us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

This address was probably, next to the Gettysburg oration, Lincoln’s most eloquent and touching public appeal.  Gladstone of England said of it:  “I am taken captive by so striking an utterance as this.  I see in it the effect of sharp trial, when rightly borne, to raise men to a higher level of thought and action.  It is by cruel suffering that nations are sometimes born to a better life.  So it is with individual men.  Lincoln’s words show that upon him anxiety and sorrow have wrought their true effect.”

As the procession moved from the Capitol to the White House, at the close of the inaugural ceremonies, a bright star was visible in the heavens.  The crowds gazing upon the unwonted phenomenon noted it as an auspicious omen, like the baptism of sunshine which had seemed to consecrate the President anew to his exalted office.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Close of the Civil War—­Last Acts in the Great Tragedy—­Lincoln at the Front—­A Memorable Meeting—­Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Porter—­Life on Shipboard—­Visit to Petersburg—­Lincoln and the Prisoners—­Lincoln in Richmond—­The Negroes Welcoming their “Great Messiah”—­A Warm Reception—­Lee’s Surrender—­Lincoln Receives the News—­Universal Rejoicing—­Lincoln’s Last Speech to the Public—­His Peelings and Intentions toward the South—­His Desire for Reconciliation.

Great events crowded upon each other in the last few weeks of the Civil War; and we must pass rapidly over them, giving special prominence only to those with which President Lincoln was personally connected.  The Army of the Potomac under Grant, which for nearly a year had been incessantly engaged with the army of General Lee, had forced the latter, fighting desperately at every step, back through the Wilderness, into the defenses about Richmond; and Lee’s early surrender or retreat southward seemed the only remaining alternatives.  But the latter course, disastrous as it would have been for the Confederacy, was rendered impracticable by the comprehensive plan of operations that had been adopted a year before.  Interposed between Richmond and the South was now the powerful army of General Sherman.  This daring and self-reliant officer, after his brilliant triumph at Atlanta the previous fall, had pushed on to Savannah and captured that city also; then turning his veteran columns northward, he had swept like a dread meteor through South Carolina, destroying the proud city of Charleston, and then Columbia, the State capital.  General Johnston, with a strong force, vainly tried to stay his progress through North Carolina; but after a desperate though