Lincoln's Last Days: March 15, 1865
By March 15, 1865 (150 years ago today) President Abraham Lincoln had recovered from illness such that he was well enough to conduct business from his office today. He saw members of his cabinet and attended to some other tasks. One of those duties involved receiving the credentials of Count Wydenbruck, the new Austrian minister. That day Lincoln gave the Count a note which read as follows:
"COUNT WYDENBRUCK: I sincerely hope that you may find your residence in our country an agreeable one. During a period in which our relations with several of the foreign powers have been a subject of especial care, if not of anxiety, the friendly intercourse between your great country and ours has been free not only from disturbance, but even from every form of irritation or annoyance. Your sovereign has been discreet, frank, and friendly, and has thus won the confidence and good will of the American people.."
Lincoln also penned a short note to Hugh McCulloch, his new Treasury Secretary, about a Treasury Departmet employee named Solomon James Johnson. Lincoln wrote "I shall be glad if S. James Johnson, the bearer, could get a little promotion." He wrote a note to General Ulysses Grant asking for permission to allow a man named Robert E. Coxe "to pass through our lines to go south and return." He also sent a note to James Speed, his Attorney-General, to appoint Judge Caleb Baldwin of Iowa to be District Attorney for the District of Iowa.
Lincoln had a lengthy meeting with a delegation from Louisiana. He was beginning to plan for life in the south following the war, and the group discussed the subject of organization of civil government in the state. He also met with Rev. Samuel Roberts, who was writing a series of articles on America for newspapers in England and Wales.
On that day Lincoln also wrote to New York Republican boss and political strategist Thurlow Weed, responding to a letter that Weed had wrote earlier that month praising Lincoln's recent speech to the Congressional Notification Committee. Lincoln responded with thanks. In the letter, he commented on his second inaugural address as well. He told Weed:
"Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as---perhaps better than---any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."
Later that evening, the President and Mrs. Lincoln attended Grover's Theatre for a performance of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Their guests were accompanied by Clara Harris, the daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris, and General James G. Wilson. This was the same Clara Harris who was the fiancee of Major Henry Rathbone, and who would be with the Lincolns along with her fiancee, sitting in the presidential box at Ford's Theater on the night of April 14, 1865, when John Wilkes Booth fired the shot that would end Lincoln's life.
"COUNT WYDENBRUCK: I sincerely hope that you may find your residence in our country an agreeable one. During a period in which our relations with several of the foreign powers have been a subject of especial care, if not of anxiety, the friendly intercourse between your great country and ours has been free not only from disturbance, but even from every form of irritation or annoyance. Your sovereign has been discreet, frank, and friendly, and has thus won the confidence and good will of the American people.."
Lincoln also penned a short note to Hugh McCulloch, his new Treasury Secretary, about a Treasury Departmet employee named Solomon James Johnson. Lincoln wrote "I shall be glad if S. James Johnson, the bearer, could get a little promotion." He wrote a note to General Ulysses Grant asking for permission to allow a man named Robert E. Coxe "to pass through our lines to go south and return." He also sent a note to James Speed, his Attorney-General, to appoint Judge Caleb Baldwin of Iowa to be District Attorney for the District of Iowa.
Lincoln had a lengthy meeting with a delegation from Louisiana. He was beginning to plan for life in the south following the war, and the group discussed the subject of organization of civil government in the state. He also met with Rev. Samuel Roberts, who was writing a series of articles on America for newspapers in England and Wales.
On that day Lincoln also wrote to New York Republican boss and political strategist Thurlow Weed, responding to a letter that Weed had wrote earlier that month praising Lincoln's recent speech to the Congressional Notification Committee. Lincoln responded with thanks. In the letter, he commented on his second inaugural address as well. He told Weed:
"Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as---perhaps better than---any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."
Later that evening, the President and Mrs. Lincoln attended Grover's Theatre for a performance of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Their guests were accompanied by Clara Harris, the daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris, and General James G. Wilson. This was the same Clara Harris who was the fiancee of Major Henry Rathbone, and who would be with the Lincolns along with her fiancee, sitting in the presidential box at Ford's Theater on the night of April 14, 1865, when John Wilkes Booth fired the shot that would end Lincoln's life.