Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
I
N LATE
M
ARCH,
Lincoln, Mary, and Tad journeyed to City Point to visit General Grant. For Lincoln, the eighteen-day sojourn was his longest break from Washington in four years. Grant had issued the invitation at the suggestion of his wife, Julia, who had been struck by constant newspaper reports of “the exhausted appearance of the President.” Grant worried at first about the propriety of issuing an invitation when the president could visit without waiting “to be asked,” but on March 20, he wrote a note to Lincoln: “Can you not visit City Point for a day or two? I would like very much to see you and I think the rest would do you good.”
Delighted with the idea, Lincoln asked the Navy Department to make arrangements for a ship to carry him south. Assistant Secretary Fox was not happy to be assigned the task, for he believed “the President was incurring great risk in making the journey.” To minimize danger, he ordered John Barnes, commander of the
Bat,
a fast-moving gunboat, to report to the Washington Navy Yard at once. Work immediately commenced on the interior of the armed ship to make alterations necessary “to insure the personal comfort of the President as long as he desired to make the
Bat
his home.” To discuss the meals and amenities Lincoln might require, Fox brought Barnes to the White House. Lincoln told Barnes “he wanted no luxuries but only plain, simple food and ordinary comfort—that what was good for me would be good enough for him.” Barnes returned to the Navy Yard to supervise the changes.
The next morning, Lincoln summoned Barnes back to the White House. Embarrassed at the thought that workers had stayed up all night to make alterations that might now require additional work, Lincoln explained apologetically that “Mrs. Lincoln had decided that she would accompany him to City Point, and could the
Bat
accommodate her and her maid servant.” Barnes was, “in sailor’s phrase, taken ‘all aback,’” knowing that the austere gunboat “was in no respect adapted to the private life of womankind, nor could she be made so.” He returned to the Navy Yard, where “the alterations to the
Bat
were stopped and the steamer
River Queen
was chartered.” The change of plans was particularly upsetting to Fox, who “expressed great regret that the determination of Mrs. Lincoln to accompany the President” had forced the shift to “an unarmed, fragile, river-boat, so easily assailed and so vulnerable.” He directed Barnes to follow Lincoln’s steamer in the
Bat,
but still could not shake his anxiety. Though aware of the danger, Lincoln remained relaxed and cheerful, talking about the problems of accommodating womenfolk at sea “in very funny terms.”
The presidential party, which included army captain Charles B. Penrose, Tad and Mary Lincoln, Mary’s maid, and Lincoln’s bodyguard, W. H. Crook, departed from the Arsenal Wharf at Sixth Street at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 23. Stanton had been laid up for several days, but against Ellen’s advice, he took a carriage to see Lincoln off, arriving minutes after the
River Queen
’s departure. Anxious about the president’s safety, Stanton panicked an hour later when “a hurricane swept over the city.” The “terrific squalls of winds, accompanied by thunder and lightning, did considerable damage here,” the
Herald
’s Washington correspondent reported. “The roof of a factory on Sixth street was blown off into the street and fell upon a hack, crushing the horses and its driver.” In some neighborhoods, trees were felled and houses destroyed, “while down the river the steamboats and sailing craft were dashed about with great violence.” Leaving his bed once again, Stanton went to the War Department and telegraphed Lincoln at 8:45 p.m. “I hope you have reached Point Lookout safely notwithstanding the furious gale that came on soon after you started…. Please let me hear from you at Point Lookout.”
Lincoln, meanwhile, was enjoying himself immensely. While Tad raced around the ship, investigating every nook and befriending members of the crew, Lincoln remained on deck, watching “the city until he could see it no more.” Once inside, he listened with relish to the adventures of the
River Queen
’s captain, who had chased blockade runners early in the war. “It was nearly midnight when he went to bed,” Crook recalled.
Crook, who shared a stateroom with Tad, was “startled out of a sound sleep” by Mary Lincoln. “It is growing colder,” she explained, “and I came in to see if my little boy has covers enough on him.” Later that night, Crook was awakened by the steamer passing through rough waters, which felt as if it were “slowly climbing up one side of a hill and then rushing down the other.” The next morning, still feeling seasick, Crook noted that the turbulent passage had apparently not disturbed Lincoln. On the contrary, the president looked rested, claimed to be “feeling splendidly,” and did “full justice to the delicious fish” served at breakfast.
Mary would nostalgically recall her husband’s fine humor during this last trip to City Point. “Feeling
so encouraged”
the war “was near its close,” and relieved from the daily burdens of his office, “he freely gave vent to his cheerfulness,” to such an extent that “he was almost boyish, in his mirth & reminded me, of his original nature, what I had always remembered of him, in our own home—free from care, surrounded by those he loved so well.”
Crook recalled that “it was after dark on the 24th” when the
River Queen
reached City Point. He would long remember the beauty of the scene that stretched before him, “the many-colored lights of the boats in the harbor and the lights of the town straggling up the high bluffs of the shore, crowned by the lights from Grant’s headquarters at the top.”
Newly minted captain Robert Lincoln escorted General and Mrs. Grant to call on the president shortly after he arrived. “Our gracious President met us at the gangplank,” Julia Grant recalled, “greeted the General most heartily, and, giving me his arm, conducted us to where Mrs. Lincoln was awaiting.” Leaving the two women together, the men went into the president’s room for a short consultation, “at the end of which,” reported Crook, “Mr. Lincoln appeared particularly happy,” reassured by Grant’s estimation that the conflict was nearing an end. After the Grants left, Lincoln and Mary, appearing “in very good spirits,” talked late into the night.
While the Lincolns were breakfasting the next day on the lower deck, Robert came by to report that the review planned for that morning would have to be postponed. Rebels had initiated an attack on Fort Stedman, only eight miles away. With Grant and Sherman closing in upon him, Lee had decided to abandon Petersburg and move his army south to North Carolina, hoping to join General Joseph Johnston and prevent Sherman from joining Grant. Abandoning Petersburg meant losing Richmond, but it was the only way to save his army. The attack on Fort Stedman, intended to open an escape route, took the Federals by surprise. Nonetheless, within hours, Grant’s men succeeded in retaking the fort and restoring the original line.
After breakfast, Lincoln walked up the bluff to Grant’s headquarters, where plans were made for a visit to the front. As the presidential party passed by the battle sites, it became clear that the engagement had been more serious than first realized. “The ground immediately about us was still strewn with dead and wounded men,” recalled Barnes. The Confederates had suffered nearly five thousand casualties; the Federals over two thousand. Burial parties were already at work as ambulances transported the wounded to the hospital and surgeons attended those still lying in the field. When a long line of captured Confederate soldiers passed by, “Lincoln remarked upon their sad and unhappy condition…his whole face showing sympathetic feeling for the suffering about him.” On the return trip, he commented “that he had seen enough of the horrors of war, that he hoped this was the beginning of the end, and that there would be no more bloodshed or ruin of homes.”
“I am here within five miles of the scene of this morning’s action,” Lincoln telegraphed Stanton from Meade’s headquarters in the field. “I have seen the prisoners myself and they look like there might be the number Meade states—1600.” Unsettled by Lincoln’s proximity to the front, Stanton replied, “I hope you will remember Gen. Harrison’s advice to his men at Tippecanoe, that they ‘can see as well a little further off.’” But for the soldiers in the field who greeted him with heartfelt cheers, Lincoln’s presence at the scene revealed that “he was not afraid to show himself among them, and willing to share their dangers here, as often, far away, he had shared the joy of their triumphs.”
Seated at the campfire that night, Lincoln seemed to Horace Porter much more “grave and his language much more serious than usual.” Undoubtedly, the grisly images of the dead and wounded were not easily dismissed. As the night wore on, the president rallied and “entertained the general-in-chief and several members of the staff by talking in a most interesting manner about public affairs, and illustrating the subjects mentioned with his incomparable anecdotes.” Toward the end of the evening, Grant asked, “Mr. President, did you at any time doubt the final success of the cause?” “Never for a moment,” Lincoln replied.
Grant then turned the conversation to the
Trent
affair. According to Grant, Seward had given “a very interesting account” of the tangled questions involved during his visit the previous summer. “‘Yes,’ said the President; ‘Seward studied up all the works ever written on international law, and came to cabinet meetings loaded to the muzzle with the subject. We gave due consideration to the case, but at that critical period of the war it was soon decided to deliver up the prisoners. It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow, but I contented myself with believing that England’s triumph in the matter would be short-lived, and that after ending our war successfully we would be so powerful that we could call her to account for all the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us.”
Lincoln continued, “I felt a good deal like the sick man in Illinois who was told he probably had n’t many days longer to live, and he ought to make his peace with any enemies he might have. He said the man he hated worst of all was a fellow named Brown, in the next village…. So Brown was sent for, and when he came the sick man began to say, in a voice as meek as Moses’s, that he wanted to die at peace with all his fellow-creatures, and he hoped he and Brown could now shake hands and bury all their enmity. The scene was becoming altogether too pathetic for Brown, who had to get out his handkerchief and wipe the gathering tears from his eyes…. After a parting that would have softened the heart of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the room door when the sick man rose up on his elbow and called out to him: ‘But see here, Brown; if I should happen to get well, mind, that old grudge stands.’ So I thought that if this nation should happen to get well we might want that old grudge against England to stand.” Everyone laughed heartily, and the pleasant evening drew to a close.
On Sunday morning, the
River Queen
carried the presidential party downriver to where Admiral Porter’s naval flotilla awaited them, “ranged in double line, dressed with flags, the crews on deck cheering.” As each vessel passed by, reported Barnes, Lincoln “waved his high hat as if saluting old friends in his native town, and seemed as happy as a schoolboy.” After lunch aboard Porter’s flagship, the
River Queen
sailed to Aiken’s Landing. There, arrangements were made for Lincoln to ride on horseback with Grant to General Ord’s encampment four miles away while Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant followed in an ambulance. “The President was in high spirits,” observed Barnes, “laughing and chatting first to General Grant and then to General Ord as they rode forward through the woods and over the swamps.” Reaching the parade ground ahead of the ladies, they decided to begin the review without them, since the troops had been waiting for hours and had missed their midday meal. General Ord’s wife, Mary, asked if “it was proper for her to accompany the cavalcade” without Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant. “Of course,” she was told. “Come along!”
Meanwhile, the ambulance carrying the women had encountered great discomfort due to the corduroyed road, which jounced them into the air each time a log was struck. Concerned that the agonizingly slow pace would make them late for the review, Mary ordered the driver to go faster. This only made things worse, for the first “jolt lifted the party clear off the seats,” striking their heads on the top of the wagon. Mary “now insisted on getting out and walking,” recalled Horace Porter, who had been assigned to escort the ladies, “but as the mud was nearly hub-deep, Mrs. Grant and I persuaded her that we had better stick to the wagon as our only ark of refuge.”
When Mary finally reached the parade grounds and saw the attractive Mrs. Ord riding beside her husband in the place of honor that should have been her own, she erupted in an embarrassing tirade against Mrs. Ord, calling her “vile names in the presence of a crowd of officers.” Mrs. Ord, according to one observer, “burst into tears and inquired what she had done, but Mrs. Lincoln refused to be appeased, and stormed till she was tired. Mrs. Grant tried to stand by her friend, and everybody was shocked and horrified.”
That evening Mary continued her harangue at dinner, manifestly aggrieving her husband, whose attitude toward her, marveled Captain Barnes, “was always that of the most affectionate solicitude, so marked, so gentle and unaffected that no one could see them together without being impressed by it.” Knowing his wife would awake the next morning humiliated by such a public display of temper, Lincoln had no desire to exacerbate the situation. Perhaps, as Mary’s biographer suggests, the blow in the wagon that Mary suffered to her head had initiated a migraine headache, spurring the irrational outburst of wrath. Whether from illness or mortification, she remained sequestered in her stateroom for the next few days.