As events turned out it was a catastrophe.  But this was not apparent at the time.  Though Lincoln had been beaten for the moment, the opposition was made up of so many and such irreconcilable elements that as long as he could hold together his own following, there was no reason to suppose he would not in the long run prevail.  He was never in a firmer, more self-contained mood than on the last night of the session.(10) Again, as on that memorable fourth of July, eight months before, he was in his room at the Capitol signing the last-minute bills.  Stanton was with him.  On receiving a telegram from Grant, the Secretary handed it to the President Grant reported that Lee had proposed a conference for the purpose of “a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention.”  Without asking for the Secretary’s opinion, Lincoln wrote out a reply which he directed him to sign and despatch immediately.  “The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee’s army, or on some minor or purely military matter.  He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions, such questions the President holds in his own hands and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions.  Meanwhile, you are to press to the utmost your military advantages."(11)

In the second inaugural (12) delivered the next day, there is not the faintest shadow of anxiety.  It breathes a lofty confidence as if his soul was gazing meditatively downward upon life, and upon his own work, from a secure height.  The world has shown a sound instinct in fixing upon one expression, “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” as the key-note of the final Lincoln.  These words form the opening line of that paragraph of unsurpassable prose in which the second inaugural culminates: 

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

XXXVI.  PREPARING A DIFFERENT WAR

During the five weeks which remained to Lincoln on earth, the army was his most obvious concern.  He watched eagerly the closing of the enormous trap that had been slowly built up surrounding Lee.  Toward the end of March he went to the front, and for two weeks had his quarters on a steamer at City Point.  It was during Lincoln’s visit that Sherman came up from North Carolina for his flying conference with Grant, in which the President took part.  Lincoln was at City Point when Petersburg fell.  Early on the morning of April third, he joined Grant who gives a strange glimpse in his Memoirs