to overflowing with kindness toward those who accomplished his death.” I have been satisfied that the persons who called at the Malvern were some of the assassins who would have killed him there if they could have got on board, and they could easily have escaped in the confusion by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore, which was not more than twenty yards distant. Moreover, I do not think that the prime instigator of the deed was ever suspected, though I have my own opinion on the subject, as also had Senator Nye, that stanch old patriot who held, in the latter part of the war, a position somewhat analogous to that of a minister of police, or was in consultation, by the wish of President Lincoln, with the police authorities of our great cities. He picked up many interesting incidents in relation to the President’s assassination which he talked about freely to me ; but he was a prudent man, and a politician, and did not desire to raise questions -which might affect his personal interests in the future.

Perhaps it was better for Mr. Lincoln’s happiness that he died -when he did. Had he lived, he would likely have been involved in bitter political feuds, owing to his liberal opinions in regard to the reconstruction of the States. He was of too sensitive a nature not to feel the shafts that would have been hurled at him by those whom he thought to be his friends, and he would not likely have been permitted to carry out his ideas. As it was, he died a martyr to a great cause, and venerated by all those who loved the Union;and while the names of many who held high places in the State will be forgotten, the memory of Abraham Lincoln will live in the hearts of his countrymen while the art of printing exists — by which his name can be handed down to posterity.

Quoted in David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, pp. 319

“How could One Avoid Liking such a Man”

Posted on May 26, 2016 Updated on May 15, 2018

To me he was one of the most interesting men I ever met; he had an originality about him which was peculiarly his own, and one felt, when with him, as if he could confide his dearest secret to him with absolute security against its betrayal. There, it might be said, was “God’s noblest work – an honest man,” and such he was, all through. I have not a particle of the bump of veneration on my head, but I saw more to admire in this man, more to reverence, than I had believed possible; he had a load to bear that few men could carry, yet he traveled on with it, foot-sore and weary, but without complaint; rather, on the contrary, cheering those who would faint on the roadside. He was not a demonstrative man, so no one will ever know, amid all the trials he underwent, how much he had to contend with, and how often he was called upon to sacrifice his own opinions to those of others, who, he felt, did not know as much about matters at issue as he did himself. When he did surrender, it was always with a pleasant manner, winding up with a characteristic story.

In the strife between the North and the South there was no bitterness in Mr. Lincoln’s composition; he seemed to think only that he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and endeavored to perform it as smoothly as possible. He would, without doubt, have yielded a good deal to the South, only that he kept his duty constantly before his eyes, and that was the compass by which he steered at all times. The results of a battle pained him as much as if he was receiving the wounds himself, for I have often heard him express himself in pained accents while talking over some of the scenes of the war ; he was not the man to assume a character for feelings he did not possess; he was as guileless in some respects as a child. How could one avoid liking such a man ?

Quoted in David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1886), p. 284.

David Dixon Porter, Admiral, US Navy

Posted on May 25, 2016 Updated on May 25, 2016

Monday, April 3, 1865.
City Point, VA and Petersburg, VA. 

That night, President Lincoln relaxed aboard the Malvern with Union Admiral David Dixon Porter, who wrote in his memoirs:

The night before Richmond was evacuated by the Confederate forces we were sitting on the Malvern’s upper deck, enjoying the evening air. The President, who had been some time quiet, turned to me and said, ‘Can’t the navy do something at this particular moment to make history?’

‘Not much,’ I replied; ‘the navy is doing its best just now holding in utter uselessness the rebel navy, consisting of four heavy ironclads. If those should get down to City Point they would commit great havoc – as they came near doing while I was away at Fort Fisher. In consequence, we filled up the river with stones so that no vessels can pass either way. It enables us to ‘hold the fort’ with a very small force, but quite sufficient to prevent any one from removing obstructions. Therefore the rebels’ ironclads are useless to them.’

‘But can’t we make a noise?’ asked the President; ‘that would be refreshing.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘we can make a noise; and, if you desire it, I will commence.’

‘Well, make a noise,’ he said.

I sent a telegram to Captain Breese, just above Dutch Gap, to commence firing the starboard broadside guns of the vessels above, to have the guns loaded with shrapnel, and to fire in the direction of the forts without attempting any particular aim, to fire rapidly, and to keep it up until I told him to stop. The firing commenced about nine o’clock, the hour when all good soldiers and sailors turn in and take their rest.

The President admitted that the noise was a very respectable one, and listened to it attentively, while the rapid flashes of the guns lit up the whole horizon.

In about twenty minutes there was a loud explosion which shook the vessel.’

The President jumped from his chair. ‘I hope to Heaven one of them has not blown up! He exclaimed. ‘No, sir,’ I replied. ‘My ear detects that the sound was at least two miles farther up the river; it is one of the rebel ironclads. You will hear another in a minute.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘our noise has done some good; that’s a cheap way of getting rid of ironclads. I am certain Richmond is being evacuated, and that Lee has surrendered, or those fellows would not blow up their ironclads.’

Just then there was a second explosion, and two more followed close after.

‘That is all of them,’ I said; ‘no doubt the forts are all evacuated, and tomorrow we can go up to Richmond. I will telegraph to Captain Breese to take the obstructions up to-night, or at least enough of them to let the Malvern go through.’

The telegram was sent, and the work of moving the obstructions commenced at once. It was completed by eight o’clock the following morning, and several of the smaller vessels went through, got their boats out, and began sweeping the river for torpedoes.⁷

The trip to Richmond began on April 5.

At 10:35 A.M. on the 4^th, River Queen, bearing the president, came alongside the Malvern, and both vessels headed for Richmond, followed by Bat, the transport Columbus, and a tug.Malvern grounded below Richmond, forcing Porter to transfer the president to a barge towed by the tug. Twenty-four marines accompanied the party, and as they neared the city, smoke still curled from the ashes of dozens of warehouses, and fires still burned throughout the city. “⁹

9.Chester G. Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, p. 311-312.

Admiral Porter recalled:

At daylight it was discovered that all the forts had been set on fire and evacuated, and nothing was to be seen of the ironclads but their black hulls partly out of water.

General Weitzel, who commanded the army on the left of the James, was marching into Richmond, and the whole tragedy was over.

‘Thank God,’ said the President, fervently, ‘that I have lived to see this! It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.

‘If there is any of it left,’ I added. ‘There is a black smoke over the city, but before we can go up we must remove all the torpedoes; the river is full of them about Hewlit’s Battery.’ It would have been simple destruction to attempt to go up there while the Confederates were in charge, and we could not have accomplished anything without a loss of life and vessels that would have been unjustifiable; it was better as it was, and the only course was to co-operate with the general of the army according to his own desire.

“When the channel was reported clear of torpedoes (a large number of which were taken up), I proceeded up to Richmond in the Malvern, with President Lincoln on board the River Queen, and a heavy feeling of responsibility on my mind, notwithstanding the great care that had been taken to clear the river.

Every vessel that got through the obstruction wished to be the first one up, and pushed ahead with all steam; but they grounded, one after another, the Malvernpassing them all, until she also took the ground. Not to be delayed, I took the President in my barge, and, with a tug ahead with a file of marines on board, we continued on up to the city.

Porter recalled:

There was a large bridge across the James about a mile below the landing, and under this a party in a small steamer were caught and held by the current, with no prospect of release without assistance. These people begged me to extricate them from their perilous position, so I ordered the tug to cast off and help them, leaving us in the barge to go on alone.

Here we were in a solitary boat, after having set out with a number of vessels flying flags at every mast-head, hoping to enter the conquered capital in a manner befitting the rank of the President of the United States, with a further intention of firing a national salute in honor of the happy result.

I remember the President’s remarks on the occasion. ‘Admiral, this brings to mind a fellow who once came to me to ask for an appointment as minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers. But tis well to be humble.’

The tug never caught up with us. She got jammed in the bridge, and remained there that tide.¹¹

11.David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 292-312.

Porter later wrote:

I had never been to Richmond before by that route, and did not know where the landing was; neither did the coxswain, nor any of the barge’s crew. We pulled on, hoping to see some one of whom we could inquire, but no one was in sight.

The street along the river-front was as deserted as if this had been a city of the dead. The troops had been in possession some hours, but not a soldier was to be seen.

The current was now rushing past us over and among rocks, on one of which we finally stuck.

‘Send for Colonel Bailey,’ said the President; ‘he will get you out of this.’

‘No, sir, we don’t want Colonel Bailey this time. I can manage it.’ So I backed out and pointed for the nearest landing.

There was a small house on this landing, and behind it were some twelve negroes digging with spades. The leader of them was an old man sixty years of age. He raised himself to an upright position as we landed, and put his hands up to his eyes. Then he dropped his spade and sprang forward. ‘Bress de Lord,’ he said. ‘Dere is de great Messiah! I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He’s bin in my hear fo’ long yeahs, an’ he’s cum at las’ to free his chillun from deir bondage! Glory, Hallelujah!’ And he fell upon his knees before the President and kissed his feet. The others followed his example, and in a minute Mr. Lincoln was surrounded by these people, who had treasured up the recollection of him caught from a photograph, and had looked up to him for four years as the one who was to lead them out of captivity.

It was a touching sight – that aged negro kneeling at the feet of the tall, gaunt-looking man who seemed in himself to be bearing all the grief of the nation, and whose sad face seemed to say, “I suffer for you all, but will do all I can to help you.’

Mr. Lincoln looked down on the poor creatures at his feet; he was much embarrassed at his position. ‘Don’t kneel to me,’ he said. ‘That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. I am but God’s humble instrument; but you may rest assured that as long as I live no one shall put a shackle on your limbs, and you shall have all the rights which God has given to every other free citizen of this Republic.’

His face was lit up with a divine look as he uttered these words. Though not a handsome man, and ungainly in his person, yet in his enthusiasm he seemed the personification of manly beauty, and that sad face of his looked down in kindness upon these ignorant blacks with a grace that could not be excelled. He really seemed of another world.

All this scene of brief duration, but, though a simple and humble affair, it impressed me more than anything of the kind I ever witnessed. What a fine picture that would have made – Mr. Lincoln landing from a ship-of-war’s boat, an aged negro on his knees at his feet, and a dozen more trying to reach him to kiss the hem of his garments! In the foreground should be the shackles he had broken when he issued his proclamation giving liberty to the slave.

Twenty years have passed since that event; it is almost too new in history to make a great impression, but the time will come when it will loom up as one of the greatest of man’s achievements, and the name of Abraham Lincoln – who of his own will struck the shackles from the limbs of four millions of people – will be honored thousands of years from now as man’s name was never honored before.

It was a minute or two before I could get the negroes to rise and leave the President. The scene was so touching I hated to disturb it, yet we could not stay there all day; we had to move one; so I requested the patriarch to withdraw from about the President with his companions and let us pass on.

‘Yes, Massa,’ said the old man, ‘but after bein’ so many years in de desert widout water, it’s mighty pleasant to be lookin’ at las’ on our spring of life. ‘Scuse us, sir; we means no disrespec’ to Mass’ Lincoln; we means all love and gratitude.’ And then, joining hands together in a ring, the negroes sang the following hymn with melodious and touching voices only possessed by the negroes of the South:

‘Oh, all ye people clap your hands,

And with triumphant voices sing;

No force the mighty power withstands

Of God, the universal King.’

The President and all of us listened respectfully while the hymn was being sung. Four minutes at most had passed away since we first landed at a point where, as far as the eye could reach, the streets were entirely deserted, but now what a different scene appeared as that hymn went forth from the negroes’ lips! The streets seemed to be suddenly alive with the colored race. They seemed to spring from the earth. They came, tumbling and shouting, from over the hills and from the water-side, where no one was seen as we had passed.

The crowd immediately became very oppressive. We needed our marines to keep them off.

I ordered twelve of the boat’s crew to fix bayonets to their rifles and to surround the President, all of which was quickly done; but the crowd poured in so fearfully that I thought we all stood a chance of being crushed to death.¹⁶

16.David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 292-312.

Admiral Porter recognized the potential danger too late:

I now realized the imprudence of landing without a large body of marines; and yet this seemed to me, after all, the fittest way for Mr. Lincoln to come among the people he had redeemed from bondage.

What an ovation he had, to be sure, from those so-called ignorant beings. They all had their souls in their eyes, and I don’t think I ever looked upon a scene where there were so many passionately happy faces.

While some were rushing forward to try and touch the man they had talked of and dreamed of for four long years, others stood off a little way and looked on in awe and wonder. Others turned somersaults, and many yelled for joy. Half of them acted as though demented, and could find no way of testifying their delight.

They had been made to believe that they never would gain their liberty, and here they were brought face to face with it when least expected. It was as a beautiful toy unexpectedly given to a child after months of hopeless longing on its part; it was such joy as never kills, but animates the dullest class of humanity.

But we could not stay there all day looking at this happy mass of people; the crowds and their yells were increasing, and in a short time we would be unable to move at all. The negroes, in their ecstasy, could not be made to understand that they were detaining the President; they looked upon him as belonging to them, and that he had come to put the crowning at to the great work he had commenced. They would not feel they were free in reality until they heard from his own lips.¹⁸

18.David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 292-312.

Admiral Porter recalled the speech and the scene:

‘My poor friends,’ he said, ‘you are free – free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it; it will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years. But you must try to deserve this priceless boon. Let the world see that you merit it, and are able to maintain it by your good works. Don’t let your joy carry you into excesses. Learn the laws and obey them; obey God’s commandments and thank him for giving you liberty, for to him you owe all things. There, now, let me pass on; I have but little time to spare. I want to see the capital, and must return at once to Washington to secure to you that liberty which you seem to prize so highly.

The crowd shouted and screeched as if they would split the firmament, though while the President was speaking you might have heard a pin drop. I don’t think any one could do justice to that scene; it would be necessary to photograph it to understand it.

One could not help wondering where all this black mass of humanity came from, or if they were all the goods and chattels of those white people who had for four years set the armies of the Republic at defiance; who had made these people work on their defenses and carry their loads, the only reward for which was the stronger riveting of the chains which kept them in subjection.²⁰

20.David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 292-312.

Porter wrote:

At length we were able to move on, the crowd opening for us with shouts. I got the twelve seamen with fixed bayonets around the President to keep him from being crushed. It never struck me that there was any one in that multitude who would injure him; it seemed to me that he had an army of supporters there who could and would defend him against all the world.

But likely there were scowling eyes not far off; men were perhaps looking on, with hatred in their hearts, who were even then seeking an opportunity to slay him.

Our progress was very slow; we did not move a mile an hour, and the crowd was still increasing.

Many poor whites joined the throng, and sent up their shouts with the rest. We were nearly half an hour getting from abreast of Libby Prison to the edge of the city. The President stopped a moment to look on the horrid bastile where so many Union soldiers had dragged out a dreadful existence, and were subjected to all the cruelty the minds of brutal jailers could devise.

‘We will pull it down,’ cried the crowd, seeing where his look fell.
‘No,’ he said, ‘leave it as a monument.’…

He did not say a monument to what, but he meant, I am sure, to leave it as a monument to the loyalty of our soldiers, who would bear all the horrors of Libby sooner than desert their flag and cause.²³

Admiral Porter wrote:

We struggled on, the great crowd preceding us, and an equally dense crowd of blacks following on behind – all so packed together that some of them frequently sang out in pain.

It was not a model style for the President of the United States to enter the capital of a conquered country, yet there was a moral in it all which had more effect than if he had come surrounded with great armies and heralded by the booming of cannon.

He came, armed with the majesty of the law, to put his seal to the act which had been established by the bayonets of the Union soldiers – the establishment of peace and good-will between the North and the South, and liberty to all mankind who dwell upon our shores.

We forced our way onward slowly, and, as we reached the edge of the city, the sidewalks were lined on both sides of the streets with black and white alike – all looking with curious, eager faces at the man who held their destiny in his hand; but there was no anger in any one’s face; the whole was like a gala day, and it looked as if the President was some expected guest who had come to receive great honors. Indeed, no man was ever accorded a greater ovation than was extended to him, be it from warm hearts or from simple ceremony.

It was a warm day, and the streets were dusty, owing to the immense gathering which covered every part of them, kicking up the dirt. The atmosphere was suffocating, but Mr. Lincoln could be seen plainly by every man, woman, and child, towering head and shoulders above that crowd; he overtopped every man there. He carried his hat in his hand, fanning his face, from which the perspiration was pouring. He looked as if he would have given his Presidency for a glass of water – I would have given my commission for half that…²⁵

“Now came another phase in the procession. As we entered the city every window flew up, from ground to roof, and every one was filled with eager, peering faces, which turned one to another and seemed to ask, ‘Is this large man, with soft eyes and kind, benevolent face, the one who has been held up to us as the incarnation of wickedness, the destroyer of the South?’ I think that illusion vanished, if it was ever harbored by any one there. I don’t what there was to amuse them in looking on the scene before them, but certainly I never saw a merrier crowd in my life, black or white,” Admiral Porter wrote in his memoirs.

We were brought to a halt by the dense jam before we had gone a square into the city, which was still on fire near the Tredegar Works, and in the structures thereabout, and the smoke, setting our way, almost choked us….

I think the people could not have had a gala day since the Confederates occupied Richmond as headquarters. Judging from present appearances, they certainly were not grieving over the loss of the Government which had just fled.

There was nothing like taunt or defiance in the faces of those who were gazing from the windows or craning their necks from the sidewalks to catch a view of the President. The look of every one was that of eager curiosity – nothing more.

While we were stopped for a moment by the crowd, a white man in his shirt-sleeves rushed from the sidewalk toward the President. His looks were so eager that I questioned his friendship, and prepared to receive him on the point of my sword; but when he got within ten feet of us he suddenly stopped short, took off his hat, and cried out, ‘Abraham Lincoln, God bless you! You are the poor man’s friend!’ Then he tried to force his way to the President to shake hands with him. He would not take ‘No’ for an answer until I had to treat him rather roughly when stood off, with his arms folded, and looked intently after us. The last I saw of him he was throwing his hat in the air.

Just after this a beautiful girl came from the sidewalk, with a large bouquet of roses in her hand, and advanced, struggling through the crowd toward the President. The mass of people endeavored to open to let her pass, but she had a hard time in reaching him. Her clothes were very much disarranged in making the journey across the street.

I reached out and helped her within the circle of the sailors’ bayonets, where, although nearly stifled with the dust, she gracefully presented her bouquet to the President and made a neat little speech, while he held her hand. The beauty and youth of the girl – for she was only about seventeen – made the presentation very touching.

There was a card on the bouquet with these simple words: ‘From Eva to the Liberator of the slaves.’ She remained no longer than to deliver her present; then two of the sailors were sent to escort her back to the sidewalk. There was no cheering that this, nor yet was any disapprobation shown; but it was evidently a matter of great interest, for the girl was surrounded and plied with questions.

I asked myself what all this could mean but that the people of Richmond were glad to see the end of the strife and the advent of a milder form of government than that which had just departed in such an ignoble manner. They felt that the late Government, instead of decamping with the gold of the Confederacy, should have remained at the capital, and surrendered in a dignified manner, making terms for the citizens of the place, guarding their rights and acknowledging that they had lost the game. There was nothing to be ashamed of in such a surrender to a vastly superior force; their armies had fought as people never fought before. ‘They had robbed the cradle and the grave’ to sustain themselves and all that was wanted to make them glorious was the submission of the leaders, with the troops, in a dignified way, while they might have said, ‘We have done our best to win, but you have justice on your side, and are too strong for us; we pledge ourselves to keep the peace.’

At length I got hold of a cavalryman. He was sitting his horse near the sidewalk, blocked by the people, and looking on with the same expression of interest as the others.

He was the only soldier I had seen since we landed, showing that the general commanding the Union forces had no desire to interfere, in any case, with the comfort of the citizens. There was only guard enough posted about the streets to protect property and to prevent irregularities.

‘Go to the general,’ I said to the trooper, ‘and tell him to send a military escort there to guard the President and get him through this crowd!’

‘Is that old Abe?’ asked the soldier, his eyes as large as saucers. The sight of the President was as strange to him as to the inhabitant; but off he went as fast as the crowd would allow him, and some twenty minutes later, I heard the clatter of horses’ hoofs over the stones as a troop of cavalry came galloping and clearing the street, which they did, however, as mildly as if for a parade.

For the first time since starting from the landing we were able to walk along uninterruptedly. In a short time we reached the mansion of Mr. Davis, President of the Confederacy, occupied after the evacuation as the headquarters of Generals Weitzel and Shepley. It was quite a small affair compared with the White House, and modest in all its appointments, showing that while President Davis was engaged heart and soul in endeavoring to effect the division of the States, he was not, at least, surrounding himself with regal style, but was living in a modest, comfortable way, like any other citizen.

Amid all his surroundings the refined taste of his wife was apparent, and marked everything about the apartments.

There was great cheering going on. Hundreds of civilians – I don’t know who they were – assembled at the front of the house to welcome Mr. Lincoln.²⁷

Porter wrote in his memoirs:

General [George F.] Shepley made a speech and gave us a lunch, after which we entered a carriage and visited the State-House – the late seat of the Confederate Congress. It was in dreadful disorder, betokening a sudden and unexpected flight; members’ tables were upset, bales of Confederate scrip were lying about the floor, and many official documents of some value were scattered about. It was strange to me that they had not set fire to the building before they departed, to bury in oblivion every record that might remain relating to the events of the past four years.

After this inspection I urged the President to go on board the Malvern. I began to feel more heavily the responsibility resting upon me through the care of his person. The evening was approaching, and we were in a carriage open on all sides. He was glad to go; he was tired out, and wanted the quiet of the flag-ship.³⁴

Sources:

David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 292-312.

The Naval History of the Civil War by David Dixon Porter

“President Lincoln’s Entry into Richmond” by David Dixon Porter