" This
was an obvious reflection, easy enough of suggestion for any one who was
not within the danger line; but to live every day in accordance with it,
when the danger was never absent, called for a singular tranquillity of
temperament, and a kind of courage in which brave men are notoriously
apt to be deficient.
On April 9 the President was coming up the Potomac in a steamer from
City Point; the Comte de Chambrun was of the party and relates that, as
they were nearing Washington, Mrs. Lincoln, who had been silently gazing
toward the town, said: "That city is filled with our enemies;" whereupon
Mr. Lincoln "somewhat impatiently retorted: 'Enemies! we must never
speak of that!'" For he was resolutely cherishing the impossible idea
that Northerners and Southerners were to be enemies no longer, but that
a pacification of the spirit was coming throughout the warring land
contemporaneously with the cessation of hostilities,--a dream romantic
and hopelessly incapable of realization, but humane and beautiful.
Since he did not live to endeavor to transform it into a fact, and
thereby perhaps to have his efforts cause even seriously injurious
results, it is open to us to forget the impracticability of the fancy
and to revere the nature which in such an hour could give birth to such
a purpose.
The fourteenth day of April was Friday,--Good Friday. Many religious
persons afterward ventured to say that if the President had not been at
the theatre upon that sacred day, the awful tragedy might never have
occurred at all.
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