Collection 3: "Bloody Times" by James L. Swanson

In the spring of 1865, the country was divided in two: the Union in the North, led by Abraham Lincoln, fighting to keep the Southern states from seceding from the United States.

He served as an officer in the United States army on the western frontier, and then became a planter, or a farmer, in Mississippi and was later elected a United States Congressman and later a senator.

She succumbed to the disease.

At the African church, it was a day of jubilation.

As the train rolled out of Richmond, most of the passengers were somber.

“It was near midnight,” Postmaster General John Reagan, on board the train, remembered, “when the President and his cabinet left the heroic city. As our train, frightfully overcrowded, rolled along toward Danville we were oppressed with sorrow for those we left behind us and fears for the safety of General Lee and his army.”

Once Jefferson Davis was gone, and as the night wore on, Parker witnessed the breakdown of order: “The whiskey...was running in the gutters, and men were getting drunk upon it....Large numbers of ruffians suddenly sprung into existence—I suppose thieves, deserters...who had been hiding.”

If the mob learned what cargo Parker and his men guarded, then the looters, driven mad by greed, would have attacked the train.

"By daylight, on the 3d,” he noted, “a mob of men, women, and children, to the number of several thousands, had gathered at the corner of 14th and Cary streets...for it must be remembered that in 1865 Richmond was a half-starved city, and the Confederate Government had that morning removed its guards and abandoned the removal of the provisions…."

The sight of ex-slaves roving freely about disgusted her.

The plodding journey from Richmond to Danville made clear an uncomfortable truth.

The man knelt at Lincoln’s feet, praising him, calling him the messiah come to free his children from slavery.

He spoke to the throng of former slaves.

My poor friends, you are free—free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it....Liberty is your birthright....But you must try to deserve this priceless boon.

“I reached out and helped her within the circle of the sailors’ bayonets, where, although nearly stifled with dust, she gracefully presented her bouquet to the President and made a neat little speech, while he held her hand....There was a card on the bouquet with these simple words: ‘From Eva to the Liberator of the slaves.’”

During his time in Richmond, Lincoln did not order arrests of any rebel leaders who stayed in the city, did not order their property seized, and said nothing of vengeance or punishment.