Blood and Daring (36 page)

New Brunswick was a fragmented colony. Its most evident division was between the north, which saw itself more closely linked to Montreal and the rest of Canada, and the south, which had firmer cultural and business ties with the United States. Confident that he could carry the north and persuade the south, Tilley called the election. All other issues were either forgotten or folded into what became a Confederation referendum. He lost. He even lost his own seat. There were celebrations in some quarters and charges of corruption in others. A
Morning News
editorial claimed that American money had been spent freely and influenced the outcome of the election: “The alternative of Confederation or Annexation is more than ever confirmed when we see how completely American influence can control elections of the Province.”
⁷⁶

News of the defeat arrived in Quebec City on March 6, just as the Canadian Confederation debates were wrapping up. Newfoundland was delaying in dealing with the question. Prince Edward Island, as expected, had declared that the scheme held nothing for its people. Its premier resigned, the government fell into disarray, and finally the legislature voted no. In Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe had roused himself from the semi-retirement of a boring patronage post to lead the charge against Confederation. He tapped into the pride that Nova Scotians based on their prosperity, linked to lumber, coal and shipbuilding, and their world-liness, afforded them by their busy Halifax port. Howe exploited that pride by inviting Nova Scotians to ask themselves if Confederation would serve only Canada and therefore be unnecessary for Nova Scotia’s future.
⁷⁷
The Conservative Tupper disagreed with Howe and continued to fight. He was supported by Liberal leaders Adams George Archibald and Jonathan McCully, but victory was by no means secure.

It appeared that Confederation would fail, but Brown and Macdonald took the Maritime body blows and continued the fight for ratification. Finally, at two thirty in the morning on March 10, 1865, with a spring blizzard raging outside, the Canadian House voted 91 to 33 in favour of
the resolutions. Despite the disappointing news from the Maritimes, plans were made to leave to seek British parliamentary approval in London. Macdonald was worn out, his personal finances were in disarray and he did not want to go. Brown, too, was tired and felt guilty for having spent so much time away from Anne and their growing children. But the two former enemies nonetheless prepared to leave.

As Macdonald and Brown were arranging their departure, word arrived that the Canadian and British efforts to assure the Americans of their goodwill following the St. Albans raid were having their desired effect. On the same day that the legislature ratified Confederation, Seward wrote to Monck that the passport law as it applied to Canadians was being rescinded, though Maritimers would still need to show passports to cross the border. Shortly afterward, Seward announced that the Rush-Bagot Agreement would not be abrogated after all.

News from the battlefield was soon even more significant. Thousands of men and boys had spent the last months shivering outside Petersburg, Virginia. Through the winter of 1864–1865, Lee’s options had continued to shrink, along with his army. He had established a line of fortified trenches from Petersburg, Virginia, all the way north to Richmond, thirty-five miles away. The spring brought no relief. Grant’s mammoth army continued its long siege of the embattled Petersburg. Meanwhile, Union general Sherman was continuing his march across South Carolina to the sea, leaving a fifty-mile swath of destruction in his wake. Cities were burned, telegraph poles were torn down and railway track was ripped up. Southern leaders knew what he was going to do and where he was going, but they could not stop him.

On March 4, 1865, Lincoln had delivered his second inaugural address. Just as he stood to speak, two days of steady rain suddenly stopped, the dark clouds parted and the sun shone down upon him. Thousands had gathered to listen. All knew the war was nearing its end and much of what he said pointed to the rebuilding that would soon need
to be done. But he also promised that fighting would continue until the bitter end. Few noted that, just thirty-five feet away, the famous actor John Wilkes Booth watched the speech with teeth clenched in rage.

Shortly afterward, Lincoln accepted Grant’s invitation to join him at City Point, Virginia. He arrived on March 25. Five days later, Grant’s troops were finally able to breach Lee’s flank, leading to an end of the stalemate and a Union victory on April 1 at Five Forks. The next day, Grant ordered an attack along the entire Confederate line. Lee had no alternative but to withdraw what remained of his bedraggled and starving army. Lee sent a telegram to Richmond, and within hours Jefferson Davis was on the run with his government in a valise. His officials set fire to cotton and to documents that could not be carried, and the flames quickly got away from them. The fires consumed much of the city, along with Confederate dreams of statehood.

On April 4, with a guard of only twelve blue-coated sailors, President Lincoln arrived aboard a small boat at Richmond’s Rocketts Landing. The city was largely abandoned, with smoke still rising from smouldering buildings. Resplendent and instantly recognizable in his black suit and tall stovepipe hat, Lincoln walked hand-in-hand with his son, down charred streets. Faces peered through broken windows and African-Americans, who just days before had been enslaved, filled the streets and formed a buoyant parade behind him. Cheers greeted Lincoln when he arrived at Richmond’s Capitol Square. He nodded at a guard and then entered the Confederate White House. He sat for a moment at Davis’s desk. He said nothing. He took nothing.

Lee led what was left of his army west, but it was clear that they were done fighting. He sent a message to Grant, and on April 9, 1865, the two met at a house in the little crossroads village of Appomattox Court House. Lee arrived in a freshly brushed full dress uniform. Grant stepped into the small parlour to meet him in a mud-spattered private’s uniform. Lee offered his sword and Grant refused it. Grant accepted Lee’s offer of unconditional surrender and then allowed Lee’s men to keep their horses and return to their homes.

The modest home in which Lee surrendered was owned by Wilmer McLean, who had moved there after his farm near Manassas had been the site of the war’s first battle. MacLean could legitimately claim that the Civil War had begun in his front yard and ended in his parlour. As Lee and Grant emerged from the house and descended the steps, a Union honour guard snapped to attention. Among those standing ramrod straight was Canadian John McEachern, there with his Maine regiment.

Lincoln arrived back in Washington on April 9 and went immediately to the home of his friend and cabinet ally William Seward. Seward had been in a carriage accident and suffered a number of lacerations as well as a fractured arm and broken jaw. On April 10, the city erupted in celebration. When a band appeared outside the White House, Lincoln asked them to play “Dixie.”

Four days later, on April 14, Good Friday, Lincoln presided over a cabinet meeting in which Grant spoke of the surrender that he expected soon from Confederate general Johnston, who was leading the last Confederate army left in the field. Later that afternoon, Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana brought a message to Lincoln that Confederate agent Jacob Thompson had left Canada and was attempting to flee to Europe. He had been spotted in Portland, Maine. Secretary of War Stanton wanted Lincoln’s permission to have Thompson arrested. Lincoln refused and offered an aphorism as explanation: “When you have an elephant by the hind leg, and he’s trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.”
⁷⁸
Thompson made it to his ship and believed himself through with the United States. But the United States was not through with him.

With the sun down and most of his staff gone for the day, Lincoln wrote a final note. It was to George Ashmun, who had been Seward’s agent in Canada and the man who had sat with the president and Galt years before. He would see Ashmun the next morning.

It had only been five days since Lee’s surrender had brought peace to America. The war was over, but Lincoln understood the immensity of the challenges still ahead. For the next couple of hours, though, he would take his mind off such serious matters and enjoy a good comedy. He took the arm of his wife, Mary, and set out for Ford’s Theatre.

6
 
JOHN A. MACDONALD: THE INDISPENSABLE MAN

A
DEVILISHLY HANDSOME
, roguishly charming and gifted actor, John Wilkes Booth had, by 1862, surpassed the fame even of his father and older brother, who were respected thespians in their own right. He led a nomadic lifestyle and hotels had become his only home. When in Washington, he spent a good deal of time at Ford’s Theatre, on 10th Street, just blocks from the White House. He had appeared thirteen times on the Ford stage, most recently in
The Apostate
, on March 18, 1865.

A few weeks later, on the Good Friday morning of April 14, the twenty-six-year-old visited the theatre to pick up his mail. While there, he learned that the president, his wife, and General and Mrs. Grant would be attending that evening’s performance of
Our American Cousin
. He went upstairs to check preparations on what would be the president’s private box, then hurried away.

Around 9:30 that evening, Booth dismounted his horse in the alley behind the theatre and asked a stagehand named Edman Spangler to hold
the reins. He entered, and then left through a side exit to purchase a whiskey at Taltavull’s Star Saloon next door. When Booth returned to the theatre, he entered through the front door, stirring no suspicion from the doorman. He made his way upstairs to the back of the unguarded presidential box, where he waited patiently for the point in the play he knew quite well, when only one actor would be on stage.

Booth held a dagger in one hand and a single-shot derringer pistol in the other. Through a small hole in the door that he had drilled that afternoon, he could see President Lincoln and his wife and, because Grant could not attend, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, enjoying the play. When the moment was right, Booth quietly slid open the door, pointed the derringer at the back of the unsuspecting president’s head, and fired. Rathbone jumped to his feet and Booth slashed him with the dagger. Booth then yelled “
Sic semper tyrannis
” and leapt twelve feet to the stage below, breaking his fibula bone inches above his right ankle. To a stunned audience, he shouted, “The South shall be free,” and then hurried out the back door to his waiting horse.
^*

Pandemonium gripped the theatre. Two doctors joined the throng crowding around the unconscious president, and they agreed that the wound was mortal. Lincoln was carried through a chaotic crowd to the Peterson boarding house across 10th Street, where he was laid diagonally across a small bed.

Six blocks away, in his three-storey home overlooking Lafayette Square, Secretary of State William Seward was resting in bed, still recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the carriage accident. He wore a steel brace, painfully securing his broken jaw, and his fractured arm was hanging over the bedside. At about the time that Booth had left the saloon, a co-conspirator, the intimidatingly large and well-dressed Lewis Powell, knocked on Seward’s front door, claiming to be delivering medicine. He pushed past a servant and rushed to Seward’s third-floor room.
Seward’s son Frederick stopped him at the bedroom door, and Seward’s daughter Fanny and army nurse George Robinson stepped out to see who was there. Fanny and Robinson left Frederick alone to deal with the visitor, at which point Powell suddenly pulled a revolver from beneath his overcoat and, when it misfired, smashed it against Frederick’s head. The horrible noise brought Fanny and Robinson back. Powell then attacked Robinson with a long Bowie knife, ran into Seward’s room, leapt onto the bed, and with Fanny screaming, began slashing at Seward. One blow nearly sliced off Seward’s cheek. Several more strikes sent blood spattering onto the bed and walls. The commotion roused another of Seward’s sons, Augustus, and he and the bleeding Robinson pulled Powell from the bed. But they could not hold him. Yelling “I am mad! I am mad!” Powell ran back outside to his partner, David Herold, who had been holding their horses. They dug in their spurs and vanished into the night. Seward lay crumpled on the floor, entangled in torn and blood-soaked nightclothes and sheets, gasping for air and barely conscious.