Free The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop Page B

moan in his sleep. “I would stand there and listen,” the guard said, “until a sort of panic stole over me. At last I would walk softly away, feeling as if I had been listening at a keyhole.”
    On the day before Mr. Lincoln’s appointment with destiny, General and Mrs. Grant arrived in Washington. This was on Thursday, April 13. The hero of the war wanted to go up to Burlington, New Jersey, to see his two children and, with Lee out of the way, Grant felt that Sherman and Meade could handle Joe Johnston. He stopped off in Washington only because Stanton wanted him to advise how to cut army personnel and to cancel certain army contracts. The general figured that he could do this chore in a day—or two at most.
    The Grants were consciously unostentatious. They did not like the theater or parades or public appearances, and didnot care much for dining out. At Appomattox Courthouse, Ulysses S. Grant expressly ordered that there be no victory celebration by the Army of the Potomac. Now this morning, he arrived at the Willard Hotel so quietly that the management was flustered. At the desk, he stood short and stocky and dusty, gray beard a little bit stained with brown, and explained that he wanted a sitting room and a bedroom for overnight. If he needed the suite for an extra night, he would let the management know. With the Grants were Colonel Horace Porter, the general’s aide, and two sergeants who carried luggage.
    In the rooms, Mrs. Grant unpacked and the general said that he and Colonel Porter would walk around the corner to the War Department and do some work. When the two stepped out on Pennsylvania Avenue, Grant was recognized and, in a trice, was surrounded by a hero-worshipping crowd. The people cheered. Porter, dismayed, tried to clear a passage for his chief. He found that he was helpless. Metropolitan policemen rescued the two officers and persuaded them to accept a carriage and a cavalry escort for the three-block trip.
    At the War Department, the general was given a desk and, after a round of handshaking and congratulations, began the work of cutting the expenses of a wartime army. He recommended that the draft be stopped at once; he marked down the numbers of certain divisions and brigades which could be mustered out of service without impairing the power of the army to enforce the peace; he labored over contracts for shovels and ambulances and ammunition and beds and blankets and bullets which, in his estimation, would not be needed.
    In the afternoon, Grant received an invitation from Mrs. Lincoln to take a drive around the city in the evening with her and her husband. The general did not want to go. He knew little about the social amenities—barely enough to make him fretful about his rights in such matters—and he went into Stanton’s office and told him about it. Stanton said thatthe general might refuse on the grounds of impending work. Grant followed this advice, although he might have wondered why his wife was not invited.
    In the late afternoon, Stanton was leaving the War Department when he stopped in to say good night and to remind the general that he and his wife were expected at an informal at-home with the Stantons. Grant said that he wanted to finish a few more items on his list of recommendations, and that he and his wife would be at the Stanton home later. He told the Secretary of War that, while he had successfully turned down the invitation for an evening drive with the Lincolns, he now had a second one—this from the President. Lincoln wanted him to attend the theater tomorrow night.
    Stanton was irritated. In the presence of telegrapher Bates, he urged Grant not to attend. He said that he and other Cabinet members had warned Lincoln about these public appearances many times, and that he, Stanton, had made it a rule to turn down all such invitations. Washington City, the Secretary of War said, was “Secesh” to the core, a place of wild-eyed