the White House that "the great job is ended." The thirteenth amendment, making slavery forever impossible in the United States, was then substantially a fact. On February 25 Leslie's published a cartoon showing Lincoln holding an envelope inscribed, "Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution," and observing, with a smile, "This is like a dream I once had in Illinois." It was, indeed, and like the dream which had occupied the better part of his life.

The fears which had always gone with this dream, however, were not unabated; but before taking up this last problem of his life, reconstruction and its dangers, we may pause to see him as he appeared in this last year of his life. Happily the picture has been drawn for us by a vigorous hand—the hand of America's prophet poet, the apostle of Democracy, to whom Lincoln meant the ideal of his country's manhood.

"From my note-book in 1864, at Washington City," says Walt Whitman, "I find this memorandum, under date of August 12:

"I see the President almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location, some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' Home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning

about 8.30 coming in to business, riding on Vermont Avenue, near L Street. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn, and held upright over their shoulders. The party makes no great show in uniforms or horses. Mr. Lincoln, on the saddle, generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dressed in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks as ordinary in attire, etc., as the commonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by two, come the cavalrymen in their yellow-striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one they wait upon. The sabres and accoutrements clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege, as it trots toward Lafayette Square, arouses no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the deep cut lines, the eyes, etc., always to me with a latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we always exchange bows, and very cordial ones.

"Sometimes the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out evenings and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early-he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the

Secretary of War on K Street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony.

"Earlier in the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in complete black, with a long crape veil. The equipage of the plainest kind, only two horses, and they nothing extra. They passed me once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slow, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed."

As late as February 5, 1865, the President drafted a message to Congress, which he never sent, recommending that he be empowered to pay $400,000,000 (in compensation for their negroes) to such of the slave states as should have ceased

resistance by April 1. The same day Lincoln made on the memorandum this indorsement, -—

"To-day these papers, which explain themselves, were drawn up and submitted to the cabinet and unanimously disapproved by them."

A day later Secretary Welles wrote in his diary: "There was a cabinet meeting last evening. The President had matured a scheme which he hoped would be successful in promoting peace. It was a proposition for paying the expenses of the war for two hundred days, or four hundred millions, to the rebel states, to be for the extinguishment of slavery or for such purpose as the states were disposed. This, in few words, was the scheme. It did not meet with favor, but was dropped. The earnest desire of the President to conciliate and effect peace was manifest, but there may be such a thing as so overdoing as to cause a distinct or adverse feeling. In the present temper of Congress the proposed measure, if a wise one, could not be carried through successfully; I do not think the scheme would accomplish any good results. The rebels would misconstrue it if the offer were made. If attempted and defeated, it would do harm." So the President sadly folded it up and laid it away. How unpopular his views were among the politicians even after his death, may be judged by this passage from the "Political Recollections" of George W. Julian: "I spent most of the afternoon in a political caucus, held for the

purpose of considering the necessity for a new cabinet and a line of policy less conciliatory than that of Mr. Lincoln; and while everybody was shocked at his murder, the feeling was nearly universal that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsend to the country." Lincoln read the Bible more in the last years of his life than he ever had before, and gave signs of taking many of the Christian principles as intense realities. All his plans of reconstruction were in harmony not with the Mosaic law but with the Sermon on the Mount.

The latest expressions by the President on the subject of reconstruction were given shortly before his death. Some of them were made to his generals when their work was about ending. Grant told him that surrender might be expected at any time, so Lincoln went down March 22 and established himself at City Point, probably to make negotiations easier. Sheridan in his memoirs hints that the President was a little uneasy about a possible rebel capture of that point, but Grant says: "Mr. Lincoln was not timid, and he was willing to trust his generals in making and executing their plans. The Secretary was very timid and it was impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the capital when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against the army guarding the Confederate capi