Read Bloody Times for Free Online

raised. “Three fourths of the men are at home, absent without leave. Now we will collect them, and then there are a great many conscripts on the rolls who have never been caught—we will get them—and with the 100,000 men from Gen. Lee’s army and the 85,000 men from Gen. Johnston’s, we will have such an army as we have never had before.”
    But these remarks rested on wishful thinking. Lee’s and Johnston’s armies were much smaller than Davis imagined. Thousands of men had deserted and gone home, and Davis had no way to round them up and force them to fight. And even if, by some miracle, Jefferson Davis was able to assemble a force of 185,000 men or more, how would he arm them, feed them, and supply them with ammunition? And even if he could overcome these obstacles, the Union armies would still outnumber them.
    *  *  *
    On the afternoon of April 11, Abraham Lincoln sat in his office and wrote out a draft of an important speech he planned to deliver from the second-floor window of the White House that night. He did not know that he was preparing his last speech. He would honor the men who had won the war and then speak about giving blacks the right to vote.
    On April 12 General Lee wrote to tell Davis what he already knew. This was Lee’s official announcement to the president that he had surrendered.
    Near Appomattox Court House, Virginia
April 12, 1865
    Mr. President:
    It is with pain that I announce to Your Excellency the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. . . . The enemy was more than five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one day longer it would have been at a great sacrifice of life; at its end, I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. We had no subsistence for man or horse . . . the supplies could not reach us, and the men deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and exhausted.
    With great respect, yr obdt svt [obedient servant]
R. E. Lee
Genl [General]
    The arrival of General Lee’s letter jolted President Davis into reality. Lee’s son was there in Greensboro when Davis received it. “After reading it,” the young man remembered, “he handed it without comment to us; then, turning away, he silently wept bitter tears.”
    At least the president’s family was safe. Varina wrote to Jefferson on April 13, telling him she had crossed the North Carolina state line and was now in Chester, South Carolina. She kept traveling, hoping to avoid Union soldiers: “I am going somewhere, perhaps to Washington Ga—perhaps only to Abbeville just as the children seem to bear the journey I will decide. . . . I feel wordless, helpless—the children are well. . . . Would to God I could know the truth of the horrible rumors I hear of you. . . . May God have mercy upon me, and preserve you safe your devoted wife.”
    In Washington on April 13, Abraham Lincoln was busy. The war was not over. And when it was, he must plan the reconstruction of the South. He visited the telegraph office early in the morning and then had meetings with his generals and officials. At night the president, like all of Washington, enjoyed a grand illumination of the city to celebrate Lee’s surrender.
    The buildings of Washington glowed with candles, lamps, and decorations. One observer described what he saw: “The Capitol made a magnificent display—as did the whole city. After lighting up my own house and seeing the Capitol lighted, I rode up to the upper end of the City and saw the whole display. It was indeed glorious . . . all of Washington was in the streets. I never saw such a crowd out-of-doors in my life.”
    Not everyone in Washington enjoyed the illumination. In his room at the National Hotel at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, the twenty-six-year-old actor John Wilkes Booth wrote a letter to his mother. “Everything was bright and splendid,” he said. But, he lamented, “more so in my eyes if it had been a display in a nobler cause.”

Chapter