Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
Authors: Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
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hatched throughout the South to seek revenge for the Union victory.
Part Two
THE IDES OF DEATH
Lincoln’s most famous profile
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NIGHT
I t seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee’s Confederate army has surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode, newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, brass bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and army howitzers launch an astonishing five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters windows for miles around the city.
The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether, euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.
Complete strangers clasp one another’s hands like long-lost friends. They rub shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next, passing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that their passion needs a purpose—or, at the very least, a focus. The human mass snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people of Washington, D.C., overcome by news of the war’s end, hope to glimpse their president on this historic night. Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.
The nation’s capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The streets are mostly dirt and mud. It is not uncommon for traffic to stop as farmers drive cattle to market. Open spaces have been military staging areas during the war, with the camp followers and soldiers’ businesses such a designation implies. The Tiber Creek and its adjacent canal are open sewers, a breeding ground for typhus, cholera, and dysentery. The vile stench is made worse by the Central Market’s butchers, fond of heaving freshly cleaved carcasses into the rancid waters each morning. This might not be a problem, were it not for the Tiber being located a stone’s throw from the Capitol Building, that beautiful unfinished idea that towers above the city like an allegory for the nation itself.
To Lincoln, the Capitol is the most important structure in Washington. During the war, even when resources were limited and manpower was desperately needed on the battlefields, he refused to halt construction. Its signature element, the dome, was fitted into place just over a year ago. Inside, scaffolding still climbs up the curved walls of the unfinished rotunda. Workmen mingle with the Union soldiers who have used the Capitol as a barracks, sleeping on the sandstone floors and waking each morning to the aroma of baking bread, thanks to the cadre of bakers in the basement turning out sixty thousand loaves each day for shipment to distant battlefields.
The Capitol was an obvious artillery target during the war, so the gas lamps atop the dome remained unlit for the duration. Now they blaze. The Capitol glows above the frenzied crowds like some great torch of freedom, a wondrous reminder that Lincoln’s common refrain of “the Union must go on” has, indeed, come to pass.
So it is fitting that on the night the Capitol dome is lit, the crowd of more than two thousand staggers to an unruly halt on the grass outside the White House’s front door, waiting for Lincoln to show himself from the windows of the second-floor residence. When Lincoln doesn’t appear right away, they cry out for him. At first it’s just a few random shouts. Then a consensus. Soon they roar as one: “Lincoln,” the people cry. “Speech.”
The crowd is crazy to touch President Lincoln, to see him, to hear
his voice. They continue calling out to him, the chant getting louder until the sound is deafening.
But Lincoln is in no mood to speak. The president sends a messenger out to the people, letting them
Part Two
THE IDES OF DEATH
Lincoln’s most famous profile
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NIGHT
I t seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee’s Confederate army has surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode, newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, brass bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and army howitzers launch an astonishing five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters windows for miles around the city.
The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether, euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.
Complete strangers clasp one another’s hands like long-lost friends. They rub shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next, passing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that their passion needs a purpose—or, at the very least, a focus. The human mass snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people of Washington, D.C., overcome by news of the war’s end, hope to glimpse their president on this historic night. Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.
The nation’s capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The streets are mostly dirt and mud. It is not uncommon for traffic to stop as farmers drive cattle to market. Open spaces have been military staging areas during the war, with the camp followers and soldiers’ businesses such a designation implies. The Tiber Creek and its adjacent canal are open sewers, a breeding ground for typhus, cholera, and dysentery. The vile stench is made worse by the Central Market’s butchers, fond of heaving freshly cleaved carcasses into the rancid waters each morning. This might not be a problem, were it not for the Tiber being located a stone’s throw from the Capitol Building, that beautiful unfinished idea that towers above the city like an allegory for the nation itself.
To Lincoln, the Capitol is the most important structure in Washington. During the war, even when resources were limited and manpower was desperately needed on the battlefields, he refused to halt construction. Its signature element, the dome, was fitted into place just over a year ago. Inside, scaffolding still climbs up the curved walls of the unfinished rotunda. Workmen mingle with the Union soldiers who have used the Capitol as a barracks, sleeping on the sandstone floors and waking each morning to the aroma of baking bread, thanks to the cadre of bakers in the basement turning out sixty thousand loaves each day for shipment to distant battlefields.
The Capitol was an obvious artillery target during the war, so the gas lamps atop the dome remained unlit for the duration. Now they blaze. The Capitol glows above the frenzied crowds like some great torch of freedom, a wondrous reminder that Lincoln’s common refrain of “the Union must go on” has, indeed, come to pass.
So it is fitting that on the night the Capitol dome is lit, the crowd of more than two thousand staggers to an unruly halt on the grass outside the White House’s front door, waiting for Lincoln to show himself from the windows of the second-floor residence. When Lincoln doesn’t appear right away, they cry out for him. At first it’s just a few random shouts. Then a consensus. Soon they roar as one: “Lincoln,” the people cry. “Speech.”
The crowd is crazy to touch President Lincoln, to see him, to hear
his voice. They continue calling out to him, the chant getting louder until the sound is deafening.
But Lincoln is in no mood to speak. The president sends a messenger out to the people, letting them
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