Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
At this time, General Sherman was on his way to City Point. His army had stopped in Goldsboro, North Carolina, to resupply, leaving him several days to visit Grant and discuss plans for the final push. When Sherman arrived, he and Grant eagerly greeted each other, “their hands locked in a cordial grasp.” To Horace Porter, “their encounter was more like that of two school-boys coming together after a vacation than the meeting of the chief actors in a great war tragedy.” After talking for an hour, they walked down to the wharf and joined the president on the
River Queen.
Lincoln greeted Sherman “with a warmth of manner and expression” that the general would long remember, and initiated “a lively conversation,” intently questioning Sherman about his march from Savannah to Goldsboro.
The talk darkened as Sherman and Grant agreed that “one more bloody battle was likely to occur before the close of the war.” They believed Lee’s only option now was to retreat to the Carolinas. There, joining forces with Johnston, he would stage a desperate attack against either Sherman or Grant. “Must more blood be shed?” Lincoln asked. “Cannot this last bloody battle be avoided?” That was not in their hands, the generals explained. All would depend upon the actions taken by Robert E. Lee.
The next morning, March 28, Sherman and Grant, accompanied this time by Admiral Porter, returned to the
River Queen
for a long talk with Lincoln in the upper saloon. With the war drawing to a close, Sherman inquired of Lincoln: “What was to be done with the rebel armies when defeated? And what should be done with the political leaders, such as Jeff. Davis, etc.?” Lincoln replied that “all he wanted of us was to defeat the opposing armies, and to get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in the their shops.” He wanted no retaliation or retribution. “Let them have their horses to plow with, and, if you like, their guns to shoot crows with. I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”
Regarding Jefferson Davis and his top political leaders, Lincoln privately wished they could somehow “escape the country,” though he could not say this in public. “As usual,” Sherman recalled, “he illustrated his meaning by a story: ‘A man once had taken the total-abstinence pledge. When visiting a friend, he was invited to take a drink, but declined, on the score of his pledge; when his friend suggested lemonade, [the man] accepted. In preparing the lemonade, the friend pointed to the brandy-bottle, and said the lemonade would be more palatable if he were to pour in a little brandy; when his guest said, if he could do so “unbeknown” to him, he would not object.’” Sherman grasped the point immediately. “Mr. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, ‘unbeknown’ to him.”
Later that afternoon, Sherman left City Point to return to his troops and prepare for the expected battle. Saying goodbye to the president, he “was more than ever impressed by his kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people,” and his “absolute faith in the courage, manliness, and integrity of the armies in the field.” To be sure, “his face was care-worn and haggard; but, the moment he began to talk, his face lightened up, his tall form, as it were, unfolded, and he was the very impersonation of good-humor and fellowship.” A decade later, Sherman remained convinced of Lincoln’s unparalleled leadership. “Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.”
Lincoln walked to the railroad station early the next morning to bid farewell to Grant, who was heading to the front for what they hoped would be the final offensive against Lee. Oppressed by thoughts of the expected battle, “Lincoln looked more serious than at any other time since he had visited headquarters,” recalled Horace Porter; “the lines in his face seemed deeper, and the rings under his eyes were of a darker hue.” As the train pulled away from the platform, Grant and his party tipped their hats in honor of the president. Returning the salute, his “voice broken by an emotion he could ill conceal,” Lincoln said: “Good-by, gentlemen, God bless you all!”
As Grant was leaving City Point, Seward was heading south to join Lincoln. “I think the President must have telegraphed for him,” Welles surmised, “and if so I came to the conclusion that efforts are again being made for peace. I am by no means certain that this irregular proceeding and importunity on the part of the Executive is the wisest course.” The
Tribune
concurred: “We presume no person of even average sagacity has imagined that the President of the United States had gone down to the front at such a time as this in quest merely of pleasure, or leisure or health even.” That he hoped to “bring peace with him on his return,” the editorial suggested, was “too palpable to be doubted.”
Though Lincoln clearly would have loved “to bring peace with him on his return,” he went to City Point with no intention of engaging in further negotiations. He had, in fact, sought a “change of air & rest,” as well as the chance “to escape the unceasing and relentless pressure of visitors.” More important, he wanted to underscore his directive that Grant should converse with Lee only with regard to capitulation or solely military concerns. Grant was “not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political question. Such questions the President holds in his own hands.” Lincoln wished to ensure that his lenient policy toward the rebels would not be undercut by a punitive agenda.
He knew that work was accumulating on his desk as his second week of absence from Washington began, but he was not yet ready to return. “I begin to feel that I ought to be at home,” he telegraphed Stanton on March 30, “and yet I dislike to leave without seeing nearer to the end of General Grant’s present movement. He has now been out since yesterday morning…. Last night at 10.15, when it was dark as a rainy night without a moon could be, a furious cannonade, soon joined in by a heavy musketry-fire, opened near Petersburg and lasted about two hours. The sound was very distinct here, as also were the flashes of guns upon the clouds. It seemed to me a great battle, but the older hands here scarcely noticed it, and, sure enough, this morning it was found that very little had been done.” Stanton replied promptly, “I hope you will stay to see it out, or for a few days at least. I have strong faith that your presence will have great influence in inducing exertions that will bring Richmond; compared to that no other duty can weigh a feather…. A pause by the army now would do harm; if you are on the ground there will be no pause. All well here.”
Seward, who had most likely come to keep Lincoln company, remained only two days. On April 1, he accompanied Mary back to Washington. The Lincolns had apparently decided that, after her public outburst, she would be better off in the White House, away from prying reporters. Moreover, Lincoln had related to her a dream in which the White House had caught fire, and Mary wanted to assure herself that all was well. Once she was aboard the steamer heading north, her spirits lifted abruptly. Fellow passenger Carl Schurz talked with her on the voyage. She “was overwhelmingly charming to me,” he wrote to his wife. “She chided me for not visiting her, overpowered me with invitations, and finally had me driven to my hotel in her own state carriage. I learned more state secrets in a few hours than I could otherwise in a year…. She is an astounding person.”
All that day, Lincoln haunted the telegraph office at City Point, anxiously awaiting news from Grant. Returning to the
River Queen,
he could see “the flash of the cannon” in the distance, signaling that the battle for Petersburg had begun. “Almost all night he walked up and down the deck,” Crook recalled, “pausing now and then to listen or to look out into the darkness to see if he could see anything. I have never seen such suffering in the face of any man as was in his that night.”
The battle was intense, but by early morning, the Federals had broken through Petersburg’s outer lines of defense and had almost reached General Lee’s headquarters at the Turnbull House. Realizing he could no longer hold on, Lee ordered his troops to withdraw from both Petersburg and Richmond. That evening Lincoln received the news that Grant had “Petersburg completely enveloped from river below to river above,” and had taken “about 12,000 prisoners.” Grant invited the president to visit him in Petersburg the following day.
Earlier that day, Lincoln had moved from the luxurious
River Queen
to the compact
Malvern,
Admiral Porter’s flagship. Concerned by the cramped quarters, Porter had offered Lincoln his bed, “but he positively declined it,” Porter recalled, choosing instead “the smallest kind of a room, six feet long by four and a half feet wide.” The next morning he insisted he had “slept well,” but teasingly remarked that “you can’t put a long blade into a short scabbard.” Realizing that the president’s six-foot-four frame must have overhung the bed considerably, Porter got carpenters to knock down the wall, increasing the size of both the room and the bed. When Lincoln awoke the next morning, he announced with delight that “a greater miracle than ever happened last night; I shrank six inches in length and about a foot sideways.”
To reach Grant, who was waiting in “a comfortable-looking brick house with a yard in front” on Market Street in Petersburg, Lincoln had to ride over the battlefields, littered with dead and dying soldiers. Years later, his bodyguard could recall the sight of “one man with a bullet-hole through his forehead, and another with both arms shot away.” As Lincoln absorbed the sorrowful scene, Crook noticed that his “face settled into its old lines of sadness.” By the time he reached Grant, he had recovered himself. Grant’s aide Horace Porter watched as Lincoln “dismounted in the street, and came in through the front gate with long and rapid strides, his face beaming with delight. He seized General Grant’s hand as the general stepped forward to greet him, and stood shaking it for some time.” Lincoln showed such elation that Porter doubted whether he had “ever experienced a happier moment in his life.”
Lincoln and his lieutenant general conferred for about an hour and a half on the piazza in front of the house while curious citizens strolled by. Though no word had arrived yet from Richmond, Grant surmised that, with the fall of Petersburg, Lee had no choice but to evacuate the capital and move west along the Danville Road, hoping to escape to North Carolina, in which case the Federals would attempt to “get ahead of him and cut him off.” Grant had hoped to receive word of Richmond’s fall while still in the president’s company, but when no message arrived, he felt compelled to join his troops in the field.
Lincoln was back at City Point when news reached him that Union troops commanded by General Weitzel had now occupied Richmond. “Thank God that I have lived to see this!” he remarked to Admiral Porter. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone.”
For Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government, the nightmare was just beginning. Twenty-four hours earlier, the Confederate president had received the devastating news of Lee’s evacuation plans. Seated in his customary pew at St. Paul’s Church for the Sunday service, Davis had received “a telegram announcing that General Lee could not hold his position longer than till night, and warning [him] that we must leave Richmond, as the army would commence retreating that evening.”
“Thereupon,” an attendant at the service noted, Davis “instantly arose, and walked hurriedly down the aisle, beneath the questionings of all eyes in the house.” Summoning his cabinet to an emergency session, he made preparations for a special train to carry the leading officials and important government papers south and west to Danville, where a new capital could be established. As word of the evacuation of the troops spread, the citizenry panicked, and a general exodus began. In the tumult, a small fire, deliberately set to destroy the tobacco warehouses before the Federals arrived, raged out of control, burning “nearly everything between Main street and the river for about three-quarters of a mile.” All the public buildings in its path, including the offices of the Richmond
Examiner
and the
Inquirer,
were destroyed, leaving only the Customhouse and the Spotswood Hotel.
The news of Richmond’s capture on April 3, 1865, reached the War Department in Washington shortly before noon. When over the wire came the words “Here is the first message for you in four years from Richmond,” the telegraph operator leaped from his seat and shouted from the window, “Richmond has fallen.” The news quickly “spread by a thousand mouths,” and “almost by magic the streets were crowded with hosts of people, talking, laughing, hurrahing, and shouting in the fullness of their joy.” A
Herald
reporter noted that many “wept as children” while “men embraced and kissed each other upon the streets; friends who had been estranged for years shook hands and renewed their vows of friendship.”
Gathering at the War Department, the crowd called for Stanton, who had not left his post for several nights. “As he stood upon the steps to speak,” recalled his aide A. E. Johnson, “he trembled like a leaf, and his voice showed his emotion.” He began by expressing “gratitude to Almighty God for his deliverance of the nation,” then called for thanks “to the President, to the Army and Navy, to the great commanders by sea and land, to the gallant officers and men who have periled their lives upon the battle-field, and drenched the soil with their blood.” Stanton was “so overcome by emotion that he could not speak continuously,” but when he finished, the crowd roared its approval.
Seward, who had been at the War Department awaiting news of Richmond’s fall, was urged to speak next. Clearly understanding that the moment belonged to Stanton, he kept his remarks short and humorous. He was beginning to think that it was time for a change in the cabinet, he began. “Why I started to go to ‘the front’ the other day, and when I got to City Point they told me it was at Hatcher’s Run, and when I got there I was told it was not there but somewhere else, and when I get back I am told by the Secretary that it is at Petersburg; but before I can realize that, I am told again that it is at Richmond, and west of that. Now I leave you to judge what I ought to think of such a Secretary of War as this.” The crowd erupted in “loud and lusty” cheers, and a “beaming” Stanton led them in a chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”