this before victory.  He dreamed it before Antietam, before Murfreesborough, before Gettysburg, before Vicksburg.  Grant observed bluntly that Murfreesborough had not been a victory, or of any consequence anyway.  Lincoln persisted on this topic undeterred.  After some lesser business they discussed the reconstruction of the South.  Lincoln rejoiced that Congress had adjourned and the “disturbing element” in it could not hinder the work.  Before it met again, “if we are wise and discreet we shall re-animate the States and get their governments in successful operation, with order prevailing and the Union re-established.”  Lastly, there was talk of the treatment of rebels and of the demand that had been heard for “persecution” and “bloody work.”  “No one need expect me,” said Lincoln, “to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them.  Frighten them out of the country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off.”  “Shoo,” he added, throwing up his large hands like a man scaring sheep.  “We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.  There is too much of the desire on the part of some of our very good friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate to those States, to treat the people not as fellow citizens; there is too little respect for their rights.  I do not sympathise in these feelings.”  Such was the tenor of his last recorded utterance on public affairs.

In the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln drove together and he talked to her with keen pleasure of the life they would live when the Presidency was over.  That night Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went to the theatre, for the day was not observed as in England.  The Grants were to have been with them, but changed their minds and left Washington that day, so a young officer, Major Rathbone, and the lady engaged to him, both of them thereafter ill-fated, came instead.  The theatre was crowded; many officers returned from the war were there and eager to see Lincoln.  The play was “Our American Cousin,” a play in which the part of Lord Dundreary was afterwards developed and made famous.  Some time after 10 o’clock, at a point in the play which it is said no person present could afterwards remember, a shot was heard in the theatre and Abraham Lincoln fell forward upon the front of the box unconscious and dying.  A wild-looking man, who had entered the box unobserved and had done his work, was seen to strike with a knife at Major Rathbone, who tried to seize him.  Then he jumped from the box to the stage; he caught a spur in the drapery and fell, breaking the small bone of his leg.  He rose, shouted “Sic semper tyrannis,” the motto of Virginia, disappeared behind the scenes, mounted a horse that was in waiting at the stage door, and rode away.