There was an early spring on the Potomac in 1865.While April was still young,the Judas trees became spheres of purply,pinkish bloom.The Washington parks grew softly bright as the lilacs opened.Pendulous willows veiled with green laces afloat in air the changing brown that was winter's final shadow;in the Virginia woods the white blossoms of the dogwood seemed to float and flicker among the windy trees like enormous flocks of alighting butterflies.And over head such a glitter of turquoise blue!As lovely in a different way as on that fateful Sun-day morning when Russell drove through the same woods toward Bull Run so long,long ago.Such was the background of the last few days of Lincoln's life.
Though tranquil,his thoughts dwelt much on death.While at City Point,he drove one day with Mrs.Lincoln along the banks of the James.They passed a country graveyard."It was a retired place,"said Mrs.Lincoln long afterward,"shaded by trees,and early spring flowers were opening on nearly every grave.It was so quiet and attractive that we stopped the carriage and walked through it.Mr.Lincoln seemed thoughtful and impressed.He said:'Mary,you are younger than I;you will survive me.When I am gone,lay my remains in some quiet place like this.'"[1]
His mood underwent a mysterious change.It was serene and yet charged with a peculiar grave loftiness not quite like any phase of him his friends had known hitherto.As always,his thoughts turned for their reflection to Shakespeare.Sumner who was one of the party at City Point,was deeply impressed by his reading aloud,a few days before his death,that passage in Macbeth which describes the ultimate security of Duncan where nothing evil "can touch him farther."[2]
There was something a little startling,as if it were not quite of this world,in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart."His whole appearance,poise and bearing,"says one of his observers,"had marvelously changed.He was,in fact,transfigured.That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being,had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy,as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved."[3]
It was as if the seer in the trance had finally passed beyond his trance;and had faced smiling toward his earthly comrades,imagining he was to return to them;unaware that somehow his emergence was not in the ordinary course of nature;that in it was an accent of the inexplicable,something which the others caught and at which they trembled;though they knew not why.
And he,so beautifully at peace,and yet thrilled as never before by the vision of the murdered Duncan at the end of life's fitful fever--what was his real feeling,his real vision of himself?Was it something of what the great modern poet strove so bravely to express--And yet Dauntless the slughorn to my lips I set,And blew:Childe Roland to the dark tower came."Shortly before the end,he had a strange dream.Though he spoke of it almost with levity,it would not leave his thoughts.He dreamed he was wandering through the White House at night;all the rooms were brilliantly lighted;but they were empty.However,through that unreal solitude floated a sound of weeping.When he came to the East Room,it was explained;there was a catafalque,the pomp of a military funeral,crowds of people in tears;and a voice said to him,"The President has been assassinated."He told this dream to Lamon and to Mrs.Lincoln.He added that after it had occurred,"the first time I opened the Bible,strange as it may appear,it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had.Iturned to other passages and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked.I kept on turning the leaves of the Old Book,and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts--supernatural visitations,dreams,visions,etc."But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on precautions against assassination,Lincoln turned the matter into a joke.He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own death.He called Lamon's alarm "downright foolishness."[4]
Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation.
He narrated it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth,which happened to be Good Friday.There was some anxiety with regard to Sherman's movements in North Carolina.
Lincoln bade the Cabinet set their minds at rest.His dream of the night before was one that he had often had.It was a presage of great events.In this dream he saw himself "in a singular and indescribable vessel,but always the same ...
moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore."This dream had preceded all the great events of the war.He believed it was a good omen.[5]
At this last Cabinet meeting,he talked freely of the one matter which in his mind overshadowed all others.He urged his Ministers to put aside all thoughts of hatred and revenge."He hoped there would be no persecution,no bloody work,after the war was over.None need expect him to take any part in hanging or killing these men,even the worst of them.'Frighten them out of the country,let down the bars,scare them off,'said he,throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep.Enough lives have been sacrificed.We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union.There was too much desire on the part of our very good friends to be masters,to interfere and dictate to those States,to treat the people not as fellow citizens;there was too little respect for their rights.He didn't sympathize in these feelings."[6]
