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.On April 12, three days after Appomattox, the president revoked his order permitting the Virginia legislature to assemble, explaining that General Grant “has since captured the Virginia troops,” thus the reason for allowing it to meet“is no longer applicable.” When the order was revoked, no more than15 legislators had wandered back to Richmond.40On April 5, the day after his return to City Point from Richmond, Lincoln gave further evidence of his almost obsessive desire to conciliate former Confederates and restore national harmony as soon as the armies laid down their arms.A cordial meeting with General Rufus126T h e L i n c o l n E n i g m aBarringer, who had been captured in Lee’s retreat from Petersburg, demonstrated Lincoln’s wish to let bygones be bygones even in the case of prominent rebels.Informed of the unnamed general’s presence, Lincoln indicated to the post commander at City Point that he had never seen a live Confederate general.He asked if he could meet the prisoner, a request that was quickly granted.When they met, Lincoln mistook the Confederate officer for his brother, Daniel Moreau Barringer, with whom he had served in Congress in 1847–1849.After the general had corrected the mistake, the two men went to a nearby tent, where they had a long and friendly conversation.Lincoln reminisced about his service in Congress with the general’s brother, whom he referred to as “my chum.” The president and General Barringer, according to a witness to this extraordinary meeting, also discussed the merits of military and civil leaders, both North and South.Lincoln often illustrated his point“with some appropriate story, entirely new, full of humor and sometimes of pathos.” Before they parted, Lincoln wrote out a note to Secretary of War Stanton directing him to make Barringer’s “detention in Washington as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.” Barringer never forgot the president’s good will toward him or toward the South.After his return home, he wholeheartedly accepted the results of the war, affiliated with the Union Republican party, and worked for the true reintegration of North Carolina and its people into the nation.This course of action was what Lincoln had in mind for former Confederate leaders.41After more than two weeks with the army in Virginia, Lincoln on April 9 returned home to Washington on the River Queen.The Marquis Adolphe de Chambrun, on board the vessel as part of Mrs.Lincoln’s entourage, wrote his wife that the president’s “only preoccupation” at this time “was to recall the Southern States into the Union as soon as possible.” Chambrun indicated that when Lincoln “encountered opposition on this point,.he would exhibit signs of impatience.[and] nervous fatigue which he partially controlled but was unable to dissimulate entirely.On one point his mind was irrevocably made up.The policy of pardon, in regard to those who had taken a principal part in the rebellion, appeared to him an absolute necessity.” When someone on the River Queen exclaimed that Jefferson Davis “must be hanged,” Lincoln, according to the Marquis, calmly replied with a biblical admonition:T o w a r d A p p o m a t t o x , T o w a r d U n c o n d i t i o n a l S u r r e n d e r ?127“Let us judge not that we be not judged.” A remark by a member of the party that the sight of the notorious Libby prison rendered mercy impos-sible produced the same reply from the president.42As the end of the war became imminent, the Republican press, with the exception of a few Radical newspapers like the New York Post, provided important public support for Lincoln’s magnanimous peace terms.However, they disagreed with him on pardons for Confederate leaders, insisting that high-ranking rebels should be punished or at least disfranchised.Like Lincoln, the Republican press indicated that the war must be pressed until the rebels had ceased their insurrection.These newspapers, including the New York Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Journal, and the Philadelphia Press, contended that the majority of Southern whites had been dragooned into the rebellion and, after much suffering, were now anxious for the war to end and the restoration of the Union of their fathers.The New York Times declared that “the great end and aim of our policy in dealing with the population of the revolted States ought to be the removal of all traces of the struggle from their memory”; the Lincoln “government has taken the ground that the object of this war is to put down the rebellion and preserve the Union,” the Times reminded its readers.President Lincoln has assured the people of the South that remaining questions “must be heard and acted upon within the Union by the government of the Union, each section being duly represented and having precisely the weight to which it is entitled.” He has repeatedly said that these questions, “so far as the action and influence of the Executive Department are concerned,” will be “canvassed and decided in a liberal and conciliatory spirit.” The Philadelphia Press declared that, though the “leading criminals” should not “retain all their rights as citizens,” there should be no “judicial bloodshed,” and, after the armies surrender, Lincoln should proclaim a general amnesty.“Our character as one of the most advanced Nations in the great March of Civilization,” the Press righteously argued, required that the Union be magnanimous to the defeated rebels.Other Northern Republican or Union newspapers expressed a similar message [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]