CHAPTER VII
THE FRENZY OF A NATION
Phil hurried through the excited crowds with Margaret and Elsie, left themat the hospital door, and ran to the War Department to report for duty.Already the tramp of regiments echoed down every great avenue.
Even as he ran, his heart beat with a strange new stroke when he recalledthe look of appeal in Margaret's dark eyes as she nestled close to hisside and clung to his arm for protection. He remembered with a smile thealmost resistless impulse of the moment to slip his arm around her andassure her of safety. If he had only dared!
Elsie begged Mrs. Cameron and Margaret to go home with her until the citywas quiet.
"No," said the mother. "I am not afraid. Death has no terrors for me anylonger. We will not leave Ben a moment now, day or night. My soul is sickwith dread for what this awful tragedy will mean for the South! I can'tthink of my own safety. Can any one undo this pardon now?" she askedanxiously.
"I am sure they cannot. The name on that paper should be mightier deadthan living."
"Ah, but will it be? Do you know Mr. Johnson? Can he control Stanton? Heseemed to be more powerful than the President himself. What will that mando now with those who fall into his hands."
"He can do nothing with your son, rest assured."
"I wish I knew it," said the mother wistfully.
* * * * *
A few moments after the President died on Saturday morning, the rain beganto pour in torrents. The flags that flew from a thousand gilt-tipped peaksin celebration of victory drooped to half-mast and hung weeping aroundtheir staffs. The litter of burnt fireworks, limp and crumbling, strewedthe streets, and the tri-coloured lanterns and balloons, hangingpathetically from their wires, began to fall to pieces.
Never in all the history of man had such a conjunction of events befallena nation. From the heights of heaven's rejoicing to be suddenly hurled tothe depths of hell in piteous helpless grief! Noon to midnight without amoment between. A pall of voiceless horror spread its shadows over theland. Nothing short of an earthquake or the sound of the archangel'strumpet could have produced the sense of helpless consternation, the blackand speechless despair. The people read their papers in tears. The morningmeal was untouched. By no other single feat could death have carried suchpeculiar horror to every home. Around this giant figure the heartstringsof the people had been unconsciously knit. Even his political enemies hadcome to love him.
Above all, in just this moment he was the incarnation of the TriumphantUnion on the altar of whose life every house had laid the offering of itsfirst-born. The tragedy was stupefying--it was unthinkable--it was themockery of Fate!
Men walked the streets of the cities, dazed with the sense of blind grief.Every note of music and rejoicing became a dirge. All business ceased.Every wheel in every mill stopped. The roar of the great city was hushed,and Greed for a moment forgot his cunning.
The army only moved with swifter spring, tightening its mighty grip on thethroat of the bleeding prostrate South.
As the day wore on its gloomy hours, and men began to find speech, theyspoke to each other at first in low tones of Fate, of Life, of Death, ofImmortality, of God--and then as grief found words the measureless rage ofbaffled strength grew slowly to madness.
On every breeze from the North came the deep-muttered curses.
Easter Sunday dawned after the storm, clear and beautiful in a flood ofglorious sunshine. The churches were thronged as never in their history.All had been decorated for the double celebration of Easter and thetriumph of the Union. The preachers had prepared sermons pitched in thehighest anthem key of victory--victory over death and the grave ofCalvary, and victory for the Nation opening a future of boundless glory.The churches were labyrinths of flowers, and around every pulpit and fromevery Gothic arch hung the red, white, and blue flags of the Republic.
And now, as if to mock this gorgeous pageant, Death had in the night flunga black mantle over every flag and wound a strangling web of crape roundevery Easter flower.
When the preachers faced the silent crowds before them, looking into thefaces of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and lovers whose dear oneshad been slain in battle or died in prison pens, the tide of grief andrage rose and swept them from their feet! The Easter sermon was laidaside. Fifty thousand Christian ministers, stunned and crazed by insanepassion, standing before the altars of God, hurled into the broken heartsbefore them the wildest cries of vengeance--cries incoherent, chaotic,unreasoning, blind in their awful fury!
The pulpits of New York and Brooklyn led in the madness.
Next morning old Stoneman read his paper with a cold smile playing abouthis big stern mouth, while his furrowed brow flushed with triumph, asagain and again he exclaimed: "At last! At last!"
Even Beecher, who had just spoken his generous words at Fort Sumter,declared:
"Never while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans,will it be forgotten that Slavery, by its minions, slew him, and slayinghim made manifest its whole nature. A man cannot be bred in its taintedair. I shall find saints in hell sooner than I shall find true manhoodunder its accursed influences. The breeding-ground of such monsters mustbe utterly and forever destroyed."
Dr. Stephen Tyng said:
"The leaders of this rebellion deserve no pity from any human being. Nowlet them go. Some other land must be their home. Their property is justlyforfeited to the Nation they have attempted to destroy!"
In big black-faced type stood Dr. Charles S. Robinson's bitter words:
"This is the earliest reply which chivalry makes to our forbearance. Talkto me no more of the same race, of the same blood. He is no brother ofmine and of no race of mine who crowns the barbarism of treason with themurder of an unarmed husband in the sight of his wife. On the villains wholed this rebellion let justice fall swift and relentless. Death to everytraitor of the South! Pursue them one by one! Let every door be closedupon them and judgment follow swift and implacable as death!"
Dr. Theodore Cuyler exclaimed:
"This is no time to talk of leniency and conciliation! I say before God,make no terms with rebellion short of extinction. Booth wielding theassassin's weapon is but the embodiment of the bowie-knife barbarism of aslaveholding oligarchy."
Dr. J. P. Thompson said:
"Blot every Southern State from the map. Strip every rebel of property andcitizenship, and send them into exile beggared and infamous outcasts."
Bishop Littlejohn, in his impassioned appeal, declared:
"The deed is worthy of the Southern cause which was conceived in sin,brought forth in iniquity, and consummated in crime. This murderous handis the same hand which lashed the slave's bared back, struck down NewEngland's senator for daring to speak, lifted the torch of rebellion,slaughtered in cold blood its thousands, and starved our helplessprisoners. Its end is not martyrdom, but dishonour."
Bishop Simpson said:
"Let every man who was a member of Congress and aided this rebellion bebrought to speedy punishment. Let every officer educated at publicexpense, who turned his sword against his country, be doomed to atraitor's death!"
With the last note of this wild music lingering in the old Commoner'ssoul, he sat as if dreaming, laughed cynically, turned to the brown womanand said:
"My speeches have not been lost after all. Prepare dinner for six. Mycabinet will meet here to-night."
While the press was reechoing these sermons, gathering strength as theywere caught and repeated in every town, village, and hamlet in the North,the funeral procession started westward. It passed in grandeur through thegreat cities on its journey of one thousand six hundred miles to the tomb.By day, by night, by dawn, by sunlight, by twilight, and lit by solemntorches, millions of silent men and women looked on his dead face. Aroundthe person of this tall, lonely man, rugged, yet full of sombre dignityand spiritual beauty, the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and ideals of thepeople had gathered in four years of agony and death, u
ntil they had cometo feel their own hearts beat in his breast and their own life throb inhis life. The assassin's bullet had crashed into their own brains, andtorn their souls and bodies asunder.
The masses were swept from their moorings, and reason destroyed. Allhistoric perspective was lost. Our first assassination, there was noprecedent for comparison. It had been over two hundred years in theworld's history since the last murder of a great ruler, when William ofOrange fell.
On the day set for the public funeral twenty million people bowed at thesame hour.
When the procession reached New York the streets were lined with a millionpeople. Not a sound could be heard save the tramp of soldiers' feet andthe muffled cry of the dirge. Though on every foot of earth stood a humanbeing, the silence of the desert and of death! The Nation's living heroesrode in that procession, and passed without a sign from the people.
Four years ago he drove down Broadway as President-elect, unnoticed andwith soldiers in disguise attending him lest the mob should stone him.
To-day, at the mention of his name in the churches, the preachers' voicesin prayer wavered and broke into silence while strong men among the crowdburst into sobs. Flags flew at half-mast from their steeples, and theirbells tolled in grief.
Every house that flew but yesterday its banner of victory was shrouded inmourning. The flags and pennants of a thousand ships in the harbourdrooped at half-mast, and from every staff in the city streamed across thesky the black mists of crape like strange meteors in the troubledheavens.
For three days every theatre, school, court, bank, shop, and mill wasclosed.
And with muttered curses men looked Southward.
Across Broadway the cortege passed under a huge transparency on whichappeared the words:
"A Nation bowed in grief Will rise in might to exterminate The leaders of this accursed Rebellion."
Farther along swung the black-draped banner:
"Justice to Traitors is Mercy to the People."
Another flapped its grim message:
"The Barbarism of Slavery. Can Barbarism go Further?"
Across the Ninth Regiment Armoury, in gigantic letters, were the words:
"Time for Weeping But Vengeance is not Sleeping!"
When the procession reached Buffalo, the house of Millard Fillmore wasmobbed because the ex-President, stricken on a bed of illness, hadneglected to drape his house in mourning. The procession passed toSpringfield through miles of bowed heads dumb with grief. The ploughstopped in the furrow, the smith dropped his hammer, the carpenter hisplane, the merchant closed his door, the clink of coin ceased, and overall hung brooding silence with low-muttered curses, fierce andincoherent.
No man who walked the earth ever passed to his tomb through such a stormof human tears. The pageants of Alexander, Caesar, and Wellington weretinsel to this. Nor did the spirit of Napoleon, the Corsican Lieutenant ofArtillery who once presided over a congress of kings whom he hadconquered, look down on its like even in France.
And now that its pomp was done and its memory but bitterness and ashes,but one man knew exactly what he wanted and what he meant to do. Otherswere stunned by the blow. But the cold eyes of the Great Commoner, leaderof leaders, sparkled, and his grim lips smiled. From him not a word ofpraise or fawning sorrow for the dead. Whatever he might be, he was not aliar: when he hated, he hated.
The drooping flags, the city's black shrouds, processions, torches, silentseas of faces and bared heads, the dirges and the bells, the dim-litchurches, wailing organs, fierce invectives from the altar, and theperfume of flowers piled in heaps by silent hearts--to all these was heheir.
And more--the fierce unwritten, unspoken, and unspeakable horrors of thewar itself, its passions, its cruelties, its hideous crimes andsufferings, the wailing of its women, the graves of its men--all these nowwere his.
The new President bowed to the storm. In one breath he promised to fulfilthe plans of Lincoln. In the next he, too, breathed threats of vengeance.
The edict went forth for the arrest of General Lee.
Would Grant, the Commanding General of the Army, dare protest? There werethose who said that if Lee were arrested and Grant's plighted word atAppomattox smirched, the silent soldier would not only protest, but drawhis sword, if need be, to defend his honour and the honour of the Nation.Yet--would he dare? It remained to be seen.
The jails were now packed with Southern men, taken unarmed from theirhomes. The old Capitol Prison was full, and every cell of every gratedbuilding in the city, and they were filling the rooms of the Capitolitself.
Margaret, hurrying from the market in the early morning with her flowers,was startled to find her mother bowed in anguish over a paragraph in themorning paper.
She rose and handed it to the daughter, who read:
"Dr. Richard Cameron, of South Carolina, arrived in Washington and was placed in jail last night, charged with complicity in the murder of President Lincoln. It was discovered that Jeff Davis spent the night at his home in Piedmont, under the pretence of needing medical attention. Beyond all doubt, Booth, the assassin, merely acted under orders from the Arch Traitor. May the gallows have a rich and early harvest!"
Margaret tremblingly wound her arms around her mother's neck. No wordsbroke the pitiful silence--only blinding tears and broken sobs.
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Book II--The Revolution