Lincoln’s Last Day

Today, spring in our nation’s capital is inevitably linked with the blooming of the cherry trees that were a gift to our nation from the people of Japan during the Taft Administration.  During the Civil War, the coming of spring was heralded by the flowering of the dogwood trees.  On April 14, 1865, the trees’ white flowers were attracting butterflies.  The city, so long accustomed to war, was still celebrating the new-found peace that followed Lee’s surrender only a week earlier.

As was his custom, Abraham Lincoln, 56, woke at seven, and walked down the second-floor hall to his office, turning up the gas lighting so he could work at his high-backed mahogany desk.  Today, the large rectangular room is known as the Lincoln Bedroom, though in reality, the president never spent the night in the southeast corner room that he used as both an office and a meeting room for his cabinet.

Though the president received hundreds of letters a day, it was his practice to read about half a dozen a day, sometimes answering a few of them with a brief letter or writing instructions on the margin for a secretary to follow up.  Lincoln wrote two brief notes, then reached behind him to pull a velvet bell cord to summon a secretary to deliver the notes.  The first note was to Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Seward to call a Cabinet meeting for 11:00.  William Seward, the Secretary of State was recovering from a carriage accident.  The second note invited General Grant to attend the cabinet meeting.

At 8:00, the president sat down with his family for breakfast.  Sitting across from Mary, his wife, and with his two sons Tad, 12, and Robert, 21, at his sides, Lincoln had his usual breakfast of an egg and a cup of coffee.  Robert, a Captain in the Union Army and an aide to General Grant, had just returned from duty and had been present in the McLean House in Appomattox when General Lee surrendered.  Robert, in answer to his father’s questions, remarked about the difference in appearance between the Confederate general’s immaculate uniform and the shabby mud-spattered coat of General Grant.

Mary Todd Lincoln, 46, told her husband that she had tickets to Grover’s Theatre to see Aladdin, but having learned that tonight was to be the last performance of Our American Cousin, she had sent an invitation to General Grant for he and his wife to accompany them to Ford’s Theatre.  Tad Lincoln would use the tickets to Grover’s Theatre that night, accompanied by Tom Pendel, a member of the White House staff.

Returning to his office by 9:00, Lincoln sat at his desk reading the morning newspapers.  Within a day’s ride from the White House, there were more than 30 daily and weekly newspapers, this in addition to the important papers from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Lincoln was in the habit of using his pearl-handled pocket knife to cut clippings from the papers, storing them in his brown leather wallet.  Besides newspaper clippings, the only other item in the wallet was a $5 Confederate note, a souvenir of the President’s tour of the captured Confederate capital. 

The first of many visitors that morning was the Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax, with whom he discussed the nation’s future policy toward the Southern states.  Colfax made no secret of the fact that he desired to join Lincoln’s cabinet as Secretary of War, to replace Edwin Stanton.  Lincoln was waiting for a vacancy to appoint Stanton to the Supreme Court, thus fulfilling a promise he had made to Stanton when he had compelled the man to serve in the cabinet for the ‘good of the country’.

For the next two hours, Lincoln saw visitors, most for only a few minutes each.  Of particular note was the former senator from New Hampshire, John P. Hale, who Lincoln had just appointed to be the new minister to Spain.  Hale was eager to take his family to Spain, as his daughter had just become engaged to the actor John Wilkes Booth, and the senator disapproved of the match.

In between meetings, Lincoln wrote a message to Ford’s Theatre, requesting the State Box for the evening.  When the message arrived, John Ford, the manager, was delighted, since the presence of both Lincoln and Grant guaranteed that the theatre would sell all of its tickets to a crowd eager to see the two men.  Ford quickly wrote out a handbill announcing that that the president and the general would be present, sending the bill out to be quickly printed so that it could be distributed across the town.  While he was drafting the handbill, John Wilkes Booth dropped by the theatre to pick up his mail from a ‘pigeon hole’ box he maintained in the office.

The cabinet meeting started at 11:00, with the president sitting sideways at the head of the long table so that he could stretch out his long legs.  Everyone was eager to hear General Grant relate the details of Lee’s surrender.  There was also a brief discussion of what to do with the leaders of the Confederacy, along with a general discussion regarding the future reconstruction of the Southern states, during which Lincoln was open to suggestions.  

During the meeting, Vice-President Andrew Johnson, who had not been invited to the cabinet meeting, arrived, expecting to meet with the President.  Hearing that the meeting was running longer than expected, the vice-president elected to go for a walk, leaving word that he would return later.

At 2:00, as the cabinet meeting broke up, General Grant told Lincoln that he and his wife would be unable to attend the play that night, as they had planned to travel to New Jersey to visit their children.  Though the trip north was real, the reason was a fiction:  Julia Grant disliked Mary Lincoln intensely, and was still angry about a recent confrontation with the First Lady at City Point, Virginia.  Mary Lincoln, who preferred to be referred to as “Madame President”, was not popular in Washington social circles.

Alone in his office for the last time, the President signed a document authorizing a new government agency.  Though he would write a few more notes and brief letters, this was his last official act.

After the President met with his Vice-President for about twenty minutes, he walked over to the War Department to have a brief conversation with Stanton.  Invited to take the place of the Grants, Stanton, too, declined an invitation to the theatre.  Lincoln then asked if Major Eckert, the Chief of Telegraphy, would be free that evening for the theatre.  Eckert, a large and powerful man, would be an excellent bodyguard, as Lincoln had personally observed the Major breaking iron fireplace pokers across his arm.  Stanton, regretfully, told Lincoln that he needed Eckert to supervise the telegraphs being sent to the army that evening.

Though the President met several more people that day, his work day was officially over and he had promised to take his wife, Mary for a coach ride.  As the couple came out onto the White House porch, a one-armed soldier yelled, “I would give my other hand if I could shake that of Abraham Lincoln.”  Lincoln walked to the soldier, grasping his hand.  “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing.”

The couple entered their barouche, driven by Francis P. Burke, and the carriage made its way down the gravel driveway, accompanied by two cavalrymen.  According to Mary Lincoln, the president was happy, discussing future travel plans once the president left office.

Upon arriving at the Navy Yard, the president left the coach to briefly tour the USS Montauk, a single-turreted ironclad monitor.  Though the ship was used throughout the war, after the war she was decommissioned and left in the harbor, where she was used as safe location for John Wilkes Booth’s autopsy and as a floating prison for his six accomplices.

Returning to the White House, Lincoln briefly chatted with two old friends from Illinois before he ate dinner with his family.  Though truly indifferent to what he ate—his favorite foods were coffee and apples—the family sat down to an elaborate formal dinner to honor Captain Robert Lincoln’s safe return.  Dinner courses included mock turtle soup, roast Virginia fowl with chestnut stuffing, baked yams, and cauliflower with cheese.

During the meal, Mary informed her husband that a young couple, Clara Harris, 20, and Major Henry Rathbone, 28, would accompany the Lincolns to the theater and they were to pick up the couple on their way to the theatre.  (Though the couple later married, the traumatic events of the evening, during which Major Rathbone was seriously injured when Booth stabbed him, would torment the man for years.  Blaming himself for having not prevented the attack on Lincoln, he finally succumbed to madness in 1883, shooting and fatally stabbing his wife, before stabbing himself five times—using both a gun and a knife just like Booth.  Though badly wounded, he recovered physically, but spent the rest of his life in an asylum, dying in 1911.)  

At 7:00 P.M., Lincoln’s personal bodyguard, William H. Crook, was relieved by John F. Parker and was immediately sent to Ford’s Theatre so that he would be present when the president’s party arrived.  Parker, who was three hours late reporting to work, was hardly a model policeman.  He had been repeatedly in trouble for drinking on the job, once being found unconscious and riding a city streetcar.  He was nearly fired after it was discovered that he had lived for three months in a whorehouse, and eventually he was fired from the Metropolitan Police in 1868 after he was discovered sleeping on the job while intoxicated.

The president (dressed in a tailored wool suit from Brooks Brothers) arrived with his party  at the theater late, at 8:30.  They made their way to the State Box (actually just boxes 7 and 8 with the partition removed), and as the party entered the box, the play stopped and the orchestra struck up Hail to the Chief.  Over a thousand patrons stood and clapped until the president took off his trademark hat and bowed.  Lincoln sat at the rear of the box in a mahogany chair with red upholstery that had been brought from the Fords’ private residence.  The two ladies each had a private sofa and the major sat in a gold chair between them.  Lincoln’s chair was positioned behind a curtain, affording him some privacy from the stares of the audience.

During the play’s intermission, John Parker left his post (which was a chair outside the State Box’s only entrance) and exited the theatre to go for a drink at the Star Saloon next door.  Whether or not he ever returned to the theater has never been determined.  Though he was charged later with dereliction of duty, the transcript of his hearing is lost and Parker remained one of the four Metropolitan Police officers charged with guarding the president for three more years.

There is little need to retell the rest of the evening’s tragic events since few Americans are not thoroughly familiar with them.  Some of the items mentioned above are still available for inspection at Ford’s theater:  Lincoln’s clothing, his pocket knife, and the wallet containing newspaper clippings can be seen in the museum there.  The Lincoln barouche is on display at the Studebaker Museum in South Bend, Indiana.  One of Lincoln’s desks—he seems to have had several—is now in the Lincoln Bedroom.

One last point:  That piece of legislation that Lincoln signed on his last day in the White House authorized the creation of a new branch of the United States Treasury—the Secret Service.