Lincoln’s Fateful 11th of April

Abraham Lincoln had a busy day, this April 11, 1865. There were meetings, then more meetings, and proclamations (and more proclamations), a pass for his friend, and a request to General Grant. That evening he would give a speech that would cost him his life.

Early in the day he consulted with General Benjamin Butler. Butler seemed to be involved in everything important happening in the war, from the workaround to avoid more bloodshed in Baltimore as northern troops first passed through the southern-leaning city on the way to protect Washington. Then there was New Orleans and Fortress Monroe and that whole business with Butler declaring that any enslaved people who escaped into Union lines would be considered contraband of war, and thus would not be returned to the South. It was this topic – what to do with the freed people – that Lincoln and Butler discussed on this fateful day, just two days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Despite the surrender of Lee’s army, the war was not over. Lincoln issues several proclamations closing certain ports of entry and defining foreign port privileges. He also modifies the blockade of Key West, Florida. The end was near, but there was more to be done.

Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s friend and the current Marshall of the District of Columbia, stopped by the White House with Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher to discuss a proposed trip to Richmond. Now that the Confederate capital had fallen, Lamon was to serve as Lincoln’s eyes for a reconstruction convention. Lincoln writes Lamon a pass: “Allow the bearer, W.H. Lamon & friend, with ordinary baggage to pass from Washington to Richmond and return.” Lamon would still be in Richmond four days later.

The meetings were not over. Secretary of the Navy in his diary describes a contentious cabinet meeting in which cotton trade is the chief topic. Lincoln had authorized some restricted trade of cotton with the South to help northern textile mill owners get back to business, but there were questions as to whether it was aiding the South as well. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lincoln was writing to General Grant that the President was ill but “would be very much pleased to see you this…evening,” adding that she would like Grant “to drive…with us to see the illumination.”

Lincoln may have been ill, but he was also busy putting the finishing touches on what would turn out to be the last public speech he would give in his presidency, and indeed, in his life.

The night before, when news of Lee’s surrender was ballyhooed in the papers, a crowd had gathered at the White House and chanted for Lincoln to give a speech. He begged off, saying the occasion called for thoughtfully considered remarks rather than an off-the-cuff victory speech. When he arrived at the window on the 11th he gave a much longer, and much more serious, speech than the crowd anticipated. Focusing on the newly approved constitution for reconstructing Louisiana, the first former Confederate state to do so. While generally in favor of the effort, he did note that:

It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

Lincoln had been pushing for African American voting rights in private letters to the military governor in Louisiana, but the legislature thought that was too radical for the times and left it out. Lincoln’s pronouncement that at least some African Americans – certainly those who risked their lives serving in the Union army and navy – should have the ability to vote was the first time he would publicly make his views clear. At least one person in the audience found it to be too much. John Wilkes Booth heard Lincoln’s call, and after expressing his racial hatred, vowed, “That is the last speech he will ever give.”

He was right. Four days later, on the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre and fatally shot the seated Lincoln in the back of the head. Lincoln died the next morning never having regained consciousness.

Assassinated, in large part, because of that fateful speech on April 11th.