History Repeats
There is a double echo in the Lincolnian saying, “No surrender, though at the end of one or a hundred defeats,” from General-President Taylor’s reply at Buena Vista: “General Taylor never surrenders,” to its antecedent, not so well authenticated, of General Cambronne at Waterloo: “The Old Guard dies, but does not surrender.”
“NOT THE PRESIDENT, BUT THE OLD FRIEND.”
In February, 1865, General Grant’s plans were so well shaped that, with the reenforcement of General Sherman returned from his march to Savannah, he could count on crushing up Richmond, as an egg under trip-hammers. Before this the doom was registered, for the Southerners were at the end of their men, as before they had been at that of their means. Bridges burned or blown up, the rebel army was pouring out of their capital with the fear that their one or two ways of flight were already blocked by Sheridan or Sherman. The desperate attempt to arm the slaves against their coming deliverer was the “last kick.” Lee clung to Richmond in hope that his lieutenant, Johnston, would check the oncomer, but he was compelled to notify his President and colleagues that flight was their only resource when he could no longer fight.
Lincoln was at Petersburg at Grant’s headquarters when, a few miles off, Davis received the fatal intelligence that Lee was being deserted so freely that there would not be a body-guard left him. He fled, to be ignominiously captured in female disguise. His lair was hot when Lincoln entered it, and made it his closet, whence he issued his orders.
Soon after this occupation the victor heard the name of Pickett announced to him. The Southern general, George Pickett, was a protégé of his, as he smoothed his entry upon the West Point Military Academy book when he was a congressman. Without either knowing it, the hero was lying dead on a hard-fought field close by. But Lincoln ordered her admittance. She was accompanied by her little son. This alone would have prevailed over the President, but, as she formally addressed him as the authority, he interrupted:
“Not the President, but George’s old friend!”
And beckoning the wondering boy to him with the irresistible attraction of men who love the young, and are intuitively loved by them, he said:
“Tell your father, rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of your mother’s smile, and your own bright eyes.”
This reconciliation on the fall of the sword was a token of the forgivingness of the North toward the chastened foes.