Complete Prose Works
then, has since come out clear enough, that four sorts of genius, four
mighty and primal hands, will be needed to the complete limning of this
man's future portrait--the eyes and brains and finger-touch of Plutarch
and Eschylus and Michel Angelo, assisted by Rabelais.
And now--(Mr. Lincoln passing on from this scene to Washington, where
he was inaugurated, amid armed cavalry, and sharpshooters at every
point--the first instance of the kind in our history--and I hope it will
be the last)--now the rapid succession of well-known events, (too
well known--I believe, these days, we almost hate to hear them
mention'd)--the national flag fired on at Sumter--the uprising of the
North, in paroxysms of astonishment and rage--the chaos of divided
councils--the call for troops--the first Bull Run--the stunning
cast-down, shock, and dismay of the North--and so in full flood the
secession war. Four years of lurid, bleeding, murky, murderous war.
Who paint those years, with all their scenes?--the hard-fought
engagements--the defeats, plans, failures--the gloomy hours, days,
when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death--the
Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attachés--the dreaded
Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously
dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free
States, (far more numerous than is supposed)--the long marches
in summer--the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush to
Gettysburg in '63--the night battles in the woods, as under Hooker
at Chancellorsville--the camps in winter--the military prisons--the
hospitals--(alas! alas! the hospitals.)
The secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war. Though
whatever call'd, it is even yet too near us--too vast and too closely
overshadowing--its branches unform'd yet, (but certain,) shooting too
far into the future--and the most indicative and mightiest of them yet
ungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of the era of those
four years, those scenes--era compressing centuries of native passion,
first-class pictures, tempests of life and death--an inexhaustible mine
for the histories, drama, romance, and even philosophy, of peoples to
come--indeed the verteber of poetry and art, (of personal character
too,) for all future America--far more grand, in my opinion, to the
hands capable of it, than Homer's siege of Troy, or the French wars to
Shakspere.
But I must leave these speculations, and come to the theme I have
assign'd and limited myself to. Of the actual murder of President
Lincoln, though so much has been written, probably the facts are yet
very indefinite in most persons' minds. I read from my memoranda,
written at the time, and revised frequently and finally since.
The day, April 14, 1865, seems to have been a pleasant one throughout
the whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant too--the long storm, so
dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended
at last by the sun-rise of such an absolute National victory, and utter
break-down of Secessionism--we almost doubted our own senses! Lee had
capitulated beneath the apple-tree of Appomattox. The other armies, the
flanges of the revolt, swiftly follow'd. And could it really be, then?
Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and failure and disorder,
was there really come the confirm'd, unerring sign of plan, like a
shaft of pure light--of rightful rule--of God? So the day, as I say, was
propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. (I remember where
I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many
lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge
to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always
reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these
blossoms. It never fails.)
But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular
afternoon paper of Washington, the little "Evening Star," had spatter'd
all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a
sensational manner, in a hundred different places, _The President and
his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening_.... (Lincoln was fond
of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember
thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor
in the stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries,
should sit there and be so completely interested and absorb'd in those
human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures,
foreign spirit, and flatulent text.)
On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay
costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young
folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many
people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--(and
over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, _Victory_,
the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the
thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music and perfumes.)
The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness'd the play
from the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one,
and profusely drap'd with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the
piece--one of those singularly written compositions which have at least
the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental
action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes
not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or
spiritual nature--a piece, ("Our American Cousin,") in which, among
other characters, so call'd, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never
seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, is introduced
in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such
phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had progress'd
through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy,
or non-such, or whatever it is to be call'd, and to offset it, or finish
it out, as if in Nature's and the great Muse's mockery of those poor
mimes, came interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be
described at all, (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems
to this hour to have left a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet
partially to be described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene
in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented
English ladies are inform'd by the impossible Yankee that he is not
a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching
purposes; after which, the comments being finish'd, the dramatic trio
make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came the
murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into
the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c.,
of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual
murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest
occurrence--the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation,
for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, with
the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which
not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--and yet a
moment's hush--somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill--and then,
through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-way of the
President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands
and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, (a
distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) falls out of position,
catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the American flag,)
falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had
happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)--and so
the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black broadcloth,
bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad
animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange
calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walks along not much
back from the footlights--turns fully toward the audience his face
of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with
desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firm and steady voice
the words _Sic semper tyrannis_--and then walks with neither slow
nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and
disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making the mimic ones
preposterous--had it not all been rehears'd, in blank, by Booth,
beforehand?)
A moment's hush--a scream--the cry of _murder_--Mrs. Lincoln leaning out
of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing
to the retreating figure, _He has kill'd the President._ And still a
moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that
mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of
a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)--the people burst through chairs
and railings, and break them up--there is inextricable confusion
and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampl'd
on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills
to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible
carnival--the audience rush generally upon it, at least the strong men
do--the actors and actresses are all there in their play-costumes and
painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge--the screams
and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to
pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to
clamber up--&c., &c.
In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President's guard,
with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--(some two hundred
altogether)--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially
the upper ones, inflam'd with fury, literally charging the audience with
fix'd bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting _Clear out! clear out!
you sons of_----.... Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it rather,
inside the play-house that night.
Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people,
fill'd with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come near
committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case
was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got
started against one man, either for words he utter'd, or perhaps without
any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hang him on
a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen,
who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowly and amid
great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the
whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro--the night,
the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd people trying in vain to
extricate themselves--the attack'd man, not yet freed from the jaws
of death, looking like a corpse--the silent, resolute, half-dozen
policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady
through all those eddying swarms--made a fitting side-scene to the grand
tragedy of the murder. They gain'd the station house with the protected
man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged him in
the morning.
And in the midst of that pandemonium, infuriated soldiers, the audience
and the crowd, the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its
paint-pots, spangles, and gas-lights--the life blood from those veins,
the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death's ooze
already begins its little bubbles on the lips.
Thus the visible incidents and surroundings of Abraham Lincoln's murder,
as they really occur'd. Thus ended the attempted secession of these