he exclaimed, ’Must more blood be shed?  Cannot this last bloody battle be avoided?’ We explained that we had to presume that General Lee was a real general; that he must see that Johnston alone was no barrier to my progress, and that if my army of 80,000 veterans should reach Burksville he was lost in Richmond; and that we were forced to believe he would not await that inevitable conclusion, but would make one more desperate effort.”

General Sherman adds this personal tribute to Lincoln to the account of the interview on board the “River Queen”:  “When I left Mr. Lincoln I was more than ever impressed by his kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South.  I felt that his earnest desire was to end the war speedily, without more bloodshed or devastation, and to restore all the men of both sections to their homes.  In the language of his second inaugural address, he seemed to have ‘charity for all, malice toward none,’ and above all an absolute faith in the courage, manliness, and integrity of the armies in the field.  When at rest or listening, his legs and arms seemed to hang almost lifeless, and his face was careworn and haggard; but the moment he began to talk his face lightened up, his tall form, as it were, unfolded, and he was the very impersonation of good humor and fellowship.  The last words I recall as addressed to me were that he would feel better when I was back at Goldsboro.  We parted at the gangway of the ‘River Queen,’ about noon of March 28, and I never saw him again.  Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.”

A few days after the interview described by General Sherman, the President changed his quarters to the cabin of the “Malvern,” Admiral Porter’s flagship.  The Admiral says:  “The ‘Malvern’ was a small vessel with poor accommodations, and not at all fitted to receive high personages.  She was a captured blockade-runner, and had been given to me as a flag-ship.  I offered the President my bed, but he positively declined it, and elected to sleep in a small state-room outside of the cabin occupied by my secretary.  It was the smallest kind of a room, six feet long by four and a half feet wide—­a small kind of a room for the President of the United States to be domiciled in; but Mr. Lincoln seemed pleased with it.  When he came to breakfast the next morning, I inquired how he had slept:  ‘I slept well,’ he answered, ’but you can’t put a long sword into a short scabbard.  I was too long for that berth.’  Then I remembered he was over six feet four inches, while the berth was only six feet.  That day, while we were out of the ship, all the carpenters were put to work; the state-room was taken down and increased in size to eight feet by six and a half feet.  The mattress was widened to suit a berth of four feet